Spring 2006

ARA 413L • Levantine Arabic II

Course Description

This is a course that parallels and is offered as an alternative to Second Year Arabic II (ARA412L). It is appropriate to students who are more interested in speaking to and interacting with average Arabs and less in reading and writing. Levantine Arabic, spoken across a wide area (referred to as bilad ash-sham) and encompassing different political boundaries has several dialects: 1) Lebanese, 2) Syrian, 3) Palestinian and 4) Jordanian Arabic. Dialect areas tend to be identified with urban centers such as Damascus, Amman, Jerusalem, and Beirut. While the focus of the course is the dialect natively spoken by the instructor, namely northern rural Palestinian Arabic, students will be repeatedly exposed to other dialects in this group. The material used will be as authentic as possible and will be given in the Arabic script. The target of this course is to approximate what may be termed as Educated Spoken Arabic.

Grading Policy

They will be determined by individual instructors

Texts

Download from www.syrianarabic.com

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