Product Description

Barron’s 501 Arabic Verbs is printed in Arabic script with exemplary sentences in English for each verb. To reflect correct Arabic style, 501 Arabic Verbs has been printed back cover to front and back page to front. Verbs are arranged alphabetically in a table format, one verb per page with English translation, and conjugated in all tenses and forms. The book’s additional features include common idioms with example sentences to demonstrate verb usage and a grammar review.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43794 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 720 pages

From the Inside Flap
(back cover)
Learning Arabic Becomes Easier
With This Helpful Guide to Verbs and Their Roots

Customer Reviews

Worst Verb Book Ever
I have verb books for six different languages in my library. This book is by far the least useful. It proves that either a) Arabic is not suited for verb books or b) the author did not test this on students before publishing it.
Negatives: No English index of verbs, no transcriptions for beginners, no discussion of prefixes, or verb morphology at all, and worst of all, glaring omissions of common verbs. I have no idea how anyone who had less than a full year of Arabic would even begin to use this book.

useful, but needs much better indexing
Used together with Hans Wehr's indispensable dictionary, this book is very useful for the intermediate learner of Arabic. However, the lack of English indexing is extremely frustrating. In short, it's definitely worth having until the next edition comes out - hopefully with a much-improved index.

PROS:

1. Each of the 501 verbs is conjugated neatly in its 65 different forms according to:

- person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd)

- number (singular, dual, plural)

- gender (feminine and masculine)

- voice (active and passive)

- mood (perfect (maadhi), imperfect (marfoo'a), subjunctive (mansoob), jussive (majroor), imperative (amr))

- active participle (sighat al-fa'il), passive participle (sighat al-maf'ool), and verbal noun (masdar)

These are all the forms that Arabic professors expect you (as an intermediate or advanced student) to know off the top of your head, but that few of us can actually recite perfectly - especially for weak verbs, hollow verbs, etc. So it's great having it all in once place as a reference. Even for the beginner, seeing all of this laid out for each verb in one place will give you a good visual schema for how Arabic verbs work.

2. Each verb comes with three or four example sentences using different forms of the verb in context. Very helpful if you're trying to learn new verbs.

3. Each verb comes with its verb pattern (wazn, I to X) and root (jadhr). The book is alphabetized by jadhr, just like Hans Wehr. The verbs are also indexed at the back of the book alphabetically in Arabic as well (i.e. by spelling of the pattern of the verb listed, not just by root).

4. Unlike some other reviewers, I don't find the type to be too small. It's fine. A lot of Arabic texts are written in smaller print than this anyway.

CONS:

1. Although each verb comes with the English meaning, there is no way to look up a verb by its English meaning without flipping through the entire book. This quickly becomes really annoying. It would have taken the publisher a couple of hours and added only a few pages to the end of the book to include an index of the 501 verbs by English definition. This is by far the biggest problem with the book. Without this problem, this would be a five-star book. The way it is, it's about 3 1/2 stars.

2. Although the verbs are indexed at the back of the book and numbered 1-501, page numbers aren't listed to lead you to the verb. Even worse, although the index tells you what verb #70 (out of 501) is, there's no #70 written next to the verb in the body of the book! So the index numbering is completely useless. A big oversight.

3. To make this book even better, it would help to have (a) the plural of the verbal noun (masdar) listed (since these are often irregular) and (b) the prepositions that are used with each verb. I find that I have to look to the example sentences to sort out which preposition comes after each verb, and sometimes that doesn't even clear up the question.

4. There are a few typos to watch out for - I've noticed a couple of sukkuns that should actually be hamzas. But this is a very minor gripe - it's almost 100% correct as far as I can tell.

Decent Explination of Arabic Verbs, But Bad Organization
The first part of the book has a decent explanation of Arabic verbs, their tenses and usage.

However, the actual listings of the verbs is not as well done. The organization of the verb conjugations isn't easily understood at first and it isn't well explained. As for formatting, the pagination often breaks verb clusters at odd places and the formatting doesn't pick up column headers for lists when they are broken and carry onto a second page. These two missteps make following the conjugations difficult to follow.

The book does include good examples of how the verbs are used in sentences, and does a good job of starting a verb listing with its root and then extending that root to as many applications as possible.

Finally, the index has the verbs listed in alphabetical order in Arabic, without English translations. There is no English verb index at all. This makes finding a verb very difficult for beginners and even for intermediate students who don't have a dictionary at hand.

Over all, its a decent tool to help learn Arabic, but it isn't directed at beginners and it shouldn't be a student's only guide to verb conjugation.