Arabic: Where did فصحى (fuSHa) come from?

[Faylasoof]

I agree that archaic phonology alone may not prove a whole lot. However, the use of the term “artificially constructed” perhaps seems a little unfortunate here. I guess a better term might be to call it a “cultivated language” and may be in the context of the pre-Islamic era we could even term it a “supra-tribal cultivated language” i.e. no particular tribe “owned” it as such but all understood it. Well, at least the northern tribes. In other words an Arabic koine (common) language that came to be used for a specific purpose which probably was not daily communication but just poetry.

I base this argument on the earliest examples we have of this language being in the form of pre-Islamic poetry, and that too quite sophisticated in form when it comes to the rules of prosody. One has to concede that this must have been a result of a long period of development. You can’t get that level of sophistication of meter, rhyme and vocabulary overnight! Borrowing of words from various dialects seems eminently plausible and may actually account for the large number of synonyms we see ending up in the classical language.

Something of a parallel for all this can be found in Ancient Greek. The Epic or Homeric dialect of Greek was also a cultivated language with its well-defined rules of grammar, phonology and morphology which were quite distinct from other Greek dialects, like Attic, Ionic, Doric etc that were spoken forms, and in the case of Attic the basis of nearly all of later (i.e. post-Homeric) Classical Greek literature. There is, bye the way, quite an overlap between the Homeric and Attic dialects although both are distinct forms of dialects.

The Epic dialect however had a very specific purpose and was heard only in recitation form and that too for a specific kind of poetry as the name suggests. So, for example, in Attic plays the poetry we see used in choral songs is Doric and not Epic. The point I’m making is that Epic / Homeric Greek was a “recited dialect”.

Early Classical Arabic language and literature also seems to have taken the form of a “recited dialect” and used only in poetry, from the examples we have. Only in the post-Islamic era do we see the use of fuSHa for sermons, letters and other forms of communications and eventually a flowering of prose literature.

 

[Tracer]

I guess a better term might be to call it a “cultivated language” and may be in the context of the pre-Islamic era we could even term it a “supra-tribal cultivated language” i.e. no particular tribe “owned” it as such but all understood it. Well, at least the northern tribes. In other words an Arabic koine (common) language that came to be used for a specific purpose which probably was not daily communication but just poetry.

The point I’m making is that Epic / Homeric Greek was a “recited dialect”.

Early Classical Arabic language and literature also seems to have taken the form of a “recited dialect” and used only in poetry, from the examples we have. Only in the post-Islamic era do we see the use of fuSHa for sermons, letters and other forms of communications and eventually a flowering of prose literature.

This was precisely the point, mutatis mutandis, that I made dozens of posting before in this thread although I used different terms. "Recited Dialect" or "Recited Variety" are excellent terms. In other words, what came to be called "Classical Arabic" was originally a jahiliyyah poetic or a prestige form of the language, understood by most tribes in Arabia, but was never spoken on a daily basis.

If this is the case, the question remains: where did this "recited variety" originate from? I continue to believe that it must have come from an amalgamation of the dialects themselves, for reasons I've previously mentioned, namely "survival" and "intra-tribal communication needs" to put it perhaps too simply. In addition, one of its main functions was to "preserve" what was considered the "best" of the spoken dialects, which, at that time, were most probably very close to this "recited" variety in any case.

In other words, the "dialects" must have preceded the "recited variety". Nothing else makes sense to me. To believe otherwise means that the "recited variety" came first and then the dialects developed from it which to my way of thinking is illogical. I think it's got to be one or the other. Any other possibility is entering a world of make-believe.

I don't want to get into a Qur'anic discussion here because I don't presume to know enough to get involved in any kind of debate, but it's interesting to note that one of the English translations for the word "Qur'an" is precisely, recitation: The Recitation.

 

[Abu Rashid]

It still doesn't help us to determine if classical Arabic is a naturally developed language or an artificially constructed one based on the phonology and vocabulary of a set of archaic Bedouin dialects.

Good, because that was not my point in posting that.

The point was that there's little chance ra and za would've been mixed up prior to using dots, just because they happened to use the same letter.

It then became apparent he was only speaking about one particular instance, and the idea that two different people interpreted it to use either ra or za.

 

[berndf]

Good, because that was not my point in posting that.

The point was that there's little chance ra and za would've been mixed up prior to using dots, just because they happened to use the same letter.

It then became apparent he was only speaking about one particular instance, and the idea that two different people interpreted it to use either ra or za.

I see.

 

[Aydintashar]

If this is the case, the question remains: where did this "recited variety" originate from? I continue to believe that it must have come from an amalgamation of the dialects themselves, for reasons I've previously mentioned, namely "survival" and "intra-tribal communication needs" to put it perhaps too simply.

Whatever the name, either "recited variety" or "cultivated language", we have already discussed in detail, and nobody seems to be convinced of the survival theory, specially if it is meant in the sense of "survival in a Greek environment". As regards "intra-tribal communication needs", nobody is able to demonstrate a second example of a rhetoric lingua franca, synthesized by some tribes through combining a large number of dialects, to provide a means of large-scale communication. If anybody knows any example, we would gladly learn from it. Did the numerous American-Indian languages/dialects converge into a lingua franca? Such a process is impossible without the intervention of a big empire with political/economic ambitions and a great social upheaval, which urgently calls for a lingua franca.
Our problem would have been considered resolved, if we located the origination of FusHa after the onset of Islam, because we could then assign it to the "linguistic needs" of a great empire and an expanding religious ideology. However, we (or at least myself) face a linguistic paradox, as the language was readily available for extensive professional use in scholarly activities in a bedouin society, before the onset of Islam.

 

[Abu Rashid]

Of course. My point was just that an archaic phonology in itself doesn't prove much.

If the phonology is more archaic than the dialects it's supposedly synthesised from, then yes it means a lot.

Going back to your analogy with Latin & Esperanto. Can you imagine someone, with no knowledge of Latin, re-producing Latin phonology for a synthetic language from French? With the limited knowledge people had of linguistics 1400 years ago?

I think the idea that fus7a is contrived in any way shape or form from the dialects back then is just not taking many factors into consideration, not just fus7a's archaic phonology, but grammar too. Fus7a is archaic, in pretty much every aspect, as compared to any known dialects of Arabic.

 

[Tracer]

I think the idea that fus7a is contrived in any way shape or form from the dialects back then is just not taking many factors into consideration, not just fus7a's archaic phonology, but grammar too. Fus7a is archaic, in pretty much every aspect, as compared to any known dialects of Arabic.

Well, I've been waiting for weeks (it seems like years, actually) for you to say it. But you still haven't said it ! It's like you almost get there, but can't quite make yourself say it.

Are you thereby saying, Ya Abu Rashid, from your above quote, that the fus7a preceded, came before, antedated the colloquials?

Or are you saying something else? What is your "bottom line"? You know what mine is. What's yours?

 

[Aydintashar]

I think the idea that fus7a is contrived in any way shape or form from the dialects back then is just not taking many factors into consideration, not just fus7a's archaic phonology, but grammar too. Fus7a is archaic, in pretty much every aspect, as compared to any known dialects of Arabic.

FusHa grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax) has been almost frozen for the last 14 centuries, while its vocabulary has been expanding. Its contemporary grammar is, therefore, almost the same as it was 14 centuries ago. This is due to its being the language of Quran, and also the lingua franca of an empire. The dialects, on the other hand, have been subjected to free evolution, and might have really changed a lot and drastically simplified. If you compare, you should compare FusHa with the dialects of 14 centuries ago. Now, I think nobody knows the real situation concerning the dialects at that time. Therefore, which of them is grammatically more archaic, simply cannot be determined.

 

[berndf]

If you compare, you should compare FusHa with the dialects of 14 centuries ago. Now, I think nobody knows the real situation concerning the dialects at that time. Therefore, which of them is grammatically more archaic, simply cannot be determined.

Exactly.

 

[Abu Rashid]

Well, I've been waiting for weeks (it seems like years, actually) for you to say it. But you still haven't said it ! It's like you almost get there, but can't quite make yourself say it.
Are you thereby saying, Ya Abu Rashid, from your above quote, that the fus7a preceded, came before, antedated the colloquials?
Or are you saying something else? What is your "bottom line"? You know what mine is. What's yours?

As i was not around 1400+ years ago, I have no more concrete knowledge about the situation than you do. Hence I err on the side of caution and do not take any particularly strong position on it, although I do lean towards Fus7a being a lingua franca that pre-dated Islam alongside various localised dialects. I do not think fus7a was merely one of many dialects existing at the onset of the Islamic period, that just happened to get preserved because it was the lucky one. I think fus7a was already being artificially preserved (if you will) well before then. Doesn't mean it's an artificial language, it's just a pristine form of the language which was well guarded.

-----

The dialects, on the other hand, have been subjected to free evolution, and might have really changed a lot and drastically simplified. If you compare, you should compare FusHa with the dialects of 14 centuries ago. Now, I think nobody knows the real situation concerning the dialects at that time. Therefore, which of them is grammatically more archaic, simply cannot be determined.

Well we don't have a dialect frozen from 1400 years ago, but we do have one frozen from about 1000+ years ago (which is close enough in my book), and it tends to suggest that the dialects of today are not that much different to the dialects of that time. They were about as distant from fus7a as they are today. This example is of course Maltese, a dialect which was isolated from mainstream Arabic evolution at least 1000 years ago, if not more.

Maltese shares too many features and innovations with the other Arabic dialects of today for them to have all developed independantly, which leads us to the conclusion that the current dialects have had most of these features for over 1000 years.

 

[Aydintashar]

Maltese shares too many features and innovations with the other Arabic dialects of today for them to have all developed independantly, which leads us to the conclusion that the current dialects have had most of these features for over 1000 years.

Since I am not a specialist on Maltese, I cannot object to your argument full-heartedly. But, why do you believe that Maltese has been a frozen language in the past 1000 years. I am generally convinced that all languages have undergone great changes in the past 1000 years, and it is hard to believe in the existence of a frozen language, unless it is considered the language of God by large masses, and it must also be a written language. Actually, in the past 1000 years some languages have changed so much as they are no longer understandable to the native speakers. Therefore, it is hard to accept that the dialects of today are the same as 1400 years ago.

 

[Abu Rashid]

I am generally convinced that all languages have undergone great changes in the past 1000 years, and it is hard to believe in the existence of a frozen language

Perhaps frozen was not the most precise word. what I mean is that it was severed from the main body of Arabic, and therefore its development has been completely separate from Arabic since that time. Therefore it's logical to conclude that the shared colloquial characteristics of Maltese and other modern dialects today were existent at the time they split, no?

Of course there is some room for similar innovations to occur as coincidence, or because they began at a common origin anyway, but the similarities with other colloquial dialects are quite striking.

 

[clevermizo]

Perhaps frozen was not the most precise word. what I mean is that it was severed from the main body of Arabic, and therefore its development has been completely separate from Arabic since that time. Therefore it's logical to conclude that the shared colloquial characteristics of Maltese and other modern dialects today were existent at the time they split, no?

Of course there is some room for similar innovations to occur as coincidence, or because they began at a common origin anyway, but the similarities with other colloquial dialects are quite striking.

I do like the appeal to your point about Maltese sharing many many similar features with other dialects, but some of those are actually unrelated historically. For example, the fact that modern Maltese [q] is pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ], just like in the Levant is actually coincidental, and the pronunciation [q] was used right up until the 20th century until it began to change in certain cities like Valletta, and we know this from descriptions about Maltese pronunciation written before the 20th century which describe the sound of ق.

The only other point I'd like to contend is that Malta was completely severed. I used to think the same way actually, but the more I learn about Maltese the more I'm sure there was lots of cross-communication between the Arabic spoken on Sicily and Malta after the Norman conquest and the Arabic spoken in the close parts of North Africa like in Tunisia. I knew a Tunisian guy once who said he visited Malta and could essentially have fluent conversation with people there without changing his dialect too much. I think there must have been influence back and forth - although the Maltese became Christianized and did not preserve Classical Arabic culturally, they must have had contact with other Arabic speakers in nearby areas just through trading and travel routes.

 

[Abu Rashid]

For example, the fact that modern Maltese [q] is pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ], just like in the Levant is actually coincidental, and the pronunciation [q] was used right up until the 20th century until it began to change in certain cities like Valletta, and we know this from descriptions about Maltese pronunciation written before the 20th century which describe the sound of ق.

Well I don't know enough about Maltese to dispute that, but it sounds extremely co-incidental to me, especially given that [q]->[ʔ] does not seem like a very likely event to occur (don't think it occurs in any other Semitic languages, [q]->[k] yes I can understand or [q]->[g]). Was there no formal/informal varieties of Maltese during that time? Or perhaps a city/village split like in Arabic, and the village dialect was what was documented as having the [q]?

I knew a Tunisian guy once who said he visited Malta and could essentially have fluent conversation with people there without changing his dialect too much.

I have a tunisian friend who lived for about 10 years in Italy, and about 10 years here in Australia, so he speaks Tunisian Arabic, Italian & English, ie. all the main languages that have influenced Maltese, and he understands it pretty much perfectly. That still doesn't mean it continued to be influenced after the severance. Because Malta was colonised by Arabs from North Africa anyway, so they probably already had a similar dialect back then.

I think there must have been influence back and forth - although the Maltese became Christianized and did not preserve Classical Arabic culturally, they must have had contact with other Arabic speakers in nearby areas just through trading and travel routes.

It would've been fairly minimal I think. The Crusaders did not allow much interaction, and also how much language transfer is really going to take place through trade anyway? Sure a new word here and there, but not complex grammatical changes.

 

[Abu Rashid]

There was a link earlier in this thread to a book called Structuralist studies in Arabic linguistics: Charles A. Ferguson's papers which raises some very good points. Some of the common features of the dialects that he describes suggests they must all be quite closely related, more so than any of them is to fus7a, which indicates they've probably always been there alongside fus7a. One example is the verb jaaba (to bring), which he states is a fusion of ja'a + bi (came with), and which exists in pretty much every single dialect, indicating it was part of a common dialect that was spoken before the spread of Islam, since such a fusion could never have developed independently in so many different locations.

 

[Faylasoof]

Thanks Abu Rashid! This was the very reference I mentioned in one of my earlier posts above (#135) but as that was from an academic journal allowing only a limited preview [ here it is again: The Arabic Koine by Charles Ferguson , Language Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1959), pp. 616-630Published by: Linguistic Society of America] I couldn’t get to the rest of the article despite my best attempts, which included help from my institutes main library!


In short, Ferguson considered an Arabic Koine to co-exist with fuSHa in the early Islamic era, and it was this koine language ( = common language) that forms the basis of the dialects we see now. Furthermore, according to him, this koine was not based on any one dialect. This stands to reason and the point has been made before here (e.g. my post # 152: “supra-tribal cultivated language” i.e. no particular tribe “owned” it as such but all understood it”) but the way he is using the word koine (as a spoken dialect) is different to the way I was using it, viz. as the commonly understood language of pre-Islamic poetry.

Ferguson’s usage of the word koine is indeed better as it distinguishes formal Arabiyyah (fuSHa) from the more informal version that would have been used for conversational purposes much the same way that a highly ornate, formal Latin as, say, in the orations of Cicero is unlikely to have been used as a spoken language in Ancient Rome. Instead, as all scholars agree, a vernacular form would have been the norm for daily use and it was this that gave rise to the various romance languages.

As has been said many times, fuSHa arose from an earlier stage of Arabic. If this was due to a fusion of even earlier forms of dialects then the process would quite obviously have to be very long since such a fusion of dialects would result in a syntactically unstable product. This is believed to have happened in the case of Elamite – another language which, like Sumeric, has obscure origins.

All this still leaves open the question of the exact development and origins of fuSHa, given the paucity of material available for the (long) period we are interested in. In pre-Islamic poetry and the Quran we only have the end result of a very long period of development. Any speculation of exactly how fuSHa arose would mean we should look to other ancient languages for some answers …. and speculate!

 

[Aydintashar]

In the foregoing posts, I made reference on more than one occasion, to the issue of Arabic having enriched local languages in the Islamic geography in a drastic scale. I also stressed that languages like Persian and Turkish would not have been able to address any audience in scholarly fields, unless at the cost of heavy borrowing from Arabic.
Now a similar, but very delicate point remains to be clarified. If you look at the different dialects in the Arabic geography itself, you will notice that all those dialects are similarly heavily influenced and drastically enriched by FusHa, in such a manner, that none of them would be able to express itself in journalistic and scholarly fields without the FusHa influence. If you follow a film in, for example, Lebanese dialect, or watch a doctor or lawyer addressing common people in the same dialect, you will notice that a heavy proportion of the vocabulary comes from FusHa. It is the main tool. The speakers of those native dialects learn FusHa words and enrich their native language more or less in the same manner that we non-Arabs do. If we take this point into consideration, it will be difficult to believe that FusHa and the dialects coexisted, more or less as similarly developed languages, at a certain time prior to Islam, and all of them evolved into their present status. It will also be difficult to accept that FusHa was synthesized from a combination of dialects to make a lingua franca. The only remaining option would be to accept that FusHa had an independent and much more archaic existence than is usually conceived, and had always played a hegemonic role on regional languages.