--- title: "The Arabic Language from Its Earliest Times to — Jnaidi 2022" description: "This article is a historiographical review in Arabic linguistics, not a computational or corpus study." authors: ["Omar Adeeb Shaker Jnaidi"] year: 2022 venue: "Şarkiyat Mecmuası" source: "https://cdn.istanbul.edu.tr/file/JTA6CLJ8T5/4BA510EEE0064F1EB7023F95B26CFFE7" doi: "10.26650/jos.1140365" licence: "CC BY-NC (journal licence per DOAJ; Şarkiyat Mecmuası)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/jnaidi-2022-arabic-language-earliest-times-age/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/jnaidi-2022-arabic-language-earliest-times-age/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2022](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2022/page/5/) / The Arabic Language from Its Earliest Times to the Age of Ignorance # The Arabic Language from Its Earliest Times to the Age of Ignorance **Authors:** Omar Adeeb Shaker Jnaidi · **Year:** 2022 · **Venue:** Şarkiyat Mecmuası · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC (journal licence per DOAJ; Şarkiyat Mecmuası)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.26650/jos.1140365) · [PDF](https://cdn.istanbul.edu.tr/file/JTA6CLJ8T5/4BA510EEE0064F1EB7023F95B26CFFE7) · [DOI 10.26650/jos.1140365](https://doi.org/10.26650/jos.1140365) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4307468358) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary This article is a historiographical review in Arabic linguistics, not a computational or corpus study. Its question is how Arabic developed before the pre-Islamic (Jahiliyyah) era. By that period the language already appears fully formed in poetry, yet almost no inscriptions or texts record its earlier stages. The author arranges existing opinions in two layers. The first comes from classical Arab philologists, who debated whether the language was divinely given, who first spoke it, how old it is and how it changed. They also showed an early sense that Arabic is related to neighbouring languages. The second layer comes from modern Orientalists and Arab scholars, who use comparative study and epigraphy to place Arabic within the Semitic family and to explain how Standard Arabic arose from tribal dialects. The paper does not argue for one theory. It sets the rival hypotheses next to each other, from single-tribe origin to a blended northern–southern koine to a literary standard spreading from al-Hira. Its usefulness is as a structured map of positions, together with an honest account of how thin the evidence is. ## Key points - Classical views: - Ibn Faris held that Arabic was sent by God. - al-Suyuti divided Arabs into three groups: Arabah, al-Muta'riba and al-Musta'ribah. - al-Jahiz named Ismail bin Ibrahim as the first speaker, while others named Yarub bin Qahtan. - Many classical scholars separated an old Yemeni Arabic from a newer Ishmaelite Arabic. - On language change: - al-Akhfash traced dialect differences to different starting points. - Classical grammarians treated heavy, frequent use as a driver of change and used it to explain dropped elements. - On the Semitic family: - The term "Semitic" was coined by Schulze in 1781. - Israel Levinson grouped the Semitic languages geographically into Eastern, Western and Southern regions. - Modern scholars treat Arabic as a branch of this family and its closest relative. - On northern and southern Arabic: - Arabic dialects split into Northern and Southern groups. - Old South Arabian differs sharply from the standard language, as Ibn al-Haik's description of Yemeni speech suggests. - After crises and emigration weakened the south, northern Arabic came to dominate the peninsula. - Modern hypotheses: - al-Rafei sees Arabic as a branch of, or descendant from, proto-Semitic. - Ali Wafi argues that dialects split and later merged again. - Mahmoud Taymour treats the dialects as a stage before literary Arabic. - Wolfensohn describes a north–south mixture. - Saeed al-Ghamdi places Arabs in southern Iraq before the 7th century BC and the Lakhmid state at al-Hira in the early 5th century AD. He sees al-Hira as the source from which the standard spread, and argues the Quraysh were not positioned to spread their dialect before Islam. ## Interesting ideas - Classical grammarians explained missing or shortened forms by how often a word is used, treating frequency as a cause of reduction. — For Mova (tokens): frequency could serve as an explicit, logged reason for treating contractions and clipped forms as variants of a full lemma in crate en. - One hypothesis treats the standard language as a coalition of several dialects rather than the speech of one tribe. — For Mova (tree): the UD dialect conversion layer could model a "standard" target as a merger of treebank conventions with recorded provenance, instead of crowning one treebank as canonical. - The paper lays out competing origin hypotheses side by side, each tied to a named scholar, without merging them into one story. — For Mova (world): the knowledge graph could store contested claims as attributed, parallel assertions, so answers can say who holds which view instead of flattening disagreement. - The author repeatedly notes where evidence is missing, such as the lack of inscriptions, before weighing any claim. — For Mova (answer): readers could mark when a question goes beyond what the text supports and answer "not established" rather than guessing, which also gives a natural negative-control check. - Levinson classifies the Semitic languages purely by geography (East, West, South), alongside classification by shared roots. — For Mova (world): the ontology could attach several independent classification axes to an entity (geographic and genealogical), letting reasoning pick whichever axis a question needs. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) Topics: [Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{jnaidi2022arabic, title = {{The Arabic Language from Its Earliest Times to the Age of Ignorance}}, author = {Jnaidi, Omar Adeeb Shaker}, booktitle = {Şarkiyat Mecmuası}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.26650/jos.1140365}, url = {https://doi.org/10.26650/jos.1140365} } ``` - [← previous The acquisition of inflectional morphology: The representation of nominal inflections in Amharic speaking children’s speeches](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/alamirew-2022-acquisition-inflectional-morphology-representation-nominal/) - [next → The effect of teaching Arabic grammar according to functional education in the achievement of female students fourth grade literary](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/anon-2022-effect-teaching-arabic-grammar-according/) - [↑ back to papers of 2022](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2022/page/5/) ## References 10 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. 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