The Arabic Language: Its Role in History - Literature review Example

The Arabic Language

Introduction

The Arabic language is among the world’s greatest and widely used languages. The language is the most dominant language in the Middle East and in some parts of North Africa. The Arabic language is spoken by nearly 250 million people in at least 22 countries in the world, (Dewey et al., 84). It is also a language used by Muslims all over the world since the Qur’an was revealed in the language. This makes the Arabic language the second language for most of the Muslim countries. Among the countries which use Arabic as the first language are, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Algeria, (Meiseles 119).

History of the Arabic Language

The Arabic language is believed to have originated long before Islam in the Arabian Peninsula among nomadic tribes, (Chejne 15). It developed as part of the ancient Semitic languages. The Semitic language includes; Arabic, Hebrew, Himyaritic, and Ethiopic. According to Chajne, Arabic is considered to be the youngest of these tongues. Its roots are therefore grounded on these other languages and that is why most words in Arabic have roots to the languages and only the vowels change. By the 7th century, the Arabic language was spreading in the Middle East. The spread is attributed to the nomadic tribes who moved from region to another spreading the language through communication.

In the pre-Islamic Arabic times, there were many languages spoken in Arabia. These ancient languages have been found in scripts and transcriptions some of which have been translated into other languages, (Dewey, et al., 100). The Nabataean and Palmyra kingdoms were responsible for the spread of the alphabets because of their trading interactions. The scripts, alphabets and writing systems of the kingdoms were generally accepted to meet the communication needs. Even the Arabic script that is used today came from the Nabataean script.

According to Mahmoud, the writing system had fifteen shapes of letters which represented 28 consonants. To create a difference between the several consonants which were represented by similar shapes, distinctive dots were placed on top of the shapes in different formats. In a speech, there was no need for differentiating the consonants. It followed a long period of time to codify these dots so that there was a uniform agreed system, (Mahmoud 53).

By the 18th century, all the dots had been codified and there was a standard way of writing the consonants and representing vowels. All writings were supposed to follow the coding system except for writings which were not meant for reading, like decorations. During the period around the 7th century, differentiating consonants from vowels in Arabic was based on colors. For instance, black lines were marks of consonants while red dots were marks of vowels, (Mahmoud 55). Later the system changed and to denote the presence of a vowel, smaller versions of the particular consonant were placed above it.

Poetry also characterized the history and development of the Arabic language, (Chejne 26). In the eighth and ninth century AD, Arabic poems were being recorded. There was a concern however due to the different dialects in Arabic which affected written Arabic. Spoken Arabic was easy but the written Arabic was more complex mostly because of the different writing systems. Eventually, classic Arabic was standardized so that writings, both formal and informal could be standard. Even in the pre-Islamic period, the Arabic language had both features of formality and informality. Formal language was used in formal documents like contracts.

Arabic Dialects

There are different dialects in the Arabic languages which are used by different people for different occasions and locations. One of those is the Classical Arabic which is the language of the Qur’an. This is the original version of the Arabic language and can serve as the bench mark for the other Arabic dialects. Classical Arabic is mostly spoken in Saudi Arabia now. Because it is the language with which the Qur’an was revealed in, it is understood even by non-native Arabic speakers. The Muslim world at large uses this language when studying the Qur’an. It could be argued that is the source of the Arabic dialects, (Shlonsky 349).

The Modern Standard Arabic is the form of Arabic language used in print media, books, radios, televisions, conducting proceedings in the mosque, and for communications between Arabs from different countries. According to Meiseles, it is also used by the educated class of Arabs. This is also the dialect taught in other countries to students willing to learn the Arabic language. This dialect is commonly accepted across different groups and thus, it is used even by non-native Arabic speakers. The Modern Standard Arabic was developed to help create more understanding between people with different orientations of the language.

Then there are the local dialects which are different from one location to another. This is where you find that Moroccans, though they speak Arabic may not speak the same way United Arab Emirates’ residents who also speak Arabic. These local dialects are only useful within the confines of the localities within which they are spoken and understood. Just like with any other language, there are differentials in the pronunciation and spelling of words though the meanings are the same across different localities, (Meiseles 140).

Morphology of Arabic words

Morphology refers to the generally accepted rules for structuring words to bring out various meanings as desired. The Arabic alphabet is made up is 28 consonants as earlier noted. To bring different words with different meanings, dots and lines are placed above or below the structure of the consonant. This is what brings differences between verbs and nouns by identifying the presence of the vowels. The Arabic morphology is considered to be highly systematic compared to English. According to Shlonsky (348), theories describing the word structure in the Arabic language are based on the how the words take syntaxes and how they are formed.

According to Dehghan (1059), the Arabic system contains patterns of consonants which are added to different structures of vowels to form a word. This is the case with English words like “song”, “sung” and “sing”. The difference between these words is the vowels added to the consonants. Every time a different vowel is added to the consonants, a different word, with a different meaning is formed. This is how the Arabic system of forming words works. An example in Arabic is the word “kaatib” that means writing. It has to do with words like “writer”, “writing”, “write”, “wrote” etc. Consequently, all words related to writing in Arabic have the root “k-t-b”. What changes to bring out different words with different meanings are the vowels inserted in between the roots. For instance, in this case, the word “written” will be “maktuub” in Arabic. Again, it has the root “k-t-b”.

As shown from the above illustrations, shifting the vowels while maintaining the root of the words is a very key approach to the formation of Arabic words. In this context, the root refers to the component of a word, morpheme, made by sequential consonants which represent the stem of the word, (Dehghan et al 1058). For any form that the word will take, the morphemes will be present and in the same order. The root in a way communicates the meaning or idea carried by the word.

In his study of the Arabic language, Shlonsky (349) argued that the structure of most Arabic words is made up of two parts, the root, which we had identified above and the pattern which is the other part of the word. None of these sections can stand alone to pass a meaning but rather they need to be joined wit each other to form the meaningful word.

Arabic dictionaries, unlike the English dictionaries, are organized following the orders of the roots of words. The do not follow the spelling of the specific words. The root is first stated then followed by all words that stem out of that root and their specific meanings are then given. This shows the important of the roots of the words in the Arabic language. It is true thus that of key importance in the understanding of the structure of Arabic words it the roots of words. I think this makes the Arabic language easy to learn for non-natives.

Other structures of words are the words formed out of a combination of two words. For instance, in words that presents an opposite of the main word. A good example is the word “non-resident”. In the Arabic language, the word “laamarkaziyya” which is formed from joining two words “laa” which means “no” and “markaziyya" which means centralization to form the one-word "decentralization". According to Shlonsky (350), this was not common in the classical Arabic but it is a result of the Modern Standard Arabic.

Differences between English and Arabic languages

When comparing the two languages, several differences and similarities can be identified. The differences can be presented in the aspects of the alphabet and vowels, phonology, and grammar.

Alphabets and vowels

In terms of the alphabets, as earlier discussed, the Arabic language has 28 consonants. Among these, consonants, there are only three identifiable vowels which are the equivalent of long “u”, “a” and “o”. Generally, in the Arabic language, there are those three long vowels, two diphthongs and three short vowels which are not written in words. The short vowels are represented by small dots above the consonants they appear after. They are thus only noticed when the words are read out and not in writing, (Wright and Cosimo 2011).

The Arabic vowel system makes it easy for non-native speakers to learn the language as opposed to Arabic students learning English. The English vowel system has 26 consonants and five vowels. These vowels though they are just five, they have 24 vowel sounds. This is what makes the English language a difficult language for Arabic speakers. Unlike in the Arabic language where there are only diphthongs, the English vowel system has monophthongs and triphthongs in addition to the diphthongs, (Dewey, et al., 101).

The pronunciation of consonants in Arabic system is also different from that of the English system. In English, where there is a cluster of consonants, only the consonants are pronounced or some are silent. On the other hand, the Arabic system does not recognize the pronunciation of clusters of consonants. Speakers often insert vowels in between the consonants. For example, a word like “scorn” will come out like “secorn”. In respect to punctuation marks, the English system is more rigorous than in the Arabic system. Studies have shown that English learners tend to be vulnerable to cases of sentence run-ons as a result of using commas in places of full stops.

Grammar and punctuation

Most notably, in Arabic, the verb “to be” is not there in the present tense. Consequently are the verbs, “were”, “is”, and “is“ are not there in Arabic. The simple sentences which we have in English are replaced by nominal sentences in Arabic which have the verb omitted, (Dewey, 99). In Arabic also, the present, both simple and progressive, are not differentiated. These grammatical differences in English present a lot of challenges to English learners. For instance, a short sentence like, “this place is good” in English would be “this place good” in Arabic. The continuous form is also missing in the Arabic system as opposed to the case for English system.

As earlier stated, there is less punctuation in the Arabic language as compared to English. For instance the comma is rarely used in the Arabic language. English punctuation rules are stricter than the Arabic rules. This complicates English language acquisition for Arabic native speakers. Arabic is for one, very simple in writing because not everything that is in speech needs to be put in text. Word stress in Arabic language is regular and therefore it is always clear where to put the stress, (Dewey, et al, 99). On the other hand, in English system word stresses are irregular and random. Different words are stressed at different places.

From these comparisons, it is clear that English learners have difficulties than Arabic learners. The English language seems to have many bureaucracies in punctuation and writing compared to the Arabic language. Studies on language acquisition have shown that Arabic speakers have it hard when learning English than do English speakers learning Arabic. According to Dehghan (1063), language acquisitions studies have also shown that learners acquire letters which are most used in the specific language earlier. For instance, according to Dewey (101) learners acquire the sound “f” faster in Arabic than in English. On the other hand, the sound “j” in English is learned earlier that in Arabic.

During the language acquisition, for both languages, learners have been observed to show characteristics of overgeneralization. This occurs when a person learns particular rules of word structure in the specific language and ends up using then in all other occasions even where there are exceptions. Exceptions to rules are not introduced in the first instances and so learners always make the mistakes despite the language, (Shlonsky 350).

Effects of globalization on the Arabic language

Globalization emphasizes on the view of the world as a small village. This emphasis stresses on the need for all people to be able to interact despite their languages, cultures or geographical locations. According to Elkhafaifa (254), the emphasis on globalization has undermined the growth of the Arabic language. He argues that globalization is a threat to the Arabic language and other languages because it has not recognized it a world language. Globalization calls for the integration of the world by elimination of any barriers. Unfortunately the Arabic language is considered as a barrier. The English language however has been viewed as the proper language for the whole world.

According to Elkhafaifa (256), most Arabic speakers have been forced to study the English language o as to be more effective in the job market and in the business world. The rate of people taking English classes is much higher than for those studying the Arabic language, (Elkhafaifa 254). There are as well many English speakers in Arabic speaking countries influencing the study of the English language. Business transactions are also conducted in the English language more. Elkhafaifa recommends the recognition of the Arabic language as a global language and a steering of globalization owing to the wide use of the language.