Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic (CA), also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times (7th to 9th centuries). It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the direct descendant used today throughout the Arab World in writing and in formal speaking, for example, prepared speeches, some radio broadcasts, and non-entertaining content.^[1] While the lexis and stylistics of Modern Standard Arabic are different from Classical Arabic, the morphology and syntax have remained basically unchanged (though MSA uses a subset of the syntactic structures available in CA).^[2] The vernacular dialects, however, have changed more dramatically.^[3] In the Arab world, 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 is written in Classical Arabic, the language is considered by most Muslims to be sacred.^[4] It is mostly the language in which Muslims recite their prayers, regardless of what language they use in everyday life.

History

Classical Arabic has its origins in the central and northern parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and is distinct from Old South Arabian languages that were spoken in the southern parts of the peninsula, modern day Yemen.^[5] Classical Arabic is the only surviving descendant of the Old North Arabian languages. The oldest inscription so far discovered in Classical Arabic goes back to 328 AD and is known as the Namārah inscription, written in the Nabataean alphabet and named after the place where it was found in southern Syria 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 is somewhat analogous to the relationship of Latin and the Romance languages or Middle Chinese and the modern Chinese languages.

Morphology

Classical Arabic is one of the Semitic languages, and therefore has many similarities in conjugation and pronunciation to Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, and Amharic. Its use of vowels to modify a base group of consonants resembles similar constructions in Biblical Hebrew.

For example:

• kataba, he wrote
• yaktubu, he writes
• maktūbun, written (words)
• kitābun, book
• kutubun, books (broken plural)
• kitābatun, writing
• kitābātun, writings (feminine sound plural)
• maktabun, desk
• maktabatun, library
• kātibun, writer
• kātibūna, writers (masculine sound plural)
• kuttābun, writers (broken plural)
• miktābun, writing machine

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

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 scholar Sibāwayhi. Recent efforts aim to annotate the entire Arabic Grammar of the Quran, using traditional syntax:

Phonology

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

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

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: /ɡʲ/
3. /l/ is emphatic ([lˤ]) only in /ʔalˤːɑːh/, the name of God, i.e. Allah,^[11] except after i or ī when it is unemphatic: bismi l-lāhi /bismillaːhi/ ('in the name of God').
4. /ɾˠ/ (velarised [ɾ]) before "i" is pronounced without velarization.

The consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" /tˤ, ɮˤ, sˤ, ðˤ/ were either velarised [tˠ, ɬˠ, sˠ, ðˠ] or pharyngealised [tˤ, ɮˤ, sˤ, ðˤ].^[12] In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, /sˤ/ is written ⟨S⟩; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, ⟨ṣ⟩. The consonants /[ɾˠ, qˠ, ʁˠ, χˠ] are pronounced with velarization.

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

• The palatals /ç/ /ɟ/ (⟨ش‎⟩‎ ⟨ج⟩‎) shifted. /ç/ became postalveolar /ʃ/, and /ɟ/ became postalveolar /dʒ/ or /ʒ/ or velar {{[ɡ]}}.
• The uvular fricatives /χˠ/ /ʁˠ/ (⟨خ⟩‎ ⟨غ⟩‎) became velar or post-velar: /x/ /ɣ/
• /ɮˤ/ (⟨ض‎⟩‎) became /dˤ/ (Certain Tajweed traditions actually preserve the original value of this sound synchronically.) See also Voiced alveolar lateral fricative

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

The language of Classical Arabic is essentially that of the so-called poetic koine of the pre-Islamic poets, a standardized prestige dialect based on conservative Bedouin dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula. A similar but slightly different koine had been adopted in Mecca, in a form adapted somewhat to the phonology of the spoken Meccan dialect of the time, and it was in this form that the Koran was given. The Koran was later rephonemicized into the standard poetic koine. Two of the differences between these dialects are represented in the modern Arabic writing system:

• The original poetic koine had preserved the Proto-Semitic glottal stop in all positions, whereas the Meccan variant had eliminated it everywhere except initially, following the spoken Meccan dialect. (Similar changes occur in all the modern varieties of Arabic.) Depending on the surrounding vowels, the glottal stop was either deleted entirely, converted to /w/ or /j/, or deleted after lengthening a preceding short vowel. The Koran as originally written down represented these changes; since the document was considered sacred, the letters were not changed. Instead, the letter representing the "incorrect" /w/, /j/ or long vowel that ought to be pronounced as a glottal stop had a diacritic (termed hamza) written over it to cancel out its inherent sound; if no such letter existed, the hamza was written between the existing letters. This is the origin of the complex rules regarding the writing of the glottal stop.
• In the dialects underlying the poetic koine, original word-final /aja, aji, aju/ had developed into /aː/, merging with final /aː/ from other sources. In the spoken Meccan dialect, however, these word-final sequences did not merge in this way, instead remaining as a separate vowel, perhaps pronounced /eː/. Correspondingly, the Meccan koine variant split the standard koine's final /aː/ in two, in ways that corresponded with the spoken dialect. In writing the Meccan variant, final /aː/ was written with the letter alif, while final /eː/ was written with the letter yāʾ, normally used for /j/. When rephonemicized into the standard poetic koine, the occurrences of yāʾ meant to be pronounced as /j/ or /aː/. Only recently, two dots was created to be written under the final yāʾ in order to distinguish it from the pronunciation of /aː/. This invention was not adopted by all Arabic speaking nations, as for example, Egypt and Sudan never add two dots under the final yāʾ in handwriting and print, even in printed Koran. Yāʾ for /aː/ was named alif maqṣūrah "broken alif" or alif layyinah "flexible alif". This is why, final /aː/ can be written either with a normal alif or alif maqṣūrah.

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).

Notes

See also

• Arabic language
• Modern Standard Arabic
• Ancient North Arabian
• Quranic Arabic Corpus
• Arabic–English Lexicon

References

• Bin-Muqbil, Musaed (2006). Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Arabic Emphatics and Gutturals. University of Wisconsin–Madison 
• Holes, Clive (2004) Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties Georgetown University Press. ISBN 1-58901-022-1
• Versteegh, Kees (2001) The Arabic Language Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0-7486-1436-2 (Ch.5 available in link below)
• Watson, Janet (2002). The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic. New York: Oxford University Press 
• Bin Radhan, Neil. Die Wissenschaft des Tadschwīd. 

External links

• Institute of the Language of the Quran
• LearnArabicOnline – an authoritative, online project for Classical Arabic (CA)
• The Development of Classical Arabic
• The Arabic Alphabet
• Arabic Grammar Checking
• Arabic Intelligent tutoring system
• Classical Arabic Morphology
• Classical Arabic Grammar
• Classical Arabic Blog
• Arabic grammar online
• Online Classical Arabic Reader
• Classical Arabic Grammar Documentation – Visualization of Classical Quranic Grammar (i'3raab)
• Die Wissenschaft des Tadschwīd
• EssentialIlm – Free Video Lessons on Arabic