Α HANDBOOK OF MODERN ARABIC: CONSISTING OF A PRACTICAL GRAMMAR, WITH NUMEROUS EXAMPLES, DIALOGUES, AND NEWSPAPER EXTRACTS; IN A EUROPEAN TYPE. BY FRANCIS W. NEWMAN, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON; FORMERLY FELLOW OF LONDON: TRÜBNER AND CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1866. [All rights reserved.] PREFACE. ARABIC is talked differently in Algiers, in Malta, in Egypt, in Syria, in Bagdad, and among the Arabs of the desart. Nowhere1 is the Arabic of the Koran and of poetry spoken. The difference of the old and new is similar in many respects to that between the Greek of Homer and the Greek dialects at the time of Xenophon. No modern can without pedantry and absurdity speak in the older dialect. When he composes poetry, he may write as Hariri, if he can; just as an Athenian or Alexandrian, if he chose to adopt dactylic hexameters, might use the dialect of Homer. When the Arab now writes prose, he obscures the chasm which separates his dialect from the ancient, by omitting the vowel points, which used to distinguish the cases of the noun and the moods of the verb. While learned men struggle to forbid the phrase MODERN Arabic, and will have it that the language has not changed (as if change were not a necessity of nature and a condition 1 See P.S. b 1 |