An Introduction to Modern Literary Arabic Review

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An Introduction to Modern Literary Arabic ReviewThis introduction to the literary language is indeed excellent. Cowan provides detailed, clear explanations of grammatical points and moves in a logical progression through the material. The book is most decidedly not of the "Teach Yourself" type, in that it is presumed that the reader is educated and familiar with grammatical terminology, and it does not interface with the spoken language.
I can only compare it with Haywood and Nahmad's "New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language", which it resembles considerably. (Cowan was published by Cambridge, whereas Haywood and Nahmad was published by Oxford - interesting!). I learned Arabic with the Haywood and Nahmad book, which I preferred and which I felt provided more background material than Cowan. Cowan is much more concise, which in my opinion is not necessarily an asset in this subject. You may want to check out both of these books; they are both still in print, both available through Amazon and were both published about the same time (1950's) and therefore somewhat dated, although not as much as you might think.
If you're shopping around for a self-teacher of literary Arabic a third title you may investigate is Wheeler Thackston's "Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic", which is also available through Amazon and which some students might find more amenable. Professor Thackston expects the would-be learner to be intelligent, but possibly less linguistically sophisticated than the Oxbridge books do. The only other choice I would recommend is a set of four books by an Austrian Arabist named Kaplivatsky (The books are in English). They were first published in the 1940's and were in print up until at least 20 years ago. Kaplivatsky really teaches you the classical idiom, and when you're done with him you can read Abu Nuwas without difficulty. I gave them away to a budding Arabic student some time ago and I have regretted it ever since. Does anybody know if they're still around?An Introduction to Modern Literary Arabic OverviewThe lessons are clear, in non-technical language, and have generous examples, with plenty of exercises for translation from Arabic to English and from English to Arabic. This is the manual that students interested in Arabic as a living and expanding world language will prefer. It is the first to deal mainly with modern literary Arabic. In Mr Cowan's words: 'The purpose is to explain to the students, in as concise a manner as possible, the grammatical structure of the modern Arabic literary language as it is found today in newspapers, magazines, books, the radio, and public speaking. I have endeavoured to restrict the material to the minimum which may serve as a stepping-stone to a deeper study of Arabic. As the fundamental grammar of written Arabic has hardly changed as an introduction to the classical language also. Having once mastered its contents the student should have a sound grasp of Arabic grammar and can then direct his studies towards modern literature or classical according to his needs and inclinations.

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