The Consonants Z and Z in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic

Abstract

Willmore, The S2oken Arabic of Egypt (London, 2nd ed. 1905), throughout his grammar and explicitly on pp. xxvii and 19, recognizes the existence in modern Egyptian Arabic of the socalled emphatic consonant z. This is sometimes found to correspond to classical or 1 (without distinction); sometimes it arises out of classical z under the influence of other sounds associated with it in the same phonetic complex; see especially pp. 11 if. Willmore is quite aware that Spitta, Grammatik des Arabischen Vulygrdialektes von Aegypten (Leipzig, 1880), p. 9 and throughout, quite as definitely denies the existence of z, either primary or secondary. Omitting the many guides and small grammars, which follow Spitta and yet have no claim to being the result of immediate personal observation of phonetic phenomena (e. g. Probst, Dirr, Thilenius), it is interesting to note that Vollers, a careful student of long residence, in his Lehrbuch der Aegypto-arabischen Umgangssprache (Cairo, 1890), takes the position of Spitta (? 1); while in his article in Z. D. M. G., XLI, 1887, pp. 365 if. he does not (pp. 367, 368) go into the question which concerns us, being chiefly interested in the process by which the inter-dental became post-dental. On p. 372 he comments on the change of t to t, and of s to s. The testimony of the Egyptian Spiro, An Arabic English Vocabulary (London, 1895), followed up with many propagandist publications, loses when one reflects that he has ever been the enthusiastic disciple of Spitta in every respect. Such different results from Willmore and Spitta, leaving the others out of account, as the followers of the latter, within so short a space of time, involving if accepted a reversal of the