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"All the Arabic You Never Learned the First Time" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5475 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 41 of 49 25 October 2010 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for your technical tips, everybody! I was able to download it from UzTranslations and open it with no trouble.
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| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5106 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 42 of 49 26 October 2010 at 2:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Now you've had a chance to read the book, what do you think? Does it live up to the "Holy Grail" status?
I read a couple of chapters in detail and skimmed the rest, here are my two cents: The good: - All important grammar rules in one book written in fun and easy-to-read style - The Introduction gives excellent advice on how to be a good Arabic student - Best advice on learning colloquial Arabic: Do not study colloquial Arabic until you have a foundation in MSA. - Answer keys to all exercises The not-so-good: Typos and glaring mistakes everywhere. The obvious and inexcusable: - P302 "eight reports" = ثماني مراسلات huh?? shouldn't it be ثمان مراسلات and he actually spent a whole paragraph explaining why it is ثماني Am I missing something? P311 - eight hundred should be ثمانمئة, not ثمانيمئة أو ثماني مئة - P336: السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاتُ The last word should be بركاته means his blessings. If one doesn't know which form it should take, just look at the first two parallel phrases that are both definite: السلام and رحمة الله . Grammatically البركات is also acceptable. And even if the word is left indefinite it should take a tanween instead of a damma. After all the lecture on Al Idhafa why did he make such a mistake is beyond me. Grammar aside, this is a common greeting used in every formal situation. Getting it wrong is like getting "How do you do" wrong in an advanced English class. Not so glaring, but hard to overlook in a grammar book: - Most of the hamzas are wrong in this book. They are written when they shouldn't and not written when they should. ا and أ are in fact different letters and are not interchangeable. There are stringent rules regarding when to use which. Most native speakers don't know these rules nor do they care, but they know when to pronounce alif and when to pronounce alif hamza even when the spelling is wrong on paper. For example all command verbs with an initial alif except form IV are incorrect in this book: ادرس is correct while أدرس is incorrect, إستخدم is incorrect while استخدم is correct. All verbs in form 7, 8, 9 and 10 in the verb charts are also incorrect. A native speaker sees "الإكتشاف" and reads aliktishaf, but an Arabic student not knowing the third letter should be ا might say "al Iktishaf" which is incorrect. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5102 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 43 of 49 26 October 2010 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I only skimmed through the book and I liked it. I'll read in more detail in a couple of weeks from now.
Numbers from 3-10 are used in idāfa constructions and therefore ثماني مراسلات is correct. (ثماني is the status constructus form of ثمان [thamānin]). You can find the same form in combinations with نَادِ [nādin] For example: نادي الكتاب العربي
ثمانمئة is more common these days, but the older form ثماني مائة (another idāfa) is valid and can be found in classical Arabic, for example in the hadiths.
AFAIK, most grammarians treat the alif in form 1 imperatives like the hamza on the definite article and allow it, as long as the word is written in isolation. E.g. !أُكْتُبْ [uktub] but !قَالَ: ٱكْتُبْ [qāla-ktub] (written with هَمْزَةُ الوَصْلِ). Therefore I wouldn't consider this a mistake, but there definitely shouldn't be hamzas on the alifs of the 7, 8, 9 and 10 perfect forms. Edited by Doitsujin on 26 October 2010 at 10:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5106 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 44 of 49 26 October 2010 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Agree with you. My bad for mixing dialect with MSA. ثمانٍ behaves like any ism manqus.
Sorry, I'm not convinced, but I'm no expert on classical Arabic. I asked several native speakers, all said that they had never seen 800 written as ثماني مائة أو ثماني مئة , not even in the Quran or Hadith. Can you provide any proof?
I disagree with you, but I don't want to hijack this thread by getting into a lengthy discussion. See this thread I opened regarding the rules of al hamazaat. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5102 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 45 of 49 27 October 2010 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
You can check out Wright's A grammar of the Arabic language (Google Books link) or Socin's Arabic Grammar (Google Books link). 800 is not used in the Qur'an, but it's found for example in Malik's Muwatta (Book #43, Hadith #1583). You'll also find a lot of historical books if you search for "ثماني مائة" (enclosed by quotation marks) in Google Books. As for the Hamza issue, I only disagree with your position regarding hamzas on isolated imperatives and I'll reply to your other thread. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5106 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 46 of 49 27 October 2010 at 5:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks for the links. I also searched on "ثماني مئة أو ثماني مائة", but couldn't find any modern usage. In the end I did find it in the Arabic Bible- Genesis 5:4
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| hnedka Triglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 5109 days ago 5 posts - 13 votes Speaks: Czech*, English, Spanish | Message 47 of 49 09 November 2010 at 3:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If anyone is interested, I modified above provided PDF file, so that it's searchable (only English text, sorry) and can be copied from (so that you can for example copy grammar explanations to SRS; again - you need to write arabic manually). It's also a little smaller - 9 MB only.
http://www.multiupload.com/XPF37HMO07 Edited by hnedka on 09 November 2010 at 3:35am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5098 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 48 of 49 11 November 2010 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It wont let me download it. It says I flooded their download server...
EDIT: Got it to work. Thanks for sharing! Edited by Ubik on 13 November 2010 at 2:44am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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