Sbahtu! A Course in San ani Arabic.

AuthorKaye, Alan S.

By JANET C. WATSON. Wiesbaden: OTTO HARRASOWITZ, 1996. Pp. xxvii + 324.

This is a comprehensive, pedagogically sound San ani Arabic textbook of twenty lessons. It complements the author's (1993) A Syntax of San ani Arabic by the same publisher (see my review in JAOS 117.3). Each lesson consists of authentic dialogues which Watson often recorded in the field. They deal with Yemenite culture, such as gat chewing, a national pastime. A big plus for the tome is that it contains a glossary of about fourteen hundred useful items (pp. 295-321), which happily gives important free variations, such as ala sibb [similar to] asibb 'for; because (of)' (p. 295); yirig/yirag 'he pours (s.th.)' (p. 312); or the geminated zukkam for zukam 'cold; flu' (p. 321). The vocabulary for each lesson is presented after its related textual material. Then, too, there is a supplementary thematic vocabulary, such as one for food and drink (pp. 62-64).

One fault of the book is that some basic words are introduced towards the very end. For instance, lesson 16 cites rah 'to go' (p. 213), or lesson 19 includes jamil 'beautiful' and gaf 'to see' (p. 265 and p. 266 respectively). On the other hand, one is exposed to less utilitarian and surely less common or needed words, such as msamma 'plastic sheet' in lesson 3 (p. 17), or baxar 'incense', or murr 'myrrh' in lesson 5 (p. 42).

The grammatical notes are linguistically sophisticated. For example, Watson comments on the dissimilation of ma 'what' to b- in bismig 'what's your name (f. sg.)?' (pp. 11-12). Descriptive adequacy is often met as the definite article/all-/allomorph is carefully noted before nouns beginning with a vowel; e.g., allumm 'the mother' and allism 'the name' (pp. 18-19). However, as with many other textbooks of various Arabic dialects, there are no rules explicating the broken plural patterns (pp. 32-33). The student is left on his own, feeling, I fear, hopelessly lost, as the idea seems to be to memorize each singular together with its plural. Imagine frustration building as one notes marih 'woman', pl. niswan and nisa, or ism 'name', pl...

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