The Best Egyptian Arabic Language Books to Buy

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I love a wall of language textbooks. They make me feel good, even if I haven’t read them all.

In fact, 90% of the books I’ve retained over the years have been language books[1]. On my last visit to a physical bookstore (in Portland, Oregon), I bought three books, all about Persian. Jo bought one on Korean. (No, we haven’t read them. Persian and Korean… a goal for 2020!)

But travelling with a reference textbook or dictionary is impractical, which is why I prefer e-books — on Kindle or in PDF format.

There are other advantages to e-books as well. If they’re Kindle ones, they’re on multiple devices — your laptop, your phone and your e-reader. You can use search (which just got WAY faster with the latest software update). You can annotate and bookmark easily.

We bought all the below resources as e-books. Not all of them are available any more as e-books. But we recommend them wholeheartedly anyway.

The Best Egyptian Arabic Books in a nutshell

Shuwayya 'An Nafsi: Listening, Reading, and Expressing Yourself in Egyptian Arabic (Shuwayya 'An Nafsi Series)
Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary
Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs
Title
Shuwayya 'An Nafsi: Listening, Reading, and Expressing Yourself in Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary
Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs
Audio Tracks
Reviews
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Star Rating
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Price
$31.99
$30.99
$38.99
Shuwayya 'An Nafsi: Listening, Reading, and Expressing Yourself in Egyptian Arabic (Shuwayya 'An Nafsi Series)
Title
Shuwayya 'An Nafsi: Listening, Reading, and Expressing Yourself in Egyptian Arabic
Audio Tracks
Reviews
Check Amazon
Star Rating
Check Amazon
Price
$31.99
More Info
Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary
Title
Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary
Audio Tracks
Reviews
Check Amazon
Star Rating
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Price
$30.99
More Info
Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs
Title
Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs
Audio Tracks
Reviews
Check Amazon
Star Rating
Check Amazon
Price
$38.99
More Info

But wait — why buy books when so much is free?

I mean, we even authored a post on free learning resources for Arabic. Kids learn for free. Maybe you can find language partners. Why spend?

I just want to point out a few things:

  1. If you bought all the books on this list, you’d have spent less than $100. How much did textbooks in university cost? Some cost me over $100 for a single Engineering textbook that I never even used more than 20% of (if any).
  2. How much did your university education cost? Mine cost US$30K. Some people spend US$300K.
  3. This stuff is unavailable for free and is extremely good value.

Basically, while many might baulk at $40 for a book, I’m trying to say that the books in this list are worth it.

Here are what we think are the best Egyptian Arabic textbooks if you’re mostly using them yourself.

For an introduction: Colloquial Arabic of Egypt (Colloquial Series)

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I’m usually a fan of the Teach Yourself series (I used it for Spanish, Italian and Standard Arabic) but they don’t have a good book for Egyptian Arabic.

I bought this book in Kindle format and worked my way through the whole thing as a starting point. But I also have it in print to flick through at home.

I particularly like workbooks like these because of the exercises. You might be tempted to gloss over them and not do them, but by doing exercise you’re reminded quickly of what words and concepts you failed to completely absorb.

The Best Egyptian Arabic Language Books to Buy 1What I like about Colloquial Arabic of Egypt

  • It explains Egyptian Arabic colloquial grammar in very simple terms. It tells you what you need to know but not anymore. See the description below for example in describing how ‘nouns of place’ work, and how many follow a pattern.Essential Egyptian Arabic Ebooks - Colloquial 1
  • The words and grammar are up to date — it doesn’t teach you anything old fashioned. Also, it doesn’t get Egyptian Arabic confused with other styles of Arabic.
  • It teaches you script along the way. I think it’s critical to learn Arabic script, but for many, it can be daunting to learn using the script. Egyptian Arabic actually is better taught using romanisation to fully explain the pronunciation, which can’t be captured in a standardised way using Arabic lettering.

Just a note on this — you can’t actually learn Egyptian colloquial Arabic using the written form. This is because colloquial Arabic does not exist in a standard written form. Standard Arabic can be quite different (even in everyday words). So it’s totally fine to learn it through romanization. That said — you definitely, definitely need to learn how to read. Otherwise, expect to go hungry in 90% of establishments in the country!

(See also: why we chose to learn Egyptian Arabic over Standard Arabic or other dialects.)

What could be improved in Colloquial Arabic in Egypt

  • We still think you should really start by learning the alphabet. Even though the best way to learn colloquial Arabic (quickly) is through romanisation, it’s still super useful to know the written form. Instead of distributing it over the 16 or so lessons, the first lesson up-front should be how to read. Then you don’t need to force the words down the reader’s throat, but present them alongside romanisation.
  • The electronic version’s hyperlinks don’t work. At least the book has a proper index and structure. But the links to more materials online don’t work. I had to poke around on the internet to find them – they’re all here on the Routledge website (which didn’t come up in search on the first page). You can download them all, which is what I advise, rather than streaming (it went offline once for half a day, and I got worried it would never come back).

Two reference books from Lingualism: The Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary

Preview Product Rating Price
Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary No ratings yet $30.99Amazon Prime
Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs No ratings yet $38.99Amazon Prime

We’re both using these in a shared Kindle library and can’t recommend them enough.

I’m completely blown away by the incredible detail of these books, written by Matthew Aldrich of Lingualism, clearly an authority on colloquial Arabic dialects (he also has a few books about other dialects, but most of his current work is about Egypt). These books are easy to read, extremely rich and have so many examples. Books explaining core colloquial grammar and vocabulary in a non-technical way are so valuable to non-academic learners like us.

Twenty years ago, when I first made an aborted attempt to learn Levantine Arabic (I was doing too much at the time, so never got far), I’d have given my right arm for resources like these.

About each book:

  • Egyptian Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary is the first one you should buy. This is a list of words by categories, like “Numbers”, “Plants”, and “Feelings”. It’s fun (if you find this kind of thing fun) to browse through, and see random things you think “oh man! I have been wondering how to say that!”
  • The Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs is the second one you should buy. This is a book with two pages for each verb. Page 1 explains how to conjugate it in every way. It doesn’t force you to look up a verb table for that ‘type’ of verb (which is an approach he uses in a different book, which would require either memorization or flicking back and forth, which isn’t easy in an e-book), and page 2 has a sweet list of example sentences to make it totally clear how to use the word.
Example from Big Fat Book.png
From the Big Fat Book of Egyptian Verbs.

Extra Credit: Shuwayya ‘an Nafsi

Shuwayya 'An Nafsi: Listening, Reading, and Expressing Yourself in Egyptian Arabic (Shuwayya 'An Nafsi Series)
  • Aldrich, Matthew (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 223 Pages - 05/10/2016 (Publication Date) - Lingualism (Publisher)

Shuwayya ‘an Nafsi is the third (and optional) book. This is a series of conversations with real Egyptians, taking what they say and taking every sentence apart word by word. It’s a really cool way of learning how to understand people as they really speak about themselves.

Like for example, an introductory book would have the question “Are you married?” with responses of “yes”, “no”, “not yet”. This book has sample responses like: “No, I’m not married but I’m in a relationship, and I may get married in a couple of years.” and “No, I’m single. I was engaged once, but we broke up because he wasn’t right for me.” Whoa!

What we like about the Lingualism books

We love the focus on colloquial Arabic, the example sentences, and the abundance of audio recordings.

  • Focus on colloquial Arabic, not technical grammar. If you’re a moderate grammar nerd, you’ll know concepts like “subjunctive mood” and “perfect tense”[2]. But if you want to learn to speak, this is a waste of time. These books focus on telling you how to construct everyday sentences using common words and don’t dive into details unnecessary to anyone but scholars.
  • There are SO MANY example sentences. These are critical for learning. Whenever you’re learning a language, unless you’re just learning a noun like “banana”, you need to see a word in context. For example, if I tell you that the participle 3and (عند) expresses “belonging”, you still know almost nothing. You have to learn how to use it in sentences like “I don’t have money right now” or know that it isn’t used in the expression “Do you have the time?”. Having example sentences is useful for searching, too. Often random other nouns/adjectives are in the book on verbs.
  • There are audio recordings of all the example sentences online! Wow, I have never even seen resources like these for other major languages. The mp3s are downloadable and have the right metadata to import into iTunes or any other media player. The audio is freely available for download, even if you don’t own the books.

It’s also great that despite being really detailed and focusing on something poorly documented (colloquial language), these books are extremely correct. They’re so correct that occasionally, they describe variances in pronunciation. It’s really hard to publish a book without typos (I’ve got a few Kindle books that are just in English that are just riddled with them… seems so lazy for non-fiction) but these don’t seem to. It’s crazy.

An additional thing I like is just that these books and resources exist. Thank you, Matthew & Lingualism!

What could improve in the Lingualism books

Just one small issue: The Kindle structure hasn’t been done so you can’t use the table of contents. Using contents is a quick way to go to the right section. The implication is that for example, That means that in the Big Book of Verbs, the only way I can find a verb is using search, or browsing through hundreds of pages. I don’t think this is critical because I think search is the best way to use them.

What else I’d like to see

I think drills are essential to learning a language well. Especially making sentences and listening to conversations. In the past, I’ve enjoyed books with both of these approaches and would love to see resources like these in every language we study.

Resources forcing you to make sentences: I used a book ages ago called “Teach Yourself Spanish Grammar”. Every page (two facing small pages) had one grammar concept (like “past tense”, then a bunch of exercises to hammer it in. It’s how I learned a lot of hard ideas, like how to say things like “If I had more money, I’d buy a better laptop.” (J/k laptops were barely a thing in 1999)

Resources forcing us to listen to conversation: I’ve used listening drills books in Chinese. You listen to the audio and constantly re-listen to it to catch the nuances of how things are pronounced in everyday life. You might only end up mimicking 10% of it, but the key is volume: do a lot and make that 10% stretch out.

What we omitted from this list

Just before anyone says “this list is terrible and you’re terrible and smell bad”, I want to remind you that this is a focus on spoken Egyptian Arabic, teaching yourself, and e-books. This means we haven’t included books

  • Not yet available electronically as of 2019
  • Written in Arabic — beginners can’t use these to teach themselves
  • About Modern Standard Arabic or other dialects like Gulf, Levantine, or Maghrebi.

That said, if we’ve missed anything, give us your awesome review and we’ll include it here and give you credit.

We also haven’t included software and online resources we use. Those are coming soon!

Footnotes

[1] I’ve retained a lot of language books, but I admit that recently I threw out a few cassette tapes with the books’ dialogues on them. I finally admitted I’m probably never going to be able to convert them to MP3s. Next stop: the CDs. I can’t even remember last time I owned a CDROM drive.

[2] It’s interesting to me that teachers in schools like to complex teach words for grammar like “subjunctive mood” and “perfect tense” even though people have never heard them before in their mother tongues and seem to get by fine. Language teachers will even go as far as to teach them in the target language (el subjuntivo or passé composé). When is that ever going to come up again, unless you also decide to become a grammar teacher?

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Bea
Bea
11 months ago

Hi Dana! Thanks so much for all these posts. I’ve been binge-reading them for the whole day! Do you know where I can find the free audio of the example sentences you mentioned? I’d like to give it a listen before deciding whether or not I will buy the books