Product Description

The most modern of its kind available, this new dictionary is an essential resource for students of Modern Standard Arabic and English alike. It is intended to cover their needs with the most up-to-date entries in handy reference form, and will especially prove to be an invaluable aid in navigating the growing global vocabulary of politics, telecommunications, technology, the Internet, tourism, business and travel. Compact and concise, the dictionary includes more than 16,000 entries in clear, easy-to-read format: the Arabic is provided with romanised transliterations and the English with phonetic pronunciations, while grammatical forms are given for each word in both languages. The selection of current words and expressions and their practical arrangement make this a comprehensive and reliable dictionary that is not only a principal tool for the study of Modern Standard Arabic but also the perfect two-way portal for Arabic and English.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31532 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 440 pages

Customer Reviews

Handles well
as I haven't yet taken this abroad I can't give a fair review of the text, but I wanted to say that this dictionary is very well built for high-speed use. it is well bound and has just the right level of flexibility and spine strength to allow you to zip through the pages quickly when looking for the right word. While this is certainly not the most important characteristic of any dictionary I personally find it very handy when thrown in at the deep end of attempting conversation in a new language. Aside from that the layout is also very clear with bold headwords which stand out well. Nicholas Awde also seems to have quite a range of well-reviewed dictionaries in related languages which is always reassuring. Happy travels!

Invaluable when travelling
I took this dictionary on holiday to Libya. It proved incredibly useful (so much so that I ended up giving my original copy to the gentleman who drove us around the desert, after he asked where he could buy one). My knowledge of spoken Arabic is sketchy at best, but with the help of the dictionary I was able to chat fairly extensively with people whose knowledge of spoken English was equally sketchy. An absolute must for any traveller to Arabic-speaking countries.

Probably the only starting point but you'll grow to hate it...
I've been learning Arabic now for about 7 months. It's vital that as early on as possible that you learn to read and write and so a dictionary soon becomes necessary and does help with learning to navigate an unfamiliar alphabet.

This dictionary is laid out as you would expect Arabic-English and Englist-Arabic in alphabetical order and the print is a reasonable size so you can make out the arabic script.

Fairly early on I noticed a few things - first there are lots of omissions - easy, regularly used words which are not provided (eg beautiful - jameel). Next you will find there are some words in the arabic section that are out of order (I am told by my teacher this is a mistake) and some which are plain wrong. Also the distinctions between singular/plural and present/past is sometimes not as clear as it needs to be.

So even at this stage I get very frustrated with it and am looking for a better "proper" dictionary...

Mark