The Syntax of Spoken Arabic: A Comparative Study of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, and Kuwaiti Dialects (Not In A Series)

This book is a dream for anyone interested in Arabic colloquial linguistics. As a speaker of a more obscure dialect, I am always looking to expand my dialect base and study the technicalities behind the differences between the major dialects. Luckily, Kristen Brustad has put together a very impressive work, and having used her Al-Kitaab books years ago to learn Arabic MSA literacy, I knew this book would be a quality product.This book is, as the title suggests, a comparative study of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, and Kuwaiti dialects-- each one representative of major regional groups in vernacular Arabic (here North African, Egyptian, Levantine, and Gulf, respectively). Bearing in mind that each country has its own variations even between town to town, the author does her best to include different demographics for each country's study. She lists her sources in the first appendix, and the second appendix is a series of long passages that A) she used for her study, and B) are great for reading to get an even bigger feel of a conversation in the dialect specified. (They are shown here written in each of these 3 modes: vernacular Arabic writing, transliteration, and English translation. Each sentence is numbered for easy reference.) Throughout the book's myriad of examples, the author took the painstaking task of completely breaking down each prefix, word, and suffix for her translations.The body of her work goes into great technicalities and remains readable, fun, and interesting for someone who is interested in comparing these dialects. I highly recommend this book.

For me, a budding linguist, it is pure joy to read this type of linguistic work. Brustad covers so many aspcts of spoken arabic in such a professional, ordered and useful manner. Examples are cited from the four dialect regions studied (Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian and Kuwaiti) to prove each point. They are written in the original arabic (or how they would be written), then transliterated into the romanized script, and then written with the english translation. Nearly every aspect of spoken arabic is discussed here; even the most basic of points (ie differences in singular and plural nouns) are discussed in detail. She uses information from general linguistics, typology, syntax, phonology and compares arabic with other languages for a great description of each dialect region. There are appendices in the back which have the full stories, anecdotes, jokes, etc. collected from her personal data which she uses throughout the book to prove her points. It is in written in the same manner that the examples are written in.GREAT BOOK! If you are interested in (arabic) linguistics, get this book!

Useless. Almost every single Arabic speaker I have conversed with, from wide range of lifestyles and countries, have all frowned at the Arabic found in this book, much as I have frowned at the pompous verbosity of this book in English. It's just a jumbled mess of words and Arabic that is basically useless. I regret wasting my money on this so bad. This books is like a bad essay. Do not buy!

If you’re interested in Arabic linguistics, this is a must-read work. It’s extremely thorough and well-researched, and Dr. Brustad’s writing style is clear and unpretentious. Be aware, however, that this is an upper-level book, some previous background in linguistics is probably necessary in order to get good use out of this.

Being a native speaker of Kuwaiti Arabic, this book is an excellent choice to get to know the syntactic nature of my dialect as observed by one the pioneers of Modern Standard Arabic, Kristin E. Brustad.

this comparative study covers a wide range of important syntactic features based on real data. it also recommends a number of topics for future research. highly professional. a significant contribution.

Great book

As a none academic I found this a bit heavy going. I have found it useful as a reference for certain grammar points though.