Modern Iraqi Arabic, With MP 3 Files.

Kaye, Alan S.

Modern Iraqi Arabic, With MP 3 Files: A Textbook, 2nd edition. By YASIN M. ALKALESI Washington D. C GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006 Pp. xi + 344. $49.95 (PAPER).

This is the second edition, with new MP 3 files, or a traditional (read: old-fashioned) textbook of colloquial (why modern?) Baghdadi" Arabic "spoken by an average, middle-class Baghdadi" (p. xvi).The pedagogy used is reminiscent of the audiolingualism in vogue in the 1960s, complete with dialogues, grammatical commentary of all sorts, transliterated vocabulary also given in semi-vocalized Arabic script with English translation and full-in-blank and translation exercises. The work concludes with an Arabic-English and English-Arabic glossary (pp. 284-344) Foreign language teaching and applied linguistics have come a long way in the past halt century: however, these advances are not evident here. Arabic language pedagogical materials lag behind those available for French, German, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese.

Since culture is intertwined with language, the volume wisely contains material on cultural and religious themes as well as idiomatic phrases with explanations however. The English prose used is occasionally awkward. Consider but one example: "I go to Lebanon by an airplane, God willing" (p.52) Furthermore, sometimes an English translation is not accurate; e. g the ubiquitous ilhamdu lillaah us not "thanks be god'" but rather: praise be to god" (p.47) The book also contains unfortunately, errors of a more serious natural. On p.49 we read that the expression allaa(h) " HOW nice!" is "the origin of the Spanish word 'ole' " The author seems unaware of this reviewer's essay, "Two Alleged Arabic Etymologies." Journal of Near Erroneous Spanish 64.2(2005): 109-11, where this erroneous Spanish typographical errors (all of which cannot be listed here but see pp, 48, 140, 153, 178, for typical examples further mar the quality of the volume.

The terminology employed and the linguistic observations offered are occasionally problematic The introduction speaks of Arabic diglossia, making specific reference to classical and colloquial "with varying levels of differences " (p. xv). This phraseiligy is most puzzling. Will any reader understand what diglossia is all about by reading the auther's explanatory follow-up "sevwral European and non-European languages share such characteristics"? Also, Alkalesi asserts that, if one learns one Arabic dia;ect, one should be able to communicate with anouther who speaks a different dialect. This is just not the case. Many speakers of Egyptian Arabic. e. g., find Moroccan Arabic very difficulrt to commprehend, and interdialectical compatibility among speakers of different Arabic vernaculars pftem invalidates the author's claim that the communication level would be the same between a person speaking American English and another speaking British English

Let us leave these types of errors and now turn to other matters of a more significant nature. Some if the vocabulary used is Modern Standing Arabic rather than Iraqi Arabic. To citwe only one illustration, let us consider the word for "vgetable" given as khudrawaat (p.188) (more properly the plural "vegetables." as correctly given by the author in the glossaries,p.297 and p,342)In checking this in A Dictionary of Iraqi Arabic [DIR], edited by R. E C;arity, Karl Stowasser, and Ronald G. Wolf (Washington, D. C Georgertwon Univ press, 1964), 194,we find listed only mxaooar

There are also mistales in the phonological analusis of the data. Consider that the author dies not transcrtibe thefinal geminate in haar 'hot' (p.3290 =haarr [DIR 1964: 88 ) yet inconsistently marks the final gemination in habb 'to like'(p.332 and passim). the word for "glass" is a loanword from English, but Alkalesi has glass (p.189) for the correct glaas [DIR 1964: 196 ) Iraqi Arabic is famous for its secindary emphatics. Thus mayy (p.314 and passim is incorrect for mayy with an empjatic (DIR 1964: 196B )

Studying Alkalesi's work afforded me an opportunity to re-examine the classic textbook yesteryear, John Van Ess's The Spoken Aranic of iraq (Oxford Univ. Press, 1917; 2nd ed., 1938) While this older tome isfar from perfect it is not marred by some of the blwmished pointed our above. One can express the hope that better Iraqi Arabic pedagogocal materials become available prodiced soild manua;s and textbook for the dialects spoken inother Arab Countries

ALAN S. KAYE

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY FULLERTION