Modern Iraqi Arabic, With MP 3 Files.

• Author: Kaye, Alan S.

Modern Iraqi Arabic, With MP 3 Files: A Textbook, 2nd edition. By YASIN M. ALKALESI Washington D.C.: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006. Pp. xi + 344. $49.95 (PAPER).

This is the second edition, with new MP3 files, of a traditional (read: old-fashioned) textbook of colloquial (why modern?) Baghdadi Arabic "spoken by an average, middle-class Baghdadi" (p. xvi).The pedagogy used is reminiscent of the audiolingualism in vogue in the 1960s, complete with dialogues, grammatical commentary of all sorts, transliterated vocabulary also given in semi-vocalized Arabic script with English translation, and fill-in-the-blank and translation exercises. The work concludes with an Arabic-English and English-Arabic glossary (pp. 284-344). Foreign language teaching and applied linguistics have come a long way in the past half century: however, these advances are not evident here. Arabic language pedagogical materials lag behind those available for French, German, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese.

Since culture is intertwined with language, the volume wisely contains material on cultural and religious themes as well as idiomatic phrases with explanations; however, the English prose used is occasionally awkward. Consider but one example: "I go to Lebanon by an airplane, God willing" (p.52). Furthermore, sometimes an English translation is not accurate; e.g., the ubiquitous ilhamdu lillaah is not "thanks be to God," but rather "praise be to God" (p.47). The book also contains, unfortunately, errors of a more serious nature. On p.49 we read that the expression allaa(h) "How nice!" is "the origin of the Spanish word 'ole'." The author seems unaware of this reviewer's essay, "Two Alleged Arabic Etymologies," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 64.2(2005): 109-11, where this erroneous Spanish Etymology is put to rest. Unfortunately, the dozens of typographical errors (all of which cannot be listed here, but see pp. 48, 140, 153, 178 for typical examples) further mar the quality of the volume.

The terminology employed and the linguistic observations offered are occasionally problematic. The introduction speaks of Arabic diglossia, making specific reference to classical and colloquial "with varying levels of differences" (p. xv). This phraseology is most puzzling. Will any reader understand what diglossia is all about by reading the author's explanatory follow-up: "Several European and non-European languages share such characteristics"? Also, Alkalesi asserts that, if one...