Photo:1
Photo:2
Photo:3
Photo:4
Photo:1 Photo:2 Photo:3 Photo:4 |
| Classical, Modern Standard, and spoken Arabic | |
| 2>
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Theoretically, Classical Arabic is considered normative, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-ʿArab). In practice, however, modern authors almost never write in pure Classical Arabic, instead using a literary language with its own grammatical norms and vocabulary, commonly known as Modern Standard Arabic. This is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" (فصحى fuṣḥā) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic.
Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows:
Certain grammatical constructions of CA that have no counterpart in any modern dialect (e.g., the energetic mood) are almost never used in MSA.
No modern spoken variety of Arabic has case distinctions. As a result, MSA is generally composed without case distinctions in mind, and the proper cases added after the fact, when necessary. (Because most case endings are noted using final short vowels, which are normally left unwritten in the Arabic script, it is unnecessary to determine the proper case of most words.) The practical result of this is that MSA, like English and Mandarin Chinese, is written in a strongly determined word order, and alternative orders that were used in CA for emphasis are rare. In addition, because of the lack of case marking in the spoken varieties, most speakers are not able to consistently use the correct endings in extemporaneous speech. As a result, spoken MSA tends to drop or regularize the endings except when reading from a prepared text.
In CA, the verb normally precedes the subject (VSO order); when the subject is fronted (SVO order), it is usually accompanied by the focusing particle ʼinna. MSA, following the spoken varieties, tends towards SVO order, and rarely uses ʼinna.
The numeral system in CA is complex and heavily tied in with the case system. This system is never used in MSA, even in the most formal of circumstances; instead, a significantly simplified system is used, approximating the system of the conservative spoken varieties.
MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., ðahaba "to go") that is not present in the spoken varieties. However, when multiple Classical synonyms are available, MSA tends to prefer words with cognates in the spoken varieties over words without cognates. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined a large number of terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times (and in fact continues to evolve[5]). Some words have been borrowed from other languages, notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling not real pronunciation (e.g., فيلم fīlm "film" or dimūqrāṭīyyah "democracy"). However, the current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., farʿ "branch", also used for the branch of a company or organization; jināḥ "wing", also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.) or to coin new words using existing lexical resources (e.g., širkah "corporation", ištirākiyyah "socialism", both ultimately based on the verb šarika "to share, partner with"; jāmiʿah "university", based on jamāʿah "to gather, unite"; jumhūriyyah "republic", based on jumhūr "multitude"). An earlier tendency was to re-purpose older words that had fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif "telephone" < "invisible caller (in Sufism)"; jarīdah "newspaper" < "palm-leaf stalk").
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages.[6] The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows,[7] as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic. Historically, Algerian Arabic was taught in French Algeria under the name darija.
Flag of the Arab league, used in some cases for the Arabic Language.
Flag used in some cases for the Arabic Language
Note that even during Muhammad's lifetime, there were dialects of spoken Arabic. Muhammad spoke in the dialect of Mecca, in the western Arabian peninsula, and it was in this dialect that the Quran was written down. However, the dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula were considered the most prestigious at the time, so the language of the Quran was ultimately converted to follow the eastern phonology. It is this phonology that underlies the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. The phonological differences between these two dialects account for some of the complexities of Arabic writing, most notably the writing of the glottal stop or hamza (which was preserved in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech) and the use of ʾalif maqṣūrah (representing a sound preserved in the western dialects but merged with ā in eastern speech).
[edit] Tags:Algeria,Middle East,Oman,Mutually Unintelligible,Quran,Islam,Qur'an,Pre-islamic Arabia,Literary Language,North Africa,English,Soap Operas,Talk Shows,Maltese,Roman Catholic,Malta,Latin Script,French Algeria,Darija,Mecca,Arabian Peninsula,Glottal Stop,Chinese,French, | |
| Language and dialect | |
| 2>
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2011)
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, similar to the issue with Chinese, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, etc. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a significant complicating factor: A single written form, significantly different from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites a number of sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language, despite significant issues of mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions.[citation needed]
From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages. This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages. Also, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to all non-Moroccans other than Algerians and Tunisians, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers. However, there is some mutual comprehensibility between conservative varieties of Arabic even across significant geographical distances. This suggests that the spoken varieties, at least, should linguistically be considered separate languages.
On the other hand, a significant difference between Arabic and the Romance languages is that the latter also correspond to a number of different standard written varieties, each of which separately informs the related spoken varieties, while all spoken Arabic varieties share a single written language. Indeed, a similar situation exists with the Romance languages in the case of Italian. As spoken varieties, Milanese, Neapolitan and Sicilian (among others) are different enough to be largely mutually incomprehensible, yet since they share a single written form (Standard Italian), they are often said by Italians to be dialects of the same language. As in many similar cases, the extent to which the Italian varieties are locally considered dialects or separate languages depends to a large extent on political factors, which can change over time. Linguists are divided over whether and to what extent to incorporate such considerations when judging issues of language and dialect.
[edit] Tags:Tunisia,Diglossia,Urdu,Hindi,Romance Languages,Sicilian,Cite,References Or Sources,Reliable Sources,Challenged,Serbian,Croatian,Spanish,Italian, | |
| Influence of Arabic on other languages | |
| 2>
Main article: Influence of Arabic on other languages
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is an important source of vocabulary for languages such as Baluchi, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, English, French, German, Gujarati, Hindustani, Italian, Indonesian, Kurdish, Kutchi , Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sindhi, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (كتاب kitāb) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "livre", "libro", "llibre" and "livro", respectively, German and English which use the Germanic "Buch" and "Book", Tagalog which uses "aklat", Hebrew which uses "sefer", Gujarati which uses "chopdi", Marathi which uses "pustak", Malayalam which uses "pustakam" and Bengali which uses "boi".
In addition, English has many Arabic loanwords, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Examples of such words include admiral, adobe, alchemy, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, alkaline, almanac, amber, arsenal, assassin, candy, carat, cipher, coffee, cotton, ghoul, hazard, jar, kismet, lemon, loofah, magazine, mattress, sherbet, sofa, sumac, tariff and many other words. Other languages such as Maltese[8] and Kinubi derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
Terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit "prayer" < salat) (صلاة ṣalāt), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq "logic"), economic items (like English coffee) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano "so-and-so") and everyday conjunctions (like Hindustani lekin "but", or Spanish hasta "until"). Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as salat 'prayer' and imam 'prayer leader.'
In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic. For example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri. Some words in English and other European languages are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them are commonly used words like "coffee" (qahwah), "cotton" (quṭn) and "magazine" (maḫāzin). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali", "zenith" and "nadir". Some words in common use, such as "intention" and "information", were originally calques of Arabic philosophical terms.
See also: list of Arabic loanwords in English
Arabic words also made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara. Variants of Arabic words such as kitāb (book) have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.[9]
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages Aramaic,[10] which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts). In addition, many cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from Iranian, notably Middle Persian or Parthian, and to a lesser extent, (Classical) Persian,[11] and Hellenistic Greek (kimiya has as origin the Greek chymia, meaning in that language the melting of metals); see Histoire de la Médecine de l`Antiquité au XXe siècle, Roger Dachez, Tallandier 2008, p. 251), alembic (distiller) from ambix (cup), qalam (pen, pencil, feather) from kalamata (cane), almanac (climate), from almenichiakon (calendar) (for the origin of the last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Foundations of Islam, Seuil, L'Univers Historique 2002. Some arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare`s above-cited book:
- rahman (merciful), from Hebrew and Aramaic, where it had a similar meaning, but also meant the very proper name of the unique God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims from the Arabian peninsula (the Arabs themselves used it similarly: during the life of Prophet Muhammad, and by others, e.g., Musailima ibn Habib) who were the initiators of another monotheistic sect, whose only one God was called in his own name Ar-Rahman.
- nabi (prophet), old non-Arab term that came into Arabic from Aramaic and Hebrew before the emergence of Islam.
- medina, word of Aramaic or Hebrew origin; Alfred-Louis de Prémare explains in The Foundations Of Islam (p. 101) that the Jews were long before Arabs a sedentary population of 'Arabian desert'.
- jizya, the tax imposed by the caliphate on individuals of religion other than Islam (dhimmis), a tax in addition to the levy on agricultural land (kharadjy). The term comes from the Syriac (gzita), which is in turn borrowed from Persian (gazit).
- kharaj, kharadji, land tax originally imposed only on non-Muslims, which comes from the Greek term "khorigia", a term which designate the act by which the wealthy citizens of the Greek polis financed the chorus of ancient Greek theater.
- jazeera, as in the well-known form Al Jazeera, means island and has its origin in Syriac gazīra/gzīrta.
- faruk (Savior), is the naturalized form of the Aramaic word poruk, which in the Syriac Bible (Peshita) means the Savior or Liberator. Once naturalized, the term produced mnemonic derivatives or shortcuts, so the f-r-q (meaning cutting) became a folk etymological explanation for faruk: the Savior was one who cuts (separates) the truth from falsehood.
- munafiq (hypocrite), a term borrowed from Ethiopian, where it had the sense of heretical sect.
- lāzaward is taken from Persian lājward, the name of a blue stone, lapis lazuli. This word was borrowed in several European languages to mean (light) blue - azure in English, azur in French and azul in Spanish.
As, throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of Latin in Europe, many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc. were coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots, especially in Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
[edit] Tags:Semitic,Syria,Ipa,Hebrew,Ethiopia,Islamic World,Persian,Turkish,Bengali,Malay,Hausa,Greek,Syriac, | |
| Arabic and Islam | |
| 2>
Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is closely associated with the religion of Islam because the Qur'an is written in the language, but it is nevertheless also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaean Tags:Iraq, | |
zote monety |