Arabic: An Essential Grammar

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Preface

This book describes the fundamental grammar and structure of modern

literary Arabic. It is complete with exercises and offers a strong founda-

tion for reading and writing the Arabic of newspapers, books, broad-

casts and formal speech, as well as providing the student with a course

for self-study. The exercises and examples contain modern vocabulary

and expressions taken from everyday use.

The work contains thirty-nine chapters with an appendix of tables for

verb forms and verb conjugation paradigms. All chapters are progres-

sive and they complement each other. For this reason it is recommended

that the student master each lesson before going on to the next.

Up to chapter 22, a full transliteration into the Latin alphabet is given

for all Arabic examples and exercises. From chapter 22 onwards, the

transliteration is omitted from the exercises only.

There are two types of exercise: Arabic sentences translated into

English, and English sentences to be translated into Arabic. The words

of the English to Arabic translation exercises are taken from the Arabic

to English exercises of the same chapter.

So that readers do not have to use Arabic–English dictionaries, which a

learner of Arabic would find difficult at this stage, most Arabic words

in the exercises are indexed with a superscript number and the same

number is given to the equivalent English word.

I am confident that this book will prove to be of great help to those who

have begun or will begin the study of Arabic, and that teachers will find

it a useful aid.