English-Arabic Arabic-English Concise Romanized Dictionary: For the Spoken Arabic of Egypt and Syria (Hippocrene Concise Dictionary)

By Richard Jasch

Book Overview

Designed for travelers and language students, this pocket guide for conversational Arabic contains over 8,000 entries. The words and expressions are in Romanized Arabic, so this dictionary will be most helpful to users who are not familiar with the Arabic alphabet and script. This dictionary features both the Syrian and Egyptian dialect, thus doubling its value for the user.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0781806860
• ISBN13: 9780781806862
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Hippocrene Books
• Length: 380 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.3" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Very practical

I've found this to be very useful as I'm still a rather middling beginner with Arabic script and verb conjugations. I've been able to communicate better with my Arab friends without fumbling with an Arabic-English dictionary that lacks transliterations and phrases. I can't comment on whether this book contains errors, but I have found a lot of phrases and terms that have been helpful and which also agree with the modest vocabulary I already know. If you don't know the Arabic script or don't know it well, this will be useful in accessing words and phrases to fill out your speech. It's not exhaustive by any means, and it you may find that it doesn't make use of the broad range of dialectic differences across 17 Arabic speaking countries, but there aren't many like it. Hippocrene also makes an English->Arabic phrasal dictionary which uses Roman script (our alphabet) which is a good companion. Not a substitute for learning other aspects of the language ->writing system, customs, etc.

perfect if you do not need to read & write Arabic

This Dictionary is very suitable for people who only learn how to understand and speak Colloquial Arabic. In my teaching I use romanized Arabic texts. For students mastering the basics, this Dictionary is very suitable.