[Footnote 205: The Oriental punctuation is here adopted.]
Besides these, there are other letters, whose power is extremely difficult to be acquired by an European, because no language in Europe possesses sounds similar to the Arabic letters خ غ ع, nor has any language, except, perhaps, the English, a letter with the power of the Arabian ث. Those who travel into Asia or Africa scarcely ever become sufficiently masters of the Arabic to speak it fluently, which radical defect proceeds altogether from their not learning, while studying it, the peculiar distinction of the synonymous letters. _No European, perhaps, ever knew more of the theory of this language than the late Sir William Jones, but still he could not converse with an Arabian;_ a circumstance of which he was not conscious until he went to India. This great man, however, had he been told that his knowledge of this popular eastern language was so far deficient, that he was ignorant of the separate powers of its synonymous letters, and consequently inadequate to converse intelligibly with a native Arab, he would certainly have considered it an aspersion, and have disputed altogether that such was the fact. Considering how much we are indebted to the Arabians 358 for the preservation of many of the works of the ancients, which would otherwise have never, perhaps, been known to us, it is really surprising, that their language should be so little known in Europe. It is certainly very difficult and abstruse, (to learners particularly,) but this difficulty is rendered insurmountable by the European professors knowing it only as a dead language, and _teaching it without due attention to the pronunciation of the before mentioned synonymous letters, a defect which is not likely to be remedied, and which will always subject the speaker to incessant errors_.
To shew the Arabic student the difference between the Oriental and Occidental order of the letters of the alphabet, I shall here give them opposite each other.
11 za ز -- 11 zain ز 359 12 sin س -- 12 ta ط
29 lam-alif: ligature lam + alif = لأ لإ لآ
Besides this difference of the arrangement of the two alphabets, the Arabic student will observe that there is also a difference in the punctuation of two of the letters: thus--