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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
I️ enjoyed this food and travel writer’s journey through the odyssey of learning Arabic. As an Arabic student myself, her delight in finding new vocabulary and discovering the way that the three-letter root can expand and create new words helped reinvigorate the joy of learning for me.
What happens when a middle-aged woman from the US decides to try and master her limited Arabic by travelling around the Middle East to different countries, learning some of the ins and outs of each version of the language? A bit of chaos, a bit of confusion, and an interesting history lesson thrown in. In short, you have 'All Strangers Are Kin'.
This book was a bit of a toss-up for me in regards to the actual reading. The parts where the author emphasized so much of the language were slow and confusing - not a surprise, really, since the language is one of the more complicated ones. However, the parts where the author spends more time talking about the places, the people, and the history of the different locations were far better and are what kept me going throughout. She has an easy way of writing that really works in getting her story out. Frankly, I recommend skipping the second chapter in the Egypt section, because she seems to have gone on a word-bender...the rest is good to go.
Overall, while I'm not sure that I would really recommend this to many friends, it was worth the reading time simply to get a different perspective on the culture of the area, as well as the constant wars. For me, this would be a library book rather than a purchase.
This book was a bit of a toss-up for me in regards to the actual reading. The parts where the author emphasized so much of the language were slow and confusing - not a surprise, really, since the language is one of the more complicated ones. However, the parts where the author spends more time talking about the places, the people, and the history of the different locations were far better and are what kept me going throughout. She has an easy way of writing that really works in getting her story out. Frankly, I recommend skipping the second chapter in the Egypt section, because she seems to have gone on a word-bender...the rest is good to go.
Overall, while I'm not sure that I would really recommend this to many friends, it was worth the reading time simply to get a different perspective on the culture of the area, as well as the constant wars. For me, this would be a library book rather than a purchase.