Arabic

The two most important things to know about Arabic, I believe, are that it is a triple-root language and it is a close relative of Hebrew.

In a triple-root language, nearly all words are formed by taking three consonants, called roots, and giving them different meanings by adding various vowels, prefixes, suffixes, etc. We do this somewhat in English too (think about the relationships between “revolve” and “revolution” and “revolver”), but we are not nearly as systematic about it. In Arabic, the patterns are really regular, so if you know the roots and you know the patterns of changes, you can generate just about any word you want to. (Except for imports from other languages, of course.)

Hebrew is also a triple-root language, and its roots are often similar to or the same as those in Arabic words with the same meaning. “House,” for example, is often transliterated as bayt from Arabic and beit from Hebrew. That’s basically the same word. Peace in Hebrew is shalom and in Arabic is salaam – not exactly the same, but the strong similarity is no coincidence.

The word Islam comes from the same root as salaam – slm. It is usually translated as “submission,” but a peace-related connotation is unavoidable for anyone who knows Arabic. Muslim also comes from the slm root. The prefix “mu” means “a person who does this action,” so a muslim is a person who submits.

Arabic is difficult for English-speakers to learn. The grammar is complex and the language contains several sounds that do not come easily to our English-trained tongues. The script is unfamiliar and often does not include such niceties as vowels and spaces between words. Furthermore, Arabic cultures have often turned calligraphy into an art, and elegant calligraphy is not generally compatible with the distinct and consistent typography that makes reading easier (or possible) for a novice.

Nevertheless, I recommend that anyone with an interest in the Qur’an or the Arabic world take a look at Nicholas Awde and Putros Samano’s The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read and Write It (2000). The book is short, and if you read the introduction and the first two chapters – a total of 28 pages – you will understand the basics of how Arabic works as a language. You won’t be able to read anything, but when people discuss Arabic words you will be much better prepared to understand the discussion.

If you then go on to read the rest of the book – just 60 more pages – Arabic script will start to feel familiar to you. It takes a lot more practice (at least for a person like me, who is not talented in languages) to actually decode the script, but it feels different to look at a sign or headline or book and have it seem familiar. It makes the culture behind that script feel less foreign.

I have also, as I have studied the Qur’an, much appreciated having an Arabic-English dictionary. Historically, Muslim cultures have been very wary of translating the Qur’an into other languages. It is impossible to convey all the subtleties and connotations of any text in any translation, so many Muslim scholars believe that if you really want to understand the Qur’an you need to learn Qur’anic Arabic. (They may be correct.)

Some English versions of the Qur’an, therefore, describe themselves as “interpretations” rather than “translations,” thus underlining that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot render a text into another language without interpreting its meanings. And many English Qur’ans include a parallel text of the Qur’an in Arabic, to help readers go back and forth between the two languages. I cannot read Arabic, but I can focus in on a particular passage and, with time and a dictionary, examine how it was translated.

As I understand it, Hans Wehr’s Arabic-English Dictionary (1960) is the most authoritative. It is organized by the roots of the words, so you have to learn how to identify roots before you can use it.

The good news is that printings of the Qur’an include vowels. When I want to truly study a passage, I use the Hans Wehr dictionary and ’Abdullah Yūsuf ’Ali’s The Meanings of the Holy Qur’an (1934, 10th edition 1999), which is particularly careful to line up English phrases with the Arabic phrases they are rendering, to work out the meanings not just of the words themselves, but also of other words with the same roots. This helps me, I believe, get access to some of the connotations that would come naturally to an Arabic-speaker but can never be fully captured in a translation.

See also The Qur’an