The Modern Egyptian Dialect of Arabic: A Grammar with Exercises, Reading Lessons and Glossaries Review

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(More customer reviews)For some strange reason that eludes me, many respected publishing houses are in the sad habit of reprinting outdated Arabic courses and grammars over and over again. Arabic is one of the larger languages in the world, and the official language of more than twenty countries. Despite this, the treatment of Arabic could not be more different from the treatment of Italian, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese or other comparable languages. While good, extensive and relevant courses, dictionaries and grammars are published all the time for other major languages, lazy publishers refuse to publish any good courses in Arabic.
This book is a case in point. It is published in 2011 and the title says "Modern Egyptian Arabic". Well, this is actually a reprint of a book that was published in the 19th century and is outdated by more than 100 years already! Needless to say, there is nothing modern with the dialect described in it, nor with its layout or organization.
Publishers such as Routledge, Georgetown University Press and Cambridge University Press should all three stop pushing out old and outdated books. However, only you as a customer can make them. It is of course cheaper to reprint rubbish like this book than to commission someone to write an extensive new book. As long as we keep buying these outdated reprints, no change will come.

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Originally published in 1895, the aim of this book was to provide the reader with a guide to the contemporary spoken Arabic of Egypt, with special reference to the speech of Cairo and its neighbourhood. The greater part of the text provides the reader with the basic grammatical structure of the language. Additionally, there is a concise introduction explaining the different varieties of spoken Arabic in their relationship with Classical Arabic. Reading exercises and a sizeable glossary are contained towards the end of the text. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Arabic and the history of linguistics.

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