Kallimni ‘Arabi Bishweesh: A Beginners’ Course in Spoken Egyptian Arabic 1 (Arabic Edition) Pap/Cdr Edition

Regardless of what the other reviews have said, I consider this to be one of the finest book series for learning the Egyptian Dialect on the market. I have studied Arabic for 6 years, starting off with the Al-kitaab series in High School and now am studying abroad and learning Egyptian. There are no other book like this one. You cannot learn Arabic in English. You have to be immersed in the target language. and for those who cannot study abroad in the Middle East for whatever reason and thus become immersed, this is the next closest thing to total immersion. That being said, yes, the book is written entirely in the Arabic Script. I realize this comes as a surprise to some, however one cannot seriously pursue learning the Arabic language without first learning the Arabic alphabet/script. You just simply cannot learn anything past basic Arabic with transliteration in Latin script. Secondly, nobody, NOBODY speaks FusHa or MSA. Nobody. I have been to Egypt and Lebanon and converse with Arabs on campus and trust me: nobody speaks it. You will be at a total loss if you try to speak MSA. The Arabs look at you funny and realize that you're an ignorant foreigner and then proceed to talk to you in MSA very slowly, as if you were dumb and need help. Thus, this book is valuable in that it immerses one in the most commonly understood dialect of the Middle East. The CD audio is amazing and the dialogues are interesting. the speakers on the CD gradually begin to speak faster in order to attune your ears to normal conversational-level speech. The only flaw is that there is not a complete, comprehensive list of all of the vocabulary. I understand that this is because the author wants students to guess by context, but in some cases there is no way of inferring what the speaker means and you simply must have a translation. Other than that, I love this series and cant wait to finish the current book and move onto the next

I have read so many comments stating that this book is not for self-study, granted it does state this fact in the introduction, but I am currently at the end of the second book of this series all the while doing self-study. I learned the Arabic alphabet online for free, although this book teaches all of the letters with the vowels. I then downloaded an Egyptian Arabic dictionary to assist in any new words that I may encounter in the book. I also set up an italki.com account where you can ask native speakers questions and receive legitimate responses within a couple of minutes. If someone has the determination to learn Egyptian Arabic this book will be the greatest asset!

Not for absolute beginners. The book is intended to be a teaching tool for instructors, so some of the lessons won't quite make sense if you're going on you're own. If you have a decent base however (basic sentence structure, some vocabulary, and definitely the alphabet) it is a great tool for conversational Egyptian.

I read the other reviews before I purchased the book but I saw english words in the "look inside" feature so I thought I could swing it. I am at an intermediate level in MSA and I still felt like there was too much Arabic to figure out what's going on without digging. Turns out some of the (english) words are at the back, and some of the words are given right after the unit. But she's selective about which she translates even in the same phrase. Huh??? I mean besides the translation issue the setup is just weird. And I can see why there are so many volumes of Kallimni, you don't get through that much in the first book and I imagine the others are the same. I know now it's not intended for self study but I think they count on people finding that out AFTER they've spent the money which is not right. Why not have the back cover written in all Arabic??? Since you're really targeting Arabic speaking teachers and tutors!I certainly prefer the Spoken Arabic of Cairo by Maurice Salib though I'm just starting it. So far it's waaaay better just older (copyright 1981). As a supplement the lonley planet phrase book is awesome as well. The Kallimni however is a waste of time.

As with the rest of the books in this series, the present volume lays out a very useful course for the practical study of the Egyptian dialect of Arabic. The vocabulary is high-frequency, and the expressions taught are those in common use.The book appears to be primarily designed for use in the courses taught in the International Languages Institute (ILI) in Cairo; so only a minimal amount of support (one CD, no answers to exercises, no explanation in English) is provided. Thus the book would probably be excellent if used with a teacher, but is unlikely to be helpful to someone working on his/her own. I would give it four stars if used with a teacher, but only two for use in self-study.

Its meant for immersion. I would not recommend this book without an instructor or without the guidance of a native speaker. While the content isn't hard do not be decieved (95%+) almost all the book is in Arabic including the instructions. If you are planning self study to start I would recommend alif baa + al kitaab or The standard Arabic elementary - intermediate for beginning to learn.

This is not a good book for absolute beginners or at least not a good book for absolute beginners that are trying to teach themselves arabic without a tutor. There is probably about 7 ish sentences of English in the entire book. The rest is in Arabic and there is nothing written beside the Arabic to help you with pronunciation. It does look like it might be a good book for a classroom setting.

Easy to follow, but time consuming. I have basic MSA knowledge, but it wasn't that helpful. My favorite part was following the audio while reading, and try to understand the context.