ABSTRACT
THE transliteration of even the few Arabic words that are essential to a survey of this character presents several difficulties, to writer and reader alike. In describing desert life and customs, only colloquial Arabic is relevant and of use. Unfortunately, colloquial Arabic has never been reduced to any form of writing; and this means that a multitude of Arab dialects, of great variety and flexibility, have never been standardized. Classical or written Arabic has been rigidly systematized; but classical and colloquial Arabic are two entirely distinct languages which have developed separately along parallel lines. They are both in use today, but the written language of the Koran, of the theologians and the schoolmen, has no more in common with anyone of the modern spoken Arab dialects than Latin has with modern Italian-even less, because, unlike colloquial Arabic, one can only conceive of Italian as both a written and a spoken language.
