i'm curious about what online bookstores babblers prefer, especially those of us (and i suspect there are quite a few) who seek out non-English books. it would be interesting to get a sense of how many *real* non-English bookstores there are in Toronto as well.

for starters, these are my favourites for Arabic:

Maktabat Niil wa al-Furaat
Al-Maktaba
E-Kotob

Arabic stores are proliferating on the net, since they seem to have clued into the fact that the Arabic script is a viable electronic medium. i'm desperate for some good stores for Persian, Urdu, and especially Pakistani Punjabi literature. there used to be a huge selection of books in Urdu and other Pakistani languages at Sang-e-Meel--but the one time i placed an order, the rip-off attempt was quite transparent. looks like the site is down all of a sudden(?) i was actually ready to cough up the extra money--they had some excellent books in Punjabi.

i haven't yet bought anything in Persian. these look interesting, though:

Asia Publishing
Iranbooks

Iranbooks' Persian catalog looks fairly impressive. i wonder how good they are about correspondence and answering questions. i don't want to buy Mantiq al-Tayr and then find out it's actually an ornithological text.

for Punjabi,

Nahal Global Trading is good for stuff in the Gurmukhi script, and Tarlochan is a nice guy, while
APNA has a very small number of books in Shahmukhi (Urdu script). you'll also notice that they're crazy enough to be attempting a transliteration of the entire Guru Granth Sahib into Shahmukhi.

Well I read Urdu but do not ask me the meaning of what I can read

Personally, I get my books from my country of birth, when I go there or I can have them sent by my family. Once, I urgently needed a non-english, non-french book, but I found it in a section of the Ottawa Public Library. I do not know whether such section for "others" still exist.

There used to be a great Italian bookshop in Montreal, Tuttolibri, but it closed down. The Italian bookshops in both Montreal and Toronto are small and provincial. There is a better choice in university libraries. There is a nice little Spanish-language bookshop on St-Laurent in the Plateau, Abya Yala (?).

"(..)I took a couple of courses in Arabic but can just read it a bit, and do great calligraphy".

Hmm ! I guess the "phenomenon goes beyond my own house ! My wife too had taken Arabic language courses -at Laval University. ANd yes, she can read, but would have no clue I think it is because practice lacked. We did intend to go for one or two years to my country of birth so sha can practice.. but we couldn't.

And even though they could speak/read/write in Hindi, Swahili, a bit of Urdu and Punjabi, I was never taught. Friggin younger brother...

I have this book and I'd like to pick up other children's books and readers from this page.