FRANZ THIMM'S SERIES OF CLASSICAL, EUROPEAN AND ORIENTAL GRAMMARS AFTER AN EASY AND PRACTICAL METHOD. PART XIII THE ARABIC LANGUAGE. LONDON: FRANZ THIMM. EUROPEAN AND ORIENTAL PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER. 24 BROOK STREET, GROSVENOR SQUARE W. 1883. PREFACE. The Arabic Language. The Arabic Language is spoken in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, and is the vulgar language spoken in those districts in the East; but in all those parts, as well as in Algeria, there are differences of Dialect, which the traveller will soon trace, but any Arab will understand the pure, primitive word, when tolerably well pronounced; the traveller will do well to study with his ear the sound of words as they are uttered by the native, for it is impossible to transcribe correctly the gutturals as well as the soft aspirants of the Eastern tongue. The written or classic Arabic, is a highly developed and most exquisitely grammatically constructed language and would require a long course of study. It belongs to the Semitic languages, which include the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopian tongues, and it comprises also some of the idioms spoken in the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, preserved in the Cuneiform inscriptions, which now occupy the attention of the learned linguistic world. The Arabic language has survived all the other Semitic languages, it may be maintained that it includes them all, for it is the most exact in its maintenance of the sanctity of the root. The common household words of the modern Arabs are not only similar to, but are identical with, those of the ancient Hebrews; and it is not too much to say, that an Israelite of old and an Arab Sheykh of our own time would be mutually intelligible in the expression of simple wants. |