Political Crossfire Forums

[Showboat]

Languages evolve. Look how the English language has evolved in the 700 years since Chaucer. How has Arabic evolved since the 1400 years since the Koran was first written? It is said that the Koran shouldn't be translated or altered because it's the word of Allah and it could lose meaning, right? So if Arabic has evolved is the Koran currently read in "Ye Olde" Arabic or has it actually been ammended?

[Glorfindel]

in fact, Arabic has not evolved... original arabic that is. Arabic itself was saved and prospered because of Islam... Persians , Romans and Nubians learned Arabic after they converted to Islam and many of them became scholars and masters in Arabic and spoke it better than some Arabs in certain occassions

nothing has changed in Arabic as a language and nothing has changed in Islam since the dawn of Islam

[Saracen]

Glorfindel wrote: in fact, Arabic has not evolved... original arabic that is. Arabic itself was saved and prospered because of Islam... Persians , Romans and Nubians learned Arabic after they converted to Islam and many of them became scholars and masters in Arabic and spoke it better than some Arabs in certain occassions

nothing has changed in Arabic as a language and nothing has changed in Islam since the dawn of Islam

That's right.

[Showboat]

So what your saying is the Arabic of the Koran is as readable as Arabic written today? Obviously I guess some new words must have been added, like television or aeroplane, but to keep the language the same, especially a language in everyday use (unlike us Catholics using Latin for Mass for centuries, but not talking it otherwise.) for 1400 years is a bloody good job. I'm impressed.

[Saracen]

Showboat wrote: So what your saying is the Arabic of the Koran is as readable as Arabic written today? Obviously I guess some new words must have been added, like television or aeroplane, but to keep the language the same, especially a language in everyday use (unlike us Catholics using Latin for Mass for centuries, but not talking it otherwise.) for 1400 years is a bloody good job. I'm impressed.

They've done a helluva bloody good job. :wink:
Koranic Arabic is what is known as regular mainstream Arabic, the "dialect" of Arabic that every Arab understands, although its vocabulary slightly differs from regular Arabic in general. As for television and aeroplane... we have our own words too. :-D
Airplane = Taa'ira.
Television = Shashatil tilfaz.

However, during the course of the 1400 years, Arabic dialects evolved and were influenced according to the region and place.

[Showboat]

I guess thats like in the UK everyone understands "The Queens English" but if I go to Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle or Northern Ireland, God forbid, I can't understand a word they're saying, and they probably have trouble listening to my midlands accent. :lol:

Thanks

[Saracen]

Anytime. :-D

[Glorfindel]

Showboat wrote: So what your saying is the Arabic of the Koran is as readable as Arabic written today? Obviously I guess some new words must have been added, like television or aeroplane, but to keep the language the same, especially a language in everyday use (unlike us Catholics using Latin for Mass for centuries, but not talking it otherwise.) for 1400 years is a bloody good job. I'm impressed.

well in the last two centuries, many people started to use slangs and distorted their Arabic which weakened it...add to that the era of ignorance and colonization after the fall of the Ottoman empire..but thank God now people are learning true Arabic and could read and understand Quran better than their grandfathers

Arabic as a language never changed...scholars from India to Morocco made sure of that

Quran was never editted to make it understandable to the lay man >>the lay man has to learn the true original Arabic to read it and understand it

thats how Islam preserved this langauge