John Mace (1) (1933–)

Excellent if dense introduction to Arabic -- one of the few you can use for self-teaching. All the vocabulary you'll need for going to conferences, talking about oil prices or ministers of the interior... The middle third of the book is entirely dedicated to the verb system, and covers ground VERY quickly -- about 8 major varieties of verbs (doubled, hollow, weak, double weak, etc), 9 forms (I-X), and 4 tenses/moods. It made my head spin. But, after many passes through it, I now feel like I show more have an excellent foundation. show less

This book is best described as an extensive cheatsheet to Persian. It is intended to accompany other books, and is thus light on vocabulary, drills, and self-tests. However I've found it to be a fantastic guide, and constantly refer to it. It is structured to follow along as you are learning; it starts out with the alphabet showing the alternative forms of many letters, then a brief section nastaliq and shekasteh, before moving on to plurals, ownership, then verbs, ezafeh, and other more show more advanced topics. Definitely one to have, in general anyone who has used or looked through my copy has been impressed, even native speakers. show less

Introductory descriptive grammar of Persian. You'd need more to actually learn the language, but this is a good reference for linguists. I like this slightly better than Thackston's An Introduction to Persian because I think the font is prettier.