I loved The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write It by Nicholas Awde and Putros Samano. It is hard-core, sincere, and careful. I learned a ton from it.

There is much useful vocabulary in there alongside the alphabet instruction. I was taken through the Arabic letters very systematically, and with genuine authorial awareness of how quickly (or slowly) a poor uninitiated human can actually learn.

As I was practicing writing words like “bee” and “love” and other short little things like that, I was amused when all of a sudden Awde and Samano threw this one at me: “the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”! (See picture below.) I wasn’t quite ready for that! 

It is, however, good to have hopes and dreams.

Four years after I first used it, The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write It remains one of my favorite language books from this project.