On my trip to Egypt this March, several people asked me where I studied Arabic, and were amazed (and thought maybe they misunderstood) that I had learned my Arabic from CD's. It was very gratifying. I picked these CD's up on an online auction. I've used Pimsleur for Swedish and Egyptian Arabic, and have had great success with both. They are the only language tapes where on arrival in the country, people could understand what I was saying, which made for a more enjoyable vacation. I also speak German and a smattering of other languages. You really must set time aside to do these tapes, as they are intensive, and at the end of the lesson you feel like your brain hurts. But it works - when stressed and lost and hungry and tired, you will remember how to say "where is" whatever. Then you watch the hands pointing, you walk in that direction a bit, and you ask again. The key is that they understand you, and you may pick out a few words. I was hanging out at one point with an Egyptian student and two Japanese students, and we four girls were speaking a mixture of Arabic, Japanese, and English. It was great! Sure, I could have had a decent time in Egypt with just English, but it was unbelievably wonderful to be able to communicate a bit with regular folks.

Even though the Pimsleur method is FABulous, before investing huge dollars in the CDs, check with your local public library. They might be available for borrowing.

Since my first visit to Egypt six years ago I have tried to learn Egyption Arabic. I have tried different courses, CDs and cassettes. But I must say that this one is by far the best.
The way the course is buildt up really makes you remember the words. And being a norwegian native, arabic is quite hard to learn. I only wish I could find a next level course.

My husband is Egyptian and I wanted to learn Egyptian Arabic before I went to Egypt (last summer) to visit his family. I must say- the first 8 cds that I purchased as a test helped me tremendously. I was able to communicate with his family better than had I not listened to any! I was able to understand more or less what they were telling me. I was pleased with my purchase that I went and bought the entire series. After continuing with the series, I found that the phrases they were telling me in Egypt were in the cds and was so happy to recognize them.

I highly recommend these cds to anyone wishing to learn Egyptian Arabic. I hope they will continue with the series as the first one leaves you hungry for more.

First, a brief description of this reviewer. I took two semesters of elementary Arabic at a university one year ago. I was fortunate to have very good professors, who went beyond the textbook to teach a lot of stuff that wouldn't be covered until later (for example, verb conjugations and negation). However, all this was in modern standard Arabic. This dialect is used in the Quran and in writing, but generally not in speaking. I was a little disillusioned of the lack of conversational Arabic in the university courses available to me. A reviewer of a modern standard textbook wrote on Amazon that others said he sounded like the Quran or an ancient author. While I do not know whether it is that extreme, I think it is important to learn a conversation dialect for speaking with native speakers.

I was serious about learning conversational Arabic, and the Pimsleur comprehensive courses seem to have a good reputation and methodology, so I bought the Egyptian Arabic I comprehensive course. I chose Egyptian because Egypt is the most populous Arabic country, and the Egyptian dialect (each country or region has a dialect with its own twist on vocabulary) is widely understood in the Arab world due to the prevalence of Egyptian films.

It certainly made it easier that I had already studied Arabic for two semesters. I was used to the sounds and some of the basic vocabulary. Note however that much of the vocabulary is different from modern standard. While "street" is the same, for instance, "car" and "this" are different. So a person who has studied modern standard will have an easier time with the phonetics than the complete beginner, but one is not immune from learning new vocabulary--and lots of it.

I was afraid that a self-guided, completely audio course would use repetition as its main weapon, and repetition doesn't work great with me as my brain just fills up to the brim quickly, leaving me unable to recall anything quickly. However, Pimsleur uses a totally different methodology. Instead of a linear process, ("learn these words and their conjugations"), Pimsleur takes a more random approach. You might learn "you understand" for a lady in lesson 1 and "you understand" for a man in lesson 3. For each new word or phrase, especially in the first few lessons, each syllable is sounded out in reverse order. The Pimsleur program uses anticipation rather than repetition throughout the course. You are prompted in English to say something in Arabic, then there is a pause to allow you to answer out loud. Then the Arabic speakers say it, and your brain can compare the two, correcting if necessary. At the beginning of each lesson there is a conversation to listen to, I think to soften up your ears for Arabic. It also serves as a review to recall previous lessons' vocabulary. For the bulk of the lesson, the prompt-pause-answer format is used. At the end of some lessons, one participates in a mock conversation.

Each lesson has both review of previous material and new material in good measure. The Pimsleur program does not teach grammar rules at all. But it does teach words, phrases, and then asks you to string them together to make whole, useful sentences. From these you infer the grammar rules. Instead of learning rules by wrote, the program lets you build a gradual intuitive understanding of how the puzzle pieces of nouns, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and phrases fit together in grammatically correct sentences. The Pimsleur program is based on 15 lesson CD's, each with two 30-minute lessons. There is an additional CD which, along with a small booklet, introduces you to Arabic writing.

I have gone through the 30 lessons, and am now in the process of going through them again. The result is that I have a basic knowledge of Egyptian Arabic. I find that I can really impress my new Arabic instructor. Just last class she asked whether I had been to Egypt, which I have not.

I only can think of three negative things to say about this program. First, there should be a level II course like Pimsleur has with other languages. Second, due to the random structure of the course, you don't learn all the verb conjugations. There is virtually no third-person verb conjugations introduced, for instance, you learn "I go", "you go", but not "she goes". This is why a level II course is so needed. Third, some people may be turned off by the price. Clearly the Pimsleur comprehensive programs are for serious learners. But really one gets what one pays for. I would encourage those who are interested in this product to shop around on price comparison sites or on popular auction sites (wink, wink), as shopping around will yield significant savings.

In conclusion, this was money well-spent.