Standard Arabic - the language of educated discourse throughout the Arab world - presents difficulties beyond those encountered in most foreign languages. Though today it is increasingly being popularised, it remains essentially an elitist, 'learned' language. It has been used without substantial change for over thirteen centuries, in regions as distant as Spain and China, in fields as diverse as poetry and medicine, mathematics and theology. Its morphology and syntax are largely constant, but vocabulary, sense, idiom and style often vary widely. Arabic script requires a good deal of...