Colloquial Arabic (Levantine) (Colloquial Series)

I’m a bit skeptical of these books that present some dialogue between two people in a falafel store and expect you to become fluent somehow. But as far as they are useful this is a good product. Little to no Arabic script it provided but if you are familiar with the dialect you will know this isn’t hugely useful unless they go to the trouble of transliterating spoken Levantine language. Certainly wouldn’t be useful for them to provide the standard Arabic used in newspapers etc. I think it’s a good resource to use for reference/expansion as long as you are doing spoken practice. Seems to fill a gap in the market; I’d use it along with the Lingualism books for more thorough gramatical reference/verb tables and so on. I’d just note that unlike some other books in the series, it seems to be well proofread and converted.

This particular course has always been the weakest spot in usually very good Colloquial series. Even though this is a completely new book, I'm sorry to say Routledge hasn't taken into account any of the massive criticism directed at the previous editions, and the "course" is unlike other Colloquial courses, being more of a phrasebook with a very limited vocabulary.There are three Colloquial Arabic books published by Routledge, but only one (Colloquial Arabic of the Gulf) lives up to the high standard in Routledge's Colloquial Series. Having said that, even Colloquial Arabic of Egypt, though rather "light" by Routledge standards, is far better than this course.This book is unsatisfactory since:1. Learning a new language is reasonably hard, and most Colloquial books published by Routledge are about 300-400 pages. This one in barely 200 pages and, what is more, its font is enourmous. This means that the material in this book compares to 1/3 in another Colloquial book. I don't think Arabic is that much easier...2. In this very short book, you'll learn very little vocabulary. Colloquial courses like Colloqual Italian, Colloquial Czech or even Colloquial Icelandic teach over 2000 words. This book, in sharp contrast, does not even reach 1000 words.3. The grammar is explained very briefly, and you don't get any understanding of it.I'm very interested in Arabic, and the Arabic of the Levant in particular, so it's very disappointing that this book don't live up to the most rudimentary expectations. Routledge is renowned as the worlds leading publisher of high quality language courses (justified in 99% of the cases) and I sincerely hope that they will remove this disgrace and replace it with a book worthy their reputation. If you want to learn Colloquial Arabic, go to Colloquial Arabic of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. I'm afraid there's no great course on Levantine Arabic to recommend, but Elihay's course in four volumes is far better than this one, so is Kattab's Lebanese Arabic.

I think this book starts out in the right direction by spending adequate time on the Arabic script and then follows up with a brief linguistic analysis of phonological features. Unfortunately, I feel that way too much of the vocabulary, useful phrases, and reading exercises are presented in transliteration rather than actual Arabic script.I assume a purchaser of this book would be well informed of how difficult any of the dialects of Arabic are, so it's my opinion that forcing us to "sink or swim" with the script from the beginning would have been better. Or at least give us a choice. There's no way a beginner can go and back-form a vocab word in Arabic script based on the transliterations and be correct 100% of the time, especially in regards to the vowel diacritics.I think the recordings could use better planning as well. More repetitions of sounds in the beginning lessons, at various rates (slow-medium-conversational). A lot of the vowels and consonants sound the same. The native speaker is either poorly recorded, or there is a lack of training for the student on how to create and repeat sounds, for example the difference in articulation of pharyngeal and uvular consonants.

Great book for the absolute beginner to any Arabic, including the alphabet. But, the only Arabic words written in Arabic letters is found in 26 pages of the back of the book. This is not helpful for the student of Arabic, seeing that learners need to learn Arabic. However, structure and content of the book is pretty good.

Having worked through the wonderful BBC Talk Arabic book and CD. ( Highly recommended for complete beginners and those wanting to improve their every day needed conversation.).In contrast I found this book dull and uninspiring.. there is no CD....although admittedly there is an audio download to go with the book. But I like to play a CD in the car as a vital tool to get to grips with the pronunciation and vocabulary..My latest PC's doesn't have a CD player, so had to find someone burn the download onto three CD's for me..bit of a hassle..The English alliteration used in the book is a bit strange at first and takes a while to master in the pronunciation of the Arabic words.. If you are a complete beginner,buy the BBC talk Arabic course.. Sadly the BBC have no plans to produce a follow up...yet..