al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, There are certain noun forms in Arabic known as siyagh al-mubaalaghah (‘forms of intensification/hyperbolic forms’) that are used to put across a more intense meaning than the original noun form. For example, a liar ‘kaadhib’ كاذب may also be known as a kadhoob كذوب or a kadhdhaab كذّاب – all carrying …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, Many people who have set about to memorise the Qur’an, or portions of the Qur’an, will at some point have become confused when they come to a verse they have learnt elsewhere in the Qur’an, but with a slight change in wording or order. The key to overcoming this confusion, more …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, Since the dawn of early Islam, and largely provoked by the doctrine of the miracle of the Qur’an’s linguistic inimitability, scholars of both Arab and non-Arab stock concerned themselves with studying the Arabic Language deeply and comprehensively. They were able to establish a range of sciences (‘uloom) into which the letters, …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, There is a long standing disagreement between supporters of classical Arabic الفصحى vs. supporters of colloquial Arabic العامية with regards which should prosper. The former group sought to avoid colloquial words at all cost, regardless of how correct they were or how well they expressed the intended meaning, while the latter …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, A common phenomenon known to linguists is that of semantic shift, whereby a word acquires new shades of meaning over time. This phenomenon is also noticeable when we take a look at Islamic terminology, such as zakat, or Shari’ah, or the Names and Attributes of Allah, or words related to the …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, Arabic linguists of the past examined the semantic connotations of Arabic alphabetical letters according to their position in a word, and were able to notice certain trends in meaning. Although the rules are by no means to be taken as absolute, they may be viewed within the larger phenomenon of ishtiqaaq …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, There is a rhetorical device in Arabic known as al-istikhbaar الاستخبار, which literally means ‘to seek information’; in practical form, it is to ask a question and seek to know the answer. Yet there is a fine line between the essence istikhbaar and the clothes of the interrogative (al-istifhaam – …
al-Salāmu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullāh, I thought that my previous entry on Ishtiqaaq marked the end of the linguists’ theories on this phenomenon, but it turns out there is more. Rather than looking at the roots as individual units, some scholars of Arabic viewed them according to their articulation points (makhaarij) or phonological characteristics (sifaat), and …
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, 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 …
