Note 120 — Chapter XI · COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF ZANZIBAR—THE WASAWAHILI AND THE SLAVE RACES.

Nothing can be more erroneous than the following sentence: ‘But the Mohammedan natives of the Eastern Coasts of Africa, who are comprehended under the name of Sawáhili, do not pronounce the hard h of the Arabs; the vowels, therefore, between which it stands in their name, unite to form a diphthong, like the Italian ai or the English i in wile; and Sawáhili is pronounced Sawïli’ (Inner Africa Laid Open, p. 88). The Wasawahil merely change the hard Arabic h (ح) into the softer guttural (ه).