What makes them different?

i. Depth of words

Words in old Arabic are deep, they are so deep... Most words in old arabic are tied to images... When you think of verbs like eating, sleeping, thinking... You do not think of an image when you think of the word 'thinking', It is an abstract idea. But to the Arabs, even those kinds of words were tied to images. There was deep imagery behind words...

EX: The word is 'akala which means 'to understand'... 'akl means intellect... But in old arabic, akl comes from the word ikal.... Ikal was a rope that the Arab will wrap around his head, nowadays they use a band to hold their scarves. However, In the olden days, it wasn't a security device for your scarf... When you travel, you travel with your camel.... The rope is used to tie the camel when they have breaks...

So they used the same word for the intellect as the rope used to hold the camel... What is the connection between the rope that holds an animal and the intellect?

They are saying that your intellect prevents you from doing stupid things, It is like a rope that holds you back like it holds the animal back... If an animal doesn't have a rope, it will go wherever it wants, it will eat whatever it want, it will do whatever it wants. If humans didn't have intellect, we will say whatever we want, go whatever we want, do whatever we want... It is a sign of our intellect that we hold ourselves back... We constrain ourselves...

That is why the word Akl is used... That is pretty deep... This is not even a religious explanation, that is just what the Arab taught of the word Akl... There is a reason why Allah chose this language to reveal his message. Before you even go into the religious understanding, even the linguistics are beautiful and on top of that we appreciate how Allah used it.

So that is one, depth of words... In Modern Arabic, that depth is gone.


ii. Precise Spelling

Arabic is different from other languages, you can the same word or very similar words spelt in in three or four different ways.. A example of that is the Arabic word for repentance ' Tawbah' ... The Quran uses three different words for repentance, all of them from tawbah.. it uses tawbah, Maatab, and taub...

When you look at the english translation , it says repentance no matter the word that was used.. If you ask an average arab, he will say it is the same thing... To the old arab even if you make a little change in spelling, something changed.. They paid attention to even the smallest changes... That is not a big deal to us anymore but it was a big deal to them back then.


iii.) Idioms and expressions

Even if you know the meaning of every word in the Quran, that is not enough... You still have to understand the idioms used by the ancient arabs... The idioms at the time of the prophet (Peace and blessings be upon him) are not been used today, many of them are dead...

Language keeps evolving, the words may be the same but the way they are used changes...

When we want to understand the Quran we have to go back to the original idioms of the ancient arabs that has overtime changed.... So it becomes a historical study not just a vocabulary study. Without which, you will not understand, what is been said.

EX: There is an arabic idiom : Cut his tongue off

It is used in a hadith, You know, Evangelicals love that kind of hadith... "Their prophet told them to cut tongues off"

It is not meant to be translated literally... It was an idiom used by the ancient arabs..

As an idiom, It means: He is complaining a lot, give him some money so he stops complaining... That is what it actually means... The way of saying it in Arabic back in the day was : Cut his tongue off...

You can't take idioms literally and the Quran is FULL of idioms of the ancient... It is a study in itself.... Many translations do not take into consideration, the idioms... It creates a huge problem....

Another example, Allah describes Mountains as Awtad (Pegs), Many muslims use the literal translation that it relates to the deep roots of mountains that may also be true but the ancient arabs also used Awtad to refer to buidings, construction... By using the word Awtad, Allah is telling the arabs... look at my own construction on the earth.... look at the mountains...so no matter how elegant your house is, remember Allah's structures on the earth: Mountains...

Allah calls Pharaoh, Lord of the pegs (awtad)... Ibn abass interpreted it as the pharaoh having a secure building, Al-Ḍaḥḥāk said: He owned many buildings; buildings are called awtād.... Of all the pharaohs, Ramsess II is most likely the pharaoh of the Quran (using the Quran)... One of his distinctive feature was of all the pharaohs, he had the most construction work... He had the most elegant buildings.....

As a monument builder Ramesses II stands pre-eminent amongst the pharaohs of Egypt. Although Khufu had created the Great Pyramid, Ramesses' hand lay over the whole land. True, he thought nothing of adding his name to other kings' monuments and statues right back to the Middle Kingdom, so that nowadays the majority of cartouches seen on almost any monument proclaim his throne name - User-maat-re ('the justice of Re is strong').

[P. A. Clayton, Chronicle Of The Pharaohs: The Reign-By-Reign Record Of The Rulers And Dynasties Of Ancient Egypt, 1994, Thames and Hudson Ltd.: London (UK), pp. 153-154. ]

Without understanding how the ancient Arabs used words, these interpretations are impossible....

Finally

iv Stylistics

The Arabs had style, They had ways of talking... Rhetorics, devices, They used tricks in their speech... They don't use those anymore but they used to use them..

One example:

Hasan ibn thabit (RA), a companion of the prophet was a very talented poet, and sometimes he made poetry praising the prophet, sometimes he would make poetry about his own tribe, The companions used to compete in good deeds and sometimes they had like leagues, only the teams were tribes, and they competed to see whose tribe can do the most good acts... So Hasan ibn Thabit would say poems urging his tribe on (like cheer-leading)... Talking about the generosity and bravery of his tribe...

So He made a piece of poetry,

He says: 1. We own shiny bowls and they are so shiny they twinkle during the day
2. Our swords are constantly dripping drops of blood from rescue missions

Line 1: The words used for bowls is used when you use bowls for charity, you take bowls, put some gold coins in them and give it out as charity... So he says we have those bowls and even those bowls are shiny and expensive... So if the bowls are shiny, imagine what could be inside.... That is how generous his tribe is....
So the first line is saying how generous they are...

Line 2: Their sword do not even get a chance to get dry from the blood because they have to go from one rescue mission to another to another.... So they keep going on these missions...This is supposed to highlight the bravery of the tribe...

This is quite deep but Al- Khansa' (RA), A female companion of the prophet (SAW) and a more talented poetess, responds to his poetry and critiques it

She says, this is good but it needs some improvement...

She says : You used the word Jafanat, you should have used the used the word Jifan.. Jafanat means less than 10 bowls, you are not that generous... If you used the word Jifan it would have been more bowls... So you are not that generous... You said they twinkle, anything twinkles... You should have said they give off light... You say they twinkle during the day (Duha), everything twinkles during the day, You should have said they give off light even during the night time.

You say as siyafuna, our swords, as siyaf is less... as siyaf like 8 swords, what do you have? a gang... you should have used as siyufuna like an army... you said they drip with blood, you should have said the swords flow with the blood...

She tore him apart and these are just two lines... It is no hard feelings but they were really sensitive to style and when there is room for improvement, they will tell you... Never ever did they ever open their mouth abouth the Quran though, because they were just totally amazed by its style.

Also, the rules of grammar of old arabic and modern arabic are totally different.... If modern arabic has 10 rules , then old arabic has like a 100 sub rules... You see people who go to school to study modern arabic and decide they know enough and then write a thesis of their stupidity calling it 'grammatical errors in the Quran' without understanding the other 90 rules of old arabic...

People that could own them without opening their mouths never criticised the Quran... This includes both the muslims and the non-muslims...

This is why all muslims should be students of old Arabic and also new arabic because that is what is spoken now..... A better, deeper understanding of the Quran will only be gotten by understanding old Arabic...

I started a thread on quranic arabic before but it didn't get much interest plus it requires a lot of commitment. Maybe I'd continue that but I can't guarantee if I will have time for it.

Search: Quranic Arabic season 1

The simplest way for you to try to organise quranic Arabic classes is for you to set up a skype account and form a class that way. The people participating can be anywhere in the world and you just need to find someone who is able to read the qur'an, this way you will learn the basics and pic up the language as you go along.

The key to learning Arabic is learning to read it.

This is how my friends and I have done it. Every morning right after fajar we have madrassa together via skype

Lala_laila: The simplest way for you to try to organise quranic Arabic classes is for you to set up a skype account and form a class that way. The people participating can be anywhere in the world and you just need to find someone who is able to read the qur'an, this way you will learn the basics and pic up the language as you go along.

The key to learning Arabic is learning to read it.

This is how my friends and I have done it. Every morning right after fajar we have madrassa together via skype

really!!

yes really. This way it is totally free, all you need is a computer or laptop you send each other the study material and the teacher can share their screen with the rest of you so that you can 'see' what they are teaching you.

2) The least alphabet an arabic word can be is 3Letters word(ثلاث الحروف) and the max. 7Letters word(سبعت الحروف)

Regards