[Illustration: A HOUSE-ROOFING BEE (ET TAYYIBEH)] The country and desert folk of Palestine and Arabia are justifiable in much of their pride in their really beautiful language. Some of the gutturals may seem unduly harsh, and when fully pronounced the word endings may at times seem monotonous; but rightly rolled and molded there is nothing more beautiful and clear than a well-spoken chain of Arabic sentences. One must prefer the country to the city speech. There are twenty-eight distinct letters in the Arabic alphabet. The first two letters _alif_ and _bay_ correspond to the _aleph_ and _beth_ of the Hebrew, also to the _alpha_ and _beta_ of the Greek, from which comes our word “alphabet.” The two letters _lam_ and _aleph_ written together are sometimes reckoned an extra letter. Many of the other letters are variants of each other phonetically, such as different kinds of t’s, h’s, d’s, s’s and k’s. Dialectical variations account in part for these numerous sounds and for others which were not given a distinguishing sign after the alphabet stiffened into its classical form. For instance, there is a character pronounced to-day by some _ḍha_, by others _za_. Another is pronounced _koff_, but by others _aff_, and by the Bedawîn, _goff_. In Egypt the sound for the fifth letter of the alphabet is hard _g_, while in Syria it is _j_. The fourth letter _th_ tends to become a plain _t_, as in _katîr_ for _kathîr_, or in _talât_ for _thalâth_. There is a historical instance of such dialectical variance among Palestine country people (Judges 12: 6) where _s_ and _sh_ in sibboleth and shibboleth are the sounds in question. Both of these are represented in Arabic, the language of modern Palestine, in the letters _sîn_ and _shîn_. This instance helps to suggest how close are the tongues of ancient and modern Palestine, Hebrew and Arabic. Aramaic was the historical bridge between the two.[182] ----- -----