What others said about Arabic Via a reliable witness
“But how could I go on pilgrimage when I knew not a single letter of Arabic? … How was I to study «the mother of languages» while in Europe, and especially in a remote country like Hungary, where nobody speaks this language — which in my view is harder than learning four European languages together?”
Gyula Germanus
1884–1979
Hungarian orientalist who embraced Islam in India, professor at Budapest and member of the Cairo Arabic Language Academy.
In Arabic
ولكن كيف أذهبُ إلى الحجّ وأنا لا أعرف من العربيّة حرفاً واحداً؟… كيف أدرسُ «أمَّ اللغات» وأنا في أوربا، وبالأخصّ في بلادٍ نائيةٍ كالمجر لا يوجد فيها من يتكلّم بهذه اللغة التي هي في نظري أصعبُ مِن تعلُّمِ أربعِ لغاتٍ أوروبيّةٍ معاً؟!
Source
«Letters of a Pilgrim» (1), al-Risāla (Cairo), year 4, no. 135, 3 February 1936
The English is ours, from the reported Arabic.
From the opening of his account of his conversion and pilgrimage, published under his name in al-Risāla. Read in the magazine's transcribed text, not a page scan; whether he wrote it in Arabic or the magazine translated it is not stated. The saying commonly circulated under his name was not found in any of his articles.
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