501 Arabic Verbs: Fully Conjugated in All Forms,   ISBN:9780764136221

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

If you are looking for a book that is past beginners level this is the one to get. This may be the only book you will ever need in order to learn Arabic. I studied Arabic in school and could read and write and new the basic words but was always a little behind with my structure of verbs and this book i take everywhere now and it really has helped me in developing the language. Dont spend your money those silly learning Arabic where its majority words you already know, if you know how to read and write in Arabic get this book!

Customer Rating: 

Arabic verbs are difficult to master, and there are so many irregularities that I've found this volume to be an exceptionally helpful guide. My teacher says that this version is very accurate and a huge improvement over the previous version--I'm not qualified to evaluate the book on that basis myself, but I completely trust her judgment. I do think, though, that it would be a more user-friendly reference if it included an English index. Also, the Arabic index is organized by root, and sometimes recognizing a verb's root isn't straightforward because of the prefixes (and sometimes there are multiple prefixes, which can really complicate matters). I've often ended up flipping through the index looking the same word up several times, unsure what the root was. Given that this book is aimed at squarely at people who are still learning Arabic, especially since there are only 501 verbs covered, it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to expand the index to list verbs by root and prefix both. That said, once I actually find the verbs, it's been a handy reference.

Customer Rating: 

Unless you can read Arabic, this book will probably be rather difficult to use. The only English provided is for the examples of some of the uses for each verb. But it does NOT provide any pronunciation for the verbs. Some transliteration for each verb would have been very helpful. This book will be useless to me until I can learn to read Arabic.

I also agree with some of the other reviews that criticize this book for its layout format. It can be hard to grasp.

If I had it to do over again, I'd probably keep looking rather than buy this book.
Its not bad, but it definitely could have been done much better.