A comprehensive foundation course for beginning students of written and spoken Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).

Lesson 1. The alphabet (pronunciation and writing); Lesson 2. Article; Gender; The equational sentence; Agreement in gender; Lesson 3. Number; The personal pronoun; The noun and the adjective; The adjective; Lesson 4. Radical, root, pattern; The broken plural; Declension and nunation; Stress; Prepositions; Lesson 5. The perfect tense; The verbal sentence; The objective clause; The Nisba-ending; Lesson 6. The genitive construction; Affixed pronouns; Definiteness (summary); The adverb; Lesson 7. The imperfect tense; Demonstrative pronouns; Diptotes; Lesson 8. Subjunctive and jussive; The imperative; Negation; Lesson 9. The dual; The numerals 1 and 2; 'How much/many'; The names of the months; Lesson 10. Cardinal numerals; The year; Lesson 11. The perfect tense of verbs; Word order and the subject of the sentence; Lesson 12. The imperfect tense of verbs; Subjunctive and jussive of verbs; The imperative of verbs; The verbs; Lesson 13. Temporal auxiliary verbs; Lesson 14. Forms II, III and IV of the verb; The attributive relative clause; Lesson 15. Forms II, III and IV of verbs continued; The nominal relative clause; Lesson 16. Ordinal numbers; Dates; The time; Numeral adverbs; Fractional numbers; Numeral adverbs of reiteration; Decimal numbers; Lesson 17. Forms V and VI of the verb; Word order; Genitive constructions; Lesson 18. Forms VII, VIII and X of the verb; Lesson 19. The passive voice; About the construction of doubly transitive verbs; Some characteristic features of the derived forms; Lesson 20. The collective; Names of nationalities; The feminine Nisba; Lesson 21. The participle; Patterns of the participle; The usage of the participles; Shortened relative clauses; The participle as predicate; The False Idafa; Participles and adjectives as 1st or 2nd term of the Idafa; Impersonal expressions; Lesson 22. The infinitive; The use; The infinitive instead of a subordinate clause; Functional verbs; Functional verbs instead of passive constructions; Adverb and adverbial constructions; The usage; The cognate accusative; Lesson 23. Subordinate clauses: a survey; Temporal clauses; Lesson 24. Verbs R2=R3; Verbs with Hamza; The spelling of Hamza; Clauses of reason; Lesson 25. The pattern; The elative as positive; The elative as comparative; The elative as superlative; Common elatives; Specification; Lesson 26. Conditional sentences; The real conditional sentence; The unreal conditional sentence; The concessive clause; Lesson 27. Exceptives; Other exceptive particles; Diminutives; Lesson 28. The Hal-accusative; The Hal-clause; Survey of use of the accusative; Exclamations in the accusative.

This book presents a comprehensive foundation course for beginning students of written and spoken Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), providing an essential grounding for successful communication with speakers of the many colloquial varieties. This long-established and successful text has been completely revised with the needs of English-speaking learners especially in mind, and will prove invaluable to students and teachers alike. - Step-by-step guide to understanding written and spoken texts - Develops conversational ability as well as reading and writing skills - Arabic-English Glossary containing 2600 entries - Fresh texts and dialogues containing up-to-date data on the Middle East and North Africa - Includes Arab folklore, customs, proverbs, and short essays on contemporary topics - Grammatical terms also given in Arabic enabling students to attend language courses in Arab countries - Provides a wide variety of exercises and drills to reinforce grammar points, vocabulary learning and communicative strategies - Includes a key to the exercises - Accompanying cassettes are also available separately