Talk:Arabic

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"Turk Arabic"

In Turkey when people try to write the Arabic words of the Quran in Latin letters, they write for example "Hacer-ul Esved" instead of "Hajar Al Aswad" (please ignore the C/J and V/W, I'm talking about the vocals). They often use "e" instead of "a" and "u" or "ü" instead of "o". Why is that so? Can this information improve the article's quality? --78.51.103.82 06:45, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that this is more about Turkish than Arabic, and so would belong better there. Drmaik 07:42, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

What the best dictionaries of Modern standard Arabic?

What the best, and most esteemed dictionaries of Modern standard Arabic? Like oxford dictionary is to English.

Oldest Attested Inscription.

Reference to the revisions made earlier regarding whether the langauge can be traced back to 600 AD or 600 BC; someone said the earliest attestation is in 600 AD. Actually, the earliest attested inscription in Arabic dates back to 328 CE, it was not the Quran (see [1]. However, some recorded poetry date at least a century older (unfortunately, I couldn't find a reliable source). --Maha Odeh 08:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

There are a few classical or pre-classical Arabic inscriptions which predate the Namara inscription. Most important of which, is the Qaryat Al Faw inscription which dates to the 1st century BC. It was written in Musnad script. References:

• A. R. Al-Ansary, Qaryat Al-Fau: A Portrait Of Pre-Islamic Civilisation In Saudi Arabia, 1982, University of Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), p. 146.
• A. F. L. Beeston, "Nemara And Faw", Bulletin Of The School Of Oriental And African Studies, 1979, Volume 42, pp. 1-6.
• M. C. A. Macdonald, "Reflections On The Linguistic Map Of Pre-Islamic Arabia", Arabian Archaeology And Epigraphy, 2000, Volume 11, p. 50 and 61.

Also of importance is the En Avdat inscription. Dating to the 120s CE. Written in Nabatean script. References:

• A. Negev, "Obodas The God", Israel Exploration Journal, 1986, Volume 36, No. 1-2, pp. 56-60.
• J. A. Bellamy, "Arabic Verses From The First/Second Century: The Inscription Of ʿEn ʿAvdat", Journal Of Semitic Studies, 1990, Volume 35, pp. 73-79.
• M. O'Connor, "The Arabic Loanwords In Nabatean Aramaic", Journal Of The Near Eastern Studies, 1986, Volume 45, No. 3, p. 229, footnote 98.--Xevorim (talk) 08:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

'Arabic is the language of Qur'an'.

The above sentence was replaced by User:Perspicacite by 'Muhammad, the last prophet in Islam, spoke the Qur'an in Arabic and aides later wrote the text in Arabic.'. I reverted, explaining that I felt this was Muslim POV, but was re-reverted without explanation. It seems to me that the latter sentence is more about the Qur'an than Arabic, introducing details irrelevant to the matter at hand, while the original sentence is fine.

Other edits made at the same time remove a helpful list of religious groups who also speak Arabic, and there's another change I don't particularly mind, deleting 'until recent times' referring to the translation of the Qur'an.

I welcome comments on these changes. Drmaik 11:16, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Classical Arabic vs Modern Standard Arabic ?!

First, I'd like to thank all wiki-members for this nice article. The differntiation between classical arabic and what's called standard arabic sounds very strange and incomprehensible to any arabic native-speaker. In fact, arabic has undergone no change in terms of grammar and lexicon, since the north-western dialect of modhar مضر -Quranic Arabic- had become the standard language. All that happened was the intoduction of some new words or loan words related to modern technology and that doesn't make a difference in any language, does it? All educated arabic-speakers can understand with perfect ease a piece of literatature written in the 8th or 9th centures for example as though it were written nowadays, in addition to Quran of course. .................................. modern authors attempt (with varying degrees of success) to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by Classical grammarians .................................. this is a very misleading comment. Grammatical and syntactic norms are thoroughly and fully respected in any form of writing; a text that may contain a few errors is generally considered unworthy of reading and the writer pointed at as uneducated. As for history, precisely pre-Islamic era, two varieties of arabic existed; northern arabic and southern arabic ie Yemen's arabic known as the language of himyar لسان حمير . The two varieties differed much in terms of grammar and lexicon; amr ibn el alaa عمرو بن العلاء,for instance, one of early prominent arabic gammarians pointed out that ... the arabic of himyar is not our arabic.The southern variety died out shorty after the spread of Islam. The northern variety contained slight differences in usage, some grammatical rules and even in pronunciation ..some tribes,for instance, replaced pronoun /ki/ كِ / -used to address females- with /shi/ some added /s/ to it, some did not inflect the dual, a usage used in Quran in one ayat. /ذو / 'whose' for the majority of tribes meant /who - which/ in tayii's -طيئ- dialect, /السكين/ assikin 'knife' in koraych's dialect was unknown to other tribes who used /المدية/ el mudia and so on.

Dialects and descendants. ....................... Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. ....................... 'radically' sounds radical here. modern dialects do differ from standard arabic, but they are not that different. Any variety of dialectal arabic can be harly distinguished from standard arabic when written. Sentence structure, lexicon, verb conjugation - with some slight differences- remain unaltered. the main difference consists of the loss of inflection - which is shown through signs not letters in writing- and varying pronunciations. That's why all dialects are mutually intelligible online. Arabic and its modern dialects should by no means be compared to Latin and romance languages ... they're two very different cases. ... another factor of the differentiation of the dialects is the use of classical arabic synonyms for the same meaning, some dialects for example use /بيت / beyt for 'home' other dialects use 'دار ' dar , some maghribine dialects use /نوء/ naw ie rain while other dialects use /مطر/ matar ... this may be confusing to uneducated speakers who are not accustomed to other varieties. .... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sayih (talk • contribs) 23:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

• That is exaggerating. Modern Arabic languages, as they have to be named, are very different from Classical Arabic, mainly in grammar.

Example in Arabic: هذا الرجل the same sentence in Egyptian: الراجل ده CAN'T YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE! or you like to ignore facts? (an example for languages descended from Arabic, is as the languages that were descended from Latin in Europe & all are recognized as languages :)) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.36.132.57 (talk) 20:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Look up Versteegh's book (in the references) for the very significant differences between dialects and standard. 'Any variety of dialectal arabic can be harly distinguished from standard arabic when written' Bahi, huni bash niktiblik 7aja bit-tunsi. Hardly distinguishable from MSA? Also, there are signficant difference between classical and MSA in e.g. agreement, negation (using ma as a sentence negator: I never see that in a newspaper, where you'll find laysa, lam, la). But it is true, this artcile does need better sourcing... Drmaik 04:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

 Thank you for your comment. Let me take what I understood of your sentence

baghi nekteb lek haja bittounsi باغي نكتب لك حاجة بالتونسي the only difference between this phrase and Standard Arabic is the onjugation of the verb. in standard arabic it's أكتب aktub.. in magribine dialects it's the plural form that's used baghi is the gerund from the verb بغى which means want or like among other meanings, the use of the gerund in this way is recognized in literary style. the use of ma ما for negation is very common in literary style modern and old, as well as in dialectal arabic ... eg ما فهمت شي ma f'hamt shi

and it's grammatically correct .... 

I'll quote a pre-islamic verse for example .. وما أنا إلا من غزية إن غوت ..غويت وإن ترشد غزية أرشدِ it's also used in Qur'an quite frequently. it's not commonly used in journalistic style as it is felt to convey more personal connotation. well, one must be well versed in grammar and literary tradition to judge such things. Let's suppose this is true, I don't quite often see 'thou knowst' in British or American newspapers though it was used in Shakespeare's works written in modern English. ... I looked at the majority of articles concerning the matter quite some time ago, they contain a good number of errors owing mostly to the lack of adequate knowledge of classical/standard arabic. I'll look again and try to make comments there, thanks again. Any variety of dialectal arabic can be harly distinguished from standard arabic when written .... the quote by the way isn't mine; a conference about arabic dialects was held in algiers last summer. Linguists from all over the Arab World participated and that was their final statement. I'll see if I can get some documents or stuff.--Sayih 16:14, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, well, the first word was bahi = 'good', in this case, 'well'. The fact that you didn't understand other bits might go against the 'hardly distinguishable' argument. huni = here, besh is the future marker. Haja is not normally used to mean 'something' in MSA, rather 'need', though a reading as 'thing' is possible: we'd expect shay' here in MSA (which generally means 'nothing' in Tunisian). niktiblik I wrote as one word as that is what it is in Tunisian, both in terms of word stress ('niktib vs. nik'tiblik' and negation maniktibliksh.)

In any case, it's not the results of discussions like these that end up in the articles, but syntheses of published work. You'll also find Clive Holes' Modern Arabic a good place to follow up related issues: it should be cited in the article (and I don't have time to do that right now). The fact may well be that Arabic speakers don't immediately think 'oh that's in dialect' when something is written in it, but the stark differences are there. Drmaik (talk) 07:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say dialect and SA don't differ at all, but the difference is not that radical as pointed to in the article. Transliteration in latin script can be confusing, bahi is an adjective is standard arabic meaning beautiful, huni is huna here pronounced with imala an acceptable form of pronunciation even in pre-islamic era. how to write lik doesn't matter much. Notwithstanding the clumsiness of style, all words present in your sentence are present in SA form and meaning , except for bash. Stating references as you said, isn't it strange that these articles don't refer to native-speaker scholars but to Westerners; for all other languages it's their native speakers who decide what is what, for arabic it must be the other way. Excuse me pal, but we know our language more than an orientalist who spent tens of years studying what he couldn't possibly understand very well.

Besides, the core of my comment is about the absurd differentiation between classical Arabic and MSA,with the article contradicting itself clearly about that and stating false things.Can you state your references about that as this 'fact' is ignored by all native speakers.--Sayih (talk) 10:51, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Sayih concerning the differences between "Modern Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" (attention: I used quoting because such thing does not exist). How can we talk about these two varieties and we do not even have the equivalent of these terms in Arabic (academic terms not old(Qadim) and new(Jadid) ). To be honest the first time I heard about them was from an orientalist book (I guess I was ignorant of my own language and all the Medieval books I read before were written in another form; this is absurd). I believe that we should rely more on native sources more than orientalist's ones (as we do in other languages). See Edward Saïd's book about orientalism and bias.

Let's talk about the differences that all the people use as arguments. The only difference I see is the less use of a set of words (considered out-timed) and the introduction of new ones (normal language evolution). Most of the lost words are referring to special terms used in old culture and environment (may be we should call them the Bedouin terms vs. the city ones). The syntax, the grammar, the roots are the same, any child who is able to read can understand old texts and novels (of course not poesy or philosophical texts).

Another very important thing (which is not even an argument; a huge error), most orientalists and authors here do not differentiate between 3elm Al-Balagha and 3elm-Allogha (may be I can translate them to "Language perfection or Art discipline" and the "Language discipline"). In fact, they consider the Al-Balagha (not knowing may be that it exists) as the classical form of Arabic and the normal language as the Modern. This is another misunderstanding of the Arabic language and its associated Arts or Disciplines.

As for the dialects, I admit that there are differences but surely they are not like the ones between French and Spanish for instance (totally incomparable). Another point for Sayih, it is really difficult to assume that dialects can have a written form (they do not represent a whole linguistic identity without Arabic). Finally, I am starting a research on the influence of the Pan-Arab media and communications on the dissolve of the dialects ( in Tunisia for example many new imported words are gaining places such as Kifak (how are you) instead of Shnowa A7walak, another term Tayeb (good or fine) instead of Bahi). I think that all Arab dialects will fuse in the coming years (may be long time but it is coming), especially with new generations. Bestofmed (talk) 00:41, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

• Bestofmed makes good points here. I remember one beginning language textbook that made some fundamental grammatical errors. Some of these orientalists think they are beyond reproach, and they are completely baffled that native speakers have no respect for them. There are scholarly books in Arabic - maybe they should be translated so that the orientalists can read them. By the way, in Tūnsi, it's actually "šniyya Hwālik" - 'aHwāl' is the plural of 'Hāl', so it's grammatically compatible with 'hiya' and not 'huwa.' Cbdorsett (talk) 04:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Language politics. While Arabs with a political view of their language make interesting claims, objective analysis is another matter. There are clearly differences between the Classical language and what is referred to by scholars as Modern Standard. The article adequately cites some. As for the differences between dialects, they are most clearly on the order of French to Spanish to Latin. Typically Machreqi Arabs can't bloody well understand Maghrebine dialects. In any event so long as the article is not deformed by nationalist / political a priori ideas about the langauge, have fun making claims and dreaming of dialect unification. (collounsbury (talk) 10:20, 17 January 2008 (UTC))

Making claims and dreaming?? please learn some Wikipedia conducts before using such expressions. Apparently it is clear who is the non-objective here; turning discussion into personal views and emotions. Please answer the claims instead of commenting as a great scholar. We are here to make an agreement, to exchange ideas. Bestofmed (talk) 20:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Making claims and dreaming is precisely accurate. Comments above are filled with personal assertions and hand waving based on Arab nationalist sentiment, not data, linguistic studies nor objective analysis. Ach ghangoulek, bghiti chi haja hulm, ma keinch chi taouhide l-lougha, ouldi. If one wishes to change the article, one has to rather than insulting "orientalists" (apparently scholars one doesn't like), bring linguistic science to the table. Or whinge on. (collounsbury (talk) 22:30, 17 January 2008 (UTC))

It seems that you find it hard to believe that there are indeed Arab scholars of Arabic and that Arabs actually study their own language more than non-Arabs. What Bestofmed was trying to say is that Arab scholars do no agree with this division. Grammar is identical, what applies in the so called 'classical' applies in 'msa' and vise versa. vocabulary may have expanded a little in the last 100 or 150 years, but I'm sure that English vocabulary did so too; I mean, try saying Electricity in the year 1800, would anyone know what you are talking about? does that mean that Jane Austin spoke a different language? or does that mean that the word 'lantern' to Jane Austin meant something different?

His claims are not biased or 'nationalist', he is basing what he says on Arab scholars who find no difference with the exception of a few new terms that refer to things that did not exist 1500 years ago. The words that are now rarely used did not change their meaning at all. What you are calling 'clear' differences is not clear at all to Arabs. Unless you speak Arabic better than Arabs, I'd say they know what they are talking about.

By the way, if you make a full search in the whole Arab world among scholars, references, poets, writers and even lay-people; you will not find a single reference to such a difference. If you truely believe they are all fooling themselves or that this is propaganda then allow me to say that your mindset is, at the least, biased. --Maha Odeh (talk) 12:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Boring whinging my dear. I studied Arabic under almost exclusively Arab professors, who had more or less the same analysis - as non-"arab nationalist" professionals. Making the Arab versus Western scholar claim is pure and utter rubbish. Grammar is not identical, nor syntax (as the arty nicely summarizes), although indeed, yes, similar, etc. But whatever, piss and moan as you like - the arty however will require proper citations. Emotional and particular provincial reactions are understandable, but in the end not relevant. (collounsbury (talk) 00:41, 15 February 2008 (UTC))

If I may just but in here. I think there is a little bit of emotion in this discussion and although I enjoy the exchange I respectfully suggest you are arguing at cross purposes. There seems to be two arguments here:

1) Is there a difference between "classical" arabic and "modern standard arabic"? Here I would tend to agree with Maha and Bestofmed; the distinction is minimal or at least to my ears (I am a non-native Arabic speaker having lived in the Arab world for twenty five years) the closest parallel would be the distinction between early modern English and contemporary written English. No native Arabic writer that I am aware of uses the distinction. Both are referred to as Al-lugha Al-fusha (eloquent language - sorry I can't "do" dots under the h).

2) Is there a difference between the classical or written register and the spoken language varieties? Here I think Collounsbury has a point, although that was not the title of the discussion. Having said that, and recognising the importance of neologisms in all current varieties of Arabic there can be little doubt that, upon analysis, even those varieties of Arabic reputed to be "furthest" (this is another discussion: i.e. was "fusha" ever spoken and do the current varieties descend from it or from other varieties of spoken Arabic contemporary with the 7th century poetic language) from the written language, such as the Darija referenced by Collounsbury turn out to be not so far!

If we take his example: "Ach ghangoulek, bghiti chi haja hulm, ma keinch chi taouhide l-lougha, ouldi" and rearrange the presentation it is possible to an analysis which shows common roots with nearly all extant varieties.

Ach or Ash (Ai shai'? = what thing?) common to just about every variety of spoken Arabic and easily linked to the literary version.

ghangoulek or ghadi ngoul lek = (will I say?) ghadi is a gerund of a root cogniscant with ghadda' (tomorrow) and the idea of the future, divergant from the standard sure - but no spoken variety uses "sa" or "saf" - most use an Aramaic derived future marker "ha" - "ha goul lek" (many varieties of bedouin Bilad ash-Shams). The difference between ngoul and 'goul is the Alexandrine plural found in other bedouin dialects even East of the Nile. Finally "lek" = to you is also easily understandable in just about any imaginable dialect.

Bghiti is a peculiar feature of Maghrebi varieties but once one connects with the "classical" verb 'inbigha' or the Gulf usage "baghi" gerund of the unusual (in classical) baghaa and realises that it is in the preterite form (also peculiar to Maghrebi dialects) a little bit of effort makes the connection.

I could go on with ma kein chi (there is nothing) - fairly widespread negative form in spoken - double negative ma//chi or ma//shi and with some thought not so different from the Baghdadi "ma kou" or the peninsular ma fi sh. In fact the Maghrebi version is more conservative than either; using a gerund of kaana (to be).

I find wryly amusing that you used the idafa for towhid al-logha rather the connective dial (dho li in the old form of the classical) - another example of where Maghribi is more conservative than Mashreq varieties etc.

All I am saying "ouldi" is that you seem to be getting het up about this whereas there is no real reason to and that perhaps there is an argument from both points of view. BTW I am aware that my transliterations are not perfect - I can't do them with this keyboard so apologies for that and ma' salema or, in Hassaniya, - wada'na koum moulana! Wildbe (talk) 13:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not fluent in Arabic but I'd like to comment that we should distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic - MSA (language of the media) and modern Arabic dialects (Egyptian, Maghribi, etc.). The former, although modernized has mostly the same grammar rules as the Classical Arabic (CA). By modernisation, I mean new words, which have to do with modern life - newly created, borrowed from other languages or spoken dialects. --Atitarev (talk) 23:24, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Translation

I found this on a vandalized page, does anyone know what it means: بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم مع تحياتي: عبد العليم محمد ليمو

Zenofwar (talk) 21:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It's In the name of God the Most Merciful the Most Gracious, with best rgards

then the guy signs his name in full.

it's polite vandalism, no? --Sayih (talk) 23:55, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It is rather polite, but why put it on the googel (not google) page? Zenofwar (talk) 16:06, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Image at top of infobox

An editor just replaced the image of the word "al-'arabiyyah" with an image showing the word written with Naskh script, on the grounds that "we" don't see Kufic much anymore. I disagree. Kufic is seen everywhere and is used often for things to give them an official appearance. Book titles (I'm looking at one right now), certificates, seals, signs on buildings, official letterheads, and more. Naskh is used for ordinary text. It's easier to read - something like Times Roman in English. I would support reverting the image to Kufic on those grounds, but, unfortunately, the previous image was not Kufic, but a modern artistic font. I don't 'object' to the Naskh image, but I think a true Kufic one would be much more suitable. Cbdorsett (talk) 14:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

English word for book is not "book"?

The influence of Arabic has been most profound in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages as diverse as Berber, English, Kurdish, Persian, Swahili, Urdu, Hindi (only the colloquial variety), Turkish, Malay and Indonesian, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example the Arabic word for book /kitāb/ is used in all the languages listed, apart from Malay and Indonesian (where it specifically means "religious book").

I found this statement rather odd... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.88.131.233 (talk) 13:32, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

• I agree. I'll delete English from the list. Cbdorsett (talk) 09:41, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the word for 'book' in Swahili is not kitab, but -tabu, singular kitabu/plural vitabu. The singular kitabu was borrowed from Arabic kitab and restructured to correspond with Swahili phonotactics and with the initial syllable being reinterpreted as the Swahili singular prefix ki-. The statement in the article makes it sound like you can go to Kenya and use a bare Arabic word and be understood. I don't know the other languages, but there is probably a similar situation in many of them. Arabic kitab was borrowed into these languages, but the words are no longer strictly kitab. (Taivo (talk) 15:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC))

If you read kitab BACKWARDS you get a word that starts with b and ends with k, as the word book. In the same way you arrive from arabic AL to french LA. Is is possible that words read backwards has been transferred from a language to another? For a person used to latin letter writings its natural to consider arabic to be written backwards. Are there more examples of this kind? / eriksson.g@gmail.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.224.114.36 (talk) 12:32, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a rather naive statement. It implies that the people borrowing the written forms of words don't actually know how to read the language. If they don't know how to read the language, how can they possibly borrow words from the written form of it? They can't. The only thing they can borrow from the writing system of a language they don't know how to read is the shape of the letters--as happened when Sequoyah borrowed the shapes of English letters to invent the Cherokee syllabary. People simply do not borrow words "backwards". It does not happen. The two examples you cite are pure coincidence. If it was true, then the English word for "book" would be "botok" because the Arabic root has a "t" in the middle. The French "la" does not come from Arabic, but is a clip of the Latin "illa". (Taivo (talk) 12:48, 9 August 2008 (UTC))

There are examples of cognates having sounds move (possibly switching) but this is due to a process called metathesis, not to interorthographic errors. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Hebrew and Arabic

I can understand Hebrew without education .. Hebrew are like Arabic language ...--89.138.198.96 (talk) 04:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

What do you think about 'Adeni Yemenite Hebrew?--72.38.211.144 (talk) 21:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

There is a difference between that Arabized Yemenite Hebrew & Hebrew --Mahmudmasri (talk) 05:35, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Introduction seems to contradict the body

This paragraph

Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested epigraphically since the 6th century, which has been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since the 7th century.

contradicts the information in the body of the article. Pre-classical Arabic inscription date back to the 2nd century BCE and proto-Arabic inscription to the 8th ecntury BCE. Even if confined to Classical arabic only, there is information on pre-Islamic Arabic writings from the 4th century AD. How do other editors propose we correct it? Tiamut^talk 14:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Caliphate?

Really 700 years of caliphate government on Iberian Peninsula? What was the caliph name in the year 1200 or 1400? If one reads such a claim in the introduction, it is hard to believe the rest of the text is accurate. Accidental visitor 89.77.134.144 (talk) 08:14, 13 February 2008 (UTC).

See Al-Andalus, Umayyad conquest of Hispania, and Reconquista. The Iberian Peninsula had a Muslim political presence from 711 to 1492 though it was greatly reduced in the 1200s and constituted Umayyads, Hammadids, Almoravids, and Almohads in that order, the last one being the presence 1200 on. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 14:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, "political presence" in the year 1200 or 1400 is correct, but did Nasrids held the title of caliphs? 89.77.134.144 (talk) 18:36, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, list of caliphs says that even the Almohads are not universally accepted. If we were to accept that not all Muslim rulership in the Iberian peninsula was caliphesque, how might we reword the article without changing the dates? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Need Arabic script

Need Arabic script at Nuubaat. Badagnani (talk) 22:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

IPA renderings

Please could someone check all the IPA renderings of Arabic words/phrases. One example [baytul mudi:r] cannot be right, because the y symbol in IPA represents a vowel that Arabic (according to the article) does not have. EEye (talk) 15:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Native vs. Non-native speakers

Why a page this old listed there being 422 million native Arabic speakers (when the total population of all the Arabic-speaking countries is only about 3/4 of that) is beyond me.

This figure seams to have arisen from a misunderstanding of the data given in the encarta list of languages spoken by more than 10 million people. This list includes non-native speakers as well as native ones, of which there are an additional 200 million for Arabic. Therefore, I've separated figure on the number of speakers into two figures that reflect this.Szfski (talk) 08:11, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

What about the arab imigrants in non arab countries?--N-G-50 (talk) 16:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

morroco, algeria, tunisia

They should be in blue because they speak mostly french than arabic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Musliman08 (talk • contribs) 18:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

No, that's not true. (Taivo (talk) 17:53, 27 May 2008 (UTC))

You have no prove for that. Wikipedia policy reflects facts and official status of countries. I am a Tunisian and I assure you that we speak Arabic. I agree with you that educated Tunisians speak French, but as a foreign language (English is gaining ground lately too; will this make us Anglophiles!). Bestofmed (talk) 23:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Phonetics

"In some Gulf dialects, /q/ is palatalized to [dʒ] or [ʒ]." Is there any support for this? It seems to me that this sentence refers to jīm, not qāf. I think the sentence should be moved, but I'll wait for input from native speakers from the Gulf. Cbdorsett (talk) 09:30, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

That is in fact accurate for the first one ([dʒ]), I've never heard [ʒ] instead of /q/, but then again I couldn't have spoken to every single person in the Gulf so there may be some truth to it. --Maha Odeh (talk) 09:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Free courses?

I don't understand why the links to free online courses were removed? This must be great for paysites, but I don't see how it is good for Wikipedia or people interested in Arabic.HD1986 (talk) 11:21, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not here for advertising of any kind. It is an encyclopedia, not the yellow pages. (Taivo (talk) 16:20, 19 June 2008 (UTC))

Yes, but removing links to free courses will not really hurt the economy of those free courses, don't you think so? I think there are other factors playing roles here. HD1986 (talk) 06:07, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

It's not about hurting the economy of the free courses. Let them continue to do business. It's about the nature of Wikipedia. This isn't the Yellow Pages. It's an encyclopedia. No advertising. (Taivo (talk) 08:16, 20 June 2008 (UTC))

This the definition of advertising from Wiki:

Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service.

This the definition of a customer from merriam-webster's: [2]

one that purchases a commodity or service

The definition of purchase from merriam-webster's: [3]:

to obtain by paying money or its equivalent

If you were into philosophy, you should have realized by now that your argument is false, because there is no money involved in a free course. HD1986 (talk) 09:05, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

And if you really understood what I was saying, then you would be able to show me in Encyclopedia Britannica a listing for "free Arabic courses". Wikipedia is NOT a sourcebook for learning Arabic, it is an encyclopedia. A free Arabic course does not provide the scientific authoritative voice that Wikipedia references provide for DESCRIBING the item in the article, in this case, Arabic. Arabic grammars are listed because they are the descriptions of the language. Wikipedia is not here to help anyone do anything other than to understand what something is, not how to use or learn to use it. (Taivo (talk) 09:28, 20 June 2008 (UTC))

Firstly, you have relinquished your former argument and now you are talking other things. The reference to Encyclopedia Britannica is invalid because there are hundred differences between Wiki and that ency. and you can't just pick things at your will and say that we're doing what Encyclopedia Britannica is doing.

A free Arabic course does not provide the scientific authoritative voice that Wikipedia references provide

This is false, because those free courses are not references but external links; and if we were to apply what you say uniformly then I think there is an awful lot of work that should be done in most of the Wiki articles with external links.

Wikipedia is not here to help anyone do anything other than to understand what something is, not how to use or learn to use it.

Well, certainly a free online course in Arabic won't go any further than explaining what Arabic grammar is. You are using many words without really making any clear point. What is the difference between descriping Arabic grammar and teaching people to use it? This looks to me like playing on words. Arabic grammar is an abstract thing, it is not a machine. HD1986 (talk) 11:28, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot report : Found duplicate references !

In language&redirect=no&oldid=228898351 the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :)

• "Bishop2" :
  • Brian Bishop (April 1998). [? "A History of the Arabic Language"]. The Center for Arabic Culture. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Text "From the Preface of Satakari Mukhopadhyaya's A Grammar of the Classical Arabic Language. Translated by Mortimer Sloper Howell. Delhi, India: Gian Publishing House, 1986" ignored (help)
  • Brian Bishop (April 1998). "A History of the Arabic Language". The Center for Arabic Culture. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help); Text "From the Preface of Satakari Mukhopadhyaya's A Grammar of the Classical Arabic Language. Translated by Mortimer Sloper Howell. Delhi, India: Gian Publishing House, 1986" ignored (help)

DumZiBoT (talk) 10:57, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Old Persian and Arabic

It would be ridiculous to remove the Old Persian Avestan pointer in the article. Its known fact that Old Persian and Arabic are almost exact same and theres indefinite sources to match the claim. Consult with the sources as well see [[4]] its common sense that Old Persian is the basic structure of Arabic. If this User:Xevorim keeps removing that claim you can inform the admins. --CMJTHY (talk) 02:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems you have no idea what Avestan Persian is, nor do you have any knowledge of Arabic. Old Avestan is an indo-iranian language from the indo-european language family. Arabic is a central Semitic language from the Afro-asiatic language group. I've also checked the book u refer to...it doesn't even make that claim!!--Xevorim (talk) 18:20, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Find yourself a reliabe linguistic book or article that makes that claim...otherwise, don't mention it!--Xevorim (talk) 18:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

CMJTHY, you are, ahem, completely wrong. Avestan and Arabic are completely unrelated languages and you cannot find a single reliable linguistic source that will make that claim because there are none. There is nothing to report to the admins about Xevorim. He is 100% in the right and you are wrong. Wikipedia will not defend your errors. (Taivo (talk) 15:39, 19 August 2008 (UTC))

This is getting ridiculous. First, Avestan and Old Persian are completely different languages. And Second, neither Avestan nor Old Persian is even distantly related to Arabic. Can't you people read a simple linguistics text? (Taivo (talk) 06:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC))

Arabic & Hebrew

It is mentioned that Arabic is: “it is closely related to Old Persian Avestan language, Hebrew”. This gives wrong imitation that Arabic was found at the age of Hebrew while there is huge time difference. Arabic was found before Hebrew. So I think this phrase in the article needs to be rephrased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.93.198.53 (talk) 06:03, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

"Arabic was found before Hebrew"?!

Care to mention any sources?--Xevorim (talk) 17:46, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Relax Mr. IP. Hebrew is definitely older than Arabic. Hakeem.gadi (talk) 08:50, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Arabic in Turkey? "coliph"

On my mother's side, they're Assyrians on her father's side, and they immigrated from Turkey in the 50s or so. (christian arabs living in turkey, fled due to kurdish attacking their villages) One of the things I noticed was how they spoke. I'm a native arabic speaker myself, but my arabic is mostly founded on lebanese arabic, common where I live, and the more formal speak.

One striking thing was the use of "k" instead of "h" in plenty of places. Such as:

Ahweh -> Kahweh Haeh -> Haek ("la faute de", "[it's his] fault") Marlahah -> Marlakah

But this doesn't apply to everything. There's also other weird terms rarely used by us, stuff like "Zabash" (watermelon, "Bateekh" seems to be canteloupe), "Oroman" (Turkish loanword?), and other terms for objects and places. I guess all the turkish words are because this particular family (a massive on at that because it started off very large and they all live in pretty much the same city now all near each other) grew up in turkey, or at least the elders did, so the kids learned it too.

There's a lot of weird deviations though that I have no explanation for:

Hekeh -> Ague' (e acute accent, my keyboard doesn't do this) Waen -> Angus ("where are you?") Inta/Intie -> Int/Inte (him/her yous. Like, angus int, is where are you for a man.) Langus (I've never heard anything like this before. It means where are you going. You can't really say "langus inte", but I've heard some say "langus tat rooh", even though it doesn't seem to be correct) Asch sayt? ("What did you do?") Hawne' -> Hawnak (here)

There's also a lot of Swedish loan words. I guess it's like our french and english loanwords. But it's more like we prefer the local word rather than the real one, I don't know if that's loanword or pidgin.

I just thought it would be interesting to mention this. I have never seen any mention, ever, to that region of Turkey (they call it "Coliph", like o = uh) nor their language. I'm hoping somebody has more details for me?

99.241.10.79 (talk) 01:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC) (Jorophose in disguise)

Simple Question

Does this article deal with the type of Arabic that was spoken 1,000+ years ago? thanks, The roof of this court is too high to be yours (talk) 16:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

It does. It doesn't elaborate on Old North Arabian and preclassical Arabic as it does on Classical Arabic (which dates to the 4th century CE). The grammar section describes the grammar of Classical and Modern Standard Arabic.--Xevorim (talk) 00:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps a separate page should be created to detail Old North Arabian/preclassical Arabic? Such information could also be worked into this existing article.. The roof of this court is too high to be yours (talk) 00:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I intend on expanding the Old North Arabian article and creating a Preclassical Arabic article. --Xevorim (talk) 11:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Revert over-enthusiam

Sometimes I feel like some editors on Wikipedia slightly abuse their authoroty. The last edit that was reverted on this article (because it "lacked source") was actually true and a common sense; it is even mentioned in other articles in wikipedia.

I wish if editors handle other people's edits with the sufficient care. I don't think it is a simple thing to undo edits made by other intelligent human being; and it shouldn't become so because the article spent some time on your watchlist. Having spent more time on Wikipedia than others doesn't mean that you know more than them, especially if it is clear that you don't. I'm not refering to a specific editor with what I say. HD1986 (talk) 08:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes an edit is just on the verge of good, and was clearly well-intentioned, but it has grammar errors, typos, etc. that are too extensive to fix easily. Sometimes there are 50 changes (literally), 25 of which are good and 25 of which are bad. Sometimes there is information that looks POV and needs more explanation on the talk page before addition is appropriate. There are many good reasons for reverting rather than just editing edits that were well-intentioned and not just vandalism. Sometimes we just make mistakes. Read the reasoning for the revert and address that. Don't just complain about a revert. (Taivo (talk) 12:45, 24 September 2008 (UTC))