Classical Arabic (CA), also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language Arabic (العربية al-ʿarabīyah, ( Arabic pronunciation ) or عربي ʿarabi) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million used in literary texts from Umayyad The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the four Islamic caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the city of Mecca, Damascus was the capital of their and Abbasid The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic Caliphates of the Islamic Empire [disambiguation needed]. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphs from all but Al Andalus times (7th to 9th centuries). It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes Arabs are a semitic people, descending from various Old North Arabian tribes. Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in formal speech. It is part of the Arabic macrolanguage (MSA) is the direct descendent used today throughout the Arab World The Arab World refers to Arabic-speaking countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. It consists of 25 countries and territories with a combined population of 358 million people straddling North in writing and in formal speaking, for example, prepared speeches, some radio broadcasts, and non-entertaining content.[1] While the lexis and stylistics Stylistics is the study of varieties of language whose properties position that language in context, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language. A variety, in this sense, is a situationally distinctive use of language. For example, the language of Modern Standard Arabic are different from Classical Arabic, the morphology Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being (with clitics) the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dog, dogs, and dog and syntax In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages have remained basically unchanged (though MSA uses a subset of the syntactic structures available in CA).[2] The vernacular dialects The Arabic language is a Semitic language with many varieties that diverge widely from one another—both from country to country and within a single country. A distinction is to be made between Classical/Standard Arabic and these "colloquial" variants. In sociolinguistic terms, Arabic in its native environment typically occurs in a &, however, have changed more dramatically.[3] In the Arab world The Arab League , officially called the League of Arab States (Arabic: جامعة الدول العربية‎ Jāmiʻat ad-Duwal al-ʻArabiyya), is a regional organisation of Arab states in North and Northeast Africa, and Southwest Asia. It was formed in Cairo on March 22, 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan after 1946), little distinction is made between CA and MSA, and both are normally called al-Fuṣ-ḥā (الفصحى‎) in Arabic, meaning 'the clearly spoken one' or the 'language of eloquence'.

Because the Qur'an The Qur’an is the central religious verbal text of Islam, also sometimes transliterated as Quran, Koran, Qur’ān, or Al-Qur’ān. Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the verbal book of divine guidance and direction for mankind. Its text addresses the Arabic speaking "children of Israel". Muslims also consider the original Arabic is written in Classical Arabic, the language is considered by most Muslims to be sacred A sacred language, "holy language" , or liturgical language, is a language that is cultivated for religious reasons by people who speak another language in their daily life.[4] It is the only language in which most Muslims recite their prayers, regardless of what language they use in everyday life.

Contents

History

Classical Arabic has its origins in the central and northern parts of the Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula , Arabia, Arabistan, and the Arabian subcontinent is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia. The area is an important part of the Middle East and plays a critically important geopolitical role because of its vast reserves of oil and natural gas, and is distinct from Old South Arabian Old South Arabian is the term used for four closely related languages spoken in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. However, there is no doubt that there were a number of other Sayhadic lanhuages (e.g. Awsanic), of which very little evidence survived, however. All those languages were quite distinct from Classical Arabic. There is a languages that were spoken in the southern parts of the peninsula, modern day Yemen Yemen , officially the Republic of Yemen (Arabic: الجمهورية اليمنية al-Jumhuuriyya al-Yamaniyya) [[Media:Ar-al Gumhuriyah al Yamaniyyah.ogg|]] (help·info) is a country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. It has an estimated population of more than 23 million people and is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the.[5] Classical Arabic is the only surviving descendant of the Old North Arabian Ancient North Arabian is a language known from fragmentary inscriptions in Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, dating to between roughly the 6th century BC and the 6th century AD, all written in scripts derived from Epigraphic South Arabian. Pre-classical Arabic , the predecessor of Classical Arabic, seems to have coexisted with these languages languages. The oldest inscription so far discovered in Classical Arabic goes back to 328 CE and is known as the Namārah inscription, written in the Nabataean alphabet The Nabataean alphabet is a consonantal alphabet that was used by the Nabataeans in the 2nd century BC. Important inscriptions are found in Petra. The alphabet is descended from the Aramaic alphabet via the Syriac alphabet. It in turn developed into the Arabic alphabet from the 4th century, which is why its letterforms are intermediate between the and named after the place where it was found in southern Syria Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية السورية‎), is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest in April 1901.[6]

With the spread of Islam, Classical Arabic became a prominent language of scholarship and religious devotion as the language of the Qur'an (at times even spreading faster than the religion).[3] Its relation to modern dialects The Arabic language is a Semitic language with many varieties that diverge widely from one another—both from country to country and within a single country. A distinction is to be made between Classical/Standard Arabic and these "colloquial" variants. In sociolinguistic terms, Arabic in its native environment typically occurs in a & is somewhat analogous to the relationship of Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many and the Romance languages extinct: Anatolian · Paleo-Balkans (Dacian, or Middle Chinese Middle Chinese , or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (6th century - 10th century). The term "Middle Chinese", in contrast to Old Chinese and Modern Chinese, is usually used in the context of historical and the modern Chinese languages Chinese or the Sinitic language (汉语／漢語 Hànyǔ; 华语／華語 Huáyǔ; 中文 Zhōngwén) is a language family consisting of languages which are mostly mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages.

Morphology

Classical Arabic is one of the Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. They constitute a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The most widely spoken Semitic language by far today is Arabic . It is followed by Amharic (2, and therefore has many similarities in conjugation and pronunciation to Hebrew Extinct as a regularly spoken language by the 4th century CE, but survived as a liturgical and literary language; revived in the 1880s, Akkadian Akkadian (also Accadian, Assyro-Babylonian) is an extinct Semitic language (part of the greater Afroasiatic language family) that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate. The name of the language is, Aramaic Aramaic is a Semitic language belonging to the Afroasiatic language family. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic subfamily, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic group of languages, which also includes Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages and is, and Amharic Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in North Central Ethiopia by the Amhara. It is the second most-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working language of several of. Its use of vowels to modify a base group of consonants resembles similar constructions in Biblical Hebrew.

For example:

These words all have some relationship with writing, and all of them contain the three consonants KTB. This group of consonants k-t-b is called a "root." Grammarians assume that this root carries a basic meaning of writing, which encompasses all objects or actions involving writing, and so, therefore, all the above words are regarded as modified forms of this root, and are "obtained" or "derived" in some way from it.

Grammar

Main article: Arabic grammar Arabic grammar is the grammar of the Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages

Grammar in Arabic (قواعد‎, meaning "rules"), underwent development in the late 700s.[7][8] The earliest known Arabic grammarian is ʻAbd Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq. The efforts of three proceeding generations of grammarians culminated in the book of the Persian The Persian people are defined by the use of the Persian language as their mother tongue. However, the term Persian has also a supra-ethnic significance and has been historically referred to a part of Iranian peoples. The origin of the Persian people is traced to the ancient Indo-Iranians , who arrived in parts of Greater Iran circa 2000-1500 BCE scholar Sibāwayhi Abū Bishr ʻAmr ibn ʻUthmān ibn Qanbar Al-Bishrī (Sibuyeh in Persian, سيبويه Sībawayh in Arabic, سیبویه) was a linguist of Persian origin born ca. 760 in the town of Bayza (ancient Nesayak) in the Fars province of Iran, died in Shiraz, also in the Fars, around 180 AH (796–797). Recent efforts aim to annotate the entire Arabic Grammar of the Quran The Quranic Arabic Corpus is an annotated linguistic resource consisting of 77,430 words of Quranic Arabic. The research project is led by Kais Dukes at the University of Leeds, and is part of the Arabic language computing research group within the School of Computing, supervised by Eric Atwell. The project aims to provide a richly annotated, using traditional syntax:

Phonology

See also: Arabic phonology While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in pronunciation, the Arabic language is more properly described as a collection of different varieties or Macrolanguage. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic, which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions. Modern Standard

Classical Arabic had three pairs of long and short vowels: /a/, /i/, and /u/. The following table illustrates this:

Vowels In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃː], where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A Short Long
High A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant /i/ /u/ /iː/ /uː/
Low An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in nearly all spoken languages . The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue. The open vowels identified in the International /a/ /aː/

Like Modern Standard Arabic, Classical Arabic had 28 consonant phonemes:

Classical Arabic consonant phonemes[9]
Bilabial In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: Inter- dental Dental In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as /t/, /d/, /n/, and /l/ in some languages. Dentals are primarily distinguished from sounds in which contact is made with the tongue and the gum ridge, as in English , due to the acoustic similarity of the sounds and the Palatal Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex Velar Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum) Uvular Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead Pharyn- geal Glottal
plain emphatic Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound
Nasal A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue. Rarely, other types of consonants may be nasalized m n
Plosive A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms. Plosives are oral stops with a pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The term is also used to describe oral stops. Many use the term nasal voiceless In linguistics, the term voiceless describes the pronunciation of sounds when the larynx does not vibrate. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation t tˤ k q ʔ
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate. This is its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which b d ɟ2
Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of [f]; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German [x], the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in voiceless In linguistics, the term voiceless describes the pronunciation of sounds when the larynx does not vibrate. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation f θ s1 sˤ ç Ç, ç is a letter in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Kurdish (strictly Kurmanji dialect), Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan, and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c” χ ħ h
voiced ð z ðˤ ʁ ʕ
Lateral l3 ɬˤ
Trill r
Approximant j w
  1. Non-emphatic /s/ may have actually been [ʃ],[10] shifting forward in the mouth before or simultaneously with the fronting of the palatals (see below).
  2. As it derives from proto-semitic *g, /ɟ/ may have been a palatalized velar: /gʲ/
  3. /l/ is emphatic ([lˁ]) only in /ʔalˁːɑːh/, the name of God, i.e. Allah,[11] except after i or ī when it is unemphatic: bismi l-lāh /bismillaːh/ ('in the name of God').

The consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" /tˤ, ɬˤ, sˤ, ðˤ/ were either velarised [tˠ, ɬˠ, sˠ, ðˠ] or pharyngealised [tˤ, ɬˤ, sˤ, ðˤ].[12] In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, /sˁ/ is written ‹S›; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, ‹ṣ›.

There are a number of phonetic changes between Classical Arabic and modern Arabic dialects. These include:[13]

See Arabic alphabet for further details of the IPA representations of contemporary Arabic sounds.

Special symbols

A variety of special symbols exist in the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an that are usually absent in most written forms of Arabic. Many of these serve as aids for readers attempting to accurately pronounce the Classical Arabic found in the Qur'an. They may also indicate prostrations (Sujud), surahs (Ayah), or the ends of chapters (Rub al Hizb).

Qur'anic annotation signs
Code Glyph Name
06D6 ۖ SMALL HIGH LIGATURE SAD WITH LAM WITH ALIF MAKSURA
06D7 ۗ SMALL HIGH LIGATURE QAF WITH LAM WITH ALIF MAKSURA
06D8 ۘ SMALL HIGH MEEM INITIAL FORM
06D9 ۙ SMALL HIGH LAM ALIF
06DA ۚ SMALL HIGH JEEM
06DB ۛ SMALL HIGH THREE DOTS
06DC ۜ SMALL HIGH SEEN
06DD ۝ END OF AYAH
06DE ۞ START OF RUB AL HIZB
06DF ۟ SMALL HIGH ROUNDED ZERO
06E0 ۠ SMALL HIGH UPRIGHT RECTANGULAR ZERO
06E1 ۡ SMALL HIGH DOTLESS HEAD OF KHAH = Arabic jazm • used in some Qur'ans to mark absence of a vowel
06E2 ۢ SMALL HIGH MEEM ISOLATED FORM
06E3 ۣ SMALL LOW SEEN
06E4 ۤ SMALL HIGH MADDA
06E5 ۥ SMALL WAW
06E6 ۦ SMALL YAA
06E7 ۧ ARABIC SMALL HIGH YAA
06E8 ۨ SMALL HIGH NOON
06E9 ۩ PLACE OF SAJDAH
06EA ۪ EMPTY CENTRE LOW STOP
06EB ۫ EMPTY CENTRE HIGH STOP
06EC ۬ ROUNDED HIGH STOP WITH FILLED CENTRE
06ED ۭ SMALL LOW MEEM
From: Unicode Standard - Arabic

Notes

  1. ^ (Bin-Muqbil 2006, p. 14)
  2. ^ (Bin-Muqbil 2006, p. 15)
  3. ^ a b (Watson 2002, p. 8)
  4. ^ "Arabic Language," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. "Classical Arabic, which has many archaic words, is the sacred language of Islam...". Archived 2009-10-31.
  5. ^ "The Collapse of the Marib Dam and the Origin of the Arabs". Arabia Felix. March 30, 2005. Archived from the original on February 9, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080209193302/http://www.arabia-felix.com/printer_20.html.
  6. ^ James A. Bellamy (1985). "A New Reading of the Namārah Inscription". Journal of the American Oriental Society (American Oriental Society) 105 (1): 31–51. doi:10.2307/601538. http://www.jstor.org/stable/601538.
  7. ^ Goodchild, Philip. Difference in Philosophy of Religion, 2003. Page 153.
  8. ^ Sayce, Archibald Henry. Introduction to the Science of Language, 1880. Page 28.
  9. ^ (Watson 2002, p. 13)
  10. ^ (Watson 2002, p. 15)
  11. ^ (Watson 2002, p. 16)
  12. ^ (Watson 2002, p. 2)
  13. ^ (Watson 2002, p. 15-17)

See also

References

External links

Look up Classical Arabic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up Modern Standard Arabic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Look up Fus-ha in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Links to related articles
Arabic · العربية
Overviews Language · Alphabet · History · Transliteration · Numerology · Influence on other languages
Alphabet Arabic numerals · Eastern numerals · Diacritics · Hamza
Letters ʾAlif · Bāʾ · Tāʾ · Ṯāʾ · Ǧīm · Ḥāʾ · Ḫāʾ · Dāl · Ḏāl · Rāʾ · Zayn · Sīn · Šīn · Ṣād · Ḍād · Ṭāʾ · Ẓāʾ · ʿAyn · Ġain · Fāʾ · Qāf · Kāf · Lām · Mīm · Nūn · Hāʾ · Wāw · Yāʾ
Eras Ancient North Arabian · Classical · Modern
Major varieties Modern Standard Arabic (formal) · Maghrebi · Egyptian · Sudanese · Levantine · Arabian · Iraqi · Judeo-Arabic
Academic Literature · Names
Calligraphy and scripts Naskh · Kufic · Thuluth · Ruq'ah · Diwani · Muhaqqaq · Maghrebi · Hejazi · Mashq · Nastaʿlīq · Jawi · Pegon
Linguistics Phonology · Sun and moon letters · ʼIʻrab (inflection) · Grammar · Triliteral root · Mater lectionis · IPA · Quranic Arabic Corpus
Varieties of Arabic
Pre-Islamic Old South Arabian† · Ancient North Arabian† (Safaitic†, Lihyanitic†, Thamudic†, Hasaitic†) · Classical Arabic
Modern Literary Variety Modern Standard Arabic
Maghreb Moroccan Arabic · Algerian Arabic · Tunisian Arabic · Andalusian Arabic† · Libyan Arabic · Jebli Arabic · Jijel Arabic · Saharan Arabic · Hassānīya Arabic · Darija · Maltese · Siculo-Arabic†
Levant Lebanese Arabic · Syrian Arabic · North Syrian Arabic · Palestinian Arabic · Bedawi Arabic · Cypriot Maronite Arabic
Mesopotamia Iraqi Arabic (Baghdad Arabic) · North Mesopotamian Arabic
Arabia Gulf Arabic · Bahrani Arabic · Najdi Arabic · Hejazi Arabic · Sharqi Arabic · Yemeni Arabic · Hadhrami Arabic · Dhofari Arabic · Omani Arabic · Shihhi Arabic
Nile Valley Egyptian Arabic · Sa'idi Arabic · Sudanese Arabic
Peripheral Nigerian Arabic . Chadian Arabic · Khuzestani Arabic · Shirvani Arabic† · Central Asian Arabic · Tajiki Arabic · Uzbeki Arabic
Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Moroccan Arabic · Judeo-Yemeni Arabic · Judeo-Iraqi Arabic (Baghdad Arabic (Jewish)) · Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic · Judeo-Tunisian Arabic
Creoles Nubi language · Babalia Creole Arabic · Juba Arabic
† Extinct

Categories: Arabic languages | Classical languages

 

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