al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, Arabic often has the ability to convey a very precise meaning using a single world, due to the richness and breadth of its vocabulary. In line with this, scholars of the language would often compile lexicons based on concepts shared between words rather than alphabetically, and thus the thesaurus genre in …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, One of the issues encountered when translating any text into another language is the extent to which dynamic or formal equivalence should be retained in the translation. One of the levels of connotation lost in translation relates to the semantic function of a word’s morphology, and this is especially true when …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, Many languages of the world contain words that reflect certain concepts that are hard to capture by a single word in any other language. One example is the word ‘ilunga’ in the Tshiluba language, which means ‘a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, The opposite end of the ishtiraak phenomenon in which a single word has many shades of meaning, is that of al-taraaduf الترادف – synonyms – where many words share the same meaning. There has been much debate among the linguists over whether there actually are complete synonyms in Arabic, or whether …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, As the new student begins to learn Arabic vocabulary, one of the things that immediately strikes them is that a single word will often have many different shades of meaning. This phenomenon is known as al-Ishtiraak (lit. ‘sharing’, ‘association’) and such words are referred to as being a mushtarak lafdhee المشترك …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, If Arabic is a sea, then the Qur'an is the most precious treasures, jewels, pearls and gems that can be found in the sea. But reaching these treasures requires a diver skilled in deep thought and contemplation. One of the prerequisites for a diver to reach this level of skill, is …
al-Bayaan wa al-Tabyeen by al-Jaahidh الجاحظ The author is Abu ‘Uthman ‘Amr ibn Bahr ibn Mahbub al-Kinaa’ee, known as al-Jaahidh (d. 255 Hijri). He was born in Basrah, and among his teachers were Abu ‘Ubaydah, Abu Zayd al-Ansari, and al-Akhfash. He was a brilliant polymath who wrote on many subjects including Philosophy, ‘Aqeedah, Politics, Economics, …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, In classical times, students of knowledge would be given speific lessons that familiarised them with the most important classical books in our heritage on various subjects such as fiqh, tafseer, Arabic, 'aqeedah, and so on. This tradition even continued it seems right up until the previous generation, where students of Arabic …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, Poetry has always had an important place to play in Arab culture, even from pre-Islamic times, when the status of a tribe would greatly depend on the skills of its tribal poet in composing verse that praised his patrons and satirised all others. While English poetry may be an artistic form …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, There are endless gems to be extracted from the depth, breadth and precision of Arabic vocabulary, and among the many books which put some such gems on display is the classic Fiqh al-Lughah wa Sirr al-‘Arabiyyah by Abu Mansur al-Tha’aalibi. His book is divided into two sections, the first of which …
