Hakini Arabi: Palestinian and Jordanian Colloquial for Beginners (Arabic Edition)

Hakini Arabi is an excellent book! It is a must for beginners and mid-level students. It is also great for students of Arabic at higher levels who have been away from the language. The book provides the literary script in Arabic as well as in the English letters and that can be very useful for beginners as they begin learning how to pronounce the words. Another very good feature in this book is that a student is exposed to three different dialects. It also explains the meaning of various expressions in Arabic in great detail in English so that a student can fully appreciate the reasoning behind why Arabs speak these expressions. This adds greatly to learning the culture. Finally, I have had the great pleasure of studying with Professor Abuhakema and I applaud him and his two colleagues who have written a very valuable book for individuals who truly are interested in and want to learn Arabic! I look forward to their next book with great anticipation.

There are several important things to note:- As other reviewers have noted, this book is NOT for self study. It is meant to be used in a classroom with several students and a native Arabic speaker.- The exercises are meant to be done in groups. Because of this the authors wrote much of the book in English. Flipping through the pages one will notice there is much more English than Arabic (unlike many other study books I have). This is not necessarily a bad thing if the book is used in the correct setting. Again, it's not meant for self study.- There is no audio CD (contrary to what may be assume from the cover). Also, the link given for the audio files is broken. I was able to find a zip of the audio files here: arabiyyaat.com/en/books/hakini-arabi/- Many Arabic words or phrases are not defined or explained. The student must have access to an Arabic speaker.- The book tries to present different dialects of Jordanian Arabic (roughly Urban vs. Village vs. Bedouin). This is good and bad. Too many options I think when a person is trying to learn it from the beginning. Better to stick with just one.- It's a good resource but cannot be your only one.

The book disappointed me, I'm sorry to say, because it appeared to be exactly what I want: a way to learn on my own real, spoken Arabic, not Modern Standard Arabic. This book is clearly meant for classroom use only. In no way is this a book for a solo beginner of Arabic. Two initial problems are, (1) the authors say in the intro that the Arabic texts will show the short vowels---they don't, not consistently, and (2) there is a picture of a CD on the bottom right front corner of the book and the words "with audio" implying accompanying audio; there's no CD. (See one of the other reviews for a link to a DropBox file of the audio; it is essential.) These two problems are annoying, but surmountable, but the main deficiencies that the buyer and would-be learner must know about are (1) there is a lot of vocabulary used in dialogues that is not glossed in the vocabulary lists for those very dialogues, (2) scanty grammatical explanations, if any, for grammar used in a chapter, (3) translation exercises (Eng to Arabic) asking for Arabic words that have not been introduced.If an instructor of Arabic used this book in a classroom, I think it would be great. I gave it two stars instead of only one because as a resource for expressions and sayings/proverbs in Levantine Arabic, it appears to be quite good. But it is of little value at all without a native speaker teacher to help you. I say this as an experienced language learner and Germanicist.

- Huge book (271 pages in big format) and reasonably priced.- Looks that the book didn't pass a serious proof reading. Unbelievable number of misprints and typos.- Both table of contents and index page numbers are shifted and hence useless.- Dictionary at the book end is not alphabetized. What's the point?- The book contains many-many redundant tables with repeating over and over unnecessary information.- The lack of Tashkeel and no English transliteration prevent lone learners to extract benefit from the book, and for sure not beginners.- People here mentioned the misleading fact that the book comes "with audio" (mentioned on front and back covers).- I tried to contact each of the three authors. Only one replied, flatly ignoring my comments.

I took Fus’Ha for two years almost seven years ago with one of the book’s authors, so my Arabic has been pretty rusty. I had no desire to go back to it (can’t stand all the grammar rules that no-one on “the street” uses…), so I was pleasantly surprised when I learned of the existence of Hakini Arabi. While I only recently purchased it, I find it very easy to use. The transliteration at the beginning of the book is a good reminder of how to pronounce certain letters and words, and I really enjoy learning about culture (in this case Palestinian), as one should when learning a language (I remember how my teacher intertwined language with history, culture, and religion in class, which this book does as well). I can understand how frustrating it would be to study this book without the audio recordings, so I contacted my former teacher and received the link to all the chapters, which can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1oeehmo0twqunc7/AADEtj63X0stmHqcSDNUqRaSa?dl=0.

Excellent book to learn Palestinian Jordanian Arabic.

Used it in class. Very appropriate vocabulary and a good mix of dialects. Really enjoyed it, especially the layout of the book.