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501 Arabic Verbs: Fully Conjugated in All Forms
by Raymond Scheindlin Ph.D.
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series (2007-10-01)
ISBN: 0764136224
EAN: 9780764136221
Dewey Decimal #: 492.78
Binding/Media: Paperback - 584 pages
Edition: Bilingual
SKU: 102309-0716
Condition: New
Comments: 0764136224 New, never read, may have minor wear on cover.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Barron’s 501 Arabic Verbs is printed in Arabic script with exemplary sentences in English for each verb. To reflect correct Arabic style, 501 Arabic Verbs has been printed back cover to front and back page to front. Verbs are arranged alphabetically in a table format, one verb per page with English translation, and conjugated in all tenses and forms. The book’s additional features include common idioms with example sentences to demonstrate verb usage and a grammar review.
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Customer Reviews
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Good, but room for improvement...
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-04-04
Some other reviewers have already hit on my main faults with this book:
First, and most important, there is no English index at the back of the book. If you want too look up a word, you will need an English-Arabic-English dictionary to find the infinitive in Arabic. Why this sin was even committed is unfathomable. Presumably if you know Arabic you wouldn't be purchasing this book to begin with. If you have other verb books in the Barron's series it's very disappointing because you already know that that was the entire formula for its original success.
Secondly, all of the other books in the series use the one page, one verb concept. This particular version lets the verbs mingle on different pages. When you couple this with the fact that the layout is opposite from normal Western books it creates unnecessary confusion. Again, why did they leave their successful formula?
It is still a useful tool and I like the fact that the vowels are included, because for a beginner, Arabic words are almost completely unpronounceable without the vowels.
If you don't need the book immediately you may want to wait for a revised and presumably improved future edition otherwise it can be a useful investment in its current flawed state.
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a very valuable reference
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-01-30
For many years Arabic learners had to make do with '201 Arabic Verbs', which was this book's predecessor in the widely used Barron's series of books on verbal conjugations in different languages. Now Arabic has (belatedly) made it to the big time in the arena of foreigh language education in English, and this work will make itself very useful to its students- and not just to those in the beginning stages of Arabic study.
The Arabic verb mirrors the character of the language itself- based on very simple and logical principles which turn out to be complex and daunting in practice. There are basically two tenses and an imperative (the future, subjunctive and jussive are basically just small and entirely predictable variations of the imperfect), practically no irregular verbs to speak of, and verbs with more complicated and abstract meanings are derived from the basic forms by means of a small number of again quite predictable formulas.
So how does it get hard? The answer basically lies in the forms of some of the three-consonant roots that Arabic uses not only to build up almost all of its verbs but its entire lexicon as well. Roots which include hamza (the glottal stop), waw and ya, or which include a double root (second and third consonants are the same) follow much more complicated rules and it is easy to forget the details of them if you don't see a particular form for a while. So that's the real reason why a reference work like this is so important to have. The verbs themselves have been well-chosen, there is a preliminary section that, although brief, explains all of the essentials of how Arabic verbs work, and along with the tables of conjugations illustrative sentences for each verb are given. The verbs are indexed both by alphabetical order and by root (a system that learners should master as soon as possible because it is the system used by the best Arabic dictionaries). It would have been nice to include an English index as well, and it wouldn't have added a lot of extra space. Hopefully a future edition will correct this omission. But in the meantime this is still a very helpful reference to have handy- learners will continue to turn to it long after they have passed their beginning stages.
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Better and worse...
Rating (3)
Date: 2009-12-01
1 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I am afraid I have to agree with other reviewers that this book is both an improvement over the earlier 201 Verbs volume but at the same time also falls short of that work in a few respects.
It goes without saying that the inclusion of 300 more items is a plus. The introduction is also longer and provides information on the various forms of the Arabic verb, their meanings and usage. The Arabic font is a tad larger but far more legible, and the new layout of forms on the page is also a big improvement. The inclusion of example sentences for each verb is also a welcome addition.
Unfortunately, the larger font/new layout and new examples result in the content for each verb no longer fitting on a single page. This means that it is more difficult than with the earlier volume to search for a given verb by riffling through the pages. I suppose the Index of Verbs in Root Order and Index of Verbs in Whole Word Order were included to make up for this.
Finally, the Index of Verb Patterns included in the 201 book, which I found extremely helpful, is strangely missing from this one. The pattern information is included in the heading of each entry, of course, but having an index of them was convenient.
I would like to give this book 3.5 stars, but I'm going to round down. It falls short of the much better reference it could have been.
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Usefulness... depends if you already know Arabic.
Rating  (2)
Date: 2009-11-01
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I have numerous language books: verbs, vocab, phrasebooks, dictionaries... you name it. This is by far the worst example of a verb study for three reasons.
1.) In my opinion, and although some would argue it's not that important, I believe any great language book on a language with a foreign text from it's translated text needs an alphabet page. It's simple, it's easy to use, and doesn't take up more a page or two.
2.) Secondly, the indexing is horrible. This book was intended for the non-native Arabic speaker to be able to access the diversity and complexity of the Arabic verb. That's near impossible, if not just annoying by page-searching, to find the English verb you wish to conjugate in Arabic. This defeats the purpose of the book... I would sooner use my standard dictionary and my Teach Yourself Arabic Verbs to figure out what category of verb it is (I-X) to conjugate it than to waste my time flipping through 501 verbs.
3.) Lastly, most of the verbs used in this book are rather useless verbs for a beginner or even an intermediate Arabic student. It's one thing to offer up religious and war-related verbs as extensions to a verb study but to make them the central focus and leave out important verbs like swim, run, and laugh is an entirely different level of poor publishing.
For the sake of Barron's name, this book should be removed from shelves and replaced immediately. I never use mine and only keep it because it's part of my collection. Save yourself the money, time and stress.
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"549" Arabic Verbs
Rating (5)
Date: 2009-10-15
This is by far the most exhaustive compilation of the conjugation of the Arabic verb that I know. There are two indices for each word; one by the root order the other by the whole word order; both given in alphabetical order with page number.
The usual information is given for each. The verb is written in Arabic with the English translation. The root and its Form are given. Under this heading, for each verb, is the Active and Passive voice in Past and Present Tense conjugated in Subjunctive, Jussive and Imperative. The Active and Passive Participles are given along with the Verbal Noun.
The author gives an explanation of each of the ten forms in the introduction section at the beginning of the book. This too is extremely helpful. Check out this Introduction. Its full of useful information.
But what makes this compilation invaluable as a learning aid is the examples of the meaning of each word in at least two English sentences. Usually three or four examples are given.
I do agree with some of the other reviewers that an English word index would be helpful to facilitate the learning process. Some years ago I made my own English Index for '201 Arabic Verbs'. It took a couple of days and then it was done. I guess I'll do the same with '501'.
I highly recommend this book for anyone studying the language. It's an invaluable learning tool and a very handy reference.
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