[Footnote 206: The African Jews find it very difficult in
speaking, to distinguish between _shim_ and _sim_, for they
cannot pronounce the _sh_, [Arabic] but sound it like _s_
[Arabic]; the very few who have studied the art of reading
the language, have, however, conquered this difficulty.]
It is difficult for any one who has not accurately studied the
Arabic language, to imagine the many errors which an European
commits in speaking it, when self taught, or when taught in Europe.
This deficiency originates in the inaccuracy of the application of
the guttural and synonymous letters.
The ain [Arabic] and the [Arabic] grain cannot be
363 accurately pronounced by Europeans, who have not studied the
language grammatically when young. The aspirated _h_, and the hard
_s_, in the word for _morning_ (sebah), are so much like their
synonymes, that few Europeans can discern the difference; the one
is consequently often mistaken for the other; and I have known a
beautiful sentence absolutely perverted through an inaccuracy of
this kind. In the words rendered _Hatred_ and _Harvest_, the two
synonymes of [Arabic:] and [Arabic:] or _s_ hard and _s_
soft, are indiscriminately used by Europeans in their Arabic
_conversations_, a circumstance sufficient to do away the force and
meaning of many a sentence.
The poetry as well as prose of the Arabians is well known, and has
been so often discussed by learned men, that it would be irrelevant
here to expatiate on the subject; but as the following description
of the noblest passion of the human breast cannot but be
interesting to the generality of readers, and, without any
exception, to the fair sex, I will transcribe it.
"Love [Arabic:] beginneth in contemplation, passeth to meditation;
hence proceeds desire; then the spark bursts forth into a flame,
the head swims, the body wastes, and the soul turns giddy. If we
look on the bright side of love, we must acknowledge that it has at
least one advantage; it annihilates pride and immoderate self-love;
364 true love, whose aim is the happiness and equality of the beloved
object, being incompatible with those feelings.
"Lust is so different from true love [Arabic], and so far from a
perfection, that it is always a species of punishment sent by God,
because man has abandoned the path of his pure love."
In their epistolary writing, the Arabs have generally a regular and
particular style, beginning and ending all their letters with the
name of God, symbolically, because God is the beginning and end of
all things. The following short specimen will illustrate this:
Translation of a letter written in the Korannick Arabic by Seedy
Soliman ben Muhammed ben Ismael, Sultan of Marocco, to his Bashaw
of Suse, &c. &c.
"Praise be to the only God! for there is neither power, nor
strength, without the great and eternal God."