— IV —
Arabic gives us, for example, faras “a mare” while the vernacular has faraṣ. The consonant t is sometimes pronounced as ṭ, ḍ as s or s as z. These changes being characteristic of the c⟨ollo⟩quial Arabic, the fact of such differences is not indicated, as th⟨e ma⟩nual has no concern but with the spoken language to-day. It m⟨ay⟩ be remarked that vowels are not always used consistently, especially the o͝o sound and short i, which are often interchanged even in the same district. One may hear ko͝olle as well as kílle, ḥiml as well as ḥo͝oml. It is therefore the more important that the beginner should pay attention to the correct pronounciation of consonants, as well as to the placing of the accent, which we have indicated whenever a word occurs for the first time, and often, later.
While, in regard to consonants, we have followed the transliteration employed in Wright's Arabic Grammar, that of vowels follows no scientific system, but has been carefully adapted to English analogies, in view of its use by those who are not philologists, and who wish to study without a teacher. The philologist will have no difficulty in recognising the Arabic original. It has not been thought necessary to give any indication of the very short e or i sound, which is often all that remains, in the dialect, of the full vowels between two consonants, at the beginning of certain words, especially of Form VIII.
In all cases when doubt as to the representation of sounds has arisen we have followed the practical method of submitting the question to educated English friends, not Arabic scholars, by the double process of showing the written form we suggest and asking “how would you pronounce this?” and by pronouncing the word and asking “how would you write this?”
It is imperative that the learner, who wishes to read and write Arabic, should study the language in its own script, but the fact of its being usually written without vowels makes it evident, especially in view of the inadequacy of the Arabic vowels, that the differences between the literary and the vernacular, and the comparison of the two—which for the student is of utmost interest and importance—can be afforded only by careful transliteration into a foreign script.
My task of accumulating grammatical and syntactical variations has been the work of many years and is the fruit of con-
