Product Description

Features an excellent selection of modern words and expressions, clear and comprehensive, designed to enable students to read the average Arabic newspaper or book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #507377 in Books
• Published on: 1995-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 900 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780781803830
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
John Wortabet and Harvey Porter

Customer Reviews

If you already know Arabic, this may be of value.
As a dictionary this may be useful to someone who already knows Arabic, but it will be difficult for a beginning or intermediate student of Arabic. Abreviations for parts of speech are given for English but not for Arabic. Going from English to Arabic, the exact sense of a word is not given so you can't really be certain what you might be saying. Pick an English word and you get two or three Arabic words. Look those up and (if you can find them) you get somewhat different English words. You won't find a single 'naughty bit' either.

Moreover, it is UK English (you can find a biscuit but you'll get no cookies here) which results in some curious word choices. For example, some English definitions for Arabic words are: "calumniator, feccundation, state of orphanage, eructation, reproach for benefit, jet d'eau, to drill child, aided conqueror, patch scrap, silk stuff, to spell award, etc." You may need another dictionary just to understand these definitions.

It is definitely not for a beginner and the intermediate student will need a fairly good grasp of Arabic.

OK
The dictionary includes a wide selection of words a student is likely to use.The arabic-english part folows the standard arabic word order using the origin base of words, which is not given explicitly. Also the gender of nouns is not given and there is no guide or grammar in the beginning. I recommend it since it is the only bi-directional dictionary.

Out of date and poorly organized
This is one of the worst English-Arabic dictionaries I've worked with. It's terribly out of date and lacking many common words. Moreover, it's organized by root, not alphabetically, which isn't terrible if you're familiar with Arabic word patterns, but since it does not bold the root verb entries or otherwise call out where each root section starts, it is incredibly difficult to look up words, even if you know what you are looking for.