“Strangely enough, the commoner the word the more likely it is to differ from area to area. شِعْرٌ “poetry” is the same everywhere. It is the everyday things, especially modern or foreign importations, which show most variety.”
Cairo’s sausage, سُجُق (suguʾ/sujuq, from the Turkish), is no more Arab in origin than Marrakesh’s سوسيس (saucisse, from the French), but both are Arabic in every meaningful sense.
Good luck telling that to the reviewer who not so long ago suggested Haywood and Nahmad's New Arabic Grammar[1] “would certainly benefit from a thorough check by a philologist who could cleanse it from vernacular Arabic and especially from artificial Arabic, that is, word forms and expressions that originate in grammatical imagination and the habits of other tongues.”[2] (Emphasis added.)
