Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

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Hans Wehr's Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, English-language U.S. edition.

The Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic by Hans Wehr is widely regarded as the foremost Arabic-English bilingual or translation dictionary and has particular usefulness for students of Modern Standard Arabic. The morphology and syntax of written Arabic is essentially the same in all Arabic countries. Unlike many other Arabic-English dictionaries, it arranges each Arabic word according to its consonantal root. Foreign words are listed in straight alphabetical order by first letter (in the Arabic script). Arabicized loanwords, if they can clearly fit under some root, are entered both ways, often with the root entry giving reference to the alphabetical listing.

Some features which could be considered drawbacks include the complete lack of indication of word-initial glottal stops or hamza (i.e. the ا vs. أ vs. إ distinction), and the similar ignoring of the distinction between word-final yā ي vs. alif maqṣūra ى. The dictionary also generally fails to give any concrete example forms of finite derived stem verbs, so that the user must memorize the meaning of the stem numbers ("II" through "X") and reconstruct such verb forms based solely on the stem number and the consonantal root; and within the dictionary entry for a root, participles and maṣdars (verbal nouns) are listed apart from finite verbs derived from the same stem, leaving it up to the user to make connections between closely-related forms. However, every word in the dictionary is transliterated, which is useful for indicating sounds which are sometimes used in Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation, but that cannot be easily represented in standard Arabic script (even with full vowel diacritics), such as [e], [o], [g], and [v]. The presence of these Latin-alphabet transcriptions makes it possible to work out when alif maqṣūra should be used and when word-final yā in the written orthography (though not when word-initial hamza should be used).

The dictionary was first published in 1961 by publishers Otto Harrassowitz in Wiesbaden, Germany. It was inspired by Wehr's German edition Arabisches Wörterbuch fur die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart (1952). In the run up to the publication of the Arabic-English dictionary, the author collated more material in a supplement. In the introduction to the first edition, J. Milton Cowan writes that on seeing the German edition, Hans Wehr gained encouragement from the Committee on Language Programs of the American Council of Learned Societies and Cornell University while the Arabian-American Oil Company provided financial support.

The English version of the Hans Wehr dictionary is currently available in two editions. The so-called third printing from 1960 under the title A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic – Arabic-English, printed in Lebanon by Librarie du Liban since 1980, is widely available in the Middle East. (No ISBN is available.) The fourth edition (pictured above), considerably enlarged (1301 pages compared to 1110 in the third printing) and amended, was published in 1994 by Spoken Language Services, Inc. of Ithaca, NY. (ISBN 0-87950-003-4)