“First 1000 Words” is a picture reference book with numerous scenes similar to the picture on the cover of the book. Even though this appears to be a children’s book, I recommend it to adults who are trying to learn Arabic, too.

All of the words in the book are nouns, so a more appropriate title might be “First 1000 Nouns in Arabic”. The book is really easy to use. Under each picture is the arabic word (in Arabic script). Beneath that is the English transliteration. This is helpful if you don’t know how to read Arabic script or aren’t very good at is. For example, under the picture of a fish, you will find the Arabic script, then the tansliteration of fish in Arabic, which is “samak”.

A glossary in the back of the book helps you easily locate the word you might be looking for and to clear up any confusion caused by a picture that could mean two or more things, like a picture of a wall, the word beneath the picture could be the word for “brick” or for “wall”. The glossary eliminate this confusion.