Gourt Home::Gourt :: Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic is the form of the Arabic language used in the Qur'an as well as in numerous literary texts from the same period. Modern Standard Arabic is a modern version, differing minimally in morphology and only to a small degree in its syntax and lexicon.
Classical Arabic is often believed to be the parent language of all the spoken varieties of Arabic, but recent scholarship, such as Clive Holes (2004), questions this view, showing that other dialects were extant at the time and may be the origin of current spoken varieties.
History
Classical Arabic spread with the spread of Islam, becoming a language of scholarship and religious devotion as the language of the Qur'an. Its relation to modern dialects is somewhat analogous to the relationship of Latin and the Romance Languages or Middle Chinese and the modern Chinese languages.
Morphology
Classical Arabic is one of the Semitic languages, and therefore has many similarities in conjugation and pronunciation to Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, and Amharaic. It possesses similar conjugation to biblical Hebrew in its use of vowels to modify a base group of consonants. For example, k-t-b means write, so out of this cluster, we get:
- kataba, to write
- yak
tubu, he writes - kitāb, book
- kutub, some books
- maktaba, library
- mik
tāb, writing machine
Phonology
There are three short vowels and three long vowels in Arabic, being A, I, and U in two different lengths each. The following table illustrates this:
| Vowels | Short | Long | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | ||||
| Low | ||||
There are as many consonant phonemes in Classical Arabic as there are in the modern form. They are:
| Bilabial | Inter- dental | Dental | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyn- geal | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | emphatic | ||||||||||
| Stop | voiceless | ||||||||||
| voiced | ¹ | ||||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | ||||||||||
| voiced | |||||||||||
| Nasal | |||||||||||
| Lateral | ² | ||||||||||
| Trill | |||||||||||
| Approximant | |||||||||||
See Arabic alphabet for further explanation of the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
- In modern Arabic, is pronounced as by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced as . However, the true classical pronunciation is .
- is pronounced only in , the name of God, i.e. Allah, when the word follows a, ā, u or ū (after i or ī it is unvelarised: bismi l-lāh ).
- is usually a phonetic approximant.
- In many varieties (if not most), are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works). However, in classical Arabic, they are pronounced as pharyngeals.
The consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" are either velarised or pharyngealised . In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter e.g. is written ‹D›; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it e.g. ‹ḍ›.
Pronunciation of Saad
The main difference of pronunciation between classical Arabic and Modern Arabic is in the pronunciation of 'Saad', which is the emphatic "s" in Arabic. In Classical Arabic 'saad' was sometimes voiced making it an emphatic "z". The emphatic "z" is widely used in pronouncing the consonant 'DHaa', which in classical usage is correctly an emphatic "dh" sound.Classical pronunciation
Overall, pronunciation of Classical Arabic differs from pronunciation of Modern Arabic in the following ways:
- In Classical Arabic, different sounds are elided. Generally, Classical Arabic pronounces every letter, but there are exceptions governed by complex rules; for example, the final -r is silent in the words baḥr (بحر) and ǧisr (جسر).
- Sentence-final -an (marking an indefinite noun in the accusative case) is pronounced -aa.
- Post-vocalic n sounds are sometimes suppressed; when this happens, the previous vowel is nasalized. This is governed by various rules.
- Classical Arabic is pronounced more slowly.
- The letter ǧīm (ﺝ) is pronounced differently. It can be pronounced as /g/ in classicalisms, but usually this pronunciation is attributed to the non-traditional Arabs (to Spanish characters in Andalus-related dramas, or to Byzantine kings). It is never pronounced /ʒ/.
- The letter kāf (ﻙ) is sometimes voiced, producing a /g/ sound; however, this is not done if ǧīm ﺝ is being pronounced /g/.
Bibliography
- Holes, Clive (2004) Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties Georgetown University Press. ISBN 1589010221
- Versteegh, Kees (2001) The Arabic Language Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0748614362 (Ch.5 available in link below)
See also
External links
"Classical Arabic"