A history of the arabic language

A history of the arabic language

The arabic language is not well known in the western world. Having studied the language for almost three years now, I could be considered something of an expert on the language. That is not to say, however, that I always knew a lot about Arabic. I certainly wasn’t an expert when I initially decided to fulfill the non-indo-European language requirement for my linguistics major by studying Arabic instead of Chinese, as I had previously planned. In fact, my knowledge of Arabic up to that point could probably have been summed up in one succinct phrase: I think Arabs speak Arabic.

The fact that Arabic is not well known in the western world should perhaps be considered a point of regret considering that the Arabic language is spoken natively by over 150 million people (Kaye 664). Moreover, it functions as a liturgical language for the hundreds of millions of Muslims throughout the earth. It is truly one of the modern languages of the world. At the same time, as I have learned through my study, Arabic is not a language without deep historical roots. In fact, the history the Arabic language is one which spans the centuries from well before the advent of the Christian era to modern times. In this paper, I will trace the history of the Arabic language from its roots in proto-Semitic to the modern linguistic situation in the Arabic-speaking world. In particular, I will focus on the various phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes which together have created Arabic unique dialectical situation.

Roots of the Arabic language

As I mentioned above, Arabic is descended from a language known in the literature as Proto-Semitic. This relationship place Arabic firmly in the Afro-Asiatic group of world languages. Merit Ruhlenis taxonomy in his Guide to the World’s Languages helps to further elucidate Arabic’s ancestry within this large group of languages. Specifically, Arabic is part of the Semitic subgroup of Afro-Asiatic languages (293). Going further into the relationship between Arabic and the other Semitic languages, modern Arabic is considered to be part of the Arabic-Canaanite sub-branch the central group of the western Semitic languages (323). It roots are clearly founded in a Semitic predecessor.

Arabic is a proto-Semitic language          

As mentioned above, Arabic is a member of the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic group of language. The common ancestor for all Semitic language (i.e. Hebrew or Amharic) in the Afro-Asiatic group of languages is called Proto-Semitic. Based upon reconstruction efforts, linguist have determined many of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of Proto-Semitic. As might be expected, not all Semitic languages have equally preserved a large majority of the original Proto-Semitic features. In fact many linguist consider Arabic the most Semitic of any modern Semitic languages in terms of how completely they preserve features of Proto-Semitic.