"For your information: we spoke Arabic at home. Edward knew not only the Mashriqi dialect of Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, but also the Egyptian dialect, and he could easily flip from one to the other. He read the language with ease and was an avid reader of Arabic poetry. He lectured in Arabic, conducted interviews with the media in Arabic, and read the Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat daily. He could write in Arabic, although he had not been trained to do so, and had greater fluency writing in English. His friends, colleagues and students knew his mastery of many languages. He was a stickler when it came to understanding the meanings and uses of words. I would like to point out to your readers an essay written by Edward in Raritan, V21, No 4, entitled “Living in Arabic”. This essay should end all speculation.
Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to Irwin that “Said still dominates the debate thirty years on” because he articulated something profound and substantial that opened the field to greatly needed debate. MARIAM C. SAID".
I can add to this, that Edward made a point to deepen his knowledge of Arabic in the early 70s when he took private lessons (for a year, I think) from one of the well-known professors of Arabic at AUB (I forgot which one. Was it not Maqdisi?). I felt that he had tremendous appreciation for the Arabic language, and made a point to speak it among Arabs. He once complained about an Arab student--a Lebanese, unsurprisingly--at Columbia because Edward said that he would greet him in Arabic, and the other would respond in English. (thanks Amer)