The Arabic Language

This book presents an overview of various aspects of the Arabic language. It covers (a) the roots and development of the language into what is known as Classical Arabic; (b) the emergence of what the author calls New Arabic as a result of the spread of Islam into new territories and the adoption of the language by non-Arabic speakers; (c) the emergence of Middle Arabic as a mode of textual (written) production in its Muslim, Judaic and Christian manifestations; (d) the Arabic dialects; (e) the emergence of Modern Standard Arabic since the nahda (renaissance); and a range of issues pertaining to diglossia, the status of Arabic as a minority language outside the Arabic speaking world and the use of Arabic among Muslim communities in Asia and Africa. In dealing with these issues Versteegh adopts a structural orientation to highlight the main features of the various forms of Arabic and the major tendencies which seem to be at work in their emergence and development, without however isolating these developments from their socio-cultural contexts. For example, Versteegh points out how, in spite of the strong links between Arabicization and Islamicization in the wake of the Islamic conquests, the former was not always associated with the latter, which meant that Arabic `became a binding factor for the Islamic empire to a far greater degree than religion' (93). The structural orientation of the book is particularly evident in the succinct and highly informative chapter on the structure of Classical Arabic as presented in the Arabic linguistic tradition (74-92). It is this structural orientation of the book which, in our view, is responsible for the absence of any treatment of Arabic in Israel as a minority language.