Arabic language

“ The Arabic language is spoken by a greater proportion of the inhabitants of the known world than any other: a person having a practical knowledge of it, may travel from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the Cape of Good Hope, and notwithstanding that in such a journey he must pass through many kingdoms and empires of blacks, speaking distinct languages, yet he would find men in all those [356] countries versed in Muhamedan learning, and therefore acquainted with the Arabic ”

“ Throughout nearly the whole of northern and central Africa, Arabic influence has for some time past been rapidly spreading, carrying with it a certain degree of civilization, the Mohammedan religion, the Koran, and some knowledge and use of the Arabic language. It is only in this quarter of the world that Semitic faith and speech still continue aggressive. ”

“ But the masterpiece of absurdity, undoubtedly, is the stipulation in regard to the Arabic language; as if by any human art a whole population, in the space of three years, could be made to substitute a foreign tongue for its own; and that, too, under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, partly arising from the total want of affinity between the Semitic and the European languages, and partly from the insulated position of the Moriscoes, who, in the cities, had separate quarters assigned to them, in the same manner as the Jews, which cut them off from intimate intercourse with the Christians. ”

“ Imperfect translations, and type which seemed to caricature their alphabet, had done much to prejudice Arabic scholars against the Christian Scriptures. By the labors of the mission, these objections were now removed. The educated Arab finds a book printed in characters modeled after the most approved specimens of Arab caligraphy. He soon perceives the style to be that of a man who is master of this wonderful language in all its grammatical and idiomatic niceties and rich resources. As a literary work it secures his respect, and thus invites a candid perusal. ”

“ A revival, however, of Arabian learning is taking place in Egypt, Syria, and North Africa, but in accordance with European models, and chiefly under European auspices. All original research has long been extinct, even among those populations whose vernacular is the Arabic language; and consequently it is the former, and not the present state of Arab literature, which is the most interesting to the people of to-day. ”

“ But, even if spoken Egyptian becomes the language of writing, what is to prevent your keeping up the Arabic of the Koran? In the village schools the children can still learn it by heart. In the other schools you can continue to teach it, as we teach classics in England. It has long been considered part of the accomplishments of an English gentleman to write verse and prose in correct Latin and Greek. You have much stronger reasons for making a sound knowledge of classical Arabic a necessary accomplishment of every educated Egyptian. ”

“ Of the Badí’a or euphuistic style, “Parleying euphuism,” and of AI Saj’a, the prose rhyme, I shall speak in a future page.
The characteristics of the whole are naïveté and simplicity, clearness and a singular concision. The gorgeousness is in the imagery not in the language; the words are weak while the sense, as in the classical Scandinavian books, is strong; and here the Arabic differs diametrically from the florid exuberance and turgid amplifications of the Persian story-teller, which sound so hollow and unreal by the side of a chaster model. ”

“ Arabic is the spoken language not only of Arabia proper but forces the linguistic boundary of that peninsula 300 miles north of Bagdad to Diarbekr and Mardin, and is used all over Syria and Palestine and the whole of northern Africa. Even at Cape Colony there are daily readers of the language of Mohammed. As early as 1315 Arabic began to be taught at the universities of Europe through the missionary influence of Raymund Lull and to-day the language is more accurately known and its literature more critically investigated at Leiden than at Cairo and at Cambridge than in Damascus. ”

“ The Arabic language is particularly rich in this kind of literature, and its proverbs are often appropriately introduced in conversation, letters, and books, and add much force to what is said or written. Many are light and colloquial, and bring a smile or laughter to both speaker and hearer ”

“ Even the English language has a number of words that came as Arab guests to the feast of reason and have been adopted into our family and put into our dictionary. When you speak of algebra, ciphers, zero, alchemy, alcove, minaret, alcohol, coffee, sofa, amber, artichokes, gazelles or magazine you are using good Arabic words which nearly every Arab would understand. ”

“ Classical Arabic is rich not only in words but in grammatical forms. The wanton development of the broken plurals, and sometimes of Grammatical forms and rules. the verbal nouns, must be regarded as an excess of wealth. The sparing use of the ancient terminations which mark the plural has somewhat obscured the distinction between plurals, collectives, abstract nouns, and feminines in general. In its manner of employing the verbal tenses genuine Arabic still exhibits traces of that poetical freedom which we see in Hebrew; this characteristic disappears in the later literary language. ”

“ But we must not suppose that people, for instance, from Mosul, Morocco, Ṣan‘ā, and the interior of Arabia would be able to understand one another without difficulty. It is a total error to regard the difference between the Arabic dialects and the ancient language as a trifling one, or to represent the development of these dialects as something wholly unlike the development of the Romance languages. No living Arabic dialect diverges from classical Arabic so much as French or Rouman from Latin ”

“ Besides these, there are other letters, whose power is extremely difficult to be acquired by an European, because no language in Europe possesses sounds similar to the Arabic letters خ غ ع, nor has any language, except, perhaps, the English, a letter with the power of the Arabian ث. Those who travel into Asia or Africa scarcely ever become sufficiently masters of the Arabic to speak it fluently, which radical defect proceeds altogether from their not learning, while studying it, the peculiar distinction of the synonymous letters. ”

“ That Arabic is so generally known throughout the Orient is doubtless no greater marvel than that mere children in Paris speak French. But, however convenient, as an inter-racial and commercial language, Arabic may be to those accustomed to it, or naturally conversant with it, it is most difficult to learn by Western races. With ten years’ study one may become a good scholar, and proficiency may follow for the persistent few. This will explain why inscriptions, texts, and verses on rugs and carpets are meaningless, except to the most erudite ”

“ There is no such division in Islam as that which prevents the average English churchman from knowing about and appreciating a religious movement at work in the Coptic or Serbian church. The common life of Islam is largely based on the use of the Arabic language as the medium of daily life, or at least of prayer and the medium of scholarship, and this was extremely effective before the inclusion of large Turkish and Indian elements which have never really become Arabic speaking. ”

“ Their language in daily life is the Egyptian Arabic of the rest of the country; as a rule, they are better educated than the rest of the people, and are extensively employed as clerks and bookkeepers, not only in shops, but in various government offices. They have a cleaner and better kept appearance on the whole than the Moslem Arabs, and some of them are such great rascals, and show so much skill in swindling, as to indicate considerable familiarity with the principles of civilization. ”

“ The knowledge [313] of the Arabic language was gradually disappearing among the Jews of Europe, and they were indebted for their knowledge of science and philosophy to the works translated. Philosophy was declining among the Arabs themselves owing to the disfavor of the powers that be, and many of the scientific writings of the Arabs owe their survival to the Hebrew translations or transcriptions in Hebrew characters which escaped the proscription of the Mohammedan authorities. ”

“ The Arabic peoples first difficulty of the Arab movement was to say who the Arabs were. Being a manufactured people, their name had been changing in sense slowly year by year. Once it meant an Arabian. There was a country called Arabia; but this was nothing to the point. There was a language called Arabic; and in it lay the test. It was the current tongue of Syria and Palestine, of Mesopotamia, and of the great peninsula called Arabia on the map. Before the Moslem conquest, these areas were inhabited by diverse peoples, speaking languages of the Arabic family. ”

“ A person who in Arabia or elsewhere should trust to his knowledge of classical Arabic only would resemble those travellers from the north who endeavour to make themselves understood by Italian waiters through the medium of a kind of Latin. The written language has, it is true, greatly retarded the development of the dialects. ”

“ The Orientals deal largely in hyperbole, and scatter numbers and values with the most reckless profusion. The Arabic, like the Hebrew, its sister tongue, and other old original tongues of Man, is a language of roots, and abounds with the boldest metaphors. Now, exaggeration is but the imperfect form of metaphor. The expression is always a splendid amplification of the simple fact. ”

“ In what may be termed the Middle Age of Arabic literature, beginning with the triumph of the Mohammadan religion and extending to the foundation of the Empire of Baghdád, the power of eloquence over the educated classes of the Arabs probably increased in proportion as it became less familiar to them: for early in this age they began to simplify their spoken language in consequence of their intercourse with strangers, who could not generally acquire the difficult, old dialect of their conquerors, which consequently began to be confined to literary compositions. ”

“ Most of the French settlers are too conceited and too ignorant to learn Arabic, though this is by no means the fault of the Government, which provides free public classes for instruction in that language in the chief towns of Algeria and Tunisia. The result is that the natives who meet most with foreigners have, without the most ordinary facilities enjoyed by the Europeans, to pick up a jargon which often does much more credit to them than the usual light acquaintance of the foreigner with Arabic does to him. ”

“ That which we call the Arabic was, anterior to Mohammed, the spoken dialect of the tribes occupying the central part of the country; that is to say, of that part of the population which was of purest Semitic blood, and less affected than any other, in language, manners, and institutions, by disturbing foreign influences. As a natural consequence of the political and religious revolution by which Islamism became the religion, first of Arabia, then of so large a portion of Asia and Africa, this dialect has had a career almost comparable with that of the Latin. ”

“ The Arabic of the Koran is taught as a dead language in the college of Mecca. By the Danish traveller, this ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of Hejaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c., to the Provencal, Spanish, and Portuguese, (Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie, p. 74, &c.) ”

“ The Arabic race occupied at first a circumscribed territory and came little into contact with the surrounding nations so that the forces which produce linguistic decay were absent. The only thing that will preserve a language pure next to isolation is a classical literature. ”

“ The Malay language, with the Moslem conquest, was also touched by Arabic influence and likewise adopted its alphabet. In Africa its influence was yet more strongly felt. The language extended over all the northern half of the continent and is still growing in use255 to-day. The geographical nomenclature of the interior is Arabic and Arabs preceded Livingstone, Stanley and Speke in all their journeys. The languages of the southern Sudan, the Hausa, and even those of Guinea borrowed largely from the Arabic. Europe itself did not escape the influence of the conquering Semitic tongue. ”

“ To use the words of one of the most eminent modern authorities, "It is now generally recognised that in grammatical structure the Arabic preserves much more of the original forms than either the Hebrew or Aramaic."
History, ethnology, and philology now combine inexorably to place the account of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of races at Babel among the myths; but their work has not been merely destructive: more and more strong are the grounds for belief in an evolution of language. ”

“ In text "Ghayth al-Hátíl = incessant rain of small drops and widely dispread. In Arab. the names for clouds, rain and all such matters important to a pastoral race are well nigh innumerable. Poetry has seized upon the material terms and has converted them into a host of metaphors; for "the genius of the Arabic language, like that of the Hebrew, is to form new ideas by giving a metaphorical signification to material objects (e.g. 'Azud, lit. the upper arm; met. a helper) ." ”

“ Arabic is a very rich language with numerous synonyms, so much so that it has been described by a wag as a language in which every word has its own meaning and exactly the opposite, and a third meaning of some kind of camel. ”