Can any one suggest any great text books and reference books for an improvement on writing in all styles and a good grammer/writing reference guide?
I apparently sold/lost all of my college Comp books, not that they were that great.
I don’t remember very many writing books from college per se. I did study linguistics and foreign languages, though, so I became super able to concentrate on grammar rules. Especially, since linguistics was coming from one side: parsing sentences and clauses and giving names to everything. And then Arabic was coming from the other: being able to impress people with my knowledge of cases, number, and impossible conjugation rules. Makes English a piece of cake when you’re overthinking. At least when I am trying to explain rules to people who are learning. Some of the introductory linguistics books to English grammar can be useful. Though, I don’t know which one to recommend, because they are usually overpriced. Unless you can find it as a free pdf or something. But I think most of the books like this in the past 10 or so years are about the same.
I was recommended ‘Sin Boldly’ by David R. Williams early on. “Dr. Dave’s Guide to Writing the College Paper”. This is one of the only books like this that is actually fun to read. And leaves a lasting impression as well.
Elements of Style by Strunk and White is a popular book in academia. Then thee is On Writing Well by Zinsser and Craft of Research by Wayne Booth.
Thanks for the suggestions John, they are all now added to my Amazon wish list.
My Arabic comprehension level is about that of a 5 year old and my speaking level is about that of 3 year old, though I have little idea of how the grammer operates, and I am lucky if I can make out much of the alaphabet. Though it strikes me as somewhat similar to Classic Hellenistic grammer(minus vowels). Of course that kind of depends on “which Arabic” someone speaks, as to if I can understand it at all. I can barely understand Iraqis, have no comprehehnsion of “formal” words, and Egyptian sounds like a whole different language to me.
5 year old level is pretty good, in my opinion. Keep at it. Or really any language. The point is that your first language you barely think about the meta aspects of language itself. But when you’re learning others, at least in my opinion, you’re focusing more on rules and how language functions. You know about all the names of phenomenon in a language, because that is how one learns a non-native language. Which I think was indispensable to my degree in linguistics.
Arabic has different dialects depending on country, that’s for sure. Egyptian being the most common; I’m not sure about Iraqi. And schools basically will teach classical, which is like a different language but very formal. It might be read one way in colloquial, and another way in the Quran or classical texts. Modern Standard and Classical are more nitpicky about pronouncing vowels and word endings. The grammar is basically verb-subject-object. Whereas English is subject-verb-object. Which is a generalization, but how English and Arabic are classified as grammars. (once you understand these component parts, I think you can explain most of the templates of English sentences, for instance).
Though, thinking about grammar is not the only thing. Just doing writing itself was how I got through most of the papers in college. ‘Knowing grammar’ is really how I help non-native speakers and when people get nitpicky with me; which I am prepared to handle. Really you’re just giving a description based on how it is used – and some logic behind it – instead of the truth about how it ‘should be’ used.
There is a Sufi story about grammarians.
A grammarian fell into a well one day and had difficulty climbing up the slippery sides.
A little later, a Sufi chanced by and heard the man’s cries for succor. In the casual language of everyday life, the Sufi offered aid.
The grammarian replied, “I would certainly appreciate your help. But by the way, you have committed an error in your speech,” which the grammarian proceeded to specify.
“A good point,” acknowledged the Sufi. “I had best go off awhile and try to improve my skills.” And so he did, leaving the grammarian at the bottom of the well.
Arabic may very technically have been the 1st language I learned. I guess for the 1st three or four years of my life I probably spoke more Arabic than English, so I never have really thought about the grammer. I did buy one of those little “learn Arabic phrase” books and it was utterly worthless to talk to anyone as no one really uses that type of formal language (maybe Saudis?)
When you learn it in school how do they teach it? Is it Egyptian dialect? Is it formal?
P.S. Egyptians tend to make the best Hummos from my experience
I have always loved Sufi stories, thanks for that.
Modern Standard Arabic, which is formal, is standard in the classrooms.
As an example, this book is used currently: