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Books for advanced Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Talib Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6663 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 1 of 5 01 November 2011 at 11:31pm | IP Logged |
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I was wondering what books are good to use for advanced Arabic. My favorite book is 'Standard Arabic: An Advanced Course by James Dickins and Janet C. E. Watson'. I find this book somewhat difficult as I have to look up a lot of words, and it is definitely not for beginners since it doesn't teach much in the way of grammar, but despite that, I like the interesting reading selections. Are there any other books that can be recommended for MSA?
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| jed Newbie United States Joined 4818 days ago 12 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 5 02 November 2011 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
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I am not sure what skills you want to focus on, but here are some ideas for reading/listening/vocab.
If you have a decent base in grammar and just want to build up listening/reading skills and vocab, you could get 'A Week in the Middle East' or 'The Arab News' by Pragnell. Both are a collection of newspaper articles (in Arabic with English translations) with decent quality recordings for all the articles. They focus on political and financial news, but 'A Week in the Middle East' also has a section on general interest stories. They can be pretty dry (sometimes almost mind-numbingly so - financial news is not a particularly exciting subject). But the payoff is that if you work through one of them, you could start watching/listening to Arabic news on the internet without too much difficulty - they are full of useful vocab/phrases. Note: you would probably still need to look up a few words in these books, but most words are clear from the translation. These books might be difficult to get in the US. Try Amazon, but your best bet is probably Alibris.com. I am pretty sure you could also get them at Foyles.co.uk. You can also get the FSI Modern Written Arabic books for free at the FSI site on the internet. The recordings for volume two are available for free at Omilia languages - you don't have to download them - you can just save the address to your computer screen. If you want to read an English language novel in translation, and if you are feeling adventuresome, another possibility would be to send an email to alahlia@nets.jo. They are a Jordanian publishing house that sells dual-language readers, with several titles that are the original, unabridged English text (Graham Greene-Loser Takes All; Graham Greene-The Third Man; George Orwell-Animal Farm; John Steinbeck-Of Mice and Men; John Steinbeck-The Pearl; John Steinbeck-The Red Pony; W. Somerset Maugham-Up at the Villa; Ernest Hemingway-The Old Man and The Sea; Erskine Caldwell-Claudelle Inglish; St Exupery-The Little Prince, in English translation). Warning: I got their books while visiting the Middle East - I have not tried getting them via the email address provided in the front of each book. You can also get dual readers - more easily - from Al Jazeer and Al Kitab websites. I am pretty sure 'A Passage to India' is the full unabridged English text. If you like Stephen King, Al-Kitab has 'Misery'. It is not dual language, but you could get an English copy of the book to help with the reading. I also like the Transparent language software for building reading/listening skills. They don't teach grammar - they are kind of like a digital phrase book. But the accompanying articles are a painless way to build up your skills. If you are only interested in the accompanying articles, the software is a bit expensive, so your best bet would be to get a used copy from Amazon. Beware: the Arabic print is fairly small. Finally, when you are ready, you can go to the internet. You can read both CNN and BBC news in Arabic on the internet. A lot of Arabic TV programming can be.....let's just say, a bit dull. But if you keep trying, there are some interesting programs. Kuwait TV has a live streaming channel with lots of documentaries, some of which are not too difficult to follow. One of the more interesting Arabic channels is surprisingly on Turkish TV. Go to Gooya.co.uk and select TRT. When the TRT main page opens, click 'canli'(live). You will be presented with a list of TRT channels, one of which is TRT Arab. (They also have a Kurmanji channel, TRT 6, for any of you learning Kurmanji Kurdish). Good luck! Have fun! One more idea. When you are ready to start watching films, go to Tulumba.com. The site is actually for Turkish products, but on the right-hand side of the screen at the top, there is a category called 'International Shops'. If you click on it, you will find a good number of fairly cheap Arabic-language films. Most seem to be Egyptian. Some have subtitles, some don't. Before buying, be sure to check that the film can be played on your equipment (check the region it was produced for). There is also an Irani shop with lots of cheap films in Farsi. Edited by jed on 09 November 2011 at 7:47pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Talib Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6663 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 3 of 5 04 November 2011 at 7:08pm | IP Logged |
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There are a lot of good suggestions here. The audio for FSI 2 is especially a good find.
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| Fred Pragnell Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4751 days ago 1 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* | Message 4 of 5 24 November 2011 at 11:08pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks Jed for recommending A Week in the Middle East and the Arab News, the dual
language Arabic- English readers I published some years ago and which are still going strong. I couldn't agree more - some of the articles are mind-numbingly dry, but sometimes the driest are the most straightforward. You may be interested to know I have also done Palestine Chronicle 1880-1950, Extracts from the Arabic press tracing the main political and social developments 2005, with a CD containing a translation in English of all the articles plus a word list. Set in a historical context, the articles continue to have relevance to this day. On the literary side, the 'standard' reader is Modern Arabic Short Stories A Bilingual Reader by Ronak Husni & Daneiel L. Newman published by Saqi, 2008. More recently I have been working with Sayyab Books, which has now published three bilingual readers of Modern Iraqi short stories, with more in the pipeline. They certainly provide excellent material for learning to read modern literary Arabic. I have recently been given permission to use one of these short stories The Train Heading up to Baghdad, by Mahmoud Abdul-Wahab, to produce an abridged version in addition to the original, as well as a series of exercises to help with the familiarization of the vocabulary and word list. I am hoping to have the Arabic recorded on CD. If you, or indeed anyone, is interested in these materials, please contact me on efprag@aol.com. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5192 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 5 25 November 2011 at 10:36am | IP Logged |
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Thank you Mr. Pragnell for all these wonderful books. "A Week in the Middle East" in particular was one of my favourites when I was studying Arabic at university 25 years ago! I still like to look at it from time to time.
Besides Mr. Pragnell's books, I'd also recommend: A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories, edited by Sabry Hafez and Catherine Cobham. It's just in Arabic, except for some notes, but the stories are excellent. Room 101 and Other Stories by Dr. Ahmad Bassam Saeh. This is in parallel text and the Arabic is fully vowelled! The stories are aimed at children, however. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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