Q: I'm fed up travelling to Arabic countries and all you can find are language tapes/dictionaries/phrase books in Arabic Perfect language. I think it would be more useful to find and use the words the local people in countries like Tunisia and Morocco use. At least it stops the hustlers :) what do you think?
A: I agree with you that it would be useful. When I first moved here a friend of my father-in-law gave me a book that the US Peace Corps had designed that was very useful. It was like a dictionary that allowed you to look up a word in either English, Arabic, or phonetic Arabic and it translated it for you. It also gave short lessons on everyday things such as telling time, cooking, shopping etc. The best part about it was that it was done with the Tunisian dialect and not literal Arabic. It was VERY useful! But I also noticed that if you know literal Arabic, it's very easy to pick up on the local dialect. And literal Arabic can be more useful in some ways because if you just learn a local dialect (Tunisian for example) when you go to Morocco or Egypt or any other Arab country, they won't be able to understand you.