More about Arabic language
Yasir Qadhi Library Chat #6
Yasir Qadhi studied German back in the day. Who would have guessed?
There are a lot of myths around Arabic. Some people say ‘Arabic is the language of Adam’ or ‘Arabic is the language of Paradise’. Those are claims based on fabricated hadith.
Undoubtedly, Arabic is a special language. It’s the language of the Quran. It’s the first language with a dictionary. It’s the first language in which people compiled grammar compilations. All languages evolve, but Arabic has a classical standard known as fusha. No other language has that. Nobody speaks Shakespearean English, and it’s only 500 years old! The grammatical concept of ʾIʿrab and the sub-science of صرف from trilateral Arabic roots are special. This distinguishes Arabic from most other languages.
Umar bin Khattab (R) sent a letter to his governor Abu Musa Ashari (R). He wrote, “Make sure you teach the people the Sunnah and the Arabic language. Make sure they recite the Quran with correct pronunciation.”
Do you know how to tell apart the ض and the ظ? Ibn Taymiyyah said, “The two letters almost sound the same, and if someone mixes the two letters in salat, the salat is fine.”
It’s interesting to note that no other major language has the letter ض. Apparently, there is a big debate on how this letter is correctly pronounced. When Qadhi was a first-year student, he was warned not to recite in front of a scholar because that scholar pronounced ض differently. Who knew there were factions around this? The debate is too advanced to be verbalized on an English language substack.
The letter ظ is the least used letter in the Arabic language. Only around 30 words have ظ. And out of those 30 words, only 10 are common. Such as zulm, azeem, and nazarah. It is the least used letter in the entire Quran.
Thousands of languages are still around, and probably tens of thousands of dead languages. So any general claim about languages shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Did you know the Egyptian government was the first to broadcast the Quran on the radio? Did you know the Egyptians in the 1930s were the first to record the Quran? Don’t be too impressed. That was courtesy of British colonization.