Arabic has a large vocabulary and permits considerable further expansion. In remoter regions the borrowed words are few, but among those who hear other tongues they are numerous. In this respect the tongue has had an experience not different from others. Still it retains considerable independence, as languages go, and covers a wide empire. Even where Arabic is not actually spoken, its influence has been considerable. It has loaned large numbers of words and its script has covered many other languages, as, for example, Turkish, Persian, Hindustani, Malay, the African dialects, etc. The influence of the Ḳurân and Islâm has been the real force in this expansion of idiom and script. Prominence in the written language is given to the consonants. Owing to its easily cursive form and the customary omission of vowels it can be written with great rapidity. For these very reasons it easily degenerates into a scrawl scarcely legible, but perhaps no worse than English or any language carelessly written. A piece of writing is called _basîṭ_ when the vowels are left out, and _mûshakil_ when they are written. The vowel signs are three, _a_, _i_, _u_, but according as these are preceded by a heavy or light consonant, or followed by such or by one of the semivowels, they admit of considerable modification. The vowel sounds in Arabic, therefore, are numerous. As the consonants are prominent in writing, so are the vowels very significant in speaking. Especially in speaking long distances in the wild country, across ravines from hillsides, etc., a peculiar and effective stress is placed on the vowels. There are dialectical variations between the common spoken language of the peasantry and that of the city; also between both of these and what is termed church or high language, which is really a near approach to the classical Arabic; finally between the language of women and children on the one hand and men on the other. One very peculiar custom is that in the use of the personal pronouns the order is always first, second and third. Not as with us, _you and I_, but _I and you_, or _I and he_, would be Arabic usage. More closely significant in a study of the Palestinian peasant are those local turns of the language which we find in his colloquialisms, exclamations, etc. There is also a very fruitful field in the proverbs, songs and stories of the peasantry. A choice collection of stories as gathered by a lifelong resident of the country, Rev. J. E. Hanauer, has been edited by Dr. H. G. Mitchell.[184] ----- ----- The word _hôl_ is used in Râm Allâh and its environs to mean very or very much, that is, as a colloquialism for _kathîr_. _Hôl_ means, literally, _frightful_, so its use is equivalent to the analogous use of _awful_ as a superlative in English. The Râm Allâh peasants would say _Shughal hôl_, “An awful lot of work”; _tîn hôl_, “very many figs.”