Arabic: Passport Control

Assalāmu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

Well, living in an environment occupied with various kind of people and ethnicity, it sometimes makes my head a little dizzy to communicate with them especially when we have to switch codes while talking. It happens to me since I was young. 

I speak Northern Malay at home and we have sprinkling of Hindustani, Persian and Arabic in our speech that do not really exist in Southern Malay especially during my schooling times. I am not sure the words such as kutub khanah (library), gerek (bicycle), prashat (villains), bahadur (courageous act), rumbas (fight), and so on ever exist in Southern Malay. We used those words before we leave them out as the time is moving on up to now...  In term of pronunciation, I was frustrated with Quranic and non-Arab teachers who taught Islamic related sciences where they pronounced things differently to our pronunciation... The Qaf (ق) becomes Kop... The Ghayn (غ) becomes Gain... The Khaf (خ) becomes Haf... Ḍhad (ض) becomes Dott.. The special glottal 'Ayn (ع) turned out to be Ain... 

I pronounced them without any pain because I am a Peranakan Arab of the Past yet I had to pretend or forced to pronounce things like non-Arabs because we are not recognized with our own ethnicity instead we were lumped into Malayan nationality during British administration era... I was so much confused back then and yes... I was so depressed... 20 years ago people perhaps were not familiar with dialectical differences as compared to now with the development of modern information technologies and the internet. 

That was just my experience. I am relieved that I could share how I feel... I am dumping some Arabic for Communication. I would only use Roman script as Arabic script would take time unless if I write everything with my hand, hehe... These are in Syrian Arabic... Not Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).

Passport Control

In this story, Sylvana had just arrived in Damascus and she has to check her passport at the passport control. Let us see how she deals with el-mowazzif (worker).

Sylvana: Ṣabāḥ el-khayr!

Worker: Ṣabāḥ el-khayrāt! Jawādh el-safar idhā bitrīdī.

Sylvana: Tafaḍḍhal...

Worker: Shukran... Shū esmek?

Sylvana: Anā ismī Sylvana.

Worker: We entī minīn? 

Sylvana: Min Iṭāliyā. Anā mu'allimeh.

Worker: Āh! Enti Iṭāliyyeh? Iṭāliyā balad helwe katīr.

Sylvana: Eh, bas b'ide katīr.

Worker: Ṭhayyib... Tafaḍḍhalī. Haī basburik, ahlaw wa sahlan fīkī bish Shām!

Meaning

Sylvana: Good morning!

Worker: Good morning! Passport please.

Sylvana: Here you are...

Worker: Thank you... What is your name?

Sylvana: My name is Sylvana.

Worker: You are from?

Sylvana: From Italy. I am a teacher.

Worker: Oh! You are an Italian? Italy is a beautiful country.

Sylvana: Yes, but it is so far.

Worker: Great... Here you are. Your passport, welcome to Syria!

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

Northern Arabia: Language

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

Now, Northern Arabs were those who actually lived a Bedouin life. They were backward than the Southern Arabs as Southern Arabs had great kingdoms and city-states down there. However in term of language, Northern Arabs had also absorbed many loanwords from foreign powers surrounding them. They gradually absorbed the words into their vocabulary and the narration of historians themselves could not decipher when the Northern Arabs had absorbed those loanwords into their language. 

The development of Arabic language could be seen in three stages...

First Stage

The period where it was still pure and was not so much infiltrated with foreign words while the region of the spoken language is not so much vast like today. The period was the period of Amalek and other ancient Arab tribes.

Second Stage

Second Jurhumite period where the native Southern Arabs moved northward and mingled with Ishmael a.s and his family. Their language became influenced by these these Arabized non-Arabs and they also influenced them. The language evolved and later becoming other languages spoken by the Arabs of various tribes such as Mudharites, Rabi'as, Kinanas, Nizarites and the Qaysites.

Third Stage

The period where Quraish Arabs becoming the servants of the Cubicle Shrine and the Holy Mecca. Arabian tribes from the whole Arabia performing pilgrimage to the holy sites there every year. They would stay there for almost 50 days and becoming the guests of the Quraish who hosted them. Three days of the pilgrims would be spent in Dhu al-Majāz, seven days in the Majinnah, 30 days in the Okadh, and 10 days for pilgrimage sacraments as according to their religions and customs.

Quraish Arabs used to travel to other regions due to business needs and trade. They went to Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia, Hawrān, Persia and ancient Indian subcontinent. They met different and various kind of languages and foreign things to their region. They brought those things back to their state and introduce them to their people. The people use the things and calling them in their own names used in original states. The most popular loanwords within Northern Arab language were from Persian. These foreign languages and their business caravan had also helped them to enrich their language and their position as the servants in the Holy Mecca makes their language spread faster than any other Arab languages.

Besides, everyone should also take to their note that a development in a language also depends to the development of the knowledge and intellectual power of a certain nation who speak their own language. We could also see this in English because I am trying to write in English, haha. There were many literature works produced within English from the period of Old English which is a fusion of Angles, Jutes and Saxon languages. They have literature works in Old English such as Beowulf with those words which sound more like German to my ears, Middle English with its King James' Bible translations and Modern English which is now of different variations due to the spread of British influence in the world through their colonies such as Indian English, American English, Malayan English, British English, Jamaican English, Australian English, Scottish English, Irish English and so on. English also absorbed many foreign words into the its vocabulary such as from Arabic, from Indian languages and from the previous Roman and Norman empires. The English that I use in my posts is not even British English but more to Malaysian English which is closer to the Standard English. The same thing that happened to Quraish Arabic.

Because of this, many Bedouin Arabs could also express their feelings through Quraish Arabic. They sometimes enrich the language with their own dialects and so, we could see about 10-100 words could be used to refer only to one thing. We sometimes could articulate a verb with different ways in our grammatical and philology studies. Arabic has a special form of plural for nouns which is the Jama' Taksir where the arrangement is not so much organized like other two plural forms for feminine and masculine in our articulation. As such, an Eastern Languages linguist known as Noldke has proclaimed that Arabic is a rich and vast language. 

Ahmad Amin from Fuad I University of Cairo however contested the statement of Noldke although he too admits that Arabic is a rich language. Arabic for him is still confined within metal stones, metal hills and desert surrounding the Arabs since ancient times. It is still original in the sense that the Arabs were largely associated to their camels and the day dream steaming in their veins due to the empty desert around them. The Northern Arabs were poor without any term to describe snow at the peak of mountains, sea and fishes, ocean and ships nor could they describe anything related to luxurious life in palaces of noble men. They only come across to these matters when North Arabian kingdoms came into contact with other nations and their languages.

The difference between Arabic and other languages that could not be compared is that it has special form of grammatical order which is divided into the grammar and the articulation where both of them are closely linked in term of word construction and forming sentences since Arabic just like other Semitic languages also depends on the three alphabets for basic root of the word. And this is some glances about our language, the Arabic language which is now used as communication tool in modern Arabic speaking world. It was the language of Northern Arabs : ) 

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

Southern Arabia: Himyar Language

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

The language spoke by the Himyarite Arabs is definitely different to the Modern Standard Arabic which resembles the Classical Northern Arabic language. 

I remembered when I studied in Folk Religious School (SAR) where my Arabic language teachers said that I was good in Arabic either in the grammar or the pronunciation. I also had a vast vocabulary as compared to other native students, lol. Some of the religious academic teachers including the Arabic ones had tried to stop me from leaving the school just after I clashed with the discipline teacher simply because Sharia stream students were bunch of useless citizens and their classes was beside an unused toilet at the edge of the top level in the school building. Moral of the story, if you wanted your children to have Arabic education, never send them to study in SAR. There was a lack of qualified teachers and I am still following the news about the national "religious and Arabic" education. I believe the situation is still the same. Send your children right away to Arabic speaking schools or simply speak with them in the language at home. Education begins from home.

There were many different dialects spoken by ancient Arabs. The prominent ones in Southern Arabia was the Himyari language and the Sayhadi language. Little is known about the Himyari language and linguists could not find any relation between the Himyari language with Southern Arabic. While being a great kingdom, the knowledge about Himyarite language is very limited and could only be seen through inscriptions written in Sabaean script, which is an Old South Arabian language. The texts written in Himyar language seems to be rhymed. One of them is the Hymn of Qaniya. The language was only known from the statements made by Arab scholars from the first centuries after the rise of Muhammad s.a.w and his teachings. According to their description, the language was not mutual to Arabic speakers. They cannot understand the language at all. 

Differently to Old South Arabian languages, which were supplanted by Arabic in 8th century, if not much earlier, the Himyar language continued to be spoken in the highlands of southwestern Yemen after the rise of Islam. According to al-Hamdani (893-947), it was spoken somewhere in the highlands of western Yemen in 10th century, while the tribes at the coast and eastern Yemen spoke Arabic and most tribes in the western highland spoke Arabic dialects with strong Himyari influence. In the following centuries, Himyari was completely supplanted by Classical Arabic. But the modern dialects of the highlands seem to show traces of the Himyari substrate.

Linguistic Features

The most prominent feature of the Himyari is the definite article am-. It was shared, though with some Arabic dialects in the west of Arabia. Furthermore, the suffixes of the perfect (suffix conjugation) in the first person singular and the second person began with k-, while Arabic has t-.

This feature is also found in Old South Arabian, Ethiosemitic and Modern South Arabian. Both features are also found in some modern Arabic dialects spoken in Yemen, probably through Himyari substrate influence. The article am- is also found in other modern dialects of Arabic in the Arabian peninsula and in Central Africa.

Scholar such as Maryam Bayshak believes that the Shehhi dialect of northern cape of the UAE descends from the Himyari language. Some scholars also claimed that Yemenite Arabic sounds like Assyrian language. And the script of Himyari language is almost similar to the script used to write Ethiopian language, Amharic. Modern Arabic script is the script of North Arabs.

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!