Arabic

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Arabic Alphabet

By origin and genetic classification, Arabic language belongs to the «Central Semitic group of languages» ​​along with Hebrew and Aramaic. The choice of the term «Semitic», was derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the genealogical accounts, of the biblical Book of Genesis.

The Arabic alphabet is written from right to left in a cursive style, and nowadays includes 28 letters. In the early Quranic manuscripts, only 15 distinct letter-shapes had to do duty for 28 sounds.

«Old Arabic» (a collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of modern Arabic).

The first recorded text in the Arabic alphabet was written in year 512 (Muhammad was born in Mecca approximately the year 570). It is a trilingual dedication in Greek, Syriac and Arabic found at Zabad in Syria. The version of the Arabic alphabet used includes only 22 letters, of which only 15 are different, being used to note 28 phonemes.

The Arabic alphabet is first attested in its classical form only in the 7th century, about a century after the death of Muhammad. In those times, while writing down the Quran, scribes realized, that working out which of the ambiguous letters a particular letter was from context, was laborious, and not always possible, so a proper methodology was required. Only by the 2nd century AH, the language had been standardized by Arabic grammarians.

Arabic Diacritics

The first «Arabic diacritics system», or so-called "harakat" was developed by Abu al-Aswad, who devised a system of dots to signal the three short vowels (along with their respective allophones) of Arabic. This system uses red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel. The early manuscripts of the Quran did not use the vowel signs for every letter requiring them, but only for letters where they were necessary for a correct reading.

The precursor to the system, we know today, is Al Farahidi's system. Al-Farāhīdī found that the task of writing using two different colours was tedious and impractical.

One of the earliest known dictionaries of any language - «Kitab al-Ayn», and the first dictionary written for the Arabic language was compiled in the eighth century by Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi. Al-Farahidi introduced the dictionary with an outline of the phonetics of Arabic, where he tried to rationalize the empirical practice of lexicography, explicitly referring to the calculation of arrangements and combinations in order to exhaustively enumerate all words in Arabic. According to al-Farahidi's theory, what is known as the Arabic language, is merely the phonetically realized part of the entire possible language.

Birmingham University's Quran manuscript

Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest examples in existence. The fragments, written on sheep or goat skin from between 568 AD and 645 AD.

Hebrew Diacritics

«Hebrew diacritics system», or Niqqud - is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

See also: «Qere and Ketiv», «Pentateuch. Ketib va-Iqrā».

Древнейшие манускрипты на иврите, Золотой Век народа Израиля **** изгнание, вынужденная иммиграция, образование разрозненных диаспор у еврейского народа **** принудительная ассимиляция, преследование и притеснения **** сокращение, а затем полная утеря носителей иврита, деградация языка до рудиментарного уровня, возникновение и укоренение синкретического языка - идиша **** осознание важности восстановления мертвого языка - иврита, консолидация усилий по восстановлению языка Ветхого Завета **** завершение восстановления иврита, обретение собственного государства.

См. также «Иврит».

The language of The Quran

English historian Edward Gibbon writes in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

«Under the last of the Umayyads, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean ... We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress of Islam diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Quran were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris.»

«Elative» (gradation)

In Semitic linguistics, «Elative» (gradation), is a stage of gradation that can be used to express comparatives or superlatives. The Arabic elative has a special inflection, similar to that of colour and defect adjectives but differs in the details.

E.g. The adjective كبير kabīr 'big', changes to أكبر ’akbar in the default elative, and then كبرى kubrā in the feminine singular, أكابر ’akābir in the masculine plural and كبريات kubrayāt in the feminine plural.

Сonfrontation

The Bedouin dialects of Najd region, were probably the most conservative, romanticizing the "purity" of the language of the desert-dwellers (as opposed to the "corrupted" dialects of the city-dwellers) expressed in many medieval Arabic works, especially those on grammar. Thus, exegetes, theologians, and grammarians who entertained the idea of the presence of "impurities" (for example, naturalized loanwords) in the Quran were severely criticized and their proposed etymologies denounced in most cases.

Finale

In 2007 journalist-publisher Frank Schirrmacher wrote an article for the Frankfurt Book Fair predicting that the Corpus Coranicum would spark similar outrage among Muslims, comparing it to the punishment of Prometheus for bringing fire to mankind. He was enthusiastic that the fruits of that research might even «overthrow rulers and topple kingdoms».

See Also

Hebrew/Иврит