British 18th-Century Orientalism and Arabic Dialectology
William Price of Worcester and his “Dialogues in the vulgar arabick of Morocco” (1797)
This article examines a relatively unknown 18th century European source on Moroccan Arabic. It is the article entitled “Dialogues on the vulgar Arabick of Morocco”, published in London in 1797 by William Price (1771–1830), a self-taught linguist and orientalist from Worcester, England. Price’s work is one of the few European texts predating 1800 focused on Moroccan Arabic, and providing some information about this linguistic variety. As we explain, Price obtained these “Dialogues” from “some natives of Barbary”, who happened to be in London. In the first four sections of the article, we examine the life and works of William Price, we place his activities as an expert in Arabic and other of the so-called “Oriental languages” in the context of 18th century British Orientalism, and we analyse the contents of the “Dialogues” provided in his article. These “Dialogues” consist of a conversation between two interlocutors who are taking a stroll in a walled coastal town of the Moroccan Atlantic strip. The fifth section of our contribution is a linguistic dialectological analysis of both the Arabic and Latin character transcriptions of Moroccan Arabic provided by Price. We analyse different issues concerning the transcriptions given, and we focus our linguistic study on phonological, morphological and syntactical issues.
References
A.Primary sources
Dodwell, Edward & James Samuel Miles
1838 Alphabetical List of the Officers of the Bengal Army. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, and Co.
Dombay, Franz von [Dombay, Francisci de
]
1800 Grammatica linguae mauro-arabicae juxta vernaculi idiomatis usum. Vindobonae: Camesina.
Chénier, Louis de
1787 Recherches Historiques sur les Maures et Hhistoire de l’Empire de Maroc, Paris: L’Auteur, Bailly, Royer et Imprimerie Polytype.
Chénier, Louis de
1788 The Present State of the Empire of Morocco. London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson.
Hadley, George
1772 Grammatical Remarks on the Practical and Vulgar Dialect of the Indostan Language, Commonly Called the Moors. With a vocabulary, English and Moors. The whole calculated for the Common Practice in Bengal. London: T. Cadell.
Herbin, Auguste F. J.
1803 Développemens des Principes de la Langue Arabe Moderne. Paris: Baudouin.
H⊘st, Georg
1779 Efterretninger om Marókos og Fes, samlede der i Landene fra 1760 til 1768. K⊘benhavn: trykt hos N. Möller.
Jackson, James Grey
1809 An Account of the Empire of Marocco and the Districts of Suse and Tafilelt. London: W. Bulmer and Co.
Journal Asiatique
, Vol. VI1
1825 Paris: Donne-Dupré et sons.
Lempriere, William
1800 A Tour from Gibraltar to Tangier, Sallee, Mogodore, Santa Cruz and Tarudant; and thence over Mount Atlas to Morocco Including a Particular Account of the Royal Harem. Richmond: William Pritchard.
Fell Smith, Charlotte
1896 “
William Price”.
Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLIV, Pocock-Puckering, ed. by
Sidney Lee. 343–344, London: Macmillan and Co.
Marcel, Jean J.
1799 Grammaire Arabe-Vulgaire du Dialecte d’Egypte. Kaire: Imprimerie Nationale.
Morier, James J.
1824 The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan. London: John Murray.
Morning Post
,
February 28 1821.
Moüette, Germain
1683 Relation de la Captivité du Sieur Moüette dans les Royaumes de Fez et de Maroc. Paris: Jean Cochart.
New monthly magazine
, vol. 301
1830, p. 439.
New Times
,
July 23 1821.
Nolleroth, Michaël B.
1787 Dissertatio academica de gente et lingua maroccana, publico eruditorum examini pro gradu modeste subjicit auctor et respondens Michaël B. Nolleroth, … in lyceo Carolino ad diem X martii 1787. Lundae: litteris Berlingianis.
Norberg, Matthias
1818 “
X. De gente et lingua maroccana. Dissertatio”.
Matthiae Norbergi Selecta Opuscula Academica, Pars Secunda, ed. by
Johannes Norrmann. 267–287. Londini Gothorum: Litteris Berlingianis.
Niebuhr, Carsten
1772 Beschreibung von Arabien. Aus eigenene Beobachtungen und im Lande selbst gesammelten Nachrichten abgefasset von Carsten Niebuhr. Copenhagen.
Ouseley, Gore
1846 Biographical Notices of Persian poets, with Critical and Explanatory Remarks. London: W. H. Allen and Co.
Ouseley, William
1795 Persian Miscellanies: A essay to facilitate the reading of Persian manuscripts, with Engraved Specimens, Philological Observations, and Notes Critical and Historical. London: Richard White.
Ouseley, William
1797–1799 The Oriental Collections. Consisting of Original Essays and Dissertations, Translations and Miscellaneous papers, 31 vols. London: Cadell and Davies.
Ouseley, William
1814 “
A Letter from Sir William Ouseley, to the Rev. H. T. Payne. Crickhowell, Aug. 7, 1809”.
Motives to the Study of Hebrew: Collected by the Right Rev. The Lord Bishop of St. David’s in two parts, Part I, 44–47. London: W. Calvert.
Price, William
1797 “
Dialogues in the vulgar Arabick of Morocco. Communicated by Mr. W. Price, of Worcester”.
The Oriental Collections. Consisting of Original Essays and Dissertations, Translations and Miscellaneous papers, vol. I1, ed. by
William Ouseley. 84–85 y 109–111. London: Cadell and Davies.
Price, William
1813 “
Letter from Mr. W. Price to the Bishop of St. David’s, Worcester, Aug. 15, 1809”. Letters on the Subject of the Election of a Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages in the University of Edinburgh.
The Scots magazine and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany: Being a General Repository of Literature, History and Politics, for 1813,
vol.
LXXV1, 421–423. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Company.
Price, William
1814 “
A Letter from Mr. Price to the Bishop of St. David’s, Worcester, Aug. 15, 1809”.
Motives to the Study of Hebrew: Collected by the Right Rev. The Lord Bishop of St. David’s in two parts, Part I, 47–51. London: W. Calvert.
Price, William
1823 A Grammar of the Three Principal Oriental Languages, Hindoostanee, Persian, and Arabic. London: Kingsbury, Parbury and Allen.
Price, William
1825 Journal of the British Embassy to Persia, mbellished with numerous views taken in India and Persia, also a dissertation upon the antiquities of Persepolis. London: Kingsbury, Parbury and Allen.
Price, William
1827 Elements of Aanskrit, or an Easy Guide to the Indian Tongues. Worcester.
Price, William
1828 A New Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language. To which are added selections from the best authors, familiar phrases and dialogues, in the proper character. London: Parbury, Allen, and Co.
Price, William
1828 Husn-oo-Dil or Beauty and Heart. A pleasing allegory in eleven chapters composed by Alfettah of Nishapoor. Persian and English. Translated by William Price, M.R.S.L. London: Parbury, Allen and Co.
Price, W.
1829 The Ch,hutru Prukash: a biographical account of Ch,hutru Sal, raja of Boondelkhund. Calcutta: Education Press.
Rabbe, M. M.
1836 Biographie Universelle et Portative des Contemporaines, T. V. Paris: Rue du Colombier 1836.
Roebuck, Thomas
1819 The Annals of the College of Fort-William. Calcutta: Hindoostanee Press.
Savary, Claude Étienne
1813 Grammaire de la Langue Arabe Vulgaire et Littérale. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale.
Seaman, William [Gulielmo Seaman]
1670 Grammatica linguae Turcicae, in quinque partes distributa. Oxford: Edvardum Millington.
Silvestre de Sacy, Antoine Isaac
1810 Grammaire Arabe à l’usage des élèves de l’école spéciale des langues orientales vivantes. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale.
Silvestre de Sacy, Antoine Isaac
1824 “
A Grammar of the three principal…”.
Journal des savans, janvier, 15–20. Paris: Imprimerie Royale.
Socin, Albert
1893 “
Zum arabischen Dialekt von Marokko”,
Abhandlungen der philologischhistorischen Classe der Königlich Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig 141. 150–204. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
Socin, A. & Stumme, H.
1894 Der arabische Dialect der Houwāra des Wād Sūs in Morokko. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.
St. James Chronicle and London Evening Post
,
January 13 1821.
The British Critic
,
June 1798, p. 603.
The Courier
,
June 30 1830.
The Courier
,
November 28 1820.
The gentleman’s magazine
1808.
The gentleman’s magazine
, vol. 1481
1830, p. 185.
The Journal of the Ex Libris Society
1899, p. 124.
Torres, Diego de
1585 Relación del origen y suceso de los xarifes y del estado de los reinos de Marruecos, Fez y Tarudante. Sevilla: Francisco Pérez.
Turnbull, William
1839 The Stirling Peerage, Trial of Alexander Humphrys or Alexander, Styling Himself Earl of Stirling, before the High Court of Justiciary for Forgery. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons and T. Cadell.
Valle Flemmarum, Agapitus a.
1845 [1687] Flores grammaticales arabici idiomatis. Romae: Vincentio F. Castellini.
B.Secondary sources
Ackerman, Gérald M.
1991 Les Orientalistes de l’école britannique. Paris: ACR Édition.
Aguadé, Jordi
1998 “
Un dialecte maʕqilien: le parler des Zʕīr”,
Peuplement et arabisation au Maghreb occidental: dialectologie et histoire, edited by
Jordi Aguadé,
Patrice Cressier and
Ángeles Vicente. 141–150. Madrid-Zaragoza: Casa de Velázquez-Universidad de Zaragoza.
Aguadé, Jordi
2003 “
Estudio descriptivo y comparativo de los fonemas del árabe dialectal marroquí”.
Estudios de dialectología norteafricana y andalusí 71. 59–109.
Aguadé, Jordi
2006 “
Writing dialect in Morocco”.
Estudios de dialectología norteafricana y andalusí 101. 253–274.
Aguadé, Jordi
2012 “
El árabe marroquí según un texto danés del siglo XVIII”.
Séptimo centenario de los estudios orientales en Salamanca, 185–192. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca.
Arberry, Arthur John
1946 Asiatic Jones: The Life and Influence of Sir William Jones. Pioneer of Indian Studies. London: Longman.
Auchterlonie, Paul
1986 “
The Development of Arabic Studies in Britain from the Middle Ages to the Present Day”.
Arabic Resources: Acquisition and management in British Libraries, edited by
David Burnett. 71–77. London: Mansell Publishing Limited.
Avery, Peter
2004 “
Ouseley, Gore”.
Encyclopaedia Iranica on line (accesed 1 March 2015).
Avery, Peter
2004 “
Ouseley, William”.
Encyclopaedia Iranica on line (accesed 1 March 2015).
Barker, George Fisher Russell
1995 “
Ouseley, Sir Gore 1770–1844”.
Dictionary of National Biography. CD-ROM, Oxford.
Behn, Wolfgang H.
1989 Index Islamicus, 1665–1905. A bibliography of articles on Islamic subjects in periodicals and other collective publications. Millersville: Adiyok Publications.
Benítez Fernández, M.
2010 La política lingüística de Marruecos: de la arabización a la aceptación del multilingüismo. Zaragoza: IEIOP.
Benítez Fernández, M.
2012a “
TelQuel: una fuente contemporánea para el estudio del árabe marroquí”.
De los manuscritos medievales a internete: la presencia del árabe vernáculo en las fuetes escritas, edited by
Mohamed Meouak,
Pablo Sánchez and
Ángeles Vicente. 403–417. Zaragoza: IEIOP.
Benítez Fernández, M.
2012b “
Al-’Amal. Otro intento fallido de escribir en dārīža marroquí”.
Dynamiques langagières en Arabophonies: variations, contacts, migrations et créations artistiques, edited by
Alexandrine Barontini,
Christophe Pereira,
Ángeles Vicente and
Karima Ziamari. 379–391. Zaragoza: IEIOP.
Bourne, John Michael
1977 The Civil and Military Patronage of the East India Company, 1784– 1858. PhD Thesis, University of Leicester.
Bourne, John Michael
1979 “
The East India Company’s military seminary, Addiscombe, 1809–1858”.
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 571. 206–22.
Burnett, Charles
1997 The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England. London: The British Library.
Cannon, Garland
1964 Oriental Jones: a Biography of Sir William Jones (1746–1794). Bombay and New York: Asia Publishing House.
Cannon, Garland
1984 “
Sir William Jones, Persian, Sanskrit and the Asiatic Society”.
Histoire, Épistémologie, Langage 6: 6–2. 83–94.
Cannon, Garland
1990 The life and Mind of Oriental Jones: Sir William Jones, the Father of Modern Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cantineau, Jean
1960 Cours de phonétique árabe. Paris: Klincksieck.
Carey, Daniel and Lynn Festa
2009 The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Caubet, D.
1999 “
Arabe maghrébin: passage à l’écrit et institutions”.
Faits des langues, Revue de linguistique 131. 235–244.
Caubet, D.
2010 “
La Nayda par ses textes”.
Magazine Littéraire du Maghreb 3–41. 99–105.
Caubet, D.
2012 “
Apparition massive de la darija à l’écrit à partir de 2008–2009: sur le papier et sur la toile”.
De los manuscritos medievales a internet: la presencia del árabe vernáculo en las fuentes escritas, edited by
Mohamed Meouak,
Pablo Sánchez and
Ángeles Vicente, 377–402. Zaragoza: IEIOP.
Caubet, D.
2013 “
Maroc 2011 – Messagerie instantanée sur l’internet marocain: Facebook, darija et parler jeunes”. Évolution des pratiques et représentations langagières dans le Marco du XXIème siècle, edited by
Montserrat Benítez Fernández,
Catherine Miller,
Jan Jaap de Ruiter and
Youssef Tamer, 63–86. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Chaudhury, K. N.
1965 The English East India Company. The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company 1600–1640. London: Routledge.
Cherti, Myriam
2008 Paradoxes of Social Capital: A Multi-Generational Study of Moroccans in London. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Colin, Georges S.
1987 Reprint. “
Morocco: VII, Linguistic Survey”.
E. J. Brill’s First Encyclopedia of Islam, 1913–1916, ed. by
Houtsma, M. Th.,
Wensinck, A. J.,
Lévi-Provençal, E.,
Gibb, H. A. R., and
W. Heffening, 597–604. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Dozy, Reinhart
1967 Supplément aux Dictionnaires arabes. Vol 11. Leyde-Paris: Brill-Maisonnaueve et Larose.
El Mansour, Mohamed
1990 Morocco in the reign of Mawlay Sulayman. Wisbech.: Middle East and North African Studies Press.
Fell Smith, Charlotte
2009 “
Price, William (1771–1830)”.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, vol. 46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fisher, Michael H.
2006 Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain 1600–1857. Delhi: Permanent Black.
Franklin, Michael John
2000 Representing India: Indian Culture and Imperial Control in Eighteenth Century British Orientalist Discourse. New York: Routledge.
Gallien, Claire
2008 Connaître et imaginer l’Orient dans la littérature anglaise du XVIIIè siècle. Université Paris IV-Sorbonne. Doctoral Thesis.
Gallien, Claire
2013 “
Le manuel de langue orientale, reflet d’une politique coloniale? Le cas anglais en Inde (1757–1830)”.
Manuels d’arabe d’hier et d’aujourd’hui: France et Maghreb, XIXe–XXIe siècle, edited by
Sylvette Larzul and
Alain Messaoudi. 31–46. Paris: Éditions de la Bibliothèque nationale de France.
González Vázquez, Araceli
2014 “
El árabe marroquí visto por un cautivo francés del siglo XVII: Estudio histórico, social y cultural del Dictionnaire François-Arabesque de Germain Moüette”.
Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, Sección Árabe-Islam 631. 65–90.
Green, Nile
2009 “
Journeymen, Middlemen: Travel, Transculture, and Technology in the Origins of Muslim Printing”.
International Journal of Middle East Studies 41:2. 203–224.
Green, Nile
2012 “
Panassus of the Evangelical Empire: Orientalism and the English Universities, 1800–50”.
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40: 3. 337–355.
Guerrero, Jairo
2012 “
La gramática de árabe marroquí del austríaco Franz von Dombay”.
Séptimo centenario de los estudios orientales en Salamanca, 241–249. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca.
Heath, Jeffrey
1987 Ablaut and Ambiguity. Phonology of a Moroccan Arabic Dialect. Albany: State University of New York.
Jones, John
1997 Baliol college: a history. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press.
Joseph, Betty
2004 Reading the East India Company, 1720–1840: Colonial currencies of gender. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Khan, Gulfishan
2013 “
Indo-Persian Scholarship and the Formation of Orientalism”.
Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 51: 4. 7–54.
Kopf, David
1969 British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773–1835. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Kopf, David
1995 “
The historiography of British Orientalism, 1772–1992”.
Objects of Enquiry: The Life, Contributions, and Influences of Sir William Jones (1746–1794), ed. by
Garland Cannon and
Kevin R. Brine, 141–160. New York, New York University Press.
Lane-Poole, Stanley
1995 “
Ouseley, Sir William (1767–1842)”.
Dictionary of National Biography. CD-ROM, Oxford.
Larcher, Pierre
2003 “
Diglossie arabisante et fuṣḥā vs. ’āmmiyya arabes: essai d’histoire parallèle”,
History of linguistics, 1999, Selected Papers from the Eighth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, 14–19 Semptember 1999, Fontenay-St. Cloud, by
Sylvain Auroux. 47–92. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Larzul, Sylvette
2010 “
Grammatisation et lexicographie de l’arabe algèrien au XIXè siècle”.
Synergies Monde arabe 71. 89–100.
Lévi-Provençal, Évariste
1928 Documents inédits d’histoire almohade. Fragments manscrits du “legajo” 1919 du fonds arabe de l’Escurial, publiés et traduits avec une introduction et notes par E. Lévi-Provençal. Paris: Geuthner.
Loubignac, Victorien
1952 Textes arabes des Zaër. Transcription, traduction, notes et lexique. Publications de l’Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines. Paris: Librairie Orientale et Américaine Max Besson.
Lucas, C.
2007 “
Jespersen’s Cycle in Arabic and Berber”.
Transactions of the Philological Society 105/3. 398–431.
Marçais, W.
1908 Le dialecte arabe des Ulād Bṛāhim de Saïda (Département d›Oran). Chalonsur-Saone: Imprimerie E. Bretrand.
Marshall, Peter J.
1970 The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moscoso, Francisco
2002 “
El dialecto árabe de Essauira a partir de los textos publicados en 1893 por Albert Socin”.
Estudios de Dialectología norteafricana y andalusí 61. 35–97.
Moscoso García, Francisco
2003 El dialecto árabe de Chauen. Estudio lingüístico y textos. Cádiz: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cádiz.
Moscoso García, Francisco
2008 “
El estudio del árabe marroquí en España durante el siglo XIX. La obra de Manuel Bacas Merino”.
Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos. Sección Árabe-Islam, 571. 269–293.
Moscoso García, Francisco
2011 “
Un pionero en los estudios de árabe marroquí: el P. Fr. Patricio José de la Torre. Refranes y adagios”.
Studia Orientalia 1111. 185–250.
Mousavi, Ali
2012 Persepolis. Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter.
Mukherjee, Soumyendra Nath
1968 Sir William Jones: a Study in Eighteenth-Century British Attitudes to India. Cambridge.
Ogborn, Miles
2008 Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Premare, Alfred-Louis (de) et al.
1993–1999 Dictionnaire arabe-français. 121 vol. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Rahman, Tariq
2008 “
The British Learning of Hindustani”.
Pakistan Vision 8: 3. 19–55.
Rocher, Rosane
1993 “
British Orientalism in the Eighteenth Century: The Dialectics of Knowledge and Government”,
Orientalism and Post-Colonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, edited by
Carol A. Breckenridge and
Peter van der Veer. 215–249. Pennsylvania: The University of Pennsylvania Press.
Roman, André
2005 “
Grammaire générale et grammaires arabes en France”.
Arabica 52: 3. 315–347.
Saporta, Isabelle de
1970 “
Une enquête linguistique au XVIIIe siècle: le vocabulaire arabe et berbère recueilli par L. de Chénier, consul de France au Maroc”.
Comptes rendus du Groupe Linguistique d’Études Chamito-Sémitiques (G.L.E.C.S.) XV1. 1–16.
Toomer, G. J.
1996 Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Troupeau, Gérard
1997 “
Deux cents ans d’enseignement de l’arabe à l’école des langues orientales”.
Chroniques yéménites 4–5. On line: URL:
[URL]
Vicente, Ángeles
2000 El dialecto árabe de Anjra (norte de Marruecos): estudio lingüístico y textos. Zaragoza: Univesidad de Zaragoza.
Vicente, Ángeles
2012 “
Sur la piste de l’arabe marocain dans quelques sources écrites anci ennes (du XIIe au XVIe siècle)”.
De los manuscritos medievales a Internet: la presencia del árabe vernáculo en las fuentes escritas, edited by
Mohamed Meouak,
Ángeles Vicente and
Pablo Sánchez. 103–120. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza.
Wilmsen, David
2014 Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators. Oxford: Osford University Press.
Wright, Denis
2001 The English Amongst the Persians: Imperial Lives in Nineteenth-Century Iran. London: I. B. Tauris.
Zack, Liesbeth
2014 “
Key to Mass Literacy or Professor’s Hobby? Fiske’s Project to Write Egyptian Arabic with the Latin Alphabet”.
Al-’Arabiyya 471.1–19.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Guerrero, Jairo
2024.
Hacia un estudio diacrónico del árabe marroquí: Acerca de algunos rasgos dialectales en los documentos árabes del siglo XVI conservados en el Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo.
Al-Qanṭara 44:2
► pp. e16 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.