al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, In continuing the theme of derivation, a third form was noticed among the linguists, commonly known as al-Ishtiqaaq al-Akbar [1] (‘The Greatest Derivation’). One angle of this theory is that it went one step further and even claimed, in the presence of certain conditions, there was a link between the common …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, The last post on Ishtiqaaq saw how the scholars of Arabic agreed that words derived from the same [usually triliteral] root share a common meaning among them. A number of great classical scholars of Arabic such as al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Faraaheedee, Abu ‘Ali al-Faarisi, and his student Ibn Jinni, understood this …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, One of phenomena that is immediately noticed among learners of Arabic is that its lexicon resembles a tree wherein some words are built on and branch out from others that usually take the form of tri-consonantal roots. This etymological phenomenon in Arabic is known as al-Ishtiqaaq and there are various theories …
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, 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, There is a phenomenon in Arabic known as itbaa’ (lit. ‘following’); it is when a word is placed after another word that sounds like it for the sake of emphasis. Some linguists also said that a condition of the second word is that it should not mean anything in itself. An …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, Arabic philologists have long studied the Arabic language in relation to the other ‘Semitic’ languages in an attempt to show the areas where Arabic is unique to the exclusion of the other Semitic languages. The reaction of many Muslims who embark on Arabic language study and who have no prior experience …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh There is a phenomenon in Arabic known as al-naht النحت. It is when two words are merged to make one word that refers to them both. Such words are often found in books of fiqh, and this is where I first came across the most common ones, some examples of which …
