UniLang

Has anyone used this book?
https://www.amazon.com/Shou-Intermediat ... ine+Arabic

Is it any good for levantine? Shukran

It doesn't feel like this subforum has been getting a lot of activity recently. I'm still going to ask though, for lack of a better platform.

So...I've caught the Arabic bug in the weirdest way imaginable: by reading about Middle Eastern civil wars. (And then it kind of snowballed from there.)
What would you guys recommend for self-study for MSA and then, somewhere down the line, do you know about anything that is specific to the Lebanese dialect and is relatively decent? I've been looking left and right, but no one seems to agree on what's best (for MSA, not a lot of talk out there about Lebanese specifically beyond Levantine in more general terms). I would probably get a private teacher to complement self-study once I get semi-serious about this, but it would be nice to have somewhere to start first.

Meera wrote:Has anyone used this book?
https://www.amazon.com/Shou-Intermediat ... ine+Arabic

Is it any good for levantine? Shukran

Hi Meera,
I heard very good reviews about it, but didn't use it myself. I wish I could get my hands on a copy of it.

Kenny wrote:What would you guys recommend for self-study for MSA and then, somewhere down the line, do you know about anything that is specific to the Lebanese dialect and is relatively decent?

My only recommendation would be not to postpone with learning a dialect for too long. From this viewpoint, Living Arabic looks like a good book, because it combines both MSA and Levantine.
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Arabic-Co ... 0974484342

voron wrote:

Meera wrote:Has anyone used this book?
https://www.amazon.com/Shou-Intermediat ... ine+Arabic

Is it any good for levantine? Shukran

Hi Meera,
I heard very good reviews about it, but didn't use it myself. I wish I could get my hands on a copy of it.

Thanks Voron, I'm thinking of getting it.

Kenny wrote:What would you guys recommend for self-study for MSA

Mastering Arabic

and then, somewhere down the line, do you know about anything that is specific to the Lebanese dialect and is relatively decent?

I can't think of anything off the top of my head right now (there probably is something), but there's always the Syrian Colloquial Arabic for Syrian Arabic, which is really similar anyway. iodalach93, who was studying Lebanese, said he was using Kamal Osman's grammar along with that (because that's for Lebanese).

Here are some recommendations for Levantine:
https://www.mezzoguild.com/learning-lev ... qi-arabic/

Thanks, voron!

Cool site with a lot of great posts especially for colloquial Arabic: teammaha.com

Thanks, Eskandar Bhai! That reminded me of Maha. I'm pretty sure she's Egyptian, too, but I remember her being pretty dialect-negative as well.

EDIT: Oh, and look!

vijayjohn wrote:Thanks, Eskandar Bhai! That reminded me of Maha. I'm pretty sure she's Egyptian, too, but I remember her being pretty dialect-negative as well.

Cheers! And no way, Maha from Youtube is extremely Palestinian

EDIT: Oh, and look!

Good find, I didn't know that! If I'm not mistaken, it's not worded this way in MSA.

eskandar wrote:And no way, Maha from Youtube is extremely Palestinian

Oh, okay, thanks!

Good find, I didn't know that! If I'm not mistaken, it's not worded this way in MSA.

Yeah, it seems MSA just uses something related to 'smoke' (as in a fire or chimney smoking), kind of like English.

eskandar wrote:Cool site with a lot of great posts especially for colloquial Arabic: teammaha.com

ana ismi maha... w ana fe3lan waheda ...

This are one of the best English Arabic dictionaries on the web.

www.alqamoos.org

There is also great Arabic-Arabic dictionary from the same people:

www.arabicterminology.com

Hello there!

I have recently published two books on Levantine Arabic.
First one is "The Dictionary of Levantine Idioms +300 Idioms of Everyday Syrian Dialect" which contains more than 300 Idioms that Syrians use in everyday life.
Kindle version:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GJN38ZB
PDF version:
https://payhip.com/b/HpQ5

The second book is "Swear Words in Syria, Egypt, and Other Arab Countries A Guide" which can be beneficial to you to know what's going on around you.
Kindle version:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GBBC53X
PDF verion:
https://payhip.com/b/EJ1j

The books are also available on Google books and Apple books.

Shukran!

Another very useful blog for learning Levantine Arabic: The LevanTongue

eskandar wrote:A list of Syrian Arabic politeness formulae

That's a very cool article! How did you come across it?

Was looking at the author's blog, Uppercase Alif, which has some other cool resources for Arabic linguistics and pedagogy.

The Colloquial series has resources for Levantine, Egyptian, and Gulf Arabic. They have all their audio available online on their website for free:

https://routledgetextbooks.com/textbook ... e/arab.php

Not technically Arabic but I wasn’t sure where else to post this. The Youtube channel One News Malta short news reports with an accurate transcription (!!!) in the description:

https://youtu.be/a5Q6YgszFuc