Book Description

This reader is designed for students who have some background in Modern Standard Arabic, and who are interested in Hijazi Arabic beyond the basic level. Presumabl[y] the student has already completed an introductory Hijazi Arabic course such as Margaret K. Omar's Saudi Arabic, Urban Hijazi Dialect Basic Course (see the bibliography). The reader may also be of interest to Arabists and Arabic dialectologists.The language of this reader is used in informal situations by educated native speakers of the Hijaz area. There are some variations within Hijazi Arabic which correlate with the level of education, occupation, age, social class, travel, etc. of native speakers. Highly educated natives speak with some admixture of pan-Arabic koine, depending on circumstances and situations. This fact is apparent in some selections of the reader.The reader consists of forty selections, some of which are based on recordings of spontaneous, unrehearsed conversations of unsophisticated native speakers from Mecca, Medina, and Ta'if. The remaining selections are based on accounts of current events which appeared in Saudi newspapers such as Al-Jazzira, Al-Medina, and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. These survey the progress made by Saudi Arabic in the areas of eduction, industry, agriculture, medicine, infrastructure and improving the standard of living as a whole. The selections also describe life in Saudi Arabic and treat various social, political, and religious problems. The introductory section on the transcription and the sound system is designed to acquaint the user with the transcription employed throughout the reader. The symbols used for the transliteration are those most commonly employed for Arabic dialects. In daily speech, short vowels are often omitted because of elision and assimilation, and because of the difference in pronunciation among native speakers.Each selection is followed by a vocabulary list. The words are listed in the order they appear in the text. Verbs are listed in the third person singular masculine in both the perfect and imperfect aspects. Grammatical and cultural notes are also provided for each selection in order to facilitate a better understanding of the dialect as well as the society in which it is spoken. Quite often the notes make comparisons of the Hijazi dialect to some features of Modern Standard Arabic.The second part of the reader provides the English translations of the Hijazi selections, from which the user will benefit whether he is studying independently or with a teacher. The translations were kept as close as possible to the Hijazi text in order to enable the user to see the relationship between the two. As a result, he may occasionally find the English somewhat stiff or unidiomatic. The words and phrases enclosed in brackets do not have equivalents in the Hijazi text. They were added for a better and smoother English translation. Words and phrases which appear in the Hijazi text but which are not necessary for the English translation are enclosed in parentheses preceded by "literally." The last part of the reader provides an alphabetized general glossary containing all the entries in the individual vocabulary lists and the words used in the notes as well.