The Olive Tree Dictionary: A Transliterated Dictionary of Conversational Eastern Arabic (Palestinian) (Arabic and English Edition)

I consider myself a pretty serious student of Arabic. It's actually an obsession of mine. I spend most of my free time studying this beautiful language. Up until recently, my primary focus was to learn MSA (classical Arabic). But, after spending many years studying MSA, I concluded that in order to converse with real Arabs on the street or in daily life (rather than reading a book, newspaper, or listening to a speech/news, etc) I would need to learn a spoken dialect. Towards the end of the last semester taking Arabic, I decided I would spend the summer break learning a spoken dialect of Arabic. I narrowed my choice down to the Levantine dialect (Syrian, Palestinian, Jordanian) and the Egyptian dialect. I chose the Levantine dialect. I plan to learn the Egyptian dialect later down the road after I have become fairly comfortable with the Levantine dialect.As for the book....After having purchased a few books now on the Levantine dialect, (including several dictionaries) I can say with confidence that The Olive Tree Dictionary is the end-all be-all dictionary for the Levantine dialect. If you can only afford to buy one dictionary, let it be this one. There aren't many others out there, and the others will leave you wanting something better.This dictionary is Arabic-English, but contains an English index so that you can look up English words. The print is nicely sized and in Romanized script. Some who are newer to Arabic may consider this a drawback, because they want to read the script and know how to spell these words in Arabic. However, it must be reminded that this is NOT written Arabic. This is a spoken dialect, so the words are not pronounced as they are normally written in texts. You will not be using this dictionary for writing purposes. This is for speaking purposes mainly.What I also love about this dictionary is that it provides sample sentences so that the reader will be able to see how the word is used in speech and can feel confident using it when speaking. What I like to do is create flash cards on my phone using these sample sentences with English on one side and Arabic on the other and I quiz myself. This helps me practice saying the words and to retain the vocabulary.There is a verb table located in the back of the book as well that the reader can refer to see how the verbs are to be conjugated for different tenses. Each verb in the book has a symbol next to it indicating the type so that the reader can refer to a specific table in the back and determine the exact conjugation for a given tense; for example, past-tense, singular, female. I like to make flash cards out of the verbs with their past and present tense conjugations. Nouns are listed with the masculine, feminine and plural forms. I make flash cards out of these as well.Now, this book is expensive, but trust me. You will be better off buying this one first rather than spending twice as much on several other books just to wind up wanting this one later. This book is very useful, very well organized and is well worth the money. I also recommend the pocket version of this dictionary for quick look-ups, because this book is quite large and hefty. Not the kind of book you will carry with you everywhere.

I've been studying Arabic for a million years ; ) If your a student of Arabic, you already know: There's an absolute dearth of colloquial Arabic dictionaries out there for any dialect. (And the ones out there aren't worth much.) In my pursuit of resources for learning to speak the colloquial Eastern dialect, I was reluctant to purchase this dictionary, 1) because of the price, and 2) because of the fact that the Arabic is transliterated in Roman letters. Wow, am I glad I got this; it is fan-tastic! Now that I've been using it, I appreciate the advantage of using Roman letters: It's much better for helping with pronunciation because of dialectical variances, the elision of Arabic letters/sounds in phrases, etc. Plus: Every word includes at least one sample usage sentence, which is adds to the total value of the dictionary by teaching one idioms and common expressions as well as new vocabulary words. I highly recommend this dictionary!

A great book, one of a kind for colloquial Arabic for Palestine/Jordan/Syrian/Lebanese dialects. The only thing that disappointed me was the binding on the book is pretty weak for how large this book is, and I can see the binding falling apart quite easily with repeated use.None of the words are written in arabic letters, which is fine because they are colloquial, spoken words, but it would be good to know how people would spell the words in a text message in arabic.

This book goes so in depth and is even intriguing to a native speaker of Arabic. It should be noted that the dictionary entries are not written in Arabic script. However, the book does provide a pronunciation guide so that you can differentiate between harder and softer consonants and long and short vowels. Excellent investment for those wanting to expand the vocab in all areas. Great for a collection of Arabic reference

An EXCELLENT dictionary for serious study of the Palestinean dialect. The perfect companion to "Speaking Arabic" by the same author. I highly recommend it. And for those who already have a background in the written language, it is truly a "jewel."

I'm studying spoken Arabic in Amman, Jordan. I have not found such an extensive dictionary for spoken Arabic (Levant dialect). This book is a tremendous help since spoken and written Arabic are so different. Bilingual people have told me that the difference between written and spoken is like today's spoken English to Beowulf. The definitions are also full with example sentences. I strongly recommend this to anyone studying spoken (Levant) Arabic.

I enjoy the content of this particular dictionary. But the company that shipped it is not up to par. When I received the book, the whole binding of the book was off completely. So I was not pleased at all.

We purchased this book with the idea of being able to actually see and understand the arabic words. This is a great dictionary for anyone who never actually wants to read arabic. Because it is written entirely in English letters. So the words are not spelled out with arabic letters. Which is hard to use if you want to find a way a word is used in an actual sentence, then you would have had to have learned arabic on somewhere and know what the word sounds like. (i.e.: shookran- means thank you. But what does it look like in Arabic? No clue. And this dictionary will not tell you either.But to make up a sentence or say a word, it is great because you can look the word up in the back and it will tell you the way to say it phonetically.