A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

I am a former Army Arabic linguist, and a graduate of DLI/FLC Monterey. This dictionary is the primary one we used, both at DLI and later on the job. An old Army buddy, I have a deep abiding affection for this thing, it being a true linguistic masterpiece and longtime companion. Hans Wehr was professor at University of Munster from the fifties thru the seventies. This dictionary was first published in 1952 in German as "Arabisches Worterbuch fur die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart" - a mouthful of a title if there ever was one. We just called it the Hans Wehr. To my knowledge, it is the only dictionary that's organized to properly exploit Arabic morphology, which is to say the consonal root system. Any other approach makes a hash out of the Arab language. Straightforward alphabetical ordering is ill suited to Arabic. The only traditionally alphabetically organized Arabic dictionary that I've seen (and I've seen quite a few) which is any good at all is the Lebanese Al-Mawrid. But I use it only as an occasional adjunct to Hans. Once you get a hang of Hans, and your vocabulary and sense of Arabic grows, the Mawrid will only be very occasionally useful from Arabic to English. It may not seem possible to a beginner (it certainly didn't to me,) but the Hans Wehr will come to make much more sense, and become much more accessible, than any other Arabic to English dictionary. So if you are new to this game, suck it up and use Hans as much as possible. One sole caveat: for Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the Hans Wehr is incomprable & indespensible. MSA is the modern universally written form of Arabic, and the pan-national lingua franca spoken in formal settings- on TV, in courts, etc., by educated Arabs. Note, though, that the local dialectical and classical forms of Arabic are very different balls of wax, and with them this dictionary can be of only limited application. I found it pretty wanting when dealing with Egyptian dialect while in Cairo, for example. For the Gulf, Jordan, Palestine and rest of the Levant it's a little more useful. A brief grammatical explanation as to why the Hans is the only game in town (sorry if this is redundant or too didactic, but everyone should know what the deal is:) As others have said here, the majority of the words in Arabic are derived from a three (usually) consonant verbal root. You take the consonants - e.g., KTB which denotes writing, or 'KH'RJ denotes outward movement - and vowel them with fatahs, or short 'a' sounds (which like all short vowel sounds are unrepresented in everyday writing) and you get KaTaBa, which basically means "he wrote" or KHaRaJa which means "he went out" - both the 3rd person masculine past perfect. This is used as the essential base form of the verb, equivalent to the infinitive in an Indo-European language. By changing the unwritten "short vowels" (re-vowelling) and by adding other written "long vowel" and consonal sounds, you can generate a slew of words re

I learned Arabic at the Defense Language Institute where they've used Hans Wehr for some time. At first I must say that it is quite hard to use until you've learned how to derive the root from a word, the alphabet of course, forms of words, and verb measures. Therefore I would definitely advise you to start with a cheap dictionary which is more easily understandable, at least until you learn the basics. Having said that, I have to tell you that anyone who says this is not a good dictionary was most likely just frustrated because they had not learned the basics yet. If you look the reviews, you'll notice that most complaints were from people trying to learn Arabic from the beginning with Hans Wehr. You'll also notice that anyone even remotely familiar with Arabic can't seem to praise it enough. Thats because once you're through learning the root system you are going to realize that the Hans Wehr is by far the most comprehensive and useful dictionary you'll find unless you're studying a very technical or esoteric subject. I guarantee that once you get your foundation in the language and have used this dictionary for a little while, other dictionaries will simply piss you off with how superficial and disconnected they seem. Just give it a little time.

First, I must say this is the only Modern Written Arabic (MWA) - English dictionary that the student of Arabic has to have. Others, Al-Mawrid, for example, are useful as supplements, and contain new vocabulary, and there is a more recent German edition (5th edition) of Wehr published by Harrassowitz, but this book has a standard of scholarship unrivalled by any other MWA-English dictionary. Middle Eastern published MWA-English dictionaries like Mawrid, for example, don't give the grammatical information learners of Arabic need, such as broken plurals, verbal vowelling, verbal nouns (masdars), let alone how verbs are used with prepositions, all of which Wehr tells the user. Words are in root order, so maktaba (desk) [mktbh] and kaatib (writer) [k'tb] both are found under the verb kataba (to write) [ktb]. This really is the most useful way of ordering Arabic dictionaries for someone who's mastered the basics of Arabic grammar, though an alphabetic order dictionary is a help when you're starting and occasionally even when you're expert. This dictionary is NOT a dictionary of Classical Arabic (although Beeston in his anthology of Bassar bin Burd reckoned that Wehr covered the vast majority of the vocabulary of this poet of the 8th Century AD). For Classical Arabic, Lane (perhaps supplemented by Hava's much more affordable al-Fara'id) is essential. But Lane is useless for modern Arabic. And if you're reading mediaeval Arabic, you will find Wehr fills in some of the gaps in Lane. This dictionary is NOT a dialect dictionary, though it contains many dialect words that have found their way into the written Arabic of Egypt, Iraq, etc. Arabs don't write colloquial Arabic (at least not in formal contexts) and dialect dictionaries are specialized (colloquial Arabic-English dictionaries are usually written in a phonetic transcription rather than in the Arabic script). If you need a dialect dictionary, get one. This isn't one. Other reviewers have rightly commented on the size of this dictionary, but some have confused editions. The 3rd (SLS paperback) edition was 114 x 162 x 45mm (4.5" x 6.4" x 1.75") in size, weighed 0.65 kg and had tiny 5.5 pt print. The 4th (SLS paperback) edition is larger: 216 x 130 x 40mm (5.2" x 8.5" x 1.5"), weighs 0.8 kg and has 7.5 pt print. This makes the SLS 4th edition's print much more readable than the SLS 3rd edition's. The 4th edition, which is sewn-bound, is also more robust than the 3rd edition, which was perfect-bound - I'm on my 3rd copy of the 3rd edition while my 4th edition soldiers on after 8 years. However, the book is not really pocket sized any more (I still keep using my last copy of the 3rd edition as a pocket copy). The 4th edition isn't cheap (it costs much more in England than in the US, though). If you're in the Middle East, you can pick up Librarie du Liban hardback copies of the 3rd edition (it has larger print than either of the two paperbacks - about 8 pt, the size of the original Brill 3rd edition

The Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary is simply the best...and totally indispensable. I don't know how you cold get by learning Arabic without it! I studied Arabic for several years, and got more use out of this dictionary than out of any other reference source BY FAR. If you don't believe me, I wish I could show you a picture of my dictionary now -- it's been used so much it's in pieces (obviously, I need to go out and buy a new one!). The most difficult thing (which can get frustrating, but like a puzzle, once you unlock the secret, everything starts clicking into place) is you've got to know the root of a word in order to find it in here. But that's the challenge -- and beauty -- of Arabic, possibly the world's richest, most poetic, amazing language; once you know the root a whole world of rich variations on the basic root meaning (i.e. DRS=study; mudarris=teacher, or one who MAKES you study!) starts to open up. No matter what level of Arabic you're at, you need this dictionary!

I've been using this dictionary for four years and i've used other dictionaries as well. The Al-Mawrid Arabic-English dictionary may have just as many words in it or more, but the definitions are actually definitions in this dictionary (not just synonyms). I like the compactness of this dictionary, it's easy to carry around and store yet comprehensive enough to find virtually any Arabic word if you know the root. There has never been a word I couldn't find in it after I knew the proper root of an Arabic word.