An index of grammatical structures, a glossary, an index and appendices of specialized vocabulary, social expressions, gestures, and Saudi names are included.

"In 1968 Margaret K. Omar (Nydell) spent four months in a small Egyptian village called Sheikh Mubarak. Located in Middle Egypt near Al-Minya, residents of Sheik Mubarak speak in a dialect closer to Sa'eedi, not the dialect spoken in Cairo. Omar spent time there conducting interviews, examinations, and taping sessions with children and families to study primary language acquisition in non-Western languages. Based on her fieldwork, Omar describes the physical and social environment in which the native language was learned, the development of early communication and speech, and when and how children learn the phonology, vocabulary, morphology, and syntactical patterns of Egyptian Arabic. Omar makes comparisons with aspects of language acquisition of other languages, primarily English, and explores implications for the theory of language acquisition. Originally published in 1973, this book is the most thorough and complete analysis of the stages in which children learn Arabic as a first language. The Arabic in this book is presented in transcription, making the information accessible to all linguists interested in language acquisition."--Publisher's description.

This reader is designed for students who have some background in Modern Standard Arabic, and who are interested in Hijazi Arabic beyond the basic level. Presumabl[y] the student has already completed an introductory Hijazi Arabic course such as Margaret K. Omar's Saudi Arabic, Urban Hijazi Dialect Basic Course (see the bibliography). The reader may also be of interest to Arabists and Arabic dialectologists.The language of this reader is used in informal situations by educated native speakers of the Hijaz area. There are some variations within Hijazi Arabic which correlate with the level of education, occupation, age, social class, travel, etc. of native speakers. Highly educated natives speak with some admixture of pan-Arabic koine, depending on circumstances and situations. This fact is apparent in some selections of the reader.The reader consists of forty selections, some of which are based on recordings of spontaneous, unrehearsed conversations of unsophisticated native speakers from Mecca, Medina, and Ta'if. The remaining selections are based on accounts of current events which appeared in Saudi newspapers such as Al-Jazzira, Al-Medina, and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. These survey the progress made by Saudi Arabic in the areas of eduction, industry, agriculture, medicine, infrastructure and improving the standard of living as a whole. The selections also describe life in Saudi Arabic and treat various social, political, and religious problems. The introductory section on the transcription and the sound system is designed to acquaint the user with the transcription employed throughout the reader. The symbols used for the transliteration are those most commonly employed for Arabic dialects. In daily speech, short vowels are often omitted because of elision and assimilation, and because of the difference in pronunciation among native speakers.Each selection is followed by a vocabulary list. The words are listed in the order they appear in the text. Verbs are listed in the third person singular masculine in both the perfect and imperfect aspects. Grammatical and cultural notes are also provided for each selection in order to facilitate a better understanding of the dialect as well as the society in which it is spoken. Quite often the notes make comparisons of the Hijazi dialect to some features of Modern Standard Arabic.The second part of the reader provides the English translations of the Hijazi selections, from which the user will benefit whether he is studying independently or with a teacher. The translations were kept as close as possible to the Hijazi text in order to enable the user to see the relationship between the two. As a result, he may occasionally find the English somewhat stiff or unidiomatic. The words and phrases enclosed in brackets do not have equivalents in the Hijazi text. They were added for a better and smoother English translation. Words and phrases which appear in the Hijazi text but which are not necessary for the English translation are enclosed in parentheses preceded by "literally." The last part of the reader provides an alphabetized general glossary containing all the entries in the individual vocabulary lists and the words used in the notes as well.

Using a field-tested, non-grammar-based approach, this book teaches a standardized variant of spoken Arabic and introduces beginning students to standard Arabic orthography.

First published in 1988. Arabic linguistics is developing into an increasingly interesting and important subject within the broad field of modern linguistic studies. The scope of this discipline is wide and varied, covering diverse areas such as Arabic phonetics, phonology and grammar, Arabic psycholinguistics, Arabic dialectology, Arabic lexicography and lexicology, Arabic sociolinguistics, the teaching and learning of Arabic as a first, second, or foreign language. The present work by Prochazka is the first general survey of the dialects of Saudi Arabia covering a wide range from north to south recording of linguistic variation in that vast region. It is particularly strong in covering a number of localities in the southwest and it is the first linguistic study of the dialect of the Ruwala bedouin of the northern desert. The work reveals a major division into two areal blocks: (i) the southern Hijaz and Tihamah and (ii) the Najdi and Eastern Arabian dialects.