Introduction

Lesson 1
Covers : numbering from 1 to 99; the syntax of the counted object; the definition of number names ; the days of the week, the months, the year; the date  the solar and lunar calendars  the main Muslim festivals.

Lesson 2
Taha Hussein, a well-known Egyptian intellectual, talks about his childhood and his setbacks when he was studying at Koranic school. You also discover the conditional sentence, and discuss clothes.

Lesson 3
You go to the theatre and discover a play written by one of the greatest Arab playwrights, the Egyptian Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm. You conduct a police investigation. You revise and complete your knowledge of the apocopated inaccompli and discover the passive.

Lesson 4
From an extract from the Muʿjam al-buldān, a vast geographical dictionary composed between 1220 and 1224 by Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (1179 - 1229), you set off on a long journey in space from the myths to the source of the Nile, but also in time as the language of this text transports you to the early 13th century. You find that modern Arabic and the classical language are not far apart.

Lesson 5
You discover two short stories written by Syrian author Zakariyā Tāmir just after the 1967 war. The criticism of absolutism and the defence of women found in them are very topical. You also see the passive of verbs as well as a very particular declension.

Lesson 6
You are transported to Lebanon to the rhythm of the regional political upheavals of past decades. You begin the systematic study of irregular verbs (in this case assimilated and concave verbs) that will hold us back for a few more lessons.

Lesson 7
You delve into the history of Egypt and visit the Aswan High Dam. You discover how the Arabic language expresses the comparative and the superlative.

Lesson 8
The writer Ṭāhir Waṭṭār takes us to a small Algerian village a few years after independence. You begin the study of defective verbs, which will continue over several lessons.

Lesson 9
You travel to the Ahwār region, the marshes of southern Iraq where everything is water, clay and reeds, at the heart of an area humanly shaped by Shiism. You continue learning defective verbs and discover a new category of nouns, collectives.

Lesson 10
You enter with Naguib Mahfouz into the life of an Egyptian family in Cairo and witness a lively discussion between a young girl and her mother. You master the conjugation of deaf verbs and make progress in expressing condition.

Lesson 11
You travel to a small village in northern Sudan and see it through the eyes of a child. This is an opportunity to refine the expression and description of the feelings experienced. You revise and complete the study of numbers. From now on, cardinals, ordinals and fractions will hold no secrets for you!

Lesson 12
In this lesson, you will work with the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwich. You also study the participles and maṣdar of defective verbs.

Lesson 13
This lesson takes you on a journey into the past, as you listen to Emir Fayṣal give a historic speech in January 1919, just after the First World War and the Great Arab Revolt. You discover some very special Arabic turns of phrase (tamyīz and ẓarf).

Lesson 14
You travel in the company of a young Saudi woman who returns to her country. You become familiar with specific syntactic turns of phrase such as mafʿūl la-hu and ḥāl, and also learn how proper nouns are declined.

Lesson 15
A Syrian traveller takes you through the back streets of Seville, on a walk enchanted by memories of Andalusia's past. You open up to rich descriptions that are an opportunity to introduce you to the exclamatory phrase and a few raised turns of phrase such as na ͑t sababī.

Vocalised texts
Arabic-French and French-Arabic lexicons
Grammatical index
Table of verb forms
Test answer key