A Student Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic Later Printing Used Edition

by Eckehard Schulz (Author)

16 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0521541596

ISBN-10: 052154159X

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This accessible grammar provides a concise and user-friendly guide to the structure of Modern Standard Arabic. Using familiar terminology and keeping theory to a minimum, it is suitable for beginning students as well as those at a more advanced level. Detailed descriptions of all types of sentences are given, and numerous tables provide a clear presentation of verbs and nouns. The most familiar grammatical terms are given in Arabic as well as in English in order to help students identify them more easily.

Matthew Aldrich
3
Paperback
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Editorial Reviews

Review

'The author has accomplished the noble goal of user-friendliness, while simultaneously presenting numerous intricate, interwoven details, and this, in and of itself, makes it an ideal text for a course in the structure of MSA.' WORD

Book Description

An accessible and user-friendly grammar of Modern Standard Arabic, for both beginners and advanced students.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; Later Printing Used edition (January 10, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 266 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 052154159X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521541596
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.69 x 0.6 x 9.61 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,550,948 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,028 in Foreign Language Instruction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
16 ratings

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Super Colin Blow

A little too complicated for the beginner

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 15, 2005

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Schulz's book is too complicated for a beginner; I would recommend it only for the advanced or intermediate student of Arabic. I don't like that it calls the past and present tenses "perfect and imperfect" (why not just call them past and present???) just to confuse you. To add insult to injury, the charts of verbs are different than those I learned in school. Instead of being arranged: ana, anta, anti, huwa, heya; nahnu, antum, antunna, hum, hunn...the pronouns in the verb charts are just arranged any old way. Plus, this book doesn't even cover in depth something very important: the Masdar! I think, though I'm not sure because I'm not an advanced scholar, that there are "added" extra marks above some of the letters, like the spelling is slightly different than what I have learned. Like a double dumma at the end of a word, or a kasra under a ta-marbuta for no apparent reason.

Ok, that said it certainly is very thorough, and probably appropriate for the advanced student who already knows what it is talking about. It is just not what a beginning or intermediate student needs as a reference grammar to have at his side to correct his homework or whatever, or look something up. I do not think it gives enough examples, nor does it clearly explain what it is demonstrating. This is clearly an advanced book; not something I would want to fool around with (I'm just ending Arabic 102).

10 people found this helpful

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Minerva

you'll love yourself.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2015

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I've been teaching Arabic my entire life, and I know for a fact this is the book for both, instructors who want to explain to English speaking students and any serious non-native Arabic student. I don't get the over-analysis of this book by some reviews here (seriously?). - Just... Get it, study it, you'll love yourself.

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S.A.S.

Great reference guide

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 21, 2008

I've been using this book as a quick grammar reference for university level Arabic classes for several years now (picked it up soon after it came out) and don't have much to complain about. Schulz's book is concise, compact, thorough, and relatively inexpensive. The layout isn't completely intuitive and may be confusing if you aren't used to Arabic grammar references. The index is laid out nicely and is easily accessible. I have no problem using this book in class to quickly find and clarify an aspect of grammar without falling behind the rest of the students. Its the perfect complement to Arabic instructional materials like the Al-Kitaab series, which do a good job of introducing grammatical rules and structures but aren't easy to reference and lack concise explanations.

A few things are worth mentioning however...

* You need to be able to read Arabic script to effectively use the book as the examples are not transliterated.

* You should have at least a basic knowledge of Arabic before using this book, or you won't get much out of it. Its probably best if you have studied Arabic for at least a year, as you will not need this book much for the first year of study. For intermediate level students and higher this book is great for review, but if you have not been introduced to a concept previously it is difficult to learn it through this book. Combining this reference with Al-Kitaab and a competent instructor works well, and as you become more proficient in the language this book becomes increasingly useful.

* Again, to clarify; this book is not supposed to teach you Arabic grammar, it is a reference tool. To quote the preface, "Not all the rules are explained in detail since the room assumes that the user already knows Arabic and should be able to deduce the rule in question from the examples quoted." This doesn't mean the book is useless for non-advanced students, just that you need to supplement it with instructional materials (and an instructor!). I personally found the book disappointing until my knowledge of Arabic grammar grew and I could make sense of the examples and terminology.

* Depending on your knowledge of Arabic and linguistics (and Arabic linguistics in particular) you may need to study the basic lexicon before being able to effectively use this book. The grammatical concepts and terms are referred to and indexed in both English and Arabic. If you are still working on basic grammar you probably are only comfortable in one or the other, so you should use either the English or Arabic terms and not both to avoid confusion. I've found that this book is helping me to understand Arabic grammar in both languages as I try to learn the English terminology when reviewing topics, and I can now compare the grammars of both English and Arabic easier.

For example, I now know that al-marfoo3, al-manSub, al-majzum and al-amr are moods, and that Arabic contains two voices. Before I didn't associate imperative with anything else and only thought of the aforementioned concepts in relation to their case ending rather than their grammatical function. If you had asked me what accusative or jussive meant before I got this book I wouldn't have had a clue.

The reviewer Colin is right that this book isn't for the beginning student, but it isn't just for advanced students either. I think he was looking for an instructional text, which may explain much of his review. Still, in response to some of his points... Masdar is a very basic concept and isn't too difficult compared to many of the other grammatical structures so it doesn't need many pages for elaboration. The verb charts are organized correctly, on page 12 Schulz clarifies with, "The order of persons in the Arabic conjugational paradigm is 3rd person - 2nd person - 1st person. This complies with Arab tradition and the practice pursued in nearly all Arabic textbooks." The dual forms are necessary to learn for literary Arabic, though for beginning students they can be ignored. The "'added' extra marks" are diacritics denoting the short vowels and are absolutely essential for literary (esp. classical) Arabic as they mark case and help identify the form used. If you have not used vocalized script before you certainly haven't progressed far enough to need this book!

The reviewer Just Another Linguist also has some misconceptions about the text. The book is organized into three parts: verbs, nouns, and syntax. Within each section the concepts are organized into further sub-divisions. It all flows nicely and the organization works well for a reference grammar, though if you wanted to learn Arabic grammar the organization is not suited to working through the whole book which may be the reason for such comments. I haven't noticed anything in the way of typographical errors, and certainly nothing to diminish the quality the text. The complaint about price feels odd to me as this is probably the cheapest Arabic-study related book I own and it is well worth the price!

I wasn't going to write a review for this book until I saw the existing ones, which I don't feel appropriately represent the text. 'A Student Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic' is a great reference guide that is best used in conjunction with other instructional materials or by those with decent existing knowledge of Arabic grammar. Its compact and easily transportable, well-organized and indexed, has examples for everything, isn't very expensive, and will be useful for as long as you continue to use/study Arabic.

14 people found this helpful

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Emberek

I've noticed an error

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 19, 2017

The vowelization for the Form III sound verb is wrong for the Imperfect Indicative, lst person singular ("'ana" form). This cost me a half hour of confusion and study time while I was plodding through Gaafar and Wightwick's "Easy Arabic Reader." The correct vowelization (with Dumma ("u") for the first vowel instead of fatHa ("a")) is given in the verb tables of Ziadeh and Winder's "An Introduction to Modern Arabic," Raymond Scheindlin's "201 Arabic Verbs," or Karin Ryding's "A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic."

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A random individual

Okay, but there are better, more reasonably-priced alternatives

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 28, 2007

This is a comprehensive treatment of Arabic grammar that suffers from (1) extremely strange organization (important, common topics are discussed after much more obscure ones have been treated) and (2) a price that seems, to me, to be too high for what you get. Additionally, there are many typographical errors.

However, the reviewer who critiques this book based on what he thinks he learned in first-year Arabic is misinformed. The Arabic verb system is commonly described as "perfect" and "imperfect," rather than "past" and "present," by many Arabic grammarians; this isn't a quirk of Schulz's, much less something Schulz does just to be difficult! Additionally, the "anaa, anta, anti" order of presenting verbs is not the way verbs are traditionally presented in the Arabic world - this order was borrowed from the traditional way of teaching European languages, and although many English-language Arabic texts use it, there's nothing particularly odd about using the Arabic system instead.

Finally, the vowel marks the other reviewer thinks are "extra" or "added" are perfectly standard in formal Arabic. (They're not normally spoken aloud, and as a result many introductory Arabic classes omit them ... but they're certainly not wrong!)

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Good for Intermediate Arabic students, college or University.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 27, 2016

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This is a good book providing you have a good basic to intermediate knowledge of Arabic. There are no transiliterations. There are examples but they require knowledge of Arabic at an Intermediate level, rather than a beginner level. If you are looking for a book with full translations of the verb forms, this is not the book for you. That said, if you know how the verbs work, from the verb stem, and you know the case system, the 'problem' verbs ( the so called 'weak' verb stems, quadrilateral verbs, hollow verbs etc) then this is a very good book. It is not just about verbs, of course, nouns, adverbs, prepositions, instruments are all here. The book has it all. But, I would caution against buying it if you do not first have a good basic understanding of Arabic or you are starting a serious study course in Arabic that will take you into an Intermediate stage at a college or University.

5 people found this helpful

tom

best for the beginners in English

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 7, 2020

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clear explanations, pleasant fonts

M. Hossen

Great for quick references to Arabic Grammar

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 2, 2015

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It's a great book for quick references and good value for money.

One person found this helpful

Does Not Render Properly (Kindle Edition)

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on July 31, 2019

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Very difficult to read on Kindle app.

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A Student Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic Later Printing Used Edition

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