Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic
Verses from the Quran vocalized in a reading tradition considered normative Classical Arabic, written in the cursive Arabic.
Native to	Historically in the Middle East
Era	7th century AD to 9th century AD; continued as a liturgical language of Islam, spoken with a modernized pronunciation
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Classical Arabic
Early form	Old Arabic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None

Classical Arabic is the form of the Arabic language used in Umayyad and Abbasid literary texts from the 7th century AD to the 9th century AD.

The orthography of the Qurʾān was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic.

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is its direct descendant used today throughout the Arab world in writing and in formal speaking, for example, prepared speeches, some radio broadcasts, and non-entertainment content; it is also used in modernized versions of the Quran and revised editions of poetries and novels from Umayyad and Abbasid times (7th to 9th centuries). While the lexis and stylistics of Modern Standard Arabic are different from Classical Arabic, the morphology and syntax have remained basically unchanged (though MSA uses a subset of the syntactic structures available in CA). In the Arab world, little distinction is made between CA and MSA, and both are normally called al-fuṣḥá (الفصحى‎) in Arabic, meaning 'the most eloquent'.

History

In the late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal ‘poetic koiné’ distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd, probably in connection with the Lakhmid court of al-Ḥīra. During the first Islamic century the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke a form of Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. The standardization of Classical Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al-Kitāb, is based first of all upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to the Qurʾān and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya. "Colloquial" Arabic refers to the many regional dialects derived from Arabic spoken daily across the region and learned as a first language, and as second language if people speak other languages native to their particular country. By the 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, as it was the lingua franca across the Middle East, North Africa, Horn of Africa during those times; the analogy is like most literate Romance speakers were also literate in Classical Latin. Various Arabic dialects freely borrowed words from Classical Arabic, this situation is similar to Romance languages, wherein scores of words were borrowed directly from Classical Latin. People speak Classical Arabic as a second language if they speak colloquial Arabic dialects as their first language, but as a third language if others speak other languages native to a country as their first language and colloquial Arabic dialects as their second language. But Classical Arabic was spoken with different pronunciations influenced by informal dialects. The differentiation of the pronunciation of informal dialects is the influence from native languages previously spoken and some presently spoken in the regions, such as Coptic in Egypt, Berber, Punic or Phoenician in North Africa, Himyaritic, Modern South Arabian and Old South Arabian in Yemen, and Aramaic in the Levant.

Phonology

Consonants

See also: Arabic phonology

Like Modern Standard Arabic, Classical Arabic had 28 consonant phonemes:

Classical Arabic consonant phonemes

		Labial	Dental	Denti-alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
				plain	emphatic
Nasal		m م		n ن
Plosive	voiceless			t ت	tˠ ط		k ك	qˠ ق		ʔ ء↓
	voiced	b ب		d د		ɟ ج
Fricative	voiceless	f ف	θ ث	s س	sˠ ص	ɕ ش		χˠ خ	ħ ح	h ه
	voiced		ð ذ	z ز	ðˠ ظ			ʁˠ غ	ʕ ع
Lateral				l ل	ɮˠ ض
Tap				r ر
Approximant						j ي↓	w و↓

Notes:

^1 Sibawayh described the consonant ⟨ط⟩ as voiced (/dˠ/), but some modern linguists cast doubt upon this testimony.

^2 Ibn Khaldun described the pronunciation of ⟨ق⟩ as a voiced velar /g/ and that it might have been the old Arabic pronunciation of the letter, he even describes that prophet Muhammad may have had the /g/ pronunciation.

^3 Non-emphatic /s/ may have actually been [ʃ], shifting forward in the mouth before or simultaneously with the fronting of the palatals (see below).

^4 As it derives from Proto-Semitic *g, /ɟ/ may have been a palatalized velar: /ɡʲ/.

^5 /l/ is emphatic ([ɫ]) only in /ʔaɫɫɑːh/, the name of God, Allah, except after /i/ or /iː/ when it is unemphatic: bismi l-lāhi /bismillaːhi/ ('in the name of God').

^6 /ɾˠ/ (velarized) is pronounced without velarization before /i/: [ɾ].

Vowels

Monophthong phonemes

	Short		Long
	Front	Back	Front	Back
Close	i	u	iː	uː
Open	a		aː

Notes:

• [e] might have been an allophone of short /a/ in certain imalah contexts
• In pre-Classical Arabic, [eː] arose out of contraction of certain Old Arabic triphthongs. Some Arabs said banē (< *banaya) for banā ("he built") and zēda (< *zayida) for zāda ("it increased"). This /eː/ merged with /aː/ in later Classical Arabic. A completely different phenomenon called imāla led to the raising of /a/ and /aː/ adjacent to a sequence i(ː)C or Ci(ː), where C was a non-emphatic, non-uvular consonant, e.g. al-kēfirīna < al-kāfirīna ("the disbelievers")
• [ɑ(ː)] might have been an allophone of /a/ and /aː/ after uvular and emphatic consonants

Grammar

Nouns

Main article: Arabic nouns and adjectives

Case

The A1 inscription dated to the 3rd or 4th c. AD in the Greek alphabet in a dialect showing affinities to that of the Safaitic inscriptions shows that short final high vowels had been lost in at least some dialects of Old Arabic at that time, obliterating the distinction between nominative and genitive case in the singular, leaving the accusative the only marked case:

أوس (بن) عوذ (بن) بناء (بن) كازم الإداميْ أتو من شحاصْ؛ أتو بناءَ الدَّورَ ويرعو بقلَ بكانون

ʾAws (ibin) ʿūḏ (?) (ibin) Bannāʾ (ibin) Kazim ʾal-ʾidāmiyy ʾatawa miś-śiḥāṣ; ʾatawa Bannāʾa ʾad-dawra wa yirʿaw baqla bi-kānūn

"ʾAws son of ʿūḏ (?) son of Bannāʾ son of Kazim the ʾidāmite came because of scarcity; he came to Bannāʾ in this region and they pastured on fresh herbage during Kānūn".

Safaitic (ca. 3rd - 4th c. AD)
	Triptote	Diptote	Dual	Masculine Plural	Feminine Plural
Nominative	∅..الـ (ʾal-)...-∅	-∅	الـ)..ـَان) (ʾal-)...-ān	الـ)..ـُون) (ʾal-)...-ūn	الـ)..ـَات) (ʾal-)...-āt
Accusative	الـ..ـَا (ʾal-)...-a		الـ)..ـَيْن) (ʾal-)...-ayn	الـ)..ـِين) (ʾal-)...-īn
Genitive	∅..(الـ) (ʾal-)...-∅

Classical Arabic however, shows a far more archaic system, essentially identical with that of Proto-Arabic:

Classical Arabic (ca. 7th c. AD)
	Triptote		Diptote	Dual	Masculine Plural	Feminine Plural
Nominative	ـٌ -un	الـ..ـُ ʾal-...-u	ـُ -u	الـ)..ـَانِ) (ʾal-)...-āni	الـ)..ـُونَ) (ʾal-)...-ūna	ـَاتٌ -ātun	الـ..ـَاتُ ʾal-...-ātu
Accusative	ـًا، ـً -an	الـ..ـَ ʾal-...-a	ـَ -a	الـ)..ـَيْنَ) (ʾal-)...-ayna	الـ)..ـِينَ) (ʾal-)...-īna	ـَاتٍ -ātin	الـ..ـَاتِ ʾal-...-āti
Genitive	ـٍ -in	الـ..ـِ ʾal-...-i

State

The definite article spread areally among the Central Semitic languages and it would seem that Proto-Arabic lacked any overt marking of definiteness. Besides dialects with no definite article, the Safaitic inscriptions exhibit about four different article forms, ordered by frequency: h-, ʾ-, ʾl-, and hn-. The Old Arabic of the Nabataean inscriptions exhibits almost exclusively the form ʾl-. Unlike the Classical Arabic article, the Old Arabic ʾl almost never exhibits the assimilation of the coda to the coronals; the same situation is attested in the Graeco-Arabica, but in A1 the coda assimilates to the following d, αδαυρα *ʾad-dawra الدورة 'the region'.

In Classical Arabic, the definite article takes the form ʾal-, with the coda of the article exhibiting assimilation to the following dental and denti-alveolar consonants. Note the inclusion of palatal /ɕ/, which alone among the palatal consonants exhibits assimilation, indicating that assimilation ceased to be productive before that consonant shifted from Old Arabic /ɬ/:

Sun consonants in Classical Arabic

Dental		Denti-alveolar		Palatal
plain	emphatic	plain	emphatic
		n n – ن
		t t – ت	tˤ ṭ – ط
		d d – د
θ ṯ – ث		s s – س	sˤ ṣ – ص
ð ḏ – ذ	ðˤ ẓ – ظ	z z – ز
		ɕ (< *ɬ) š – ش	ɮˤ ḍ – ض
		l l – ل
		r r – ر

Verbs

Main article: Arabic verbs

Barth-Ginsberg alternation

Proto-Central Semitic, Proto-Arabic, various forms of Old Arabic, and some modern Najdi dialects to this day have alternation in the performative vowel of the prefix conjugation, depending on the stem vowel of the verb. Early forms of Classical Arabic allowed this alternation, but later forms of Classical Arabic levelled the /a/ allomorph:

	Pre-Classical (taltalah)		Classical
1 sg.	ʾi-rkabu	ʾa-qtulu	ʾa-...-u
2 m.sg.	ti-rkabu	ta-qtulu	ta-...-u
3 m.sg.	ya-rkabu (< *yi-)	ya-qtulu	ya-...-u
1 pl.	ni-rkabu	na-qtulu	na-...-u

See also

• Arabic language
• Modern Standard Arabic
• Varieties of Arabic
• Ancient North Arabian
• Quranic Arabic Corpus
• Arabic–English Lexicon

References

• Bin-Muqbil, Musaed (2006). "Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Arabic Emphatics and Gutturals". University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• Holes, Clive (2004) Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties Georgetown University Press. ISBN 1-58901-022-1
• Versteegh, Kees (2001) The Arabic Language Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0-7486-1436-2 (Ch.5 available in link below)
• Watson, Janet (2002). "The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic". New York: Oxford University Press.
• Bin Radhan, Neil. "Die Wissenschaft des Tadschwīd".

External links

• Classical Arabic Grammar Documentation – Visualization of Classical Quranic Grammar (iʻrāb)
• Learn Quran – Lectures on Quranic Arabic by Dr. Khalid Zaheer (CA)
• Institute of the Language of the Quran - Free Video lectures on basic and advanced Classical Arabic grammar