A Handbook of Kuwaiti Arabic.. This item is unavailable.A Handbook of Kuwaiti Arabic.

12mo. (16.5 x 10 cm). pp.ix+251+[5, blank leaves for notes]. Original periwinkle cloth lettered in silver. With manuscript notes for the second edition to flyleaf signed off D.C.B.H. and dated April 1955. Some sunning to spine, upper joint lightly rubbed, some browning to endpapers, contents clean and unmarked, a very good copy overall. Scarce. First published in 1951, this guidebook was issued by the Kuwaiti Oil Company to "encourage its employees to become students". It was a "notable beginning in the use of the Arabic colloquials of the Persian Gulf and, indeed, in the study of what may be called Gulf Arabic" (foreword). John Rupert Firth is credited with writing the introduction/foreword and overseeing the publication of the Handbook of Kuwaiti Arabic. This text served as one of the earliest structural guides to the grammar, phonology, and vocabulary of the Kuwaiti dialect. Beyond the present handbook, J. R. Firth is the father of Firthian Prosodic Analysisa non-segmental phonological framework. Arabic (including Kuwaiti and Gulf dialects) has long been a primary test case for his theories. He was also the director of the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at the School or Oriental and African Studies as a training school for special intelligence personnel in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force during World War II.…