Spoken Arabic of Syria

In order to define clearly the subject of the essay which is The spoken Arabic of Syria, it is perhaps necessary to say a word about it. The thesis treats of the dialect spoken by all classes of people - the rich and the poor, the high & the low, the learned and the ignorant - both at home and in the street, & for all purposes, except the literary i.e. writing and lecturing. It is really the language of the masses, called [??], and therefore it is considered an unpardonable breach of literary etiquette to use it in modern periodicals, public addresses, or even in private correspondence. The object of this thesis is to show the contrast between the classical and the vulgar, to examine, classify & account for all the changes to phonetic, linguistic & grammatical as far as possible. As it is beyond the scope of this thesis to deal with the various dialects current in Syria, I have confined myself to that of Beirut and its neighbourhood. Beirut, besides being the most important town in Syria commercially, politically + ecclesiastically is the centre of intellectual activity with its three universities, numerous schools, 20 printing presses and 12 Arabic periodicals. Its language, therefore, may be considered the standard Syrian Arabic dialect