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 You said that Egyptian has no grammar. I cannot allow that. Every language must have a grammar to be spoken at all. Do you mean to say that it is just the same whether I say 11 Sheik akal il samak’ (The Sheikh ate the fish), or 11 samak akal il Sheikh’ (The fish ate the Sheikh)? The grammar of a language which is hardly written or not at all, fluctuates more than that of a language which has a large literature. But no language can exist as a medium for communicating thought unless it has fixed rules which make it understandable-that is, a grammar.

No. Sheikh, not one of the charges you have brought against Egyptian but would condemn every other spoken language in the world, and brand as vulgar and corrupt words which have endeared themselves to several generations of Frenchmen and Italians. One of our professors has written a book called “The Science of Language”. Read it, and you will see how languages, your own included, are formed. SHEIKH: Well you may be right. I have not studied comparative philology. They do not teach these things at the Azhar, nor in the schools of the Government. But sir, I think that in any country people do not write as they speak. Surely in England educated men do not write like that? In speaking, one uses many vulgar expressions which are not to be written.

CRITIC: I do not deny that in our country there is a certain difference between the language of conversation and that of literature, but it is a difference of style rather than of language. A ‘horse’ is always a ‘horse,’ whether I am conversing with a friend or writing an article in the Times. With you it becomes a ‘steed’ as soon as you put pen to paper.

Of course one must distinguish between ordinary conversational language and slang. Unless an Englishman were consciously imitating the speech of the common people, he would 1390 Minute of Dissent