burton--1001-nights--sample

of voice; but such appoggio is unknown to those who speak with
purest articulation; for instance whilst the European pronounces Muscat’,
and the Arab villager Mas’-kat; the Children of the Waste, “on
whose tongues Allah descended,” articulate Mas-kat. I have therefore
followed the simple system adopted in my “Pilgrimage,” and have
accented Arabic words only when first used, thinking it unnecessary to
preserve throughout what is an eyesore to the reader and a distress to
the printer. In the main I follow “Johnson on Richardson,” a work
known to every Anglo-Orientalist as the old and trusty companion of
his studies early and late; but even here I have made sundry deviations
for reasons which will be explained in the Terminal Essay. As words
are the embodiment of ideas and writing is of words, so the word is
the spoken word; and we should write it as pronounced. Strictly
speaking, the e-sound and the o-sound (viz. the Italian o-sound not the
English which is peculiar to us and unknown to any other tongue) are
not found in Arabic, except when the figure Imálah obliges: hence
they are called “Yá al-Majhúl” and “Waw al-Majhúl” the unknown y (í)
and u. But in all tongues vowel-sounds, the flesh which clothes the
bones (consonants) of language, are affected by the consonants which
precede and more especially which follow them, hardening and
softening the articulation; and deeper sounds accompany certain letters
as the sád compared with the sín. None save a defective ear would
hold, as Lane does, “Maulid” (= birth-festival) “more properly pronounced
‘Molid.’” Yet I prefer Khokh (peach) and Jokh (broad-cloth)
to Khukh and Jukh; Ohod (mount) to Uhud; Obayd (a little slave) to
Ubayd; and Hosayn (a fortlet, not the P. N. Al-Husayn) to Husayn.
As for the short e in such words as “Memlúk” for “Mamlúk” (a white
slave), “Eshe” for “Asha” (supper), and “Yemen” for “Al-Yaman,”
I consider it a flat Egyptianism, insufferable to an ear which admires
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