The Arabic Language

ʿaḍīm
instead of 
ʿaḏ̣īm
‘great, mighty’ or 
ḍabyun
instead of 
ḏ̣
abyun 
‘gazelle’. An example from the domain of morphology is the disappearance of the 
modal endings of the imperfect verb in dialect, which makes it difficult for people 
to know when to use the indicative 
yaktubūna
‘they write’ and when to use the 
subjunctive 
yaktubū
. This induces them to use the colloquial form 
yaktubū
in all 
contexts.
It would be wrong to suppose that every deviation in a written text is collo
-
quial. Since people know that there is a difference between written and spoken 
language, they make a conscious attempt to write correctly, but in doing so 
sometimes overreact using forms that are neither colloquial nor standard. In the 
case of the modal endings just cited, for instance, the correct form in the jussive 

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The Arabic Language
is 
lam yaktubū 
‘they did not write’, but in their fear of colloquial interference 
people sometimes use 
lam yaktubūna
in order to show that they are not illiterate. 
A parallel error involving the spelling of /ḍ/ and /ḏ̣/ consists in writing 
ḏ̣
araba 
instead of 
ḍaraba 
‘to he hit’
. 
Such errors are called ‘pseudo-corrections’. Usually 
two categories are distinguished: hypercorrections and hypocorrections. In the 
example given above, we have an instance of a hypercorrection: in correcting 
the dialectal forms, the writer exaggerates and ends up using a form that is ‘too 
Classical’. In hypocorrections, on the other hand, the correction is incomplete. 
In Middle Arabic texts, the usual verbal form to refer to a dual subject is the 
plural, for example, 
ar-rajulāni yadḫulū
‘the two men [dual] enter [plural]’. When 
this form is corrected incompletely, it becomes 
yadḫulā
, which is neither collo
-
quial nor Classical Arabic (
yadḫulāni
). A further example of incomplete correc
-
tion occurs when the writer inverts the order of the sentence to make it more 
Classical, but leaves the dual form instead of changing it into a singular as in 
Classical Arabic 
yadḫulu r-rajulāni
. 
The use of pseudo-corrections is not limited to written speech. Since the written 
standard also serves as the model for formal elevated speech, in modern times 
one finds many examples of pseudo-corrections in speech (Chapter 13). Egyptian 
speakers, for instance, are very much aware of the correlation of Classical /q/ 
with colloquial /ʾ/ (glottal stop). When they wish to appear educated, they tend 
to replace every glottal stop with /q/, not only in those words that in Classical 
Arabic contain /q/, but also in those words that never had /q/ in the first place. 
Thus, one might even hear forms such as 
qurqān
for 
qurʾān
.
Apart from deficient knowledge of the standard, manifesting itself in plain 
errors and pseudo-corrections, deviations in written language from the standard 
norm may have another source. Because of the large distance between spoken and 
written language, it is difficult to represent a lively dialogue between real people 
in written language. In modern Arabic literature this is a much-debated problem, 
and it must have existed in the Classical period as well, in particular, in stories 
that were intended to be read to a larger audience. As a result, in such text types 
there was always a tendency to enliven the dialogue with dialect words or even 
dialect constructions. In the aforementioned story of Bāsim (Landberg 1888), for 
instance, we find in a conversation between the Caliph Hārūn ar-Rašīd, his vizier 
Jaʿfar and his eunuch Masrūr the following expressions, that add to the