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History of the Arabic Language
by Charlie Jay
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Overview
Prior to the revelation to the prophet Mohammad and the subsequent spread of Arabic as the language of the new religion of Islam, Arabic paled as a linguistic power in comparison to Latin, Greek and other languages of the time. However, within a century after Mohammad's death in 632, Arabic became the lingua franca of a vast region of the world, in one of the most rapid linguistic transformations in history. Its roots and progress are fascinating and helpful in understanding the rise of Islamic culture over a millennium ago.
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Origins and Precursors
Arabic is one of a number of languages (including Hebrew and the now-endangered Aramaic) in the Semitic family of languages, a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic language group. Modern Arabic is further classified as a member of the Arab-Canaanite branch of Western Semitic languages. Like all other Semitic languages, Arabic is the descendant of a so-called "Proto-Semitic" language, which is currently believed to have developed in East Africa and which never evolved in a written form. Arabic and Amharic, the two most recent Semitic languages, both arose in the mid-300s.
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Pre-Islamic Arabic
The earliest extant examples of written Arabic are in the form of tombstone inscriptions, the first from 328 on a tombstone discovered in the desert of Syria and additional inscriptions in the fifth and sixth centuries. Arabic, in the beginning of the seventh century, had numerous dialects and two primary divisions, western and eastern, but it also had a large body of orally transmitted poetry from the 500s, which began to take written form only in the 700s. After the inscriptions, the earliest written work in Arabic that survives is the Qur'an.
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The Qur'an and Arabic
The series of events that led to Arabic's place as the sixth most commonly spoken language in the contemporary world began with the prophesy revealed to the prophet Mohammad, recorded in Arabic in the seventh century in the form of the Qur'an, the central religious text of Islam. Due to the emphasis on studying the Qur'an in its original language, Arabic spread hand in hand with the religion that promoted it. Eventually, use of Arabic for religious functions in the widespread Islamic empire in Asia, Africa and even Europe led to the adoption of the language for administrative use in many Muslim regions as well.
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Arabic Diglossia
Diglossia, from the Greek "two tongues," refers in Arabic to the dichotomy between Modern Standard Arabic, the descendant of the classical Arabic used in the Qur'an, and colloquial Arabic, a huge family of dialectic variants used in different regions. Three theories exist about the development of these two forms of Arabic. One theory asserts that the modern standard form actually developed by fusing elements of several dialects to create one formal mode of the language. Another theory inverts this contention, claiming instead that the various dialects arose from natural language shifts away from the uniform version. Still other scholars argue that dialects were formed through creolization of Arabic: when interactions with speakers of other languages created new hybrid dialects.
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Contemporary Trends
Arabic is currently engaged in a linguistic conflict between hesitation to endorse change in the formal language, based upon its religious significance, and necessity to evolve to reflect modern concepts that did not exist when the Qur'an was written. Due to their disinclination towards dramatic change, Arabic scholars have endeavored to limit the borrowing of foreign words by adapting old Arabic words for new purposes and by adjusting words that are borrowed to appropriately fit into Arabic phonology. Language academies have been established in Cairo, Amman, Baghdad and Damascus, among other locations, in order to curb borrowing and to usher in gradual change to the Arabic language.
