When was arabic language created

So as the world celebrates Arabic on Sunday, it heralds a complicated language, its story difficult to reconstruct because historic truth is still much shrouded and obscured by legends and myths. There are several places in the UAE where people can get to grips with the basics of Arabic or improve existing linguistic skills. Here are five to get you started:. Rym ghazal. Sudan's military head appoints new apex council after takeover.

Britain's forgotten heroes remembered at Sharjah graveyard. FW de Klerk, former president of South Africa, dies at Modern Standard Arabic, a continuation of Classical Arabic with some modifications in grammar and an extensive addition of modern vocabulary, is the language of written communication throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

When educated speakers from different dialectal backgrounds communicate orally, they tend to use what is sometimes known as Educated Spoken Arabic — a mixture of colloquial speech and Modern Standard Arabic. The Arab intellectual awakening of the nineteenth century led to a call for arabization which, in one of its meanings, referred to the policy of adopting Arabic as the national official language of newly independent states.

A second sense, used by some writers, concerned the assimilation of foreign vocabulary into Arabic in a way that would make the language suitable for modern life, while at the same time preserving its essential character.

The new demands placed on the language came to symbolize the conflict between adherence to tradition and the desire for modernity. The modernization of Arabic, an effort in which language academies as well as individuals participated, generally focused on three areas of concern: orthographical reform, grammar simplification, and vocabulary development Abu-Absi.

Orthographical Reform : Between and , the Egyptian academy received over reform proposals, demonstrating the degree to which attention was focused on this area. These proposals ranged from simple modifications in spelling to a complete replacement of the existing system with a Latin-type alphabet. They generally addressed two problems: the high cost of printing due to contextual variations in letter forms and the relative difficulty of learning the Arabic writing system compared with Western alphabets.

The orthographical reform proposals failed because they either represented a break with a very important tradition, introduced new complexities, or fell short of the esthetic standards that Arabs have traditionally placed on the system. Advances in printing technology and the increased use of computers have resolved most of the issues that concerned earlier reformers. Grammar Simplification : The drive for arabization brought to the fore the Arabic diglossic situation — a wide gap between the Classical and the Colloquial varieties.

In searching for a suitable literary and educational standard, some argued for the use of the Classical language with its rich history while others argued for the use of the Colloquial varieties that were more natural and less cumbersome to learn.

Some Colloquial proponents argued that Classical Arabic was a dead language that belonged to a by-gone age, had a complex grammar, and lacked a modern scientific vocabulary. Classical proponents countered by pointing out that Arabic had proven itself in the past through its flexibility and ability to adapt to new situations. Additionally, it was the most important bond among Arabs and of utmost importance to all Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs alike.

Having accepted a modernized version of Classical Arabic Modern Standard Arabic as a common standard among Arabs, the majority of intellectuals agreed on the need for grammar reform and simplification, although they disagreed on the nature and extent of the reform. Some proposed the elimination of certain grammatical contrasts not present in the dialects. Eliminating the subjective form would simplify the grammar and make it closer to familiar spoken dialects. This type of simplification, as might be expected, encountered strong resistance as it threatened to effect a radical structural change in the language.

When the subject of grammar simplification is now discussed, it usually refers to teaching methods aimed at helping learners cope with acquiring the literary language. Vocabulary Development : The development of scientific and technical vocabulary is an ongoing process which has received its fair share of attention.

The Syrian academy is credited with leading the way since the early twentieth century and the Syrian University pioneered the use of Arabic as the language of instruction in fields such as law, science, and medicine. The lack of coordination among the academies, however, and the proliferation of new terminology led to the establishment of the Bureau of Arabization in Rabat in which has published a number of technical dictionaries dealing with various disciplines. The procedure for introducing new vocabulary ideally followed certain steps.

The first step involved searching old dictionaries and texts for an obsolete word which might fit the desired meaning. In real practice, however, scientists, teachers, and journalists have been more pragmatic and more liberal in their use of foreign borrowings.

This has resulted in multiple words for the same concept and the acceptance in common usage of words which may not have been officially endorsed by the academies. In addition to thousands of arabized foreign words now part of Modern Standard Arabic, the language has acquired numerous foreign phrases and expressions more or less literally translated from languages like French and English.

The addition of a large number of new words has made it necessary to channel considerable efforts into lexicography, or the compilation of dictionaries. Traditional Arabic dictionaries listed words alphabetically according to their root consonants. The value of this arrangement lies in revealing the etymological relations among various words.

Some recent dictionaries list words alphabetically and some attempt to combine the traditional root system and the alphabetical system. As both the language of Islam and a medium of culture and learning for five centuries, Arabic came into close contact with several other languages. Asian and African languages such as Urdu, Turkish, Farsi, and Hausa borrowed a large number of Arabic words dealing with various aspects of culture, particularly those related to Islam. Spanish and Portuguese came into direct contact with Arabic as a result of the Arab conquest.

European Crusaders from various linguistic backgrounds interacted with Arabs and acquired words relating to food, clothing, and other aspects of ordinary living. As Europe emerged from its dark ages, it turned to Arabic writings for enlightenment and rediscovered classical Greek and Latin texts preserved in Arabic translations.

Even languages like English, which had relatively little direct contact with Arabic, borrowed many Arabic words, often indirectly through Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish. A linguistic study of the contributions of Arabic to English cites over 2, English words either of Arabic origin or borrowed and assimilated into Arabic before being transmitted to other languages Cannon.

A cursory glance at Arabic loan words in English reveals a linguistic and cultural influence on English that extended to art, music, astronomy, architecture, biology, chemistry, geography, mathematics, law, literature, the military, finance, and numerous other fields. The following words illustrate the range of cultural impact and the extent of linguistic influence that Arabic has had on English: admiral, alcohol, alcove, algebra, algorithm, almanac, amber, arabesque, arsenal, artichoke, balsam, caliber, carat, checkmate, chiffon, coffee, coral, cork, cotton, damask, dinar, elixir, endive, fanfare, gazelle, genie, giraffe, guitar, halvah, imam, Islam, jar, jasmine, kabob, lemon, lilac, lute, magazine, massage, mattress, monsoon, natron, orange, organza, poof, Quran, racket, ream, rice, satin, soda, sofa, sultan, sugar, sherif, sherbet, talc, tambourine, ud or oud , vizier, wadi, zenith, and zero.

Versteegh emphasizes the fact that most dialects have become analytical whereas Standard Arabic is more synthetic. One place where this is easily seen is in showing possession; Standard Arabic uses a synthetic method to show possession, but almost all dialects have now developed an analytical method of showing possession using a word which shows the possession relationship Versteegh The colloquials have undergone and will likely continue to undergo great change.

Unfortunately, until recently they have not been closely studied, and therefore it is difficult to document any changes they may have undergone. It is easier, however, to document changes in Modern Standard Arabic. One on-going trend in Modern Standard Arabic is modernization. Like many other speakers around the world, Arabic speakers are sensitive to the wholesale borrowing of words.

In fact, they are perhaps more sensitive to language change because most Arabs recognize Arabic as the language of God. As a result, normative language academies have been established in several areas throughout the Arab world including Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Amman Bakalla The language academies try to control borrowing by creating terms for new technological entities.

Their typical means for doing this include extension, calques, and a process known as Arabization. This word originally meant caravan of camels but has been redefined to mean car.

Calques are more obvious in such phrases as kurat al-qadam , which is literally ball of the foot or football soccer Bakalla Arabization, on the other hand, involves the adoption of a foreign word, but with changes which make it acceptable to Arabic morphological and phonological patterns Bakalla Another trend I have noticed in both personal experience and in researching is how Arabs have the expectation that the Arab world is slowly turning toward Modern Standard Arabic as its mother tongue.

This trend takes two parts. In my experience, Arabs uniformly disparage the colloquial dialects they speak natively. For example, a teaching assistant in my current Arabic language class emphasizes every time she tells us a colloquial Arabic word that it is, "slang. Ferguson noted this tendency when he stated there is an expectation among Arabs that Modern Standard Arabic will take over the Arab world Myths I was introduced to this idea personally in May of when, during a conversation with a taxi driver in Amman, Jordan, I was told that I needed to speak Standard Arabic.

This, despite the fact, as I told him, that no one actually speaks Standard Arabic natively. History of Arabic Writing System Before concluding, I wish to examine briefly the historical development of the Arabic writing system.

Descended from the North Arabic script, the modern Arabic language writing system runs from right to left and is a cursive script. There are twenty eight letters in the alphabet, but because the script of the alphabet is cursive, 22 of the letters take different shapes when they are in initial, medial, final, or isolated positions See Appendix 1. There are six letters in the alphabet which have only two possible forms because you only connect to them; they cannot be connected from. The three long vowels are represented within the alphabet.

However, the three short vowels are not. Short vowels can be indicated by optional diacritical markings, but these are most often not written. Those texts in which they are written are usually of a religious nature and they are included to ensure that the proper pronunciation is made for all the words. Historically, the North Arabic script, the earliest extant copies of which date to the 4th century B.

However, because the Aramaic script represented less than the required number of consonants for Arabic, the use of some shapes was extended by the means of dots placed on the letters. Thus there are several letters in Arabic whose only distinguishing feature from another Arabic letter is the placement of a dot above or below the letter Daniels The result of the utilization of short vowel diacritics in Arabic is that written Arabic is highly lexicalized: you have to know the words in order to be able to read the language correctly.

Many Arab intellectuals criticize this situation and have proposed changes in order to make the Arabic writing system have a more strict one to one correspondence between letter and sound Daniels However, resistance to the change is so high that it is very unlikely such a change will ever take place. Many explain that Arabic is the language of God Allah , and as such has no need to be changed. Conclusion In many ways the idea stated in the previous paragraph, that Arabic is the language of Allah, has defined how the Arabic language has behaved over the centuries.

Of course in the early years, before the advent of Muhammed, Arabic developed and grew, though it was largely localized among the tribes of Arabia. As the Islamic conquests took place, however, Arabic became the language of the conquered peoples both because it was the language of their conquerors and because it was the language of their newly adopted religion.

In subsequent years, the desire to preserve the proper pronunciation and reading of the Holy Quran has been the driving force behind the maintenance of Classical Arabic as the standard par excellence for the Arabic language. Even today, when you ask an Arab about the colloquial dialect they speak, they are most likely to respond that what they speak is a "slang.

Linguistically, the Arab world is a complex struggle between the progressiveness of colloquial Arabic and the conservative action of Standard Arabic which is fostered by religion. The interaction of the religious and the linguistic is part of what has made Arabic the interesting and vital language it is today.

Re-formation of geminate verbs. The verb suffix -l- "to, for". Cardinal numbers Loss of the feminine comparative. The verb "to bring. Summarized from Charles A. Ferguson, "The Arabic Koine. Bakalla, Muhammad Hasan. Arabic Culture Through its Language and Literature.