ARABIC LANGUAGE. Among the languages termed Semitic, subdivided into Northern, embracing Aramean, Canaanitic, and Hebrew, the Babylonian and Assyrian, and Southern, including Arabic, Himyaritic, Geez or Ethopian, the Arabic in its historical growth and development and its present-day wide diffusion and prominence, is the richest and most important of the entire group. Com pared with its sister idioms, it has the merit of modernity and completeness. Re garded as an ancient tongue, it has the vigor and freshness of youth. In the earlier times, as the Bible and the inscriptions show, the constant migrations from central Arabia into Babylonia, Egypt, and south into Yemen and Abyssinia brought about reciprocal changes in dialects and customs. It was Schrader's view, contested by other authorities, that Arabia was the starting-point of Semitic culture. His torical and geographical conditions, however, tended to preserve its earliest roots and forms until the 6th or 7th century of our era, being more fortunate than Aramean and Can aanite and the Phoenician in their closer con tact with foreign nations that was disturbing and led to destruction. Another happy cir cumstance was the fixation by the Koran of the Koreish dialect, the tribe settled in and around Mecca, and from which branch Mo hammed sprang, as the future literary language of the whole nation. Even if with Naldeke we deny the theory that classical Arabic is nothing but the dialect of Mecca which the Koran brought into fashion, we must admit how vital the Koran has proved, despite some variations from classical rules, as the store house of the national tongue. Mohammed's grammatical and orthographic • errors were later sanctified and introduced into the lan guage as standard authority. Hence the essential unity of Arabic wherever spoken or written. From the mouth of the Tigris, through all Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine, in Arabia proper, Egypt and north Africa as far as Morocco, the language is the same, although some decay in inflection is to be observed Wright claims its purest form is found among the Bedouin and its most corrupt on the Island of Malta. In its long stretch of history it has not been untouched by foreign in fluences; it has absorbed in particular Greek elements of culture, but not to the same ex tent of assimilation as an Indo-Germanic dialect would have done. Its antiquity and
influence are shown in the earliest records of the Old Testament in grammatical forms and words, while in later centuries Arab wisdom was personified in the Queen of Sheba, in the friends of Job and in Solomon's own sagacity being compared to that of the Arab.
It was the Koran and the religion of Mohammed which made Arabic one of the chief languages in the world and subjected half the earth to the sway of Islam. The linguistic changes that naturally followed the military domination of the 1st century dis appeared a century later when Arabic gram mar was constructed so firmly as to undergo subsequently no essential variation. The zeal of Arabic philologists has opened to the world the vocabulary of the language, its wealth of words and ease of modification, which is the more wonderful when we consider the simple conditions of Arab life and how monotonous the land. The grammatical forms, too, are exceedingly rich, with the lavish development of broken plurals and verbal nouns, while it possesses the poetical freedom that seems the characteristic of the Hebrew. It is adapted as well for business as for society, and for abstract subjects in particular. Minor Arabic dialects developed with time and diverged one from the other. The present speech of Egypt and the African coastal lands — the Maghnb from Tripoli to Morocco have been made in telligible by special grammars. Maltese for nine centuries has been isolated from the influence of literary Arabic and exposed to that of Italian, and forms an interesting language for the philologist. Noldeke asserts, however, that with all their variations these dialects do not differ as much from classical Arabic as French and Rumanian do from Latin. Despite the puzzling appearance to the novice of Arabic script, it is comparatively easy to learn. The real mystery of the Semitic lan guages, seen in the Arabic in its most bewilder ing form, is the triliteral root which consists of three consonantal letters. While the vowels are only subordinate, expressing the word's modifications, the consonants give its meaning.