Egyptians asserted cultural authority over Sudanese through language instruction in plays

Evidence

Sanüa clearly defines who is an Egyptian by the way his characters speak, but he is not as clear when it comes to the Sudanese or Nubians. In plays and other representations of the time, the Sudanese were just as constant a source of laughter when they spoke. But with the Sudanese, many of whom spoke Arabic as their native tongue, the linguistic stereotyping assumes another dimension in assertions of Egyptian authority.The Sudanese and Nubian characters’ problems in Arabic come not from having a poor grasp of grammar or a lack of vocabulary, as the Turks and British had, but from a seeming inability to pronounce key Arabic letters correctly, for instance, the ayn, the hard h, and the kaf. There emerges, then, a linguistic tutorial between Egyptian and Nubian in Sanü`a’s work, in which the Egyptian instructs the latter in how to speak his native tongue. The lessons are dictated by educated, middleto upper-class Egyptians. This tutorial reinforces the intimate ties between Egyptian and Sudanese cultures while also repeating the pattern and goals of domination established by both the khedive’s foreign policy and the traditional employment of the Sudanese as servants in Egyptian homes. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 362

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader Egyptian-vs-Sudanese coloniality comparison the reader is building; language-as-domination parallels the ‘colonial tools’ thread across the book.