“I hope you will teach your daughters to read”: Dialogues in Arabic language guides from nineteenth-century Egypt

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of increasing contact between Egypt and the West. Travellers to Egypt, whether they went there for tourism, trade, or a more prolonged stay, were keen to learn some Arabic. This resulted in the publication of a number of language guides such as textbooks and grammars. Some of these contained conversational phrases and dialogues, often divided into categories describing every-day activities such as ‘in a shop’, ‘visiting antiquities’, and ‘with a camel driver’. Other topics are more unexpected, such as a dialogue ‘with an Eastern lady’, discussing women’s literacy. The chapter examines the contents of these dialogues: who were the foreign travellers expected to talk to, and what topics would they discuss with their interlocutors? It also discusses how the type of language used (dialect, Classical Arabic, or a mix) relates to the contents of the dialogues and the persons they were directed at.