The Arabic Language: History and Development | Part 2

In this post, you will go through the evolution and development of the Arabic language over the centuries to its present form.

Arabic is a Sematic language – a major branch of Afro-Asiatic language family – like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Phoenician which passes through a Central Semitic branch of West Semitic languages that developed from Proto-Semitic language. Other Central Branches of West Semitic include Northwest Semitic languages (Aramaic, Canaanite, Ugaritic & Hebrew) and the Old South Arabian languages.

Old Arabic

Old Arabic is thought the earliest form of the Arabic language which dates to around 8th – 10th C. BCE spoken in Arabia, commonly known as the Arabia Peninsula. Although a wide variety of Semitic, as well as Sayhadic (Yemenite, non-Semitic) languages, were spoken in Arabia between 13th BCE to 6th BCE even later, and they were related to Arabic, they don’t have features to classify them as Arabic. Delving into Old South Arabian or Sayhadic languages, linguists find a variety of languages like Sabaean, Madhabic, Qatabanic, and Hadramitic that are extinct now but have a great influence on Arabic to be developed as a distinct language. Other surviving varieties of the Sayhadic include Razihi and Faifi languages, while Awsānian to some extent. Meanwhile, Northern and Western Arabia also have some prestige of some other extinct languages including Dadanitic, Taymanitic, and Thamudic.

The earliest evidence of people referred to the Arabs is an Assyrian (an extinct language of ancient Mesopotamia – modern-day Syria-Iraq) inscription from 8th C. BCE, but archaeologists and linguists gather to state that it just mentioned the Arab neither it depicts the example of the Arabic language. However, earlier it was believed that the Old Arabic emerged into 1st C. BCE and the inscription of Sabaic script from 1st C. BCE was thought the earliest form of Arabic, but this inscription had not enough features to classify it Arabic language.

On the other hand, from 6th C. to 4th C. BCE, there are inscriptions which are mostly the proper name that show the early form of the Arabic language. Some of these inscriptions have the reflection of the early form of Arabic or say these are written in the earliest form of the Arabic language, while some are in the Aramaic (language spoken in ancient Levant & Mesopotamian territories) but show the Arabic influence. The earliest inscription that is unmistakably believed the oldest form of Arabic is the Ein Avdat inscription from the 1st C. BCE. Ein Avdat inscription is referred to the earliest attestation of Arabic text found at Ein Avdat (located in modern-day Israel) which is an Aramaic inscription that contains three lines of poetry in Arabic.

Another inscription was discovered at An-Namaara 120km southeast from Damascus dating to nearly 328 CE written in Nabataean script which derived from Aramaic. Namara inscription which is an epitaph of king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, has a language that is nearly identical to Classical Arabic or the Arabic during the emergence of Islam. There are also other scripts from 4th and 6th C. CE found at four different locations in modern-day Syria that are more like Arabic. In general, it is thought that the Arabic script has been developed from the Nabataean script, and these inscriptions might be two somewhere.

In the meantime, the aforementioned inscriptions and evidence contradict two different beliefs about Arabic that:

• the Arabic language has the root of Sanskrit (an ancient language of the Indian subcontinent and the language of Vedas) that belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family
• the Old Arabic has been developed from Greek, a language that comes from the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European language family

However, it cannot be denied that some Northwest Semitic languages like Aramaic, Hebrew & Phoenician have significant influence of Latin and Greek languages, thus this influence shifts indirectly to Arabic, a Central Semitic language.

Before the emergence of Islam, there were numerous dialects of Arabic around the Arabian Peninsula but there was also a common literary language used among the different tribes for poetry called Koine which was a compromise between the various dialects of Arabic at that time. The poetry written in this literary koine is considered the first text written in classical Arabic which is the earliest example of the Arabic language.

At the emergence of Islam in 7th C., the Quran was written for 23 years. During the revelation of the Quran, there were seven dialects of classical Arabic:

1. Qureshi
2. Tamimi
3. Hatheel
4. Azad
5. Rabee’ah
6. Hawazen
7. Saab bin Bakr

The Quran was written in all of them which called Sab’a, Qirat but the Qureshi version became the standard, upon which the text of today’s Quran is based. The differences among these dialects are in pronunciation not in vocabulary or in grammar.

The Arabic of the Quran is similar to pre-Islamic classical poetry but not exactly the same. While the emergence of Islam and its spread led to scattering the Arabic into faraway lands between 622-632, 632,661, & 661-750.

After the spread of Islam, there was an important need to standardize written Arabic because a vast number of people were beginning to speak it. So, the script was made more practical, a new vocabulary was created, the grammar and style of prose were standardized.

Read more: The Arabic Language: Dialects and Variants

Neo-Arabic and Middle Arabic

From Classical Arabic standardized, there was the emergence of new local Arabic dialects throughout the Arab empire. These dialects weren’t directly the same as Classical Arabic or to single Arabic koine which was the common language of the Arab army. These dialects were essentially influenced by the original languages of the conquered areas.

The dialects from the Levant and Mesopotamian Arabic were influenced by the Aramaic and Phoenician. The Maghrebi dialect was influenced by the Berber language of North Africa while the dialect of Egypt was influenced by the Coptic. The Arabic in the early centuries of these newly emerging dialects is referred to as Neo-Arabic.

Even though Classical Arabic was standardized, not everybody could write it perfectly. Writing that contains Classical Arabic, as well as newly emerging dialect features, are referred to as Middle Arabic. It must be kept in mind that middle doesn’t refer to the period of the language, in fact, it refers to in the sense of between classical and colloquial Arabic.

Also, this was the time when the Arabic language itself absorbed some influence of several non-Semitic languages like Greek, Persian, languages of Africa, and so on.

Modern Arabic

Over the centuries the neo-Arabic dialects were continued to evolve into the Modern Standard Arabic dialects of today, but literary Arabic remained constant relatively because the Arabic of Quran remained as the kind of Arabic to imitate. This probably is a conservative fact on the dialect limiting them from changing too much.

After the Napoleon invasion in 1798, the Arab world entered greater contact with the West. The influx of new western concepts required Arabic to be updated. So, in the early 20th C., regional academies of Arabic began a process of language reform expanding and updating language’s vocabulary, and these updates and modernization are now known as Modern Arabic.

If you would like to learn more about the Modern Arabic and the various dialects of the Arabic language in present times, kindly check out post The Arabic Language: Dialects and Variants

Words from Us

Arabic is a fascinating language with lots of interesting features including script, phonology, and others. It is a language that often seems intimidating to learners because of its various dialects. 

The Arabic learners may ask what they should learn either Modern Standard Arabic or an Arabic dialect like Gulf Arabic, Najdi, Maghrebi, etc. So, the answer could be that one should learn some standard Arabic & classical Arabic (Quranic Arabic) either before the starting of an Arabic dialect or together with learning an Arabic dialect as it is so important. On the other hand, if one has a little knowledge of some Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic (Quranic Arabic), it will help learn and understand various dialects. 

By contrast, if the learner is just looking for communicative Arabic, he/she doesn't need to speak standard Arabic at a high level.

Read more: The Maltese Language: An Arabic Dialect