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 how a people can come to have such a contempt for the tongue which they use in their daily intercourse, and which, in any other country, would have been endeared to them by a thousand associations. Least of all can we understand that the favoured and universally accepted substitute for this mother-tongue should be an artificial language which only lives in books and formal speeches - which is acquired not in the home, but in the school-room.

4. Before proceeding further, however, with the discussion of this question, it may be well to offer a few words of explanation - we would readily call it apology - to those Egyptians who may happen to read these pages. Nations are inclined to be sensitive about their language, and to resent the comments of a stranger. However qualified the critic may be on account of his literary and philological attainments, the question is considered as being outside his competence. No more qualified authority on the Arabic language could be found than Judge Willmore” yet his opinions on the Egyptian language question, so ably expressed in the preface to his Grammar, were received with scant courtesy by the native Press. It may therefore be as well to state that the writer of the present article gives his opinion with every deference, with full consciousness of his own limitations, and, above all, with no desire to offend the religious prejudices of those who might be inclined to construe any criticism of the written Arabic language into an attack on the Koran. We are studying Egyptian problems as a European writing for Europeans. The Egyptian language question is one of the most interesting, as it is one of the most vital of those problems, and cannot be ignored by any writer on Egypt. At the same time, the opinion expressed is purely platonic and Egyptians may rest assured that this, at any rate is a problem the solution of which will be left entirely to themselves.

5. First among the disadvantages arising out of this duality of language is the effect produced upon education. The child 1386 Minute of Dissent