But My Own Inquiries
Have Led Me To A Very Different Opinion.
There certainly exists a great
variety of dialects in Arabic; more perhaps than in other languages:
But
notwithstanding the vast extent of country in which Arabic prevails,
from Mogador to Maskat, whoever has learned one dialect will easily
understand all the others. In respect to pronunciation, whoever can
spell correctly will feel little embarrasment
[p.467] from the diversity of sound, and soon become familiar with it.
The same sense is often expressed by different terms; but this is
applicable rather to substantive nouns than to verbs. Many words are
used in one country and not in another: thus bread is called khobs in
Syria, and aysh in Egypt; both terms being genuine Arabic, a language
rich in synonyms: but the Syrian dialect still retains what has become
obsolete in the Egyptian. From the specimen given by Niebuhr of the
Egyptian and Hedjazi dialect, I could show, word by word, that there is
not one provincialism in the whole. If the Egyptian says okod, and the
Arabian edjles, they both use genuine Arabic words to express the same
thing, one of which is more common in Arabia, the other in Egypt, when
both terms are well understood by all who have mixed in the busy crowd,
or have had even an ordinary education. An Englishman is justified in
using "steed" for "horse;" thus the Moggrebyn calls a horse owd, the
eastern Arab hoszan; but many poets use the word owd, which is at
present unknown to the vulgar in Egypt.
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