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.
