PREFACE.
THIS little manual is intended as a practical handbook of colloquial Arabic, as spoken in Egypt, for the Army and Navy, Travellers, Missionaries and Traders, in the Nile Valley and Delta, or in the Sudan.
By the use of this book, students, tourists and others will find they are quite competent to make themselves understood by all classes of Arabs met with in Egypt, the Sudan, and a considerable part of North Africa.
Full Vocabularies of words in common, every-day use are supplied, including a particularly comprehensive list of Military terms and a useful section of Conversational Phrases and Sentences of a practical character. In addition an outline of the Grammar of Arabic is given, and students of the Language will find this of great assistance in mastering the construction of sentences.
In the Vocabularies the plural has in most cases been added to the nouns, as well as the imperative of the verbs, which also occasionally presents difficulties. The system of transliteration adopted is of a simple and phonetic character, and is clearly laid down at the commencement of the book, where the forms of the Arabic characters are given, together with a full explanation of the peculiarities of pronunciation, the Egyptian rendering of the Arabic alphabet, and the equivalent sound of each letter in English—thus supplying the key to the second column throughout.
Thanks are due to Professor Flinders Petrie for revising the proofs, and to Sir Alfred Milner, K.G.B., Dr. Andrew Watson, Captain H. C. Prichard, Mr. D. A. Cameron and others for useful suggestions made.
