Arabic

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The common language of the land is the Arabic, which is divided into two types—the classical and the common, or the language of learning and that of daily speech. The classical language is one, but the common language is a labyrinth of dialects. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even reduced to its own resources, this art of Arabic calligraphy is one of the most marvellous forms of decorative skill that has ever sprung from human imagination. It is perhaps the only science of ornament of which it may be said without exaggeration that it possesses a soul, for like the voice, it expresses thought. Owing nothing even to the most cultured parts of the outer world, its independence resembles that of music and seems like the stenography of the innermost beatings of the heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is true that in Arabic very many features are preserved more faithfully than in the cognate languages,—for instance, nearly all the original abundance of consonants, the short vowels in open syllables, particularly in the interior of words, and many grammatical distinctions which in the other languages are more or less obscured. On the other hand, Arabic has coined, simply from analogy, a great number of forms which, owing to their extreme simplicity, seem at the first glance to be primitive, but which nevertheless are only modifications of the primitive forms ”

“ Fortunately for the common needs of life, Arabic-speaking people are content with an ordinary vocabulary, and even the educated reserve the richness of their mother-tongue for special occasions. The appalling thirteen forms of the verb of grammarians dwindle in practice to the intransitive, transitive, and an impersonal form, with occasionally a passive form, and prepositions are considered sufficient without the inflection of the various cases. ”

“ The whole structure of the work is intended to be such as will make it available to English scholars unacquainted with the Arabic language; and, consequently, most of the information given will be found under English words rather than under their Arabic equivalents. For example, for information regarding the attributes of the Divine Being, the reader must refer to the English God, and not to the Arabic allah; for all the ritual and laws regarding the liturgical service, to the English prayer, and not to the Arabic salat ”

“ The genius of the two languages (Arabic and English) belonging, as they do, to opposite groups of speech-form, presents no point of union; and it seems to me, therefore, that the only satisfactory way of rendering Arabic poetry in English verse is to content oneself generally with observing the exterior form of the stanza, the movement of the rhyme and (as far as possible) the identity in number of the syllables composing the beits.
The principal Arabic metres are sixteen in number, each subdivided by numerous variations ”

“ But the character of the two former words seems to entitle them not to be passed over in this Glossary. The Arabic is a loan-word from Aramaic targĕmān, metargĕmān, 'an interpreter'; the Jewish Targums, or Chaldee paraphrases of the Scriptures, being named from the same root. The original force of the Aramaic root is seen in the Assyrian ragāmu, 'to speak,' rigmu, 'the word.' See Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., 1883, p. 73, and Delitsch, The Hebrew Lang. viewed in the Light of Assyrian Research, p. 50. In old Italian we find a form somewhat nearer to the Arabic. (See quotation from Pegolotti below.) ”

“ Their own speech in Arabic sounds very strange when translated into our own tongue, as the Egyptians, and indeed all the races which speak Arabic, are very fond of using big words, and they invariably express themselves in the most formal and dignified manner. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Everyone knows that the Arabic abounds in d’s, and perhaps the philologists are right in calling it the most ancient of languages, since the a is the most natural and easy to pronounce of all the letters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With so few female readers, and the majority of men even, insufficiently educated to understand the magnificent classical translation into Arabic, one within the grasp of every man, woman, and child was urgently needed. ”

“ And, though it must be granted that the Arabic is extremely fine and copious, so as to afford words sufficient to express with elegance and propriety every subject, it is, nevertheless, not sufficient of itself, any more than any other language, to make a man an author; there being a manifest difference between language and style, insomuch that a man may write the best language in the world, and use the most proper and significant words, and yet not be worth the reading. ”

“ He proposes the one to him who follows Him, the other to him who goes astray from Him.”
And hast revealed them unto babes, Gr. νηπίοις, or infants. So the Arabic, meaning to ignorant, unskilled, and uneloquent men (such as the Apostles, who seemed to the Scribes and worldly persons to be rude, and as foolish as children) , in order that Thou mayest exhibit in them the power of Thy grace and Thy light, by which Thou hast made the tongues of these infants eloquent, so that their sound is gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every school and every brotherhood has its own distinctive teachings and technicalities, and its peculiar practices and observances, its saints and doctors, great men and founders.
A student will also readily discover a different character in Arabic and Persian Sufism. The Arabic being nearer to Christianity takes up much from it, but moulds it in its peculiar way ”

“ 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 former, in degenerated dialects, is still spoken in Arabia, in parts of western Asia, and throughout northern Africa, and forms an important part of the Turkish, Persian, and other Oriental languages. The Arabic is characterized by its guttural sounds, by the richness and pliability of its vowels, by its dignity, volume of sound, and vigor of accentuation and pronunciation. Like all Semitic languages, it is written from right to left; the characters are of Syrian origin, and were introduced into Arabia before the time of Mohammed. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Through the industry of Arabic philologists we are able to make ourselves intimately acquainted with the system, and still more with Vocabulary. the vocabulary of the language. Although they have not always performed their task in a critical manner, we are obliged to thank them sincerely. We should be all the more disposed to admire the richness of the ancient Arabic vocabulary when we remember how simple are the conditions of life amongst the Arabs, how painfully monotonous their country, and consequently how limited the range of their ideas must be. ”

“ So large in fact is the vocabulary of Arabic writers that the classics require copious explanatory notes for the Arabs themselves and some of them have written notes on the notes, to explain the difficult words used in explaining others more difficult. Moreover Arabic literature is so vast in its extent that acquaintance with the vocabulary of a dozen authors in one line of literature does not yet enable the student to appreciate the language of other works. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Luis Torres and I alike had knowledge of Arabic. We had no Persian that might be nearer yet, but Arabia being immemorially caravan-knit with India, it was thought that it might be understood. But these bare folk had no notion of it, nor of the Hebrew which Luis tried next. The Latin did not do, the Greek of which I had a little did not do. But there is an old, old language called Gesture. If, wherever there is a common language there is one people, then in end and beginning surely we are one folk around the earth! ”