Hi there,
Today while I was at my arabic discussion group someone mentioned that their roommate has an Arabic-English dictionary that is arranged NOT by root. One of the native speakers in the group admitted that he was useless with an Arabic dictionary and expressed interest in the dictionary.
Does anyone here know of such a dictionary? That you can just look up words without finding their root? Does such a thing really exist?
Thanks in advance,
Butros
For Moroccan there is the dictionary by Richard S. Harrell that is sorted mostly by the Latin alphabet.
I do have an Arabic dictionary not sorted by root, but by the Arabic alphabet. But it’s Arabic-German that wouldn’t help you.
Hello Butros, and welcome to the forum :).
I am afraid I can’t help with your inquiry. The dictionaries I ever used for MSA are most of the time arranged by root. I remember seeing in some library some dictionary like you described and I found it strange to have words listed other than by root. But I don’t remember anything about it at all.
I hope someone else can be more useful about this.
By the way, are you studying MSA or Darija?
Nuwwara, the one you mentioned is for Darija?
Yes, the English one is DArija. http://books.google.de/books?id=uQD2Qd-dhy0C
The German one is fusha.
oops, I study MSA.
Thanks for all the feedback so far.
On Amazon.com there was one dictionary that a reviewer seemed to indicate was arranged alphabetically and not by root, but I can’t be sure. Time will tell.
An French-Moroccan dictionary to down load: http://www.freelang.com/dictionnaire/arabe_marocain.html
Or use it online: http://www.freelang.com/enligne/arabe_marocain.php
This is an old topic, I see, but let me add that there is one Arabic-Arabic dictionary, available on line but I doubt anyone will want it so I’ll spare you the details and me the research (let me know if you want more info)…anyway, there is one classical Arabic/Arabic dictionary (it’s not Lisan al Arab) by a Jaouhari, which is arranged by root, but starting with the last part. I found that strange, but it is usable.
Actually Butros was looking for one that is not arranged by root.
What did you mean “starting from the last part”? Words were arranged backwards?
There are strange dictionaries that go first by the last letter of the root, there is also a German-Arabic one that does that.
Yes, SM, I meant that instead of finding your word under f 3 l you would find it under l 3 f. Very strange, I thought, but an old, classical dictionary.
[quote=Butros]oops, I study MSA.
Thanks for all the feedback so far.
On Amazon.com there was one dictionary that a reviewer seemed to indicate was arranged alphabetically and not by root, but I can’t be sure. Time will tell.[/quote]
I don’t think arranging an Arabic dictionary by actual word would be more effective than the established method of arranging by root. It is hard to use one like that when your vocabulary is in its infancy, but as you acquire more words it is really very useful. Especially since the Morphology of Arabic is predictable, in most cases. Add a t after the second root letter and, wallah, such and such a function appears. Put an M in front of the word and you’ve created thus and such. Put an alif after the first letter, and you have the active participle. I don’t know what level you are at, Butros, but trust me, the root system for arranging word in the dictionary is preferable to giving each word its own entry. It’s so hard to build your, how shall I put it, framework, during the gruelingly hard first two years, but then things start to pick up. Of course, I am coming from the vantage point of a native English speaker with no background in the Semitic languages; if you know a lot of dialect things may be very different for you.