Arabic Voices 1


Book Description

Arabic Voices is a two-part series designed to provide students of Arabic with an opportunity to hear and study authentic Arabic as it is spoken by native speakers today. Unlike the scripted materials read by voice actors used in many course books, Arabic Voices offers dozens of audio essays spoken naturally and off-the-cuff by individuals from across the Arab World. Each of the twelve native speakers has contributed audio essays in both Modern Standard Arabic and his or her native dialect, which have then been transcribed for study. In Arabic Voices 1 and 2, you will hear Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic (Lebanese Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, Jordanian Arabic), Yemeni Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, as well as Modern Standard Arabic. MP3s are available for free download at www.lingualism.com. The segments in Modern Standard Arabic provide valuable insight into native speakers’ range of style and proficiency in the language. The segments in colloquial Arabic dialects offer a fascinating look into the many varieties of Arabic, and how similar and different they really are from one another. Fine-tuning your listening to the idiosyncrasies of each dialect will truly help you better understand spoken Arabic. Each “segment" (audio essay chapter) contains: 1) exercises to sharpen your listening skills and increase how much you can understand, whatever your level 2) in-chapter answers to the exercises (no having to flip back and forth to the back of the book) 3) a voweled transcript of the audio with side-by-side English translations 4) cultural and linguistic notes 5) web links to articles and videos related to the segment 6) select segments feature grammar focuses with additional exercises.




Arabic Voices 2


Book Description

Arabic Voices is a two-part series designed to provide students of Arabic with an opportunity to hear and study authentic Arabic as it is spoken by native speakers today. Unlike the scripted materials read by voice actors used in many course books, Arabic Voices offers dozens of audio essays spoken naturally and off-the-cuff by individuals from across the Arab World. Each of the twelve native speakers has contributed audio essays in both Modern Standard Arabic and his or her native dialect, which have then been transcribed for study. In Arabic Voices 1 and 2, you will hear Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic (Lebanese Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, Jordanian Arabic), Yemeni Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, as well as Modern Standard Arabic. MP3s are available for free download at www.lingualism.com. The segments in Modern Standard Arabic provide valuable insight into native speakers’ range of style and proficiency in the language. The segments in colloquial Arabic dialects offer a fascinating look into the many varieties of Arabic, and how similar and different they really are from one another. Fine-tuning your listening to the idiosyncrasies of each dialect will truly help you better understand spoken Arabic. Each “segment" (audio essay chapter) contains: 1) exercises to sharpen your listening skills and increase how much you can understand, whatever your level 2) in-chapter answers to the exercises (no having to flip back and forth to the back of the book) 3) a voweled transcript of the audio with side-by-side English translations 4) cultural and linguistic notes 5) web links to articles and videos related to the segment 6) select segments feature grammar focuses with additional exercises.




Voices of the Arab Spring


Book Description

Narrated by dozens of activists and everyday individuals, this book documents the unprecedented events that led to the collapse of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Beginning in 2011, these stories offer unique access to the message that inspired citizens to act, their experiences during revolt, and the lessons they learned from some of the most dramatic changes and appalling events to occur in the history of the Arab world. The riveting, revealing, and sometimes heartbreaking stories in this volume also include voices from Syria. Featuring participants from a variety of social and educational backgrounds and political commitments, these personal stories of action represent the Arab Spring's united and broad social movements, collective identities, and youthful character. For years, the volume's participants lived under regimes that brutally suppressed free expression and protest. Their testimony speaks to the multifaceted emotional, psychological, and cultural factors that motivated citizens to join together to struggle against their oppressors.




Syrian Arabic Voices


Book Description

In Syrian Arabic Voices, you will meet Amani, Umran, Nada, Fares, Bayan, and Rami, all Syrians in diaspora, who share their personal stories of war and emigration, along with more lighthearted topics such as self-introductions, hobbies, and fond memories. Syrian Arabic Voices is designed to provide intermediate and advanced students of Arabic with an opportunity to hear and study authentic Levantine Arabic as it is spoken by native speakers today. Unlike the scripted materials read by voice actors used in many course books, Syrian Arabic Voices offers dozens of audio essays spoken naturally and off-the-cuff by individuals from around Syria. Each of the six native speakers has contributed audio essays that have then been transcribed (as voweled Arabic text) and translated for study. Each segment (audio essay chapter) contains: 1) accompanying audio tracks available for free download at www.lingualism.com/sav. 2) vocabulary and comprehension exercises to sharpen your listening skills and increase how much you can understand 3) in-chapter answers to the exercises (no having to flip back and forth to the back of the book) 4) verbatim transcripts of the audio with side-by-side English translations. 5) lined sections for taking notes and recording new vocabulary.




Arabic as One Language


Book Description

For decades, students learning the Arabic language have begun with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and then transitioned to learning spoken Arabic. While the MSA-first approach neither reflects the sociolinguistic reality of the language nor gives students the communicative skills required to fully function in Arabic, the field continues to debate the widespread adoption of this approach. Little research or evidence has been presented about the effectiveness of integrating dialect in the curriculum. With the recent publication of textbooks that integrate dialect in the Arabic curriculum, however, a more systematic analysis of such integration is clearly becoming necessary. In this seminal volume, Mahmoud Al-Batal gathers key scholars who have implemented integration to present data and research on the method’s success. The studies address curricular models, students' outcomes, and attitudes of students and teachers using integration in their curricula. This volume is an essential resource for all teachers of Arabic language and those working in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL).




Arab-American Faces and Voices


Book Description

As Arab Americans seek to claim their communal identity and rightful place in American society at a time of heightened tension between the United States and the Middle East, an understanding look back at more than one hundred years of the Arab-American community is especially timely. In this book, Elizabeth Boosahda, a third-generation Arab American, draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants. Boosahda focuses on the Arab-American community in Worcester, Massachusetts, a major northeastern center for Arab immigration, and Worcester's links to and similarities with Arab-American communities throughout North and South America. Using the voices of Arab immigrants and their families, she explores their entire experience, from emigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the present-day lives of their descendants. This rich documentation sheds light on many aspects of Arab-American life, including the Arab entrepreneurial motivation and success, family life, education, religious and community organizations, and the role of women in initiating immigration and the economic success they achieved.




New Voices in Arab Cinema


Book Description

New Voices in Arab Cinema focuses on contemporary filmmaking since the 1980s, but also considers the longer history of Arab cinema. Taking into consideration film from the Middle East and North Africa and giving a special nod to films produced since the Arab Spring and the Syrian crisis, Roy Armes explores themes such as modes of production, national cinemas, the role of the state and private industry on film, international developments in film, key filmmakers, and the validity of current notions like globalization, migration and immigration, and exile. This landmark book offers both a coherent, historical overview and an in-depth critical analysis of Arab filmmaking.




A Bit of Air


Book Description

Award-winning Egyptian children's author and illustrator Walid Taher targets a wider audience with A Bit of Air. Inspired by the long tradition of Egyptian colloquial poetry and its relation to social and political movements in Egypt, Taher creates a unique blend of visual art, poetry, and architecture. These darkly humorous poems and their accompanying images are snapshots of a state of mind and a space of fantasy that convey the absurd, the comical, the profound, and the idiosyncratic. This illustrated, bilingual edition comes at a time of political and literary upheaval. An unprecedented number of Arab authors are producing new and noteworthy works by appropriating the language of blogs, poetry, comic strips, and film, to name a few. This mixing of media gives shape to new experiences emerging from and redefining a rapidly changing social and political reality. A new generation is ushering in a new language, a new literature, and a new Arab world.




Voices of the Lost


Book Description

Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, this novel weaves together a series of devastating confessions about life in contemporary Arab society “Barakat isn't writing about ‘the immigrant.’ She's writing about the human.”—Rumaan Alam, 4columns “Spare and deep, Voices of the Lost captivates. Hoda Barakat is one of Lebanon's greatest gifts to literature, and Booth allows her English audience to explore this painful and irresistible present.”—Amy Bloom, author of White Houses In an unnamed country torn apart by war, six strangers are compelled to share their darkest secrets. Taking pen to paper, each character attempts to put in writing what they can’t bring themselves to say to the person they love—mother, father, brother, lost love. Their words form a chain of dark confessions, none of which reaches the intended recipient. Profound, troubling, and deeply human, Voices of the Lost tells the moving story of characters living on the periphery, battling with displacement, devastating poverty, and the demons within themselves. From one of today’s most talented Arabic writers, Voices of the Lost is an urgent story of lives intimately woven together in a society that is tearing itself apart.




The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction


Book Description

This dazzling anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south. Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said “the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time,” this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of Naguib Mahfouz’s literary sons and daughters. Among the Egyptian writers who laid the foundation for the Arabic literary renaissance are the great Tawfik al-Hakim; the short story pioneer Mahmoud Teymour; and Yusuf Idris, who embraced Egypt’s vibrant spoken vernacular. An excerpt from the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s novel Season of Migration to the North, one of the Arab world’s finest, appears alongside the Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Koni’s tales of the Tuaregs of North Africa, the Iraqi writer Mohamed Khudayir’s masterly story “Clocks Like Horses,” and the work of such women writers as Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh and Morocco’s Leila Abouzeid.