A Dictionary of Iraqi Arabic (Georgetown Classics in Arabic Language and Linguistics) Review

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A Dictionary of Iraqi Arabic (Georgetown Classics in Arabic Language and Linguistics) ReviewAs a university graduate in Arabic and as a teacher of Arabic I can say that this dictionary is a great help for learners of Iraqi dialect. As other customers have stated before, it must be stressed that this is a DIALECT dictionary and not a MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) dictionary. Arabic idalects are hardly, if ever written, except maybe in folk stories collections aimed at investigators or in the odd proverbs compilation, and are much more written by foreigners than by Arabs. In fact most of the Arabs simply don't know how to write their own dialect (if they ever have thought it should be written). In view of this, the use of Arabic script in a dialect dictionary is totally a waste of time and effort, because it means you must adapt a system which is well suited for Standard Arabic to the dialect which functions in quite a different way phonologically and morphophonologicaly. The Iraqi dialect has at least 3 phonemes that do not exist in Standard Arabic (ch, g and p) and a lot of emphatic spreading (as other dialects) which cannot properly be represented using Arabic script except if we add leters taken from Persian. But then where's the difference from using the Persian alphabet or using a Roman transliteration except that transliteration is almost the norm when dealign with dialects (even among many Arab linguists)? Nearly all the material on Arabic dialects is in transliteration, so a learner does not need to go through Arabic script when he just wants to learn to speak a dialect so he can straight concentrate in speaking, while advanced students of MSA dealing with dialect can easily transfer transliterated words to Arabic scripts (when they exist in MSA) so I do not understand the problem with romanization.
Another reviewer deplored the lack of guidelines on prosodical information (the music and rythm of the language) so useful to learn to speak, but it must be stressed that nobody learns to speak using a dictionary, to learn to speak in any language you must (first of all of course hear it spoken and try to speak it) use a coursebook or other pedagogical material, which a dictionary IS NOT, a dictionary is reference material to help you expand your vocabulary, but it's useless if you havent' the basics of a language which you must acquire in a language course(book).
My only complain is that, in fact, this dictionary is the sum of two different independent dictionaries written by different hands. So entries in the E-A part do not match entries in the A-E section (which is much larger), and also as the E-A part is based on an earlier English-German dictionary there are some entries which aren't culturally and socially useful in Iraqi society (such as blondette) while other words for important items in Arabic society (clothes, food) do not appear in the E-A section.
Except for this inconsistencies (which appear in the other Arabic dictionaries of this serie) this dictionary is a great useful tool for learners of Iraqi dialect.A Dictionary of Iraqi Arabic (Georgetown Classics in Arabic Language and Linguistics) OverviewOriginally offered in two separate volumes, "A Dictionary of Iraqi Arabic", a staple of Georgetown University Press' world-renowned Arabic language program, now handily provides both the English to Arabic and Arabic to English texts in one volume. Designed for an English speaker learning Arabic, this is a key reference for anyone learning the colloquial speech of Iraq as spoken by educated people in Baghdad. Using romanized transliteration and transcription rather than the Arabic alphabet, it is further enhanced in most cases by having sentences to illustrate how individual word entries are used in context, reinforcing the user's acquisition of colloquial Iraqi.

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