The Arabic Language

This is an updated, improved and expanded version of a classic which first appeared in 2000. The object is the illustration of the history and characteristics of the two varieties of the Arabic language, namely., the standard type (fusha), and the vernacular/colloquial ([ammiyah/darijah) in their synchronic and diachronic continuum. The 17 chapter-work sketches the history of the study of Arabic in Western Europe, its position in the Semitic language family, the pre-Islamic languages of the Arab and their dialects, the evolution of Arabic, as the language of religion, administration, and culture in Islamic lands from the 6th century onwards, and apropos the Qur’an and the pre-Islamic poetry. Also examined are the theories and methods of the Arab grammarians in the analyses of the Arabic word structure; the central subjects of which are the i[rab (declension of vowels) phenomenon, morphology (tasrif), syntax (nahw), phonology ([ilm al-aswat). Illustrated in relation to these is lexicography which major representative works from the early Islamic period to-date are discussed, and on their margins are indicated the principles of great etymology (al-ishtiqaq al-kabir), and greater etymology (al-ishtiqaq al-akbar) on which the definitional and stratigraphical paradigms of the native lexicographers and lexicologists are based. (Cf. Yasir Suleiman, ‘Ideology, Grammar-Making, and the Standardization of Arabic’, in In the Shadow of Arabic.