Egyptian Arabic Diaries

Egyptian Arabic Diaries

(8 customer reviews)

Additional information

Format

PDF eBook

Level

A2, B1, B2

Length

170 pages

Audio?

Yes

Category: Tag:

Improve your reading and listening skills with 20 essays by individuals from around Egypt.

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The goal of Egyptian Arabic Diaries is to provide intermediate and advanced learners with authentic materials to practice both reading and listening skills in authentic Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA). The twenty texts that appear in this book have been written and recorded* by native speakers from around Egypt. The texts have been dubbed diary entries, although they are actually short personal essays that the contributors have chosen to share with learners of their language.

* The audio is now available in two versions and can be downloaded or streamed below:

  • the original audio: as spoken by the participants (at times challenging, but excellent practice for building listening skills)
  • slow audio: a studio recording by professional voice artists who speak very slowly and deliberately (good for hearing the sounds of each word and shadowing the speech to improve your pronunciation and accent)

Each diary entry appears in various forms to allow you to study the language from a variety of focal points:

The unvoweled Arabic text provides realistic reading practice. Although ECA has no official rules of orthography, there are spelling conventions which are widely agreed upon by most Egyptians. Still, there remain differences in personal preferences, especially when it comes to the spelling of conjugated verbs and function words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns. Some try to preserve the spelling used in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as much as possible, while others prefer to represent the actual sounds of ECA. Many people tend to be inconsistent even in their own spelling, as they are basically sounding things out as they go. To keep all this a bit neater, Lingualism has adopted a consistent orthography based on the most popular spelling conventions.

The handwritten text is an invaluable addition to the materials, allowing you to familiarize yourself with natural Arabic handwriting. You can try your best to decipher the handwritten words, and then compare them to their typed counterparts, progressively improving your ability to read handwriting by various individuals. You can also copy (or trace) traits of the handwritten letters to make your own handwriting more natural.

The English translation stays true to the original Arabic, sentence by sentence, making it easy to find the corresponding translation. The translation can be used to compare similarities and differences between the style and structure of sentences in the two languages.

The voweled text is found in the left-most column of the three-column in-depth study section. Every effort has been made to provide systematic and accurate voweling (tashkeel). Keep in mind that Arabic script, as it is written by Egyptians, does not always represent the actual sounds. Vowels may be shortened, elided, or even inserted in places.

The phonemic transcription allows for close study of the actual pronunciation. Even if you prefer the Arabic script, you will find it well worth your time to familiarize yourself with Lingualism’s phonemic transcription system. Using the phonemic transcription allows you to better understand the sound patterns in ECA, thereby improving your own pronunciation.

The word-by-word translations act as a glossary. You can easily find the literal meaning of every word without having to search through lists of words. And more than just a glossary, the word-by-word translations give you a better understanding of the grammar and style of Arabic. Try reading these English sentences out loud. They will sound quite strange, but this will help you get used to the logic of Arabic sentences.

Notes are referenced with an asterisk under a column’s number and follow the three-column section. These notes highlight interesting points of grammar and vocabulary.

Take a closer look inside!

Not sure if this book is right for you? Download a free sample for an extended preview and try out the materials before you decide to buy. See how the PDF eBook looks on your screen and how it prints out.

Visit Amazon to get this book in paperback!

This book is available in paperback on your local Amazon website. (On Lingualism.com, we only sell the PDF eBook version.)

Egyptian Arabic Diaries

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8 reviews for Egyptian Arabic Diaries

  1. tj

    tj

    I am greatly enjoying studying the Egyptian Arabic Diaries. I practice with it every day and night. The arabic font is very neat and easy to read, the translations are accurate, and its very helpful to have the meanings in english.

    The only negative is on some of the accompanying audio tracks from the website, the speaker talks too fast. The product still is very beneficial and enjoyable to arabic learners.

  2. Fatimah

    Fatimah (verified owner)

    This is by far my favourite Lingualism product so far, as it allows me to practice multiple skills within the same documents. The short stories are perfectly for an early-intermediate level learner such as myself and improve my general vocabulary and grammatical skills, while the handwritten samples produce the opportunity to more thoroughly immerse myself in native Arabic written culture. A fantastic product. Hope to see more like this!

  3. Mark Arvi

    Mark Arvi

    This book is great to improve your listening and reading skills! will recommend to a friend who is also learning egyptian accent like me.

  4. Ameena

    Ameena

    I’ve been working on this book with a friend. We read a diary entry weekly and pick out interesting words/ phrases/ expressions and for verbs we try to find them in the Big Fat Book of EA Verbs. It’s been a fun and interesting experience…reading the different entries, learning lots of new vocabulary and different aspects of the language and how it’s used and just enjoying the different stories that are told.
    Thanks, Lingualism for another fantastic resource.

  5. Christina

    Christina

    One of my favorite resources ever!

  6. Marija

    Marija

    The reading is too fast.

  7. Gil

    Gil (verified owner)

    Great!

  8. Mostafa

    Mostafa

    I’m about to finish studying with the help of the “Egyptian Arabic Diaries” and I have to say that this product is amazing! I really enjoyed the topics. It enabled me to grasp a good amount of useful vocabulary and to see how sentences should be structured. The audios were also very helpful. All in all this was a fun and enjoyable learning experience.
    Thank you so much!

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