Kallimni ‘Arabi: An Intermediate Course in Spoken Egyptian Arabic 2 (Arabic Edition)

Whether you have prior knowledge of MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) or just a smattering of MSA cum-colloquial Egyptian this is the book for you! You have lots of recorded dialogues and the whole book is in Egyptian Arabic! That's something I never really saw before except when I was in Cairo. To follow, you just need to learn the Arabic alphabet and that's it. The letters are not that hard to learn. They're actually beautiful and it makes sense to use them even for colloquial because you'll find most of the colloquial words in MSA so it's good to know their spelling. Colloquial is much easier than MSA and even more natural to speak. The book is user-friendly with pictures and diagrams: very easy to follow. The authors have done an outstanding job and, easily, you'll speak Egyptian in no time.

I am a little biased, having taken courses from Samia in Cairo, but, this is a wonderful collection of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Just what we needed to stay in practice. The CD is wonderful, as I have it loaded on my IPOD, and the tracks come up randomly to keep my Arabic up. Recommend this for anyone who has studied some Egyptian Arabic, and wants to stay in practice. Not for beginners. That one is in the pipeline to be released at a future date. Enjoy!

The audio and the tone of voice helped a lot with understanding the conversations

Book did not ship with a CD, which is required to complete the modules. The book by itself is completely useless. Do not purchase.

Very excited to use this book, I've heard great reviews. Unfortunately, this did not come with a CD. Based on the other reviews, it looks like I'm not the only one. However, there is a QR code in the introduction that takes you to SoundCloud where you can find the audio.It’s nice to have the SoundCloud option, but the seller should make it clear in the title and description that the CD does not come with the book, but that there is a QR code in the book for those of us who are less attentive to details at first.

It is such a great book, its really integrated. i do like its listening activities, and i do recommend it

This is a good transition book from standard Arabic to Egyptian. If you're going to Egypt, you need colloquial. For a beginner, though, start with a basic text, like Kullu Tammam. (This one uses Arabic script, for example, not transliteration). The authors are from ILI in cairo, a top rate school for colloquial Egyptian. And let's face it, that's the most important Arabic dialect. The audio is great, the CD very easy to use and well linked to the text. The scenarios are quite funny and true to life (the one with the cab driver arguing with the customer was great), so you get a little of the underside of Cairo culture thrown in. The only drawback is that the glossary is very weak, and organized by lesson, not alphabeticallt. A lot of key colloquial terms are used but never defined.

Having taught out of this book and reviewed the others for the publisher, I can say that the books in the Kallimni Arabi series altogether present the best Arabic textbooks available (whether for spoken or written Arabic). The method followed by the books is intended to enable students to learn from example and practice rather than through lengthy explanations of structure and usage. The books are designed in a way that they almost teach themselves; they could actually be used for self-instruction. That cannot be said for any other Arabic textbook I know of.The praiseworthy features of the book are many; of those, I'll name some of my favourites: intuitive diagrams of stress rules to help students acquire the rhythmic musicality of Egyptian speech; where variants in usage occur in the natural speech of Egyptians, the books reflect it (many Arabic textbooks gloss over such variants for the sake of simplicity); there is consistent, attractive artwork throughout (a real novelty in the Arabic textbook trade); the audio materials, presented on a CD, actually feature people with pleasant voices who know how to act (another novelty - mind you, the  Al-Kitaab  series, which teaches modern written Arabic, and which is the teaching standard, employs real actors); and the "from real life" segments at the end of each module are presented with realistic ambient noise (a party with people talking in the background; a taxi ride with Quranic recitation on the radio and Cairo traffic fulminating outside). These may seem like trivial considerations, but they place these books miles ahead of most other Arabic textbooks.There are some things that I might have done differently, the most salient of which is the treatment of vocabulary. There is never a comprehensive list of vocabulary presented anywhere in the lessons, neither at the beginning nor the end (I have seen both in other textbooks), nor is the glossary in the end materials comprehensive. This is not a huge flaw, however; nor is it an oversight. The authors have done this of a purpose, intending that students acquire vocabulary in context (not a bad idea in itself). This means that someone teaching out of the book or someone using this book as a self-teaching aid would need to augment the book with a dictionary (also not a bad idea). A good beginners dictionary is also published by the AUC Press:  A Pocket Dictionary of the Spoken Arabic of Cairo: English-Arabic , with somewhere above 6000 entries. In it, the Arabic is presented in transliteration, while Kallimini Arabi generally uses the Arabic script throughout - except in the vocabulary lists. In the beginners volume, which has just been published, the Arabic script is taught, and practice drills are presented in transliteration.If you get really good or really interested in Egyptian Arabic (of if you want to become so), you should also eventually plan to buy A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic: Arabic-English, by Martin Hinds and El-Said Badawi. The best dictionary of colloquial Arabic available, users need to know how to read Arabic in order to use it, because the entries are listed in Arabic (definitions are in English and the examples of usage are in transliteration); familiarity with the citation method used in the  The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic , the Bible of Arabic students, would also be useful.Should one learn Egyptian Arabic or another variety? Considering that about a quarter of all native speakers of Arabic are from Egypt (assuming upwards of 75 million people in Egypt and some 300 million in the entire Arab world) we could say that the most widely spoken vernaculars are the Egyptian vernaculars. That of Cairo is generally the one labelled "Egyptian Arabic", but the other Egyptian varieties can lay equal claim to the appellation. Even so, speakers of the Cairene vernacular are understood throughout Egypt and to some (perhaps a large) degree throughout the Arab world; anyone who owns a television set in the Arab world will be exposed to the Cairene vernacular (they could hardly escape it).My contention is that learners should concentrate on learning a spoken vernacular first. If they intend to go in with their engagement with the Arab world, and I hope they do, they will eventually have to learn what is usually called Modern Standard Arabic, or that form used with minor local variations in writing throughout the Arab world (but not spoken as a native tongue by anyone). By starting with a spoken vernacular like that of Cairo learners will acquire many of the somewhat initially challenging grammatical features of Arabic, which are shared by the spoken and written forms - after all, they are two aspects of the same language - in a conceptually less challenging framework, while learning how to talk about ordinary life and immediate needs and interests.All that said, the Kallimni Arabi series is the best place to begin a study of Arabic.

Das Buch, so wie alle anderen in der Reihe erschienenen, eignet sich hervorragend, wenn man den ägyptischen Dialekt lernen möchte. Allerdings braucht man dazu die Unterstützung durch einen Lehrer da die Schrift ausschließlich in arabischer Schrift verfügbar ist. Alle Geschichten sind aus dem alltäglichen Leben, so dass man die Vokabeln sofort anwenden kann.

La foto muestra un libro con CD, pero el libro viene sin el CD. Hay un sitio en línea para el audio pero no es práctico. Considero hacer la devolución.

Testo fondamentale per chiunque desideri avere una conoscenza approfondita della variante dialettale egiziana. Parte di una collana unica nel suo genere, guida all'apprendimento dell'arabo egiziano parlato nella vita di tutti i giorni; molto utile per coloro che desiderino conoscere l'arabo come una lingua viva, trascendendo in parte gli schemi artificiosi del Modern Standard Arabic.Unica pecca la presenza di alcuni esercizi che necessitano di un contesto di studio di gruppo per essere svolti. A parte questo deficit, rimane la migliore collana nel suo genere.Punta di diamante il CD di accompagnamento, con ascolti tratti dalla quotidianità, esercizi di pronuncia e declinazioni verbali.Coloro in possesso di conoscenze pregresse in MSA potranno iniziare da questo volume, anzichè dal precedente.

A previous reviewer slated this book and I can understand that - if you are not prepared to learn to read and write in script. However they were quite wrong saying it is a book for teachers only. It is aimed at students but clearly is best used in a class where you have some guidance.That said - I am doing mine at home alone but there is plenty of help in forums and so on.I have already done both Michel Thomas (good for understanding) and Pimsleur (good for talking) audio courses and found this a great place to continue albeit a somewhat daunting task having to totally embrace reading and writing in script.It is however untrue that there is no transliteration in the series. The place to start is Kallini Arabi Bishweesh where the earlier work is repeated in transliteration and this is gradually withdrawn as the book goes on.It will always be painfully slow for someone new to script but if you intend to do it, it's a good way to get immersed in it.For the feint hearted, Kullu Tamam teaches a similar format but is transliterated. Might a good idea to dip into both if you find it a bit heavy going till you can read script reasonably well.I have bought all 5 in the series and think they are a great investment for those who are seriously wishing to learn.If anyone is unsure, feel free to email me.

The book is excellent and honestly I do not understand some negative reviews regarding the absence of a teacher....these books can be used in a classroom but they are also an outstanding tool for self-study. Of course it is clearly stated that the required level is Intermediate. I have bought almost anything on the market regarding Egyptian Arabic and I can tell you without fear of being contradicted that this book is simply a must if you want to learn Intermediate Egyptian Arabic.