Oxford Essential Arabic Dictionary (Multilingual Edition)

I teach Arabic and bring this dictionary in class for my students to use. It is a pocket dictionary, so do not expect hundreds of thousands of words. It has quite a lot of words, though. Enough for the most part. I think the font size is fine. Maybe not for first-semester students, but for second-year students, it's absolutely fine. The paper is high quality (not thin at all). Great small dictionary in my opinion.

I understand a lot of the words.

Thank you

Pros:- comes from a venerable publisher - no small matter in everything related to the Arabic language as this guarantees its correctness and modernity.- Arabic words fully pronounced, using Arabic diacritics- High quality paper and printing, which makes the text very legible- Small size and light weight, easy to carry around if needed- Contains 16000 words - not bad for such a small dictionaryCons:- 'Essential' - the name says it all. This makes it a great first dictionary but once you move on you see its deficiency - many words of general usage in printed Arabic media are missing, for many words only few out of many meanings are listed.- Price - not a big deal but still - if I can buy from Oxford huge dictionaries for 30$ this one for 15$ is a bit disproportional.Regarding small print issue - I attach to the review the picture I took of 2 dictionaries side by side - this dictionary and Wehr'sArabic-English Dictionary: The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic which is the standard to compare with (Wehr is on the left, this dictionary is on the right) . As you can see Wehr's font is even a bit smaller, moreover the paper in Wehr is really thin and transparent making it harder to read than this dictionary. In general most of the Arabic dictionaries have smaller font than we are used to in Latin-based languages.

My eyesight isn't that great, but the size of the script was a challange. Lets just say TOO SMALL!!!!!! Forget the vowels. Book size also needs to be 8" tall. This is the only Oxford language book i have that was a disappointment. For difficult languages, i think Oxford is the best. Can't learn if you can't see. Kindle is the answer to this problem because you can expand the size. A beautiful written language, easy to learn.

I use it in my test and my english classes. Its easy to find word and English- Arabic and Arabic- English

For someone just learning, this book has both Arabic to English and English to Arabic which is great. Not to bulky so easy to carry with you. I recommend!

The Oxford Essential - Arabic is practical and easy to handle, while the inside information is nicely spaced and easy to follow!