This book is intended for beginners, intermediate and advanced students, for scholars in linguistics and related fields and also for Arabs grown up in an English-speaking environment who often try to learn Arabic and find difficulties when consulting traditional Arabic grammars.

The Arabic portrayed in this book is not only literary Arabic, rather it is based on contemporary professional practice, i.e. the type of modern Arabic used in newspapers, magazines, official and business communications and the internet, too. On the other hand, it is clear for those who know the history of Arabic that the classical tradition is still alive in quotations from the Koran or from ancient literature and poetry.

This book is slightly different from other grammars because it follows a different approach. Its focus is on Modern Standard Arabic and it pays special attention to what is in use today but does not leave out what else can occur. The terminology is both in English and Arabic and the approach is influenced by the traditional Arabic system of writing grammar, i.e. not to try to press Arabic as a Semitic language into the terminology of English grammar.

In general, I have tried to use the most intelligible and familiar terminology and not to overload the book with too much theory. Arabic terms, although not in full, are given to open the way for the user to find the according passages in traditional Arabic grammars to gain more information about a certain topic and to help the learner to identify these terms when attending Arabic courses in the Arab world.