Publication date: 4 March 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800086180
Number of illustrations: 56
Arabic Dialogues
Phrasebooks and the learning of colloquial Arabic, 1798-1945
Rachel Mairs (Author)
During the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, more Europeans visited the Middle East than ever before, as tourists, archaeologists, pilgrims, settler-colonists and soldiers. These visitors engaged with the Arabic language to differing degrees. While some were serious scholars of Classical Arabic, in the Orientalist mould, many did not learn the language at all. Between these two extremes lies a neglected group of language learners who wanted to learn enough everyday colloquial Arabic to get by. The needs of these learners were met by popular language books, which boasted that they could provide an easy route to fluency in a difficult language.
Arabic Dialogues explores the motivations of Arabic learners and effectiveness of instructional materials, principally in Egypt and Palestine, by analysing a corpus of Arabic phrasebooks published in nine languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian) and in the territory of twenty-five modern countries. Beginning with Napoleon’s Expédition d’Égypte (1798–1801), it moves through the periods of mass tourism and European colonialism in the Middle East, concluding with the Second World War. The book also considers how Arab intellectuals understood the project of teaching Arabic to foreigners, the remarkable history of Arabic-learning among Yiddish- and Hebrew-speaking immigrants in Palestine, and the networks of language learners, teachers and plagiarists who produced these phrasebooks.
List of figures
List of tables
Note on research data set
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Cairo and Paris (1798-1869)
2 Fāris al-Shidyāq, As‘ad Ya‘qūb al-Khayyāṭ and Protestant missions (1819-1920)
3 Tourists’ phrasebooks and self-instruction: the business of language book publishing (1830-1935)
4 Arabic in war and occupation I: The Veiled Protectorate to the First World War (1882-1914)
5 Arabic in war and occupation II: the First and Second World Wars and Mandate Palestine (1914-1945)
6 Arabic, Yiddish and Hebrew in Palestine (1839-1948)
7 Conclusion: patterns and networks
Bibliography
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800086180
Number of illustrations: 56
Publication date: 04 March 2024
PDF ISBN: 9781800086180
EPUB ISBN: 9781800086210
Hardback ISBN: 9781800086203
Paperback ISBN: 9781800086197
Rachel Mairs (Author) 
Rachel Mairs is Professor of Classics and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Reading. She works on ancient and nineteenth-to-early-twentieth-century multilingualism in the Middle East, with a particular interest in interpreters. Her books include The Graeco-Bactrian World (ed. 2021), The Hellenistic Far East: Archaeology, Language and Identity in Greek Central Asia (2014), Archaeologists, Tourists, Interpreters (with Maya Muratov, 2015) and From Khartoum to Jerusalem: The Dragoman Solomon Negima and his Clients (2016).
Extra resources for Arabic Dialogues
Download a .zip file of all accompanying resources.
This file includes:
- A Catalogue of colloquial Arabic phrasebooks discussed in the book (Word document and PDF). (Referred to in the text of the book as ‘the Catalogue’.)
- Two Gephi graphs of: a) social connections between authors of language books, learners of Arabic and other significant figures; and b) relationships of plagiarism and influence between Arabic phrasebooks. (Referred to as Graph 1 and Graph 2 respectively.)
- PDF and JPEG files providing a visualisation of the Gephi data, for users who do not have or do not wish to use network analysis software. (Referred to as above.)
- A line chart showing the number of colloquial Arabic phrasebooks each year, across all languages, in the period 1798-1945 (Graph 3, PDF and JPEG).
- A line chart showing the cumulative number of colloquial Arabic phrasebooks published in the period 1798-1945 (Graph 4, PDF and JPEG).
- A line chart showing the number of colloquial Arabic phrasebooks published each year, separated by language, in the period 1798-1945 (Graph 5, PDF and JPEG)
Access to this data set is not essential in order to follow the arguments of the book.
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