The Arabic Language

Grundriß 
der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen
(1908–13). In Chapter 2, we 
shall see how these new theories shaped the ideas about the classification of 
Arabic within the Semitic languages.
The development of European linguistics affected Arabic studies in another 
way as well. Before the nineteenth century, most European linguists had been 
interested only in the standard language, whereas dialects were regarded as faulty 
speech which had to be eradicated. When in the nineteenth century it was discov-
ered that the rural dialects often contained forms that were much older than 
the corresponding forms in the standard language, and thus could explain the 
etymological derivation of the standard language, a tremendous effort was made 
to register and analyse the dialectal forms of the standard language. Moreover, in 
line with the prevailing Romanticist mood, the way in which country folk spoke 
was seen as more natural than the artificial urban standard. Before this time, 
these dialects had been regarded as deviations or, at best, secondary develop
-
ments of the standard language, but the new trend aimed at an explanation of 
the standard language from the existing dialects. Wide-ranging projects were set 
up to register as many dialect variants as possible, and the result was the publi
-
cation of the huge dialect atlases of France, Switzerland and Germany, followed 
somewhat later by those of other countries such as the Netherlands and Britain.
This development did not fail to make itself felt in the field of Arabic studies. 
In the past, Arabic, Turkish and Persian had been studied partly for practical 
purposes, and at least some Arabists knew the Middle East and North Africa 
from personal experience. They had visited these countries as diplomats or as 
representatives of governments or companies, and bought manuscripts into the 

---

The Study of Arabic in the West 
7
bargain. During these trips, they must also have become acquainted with the 
living language, and, even though their publications were concerned with the 
Classical language, they knew perfectly well that Arabic was used as a colloquial 
language in the Arab world. In the eighteenth century, this function of scholars of 
Arabic had more or less disappeared, and the average professor of Arabic did not 
leave his study to speak Arabic with native speakers. At the end of the eighteenth 
century, however, when more and more linguists actually went to the Middle 
East, they discovered that the colloquial language was vastly different from the 
language that they had learnt from their books. Consequently, they started to 
study this living language following the paradigm in which European linguists 
had begun the study of the European dialects. In 1820, for instance, a chair was 
established at the École des langues orientales in Paris for the study of ‘l’arabe 
vulgaire’. The interest in dialects was to remain a permanent feature of Arabic 
studies, even though it did not lead directly to any drastic change in the curric
-
ulum of most departments of Arabic, which continued to concentrate on the 
Classical language.
In this introduction, we have traced the development of Arabic studies in the 
West, and stressed the connection between the study of Arabic and that of Hebrew 
and the other Semitic languages. Since the Second World War, Arabic studies have 
become somewhat separated from the developments in Semitic linguistics. As 
general linguistics in the twentieth century moved away from the comparativist 
paradigm, Semitic linguistics did not follow this direction, but continued to follow 
a comparativist–historical approach. As a result, it lost its position at the centre 
of linguistic interest that it had occupied for a long time, and became relegated to 
an isolated corner of ‘Oriental’ linguistics. Students of Arabic, which before this 
time had usually been studied within the framework of the Semitic languages, 
began to emphasise its character as an Islamic language and to study it in connec
-
tion with other Islamic languages, such as Persian and Turkish. The knowledge 
of Arabic remained important for comparisons between Semitic languages, but 
increasingly these comparisons were no longer initiated from within the circle of 
Arabic studies.
One reason for this change may have been the shift in emphasis in the field 
of Arabic studies from a basically historical and historicising discipline to the 
study of the contemporary Arab world, with important connections with social 
sciences, political sciences and the study of Islam. At the start of the twenty-first 
century, a new trend has manifested itself, the relocation of departments of Arabic 
within religious sciences, with an emphasis on contemporary Islamic studies. As a 
result, the study of Arabic in the West is increasingly relegated to the status of an 
ancillary to the study of Islam. Within a political context, knowledge of Arabic is 
required for the purpose of monitoring Islamist movements that are perceived as 
being dangerous. For both purposes, the philological study of (Classical) Arabic at 
European and American universities is regarded as largely superfluous.

---

8
The Arabic Language
The focus on the contemporary world has affected language teaching as well. A 
few decades ago, Arabic was taught as a dead language in most Western universi-
ties, and the number of departments that offered courses in Arabic dialects was 
very small. Nowadays, both in Europe and in the United States, almost all depart
-
ments aim at a certain level of proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic, and expect 
students to learn at least one Arabic dialect and to spend some time in the Arab 
world in order to learn to speak the language fluently.
The focus on the living language has strengthened the link between Arabic and 
general linguistics. In the United States, where the tradition of philology had never 
been rooted the way it was in Europe, there has always been a greater openness in 
Arabic linguistics towards general linguistics, a tendency that has made itself felt 
in European universities as well. This development has also led to an increase in 
cooperation between European and American scholars and those from the Arab 
world. At the end of the nineteenth century and through the twentieth century, 
some Arab linguists started to free the study of Arabic from what they regarded 
as the shackles of the indigenous grammatical tradition and introduced modern 
linguistic methods. Moreover, there was an upsurge of interest in the colloquial 
language. In spite of the prevailing unpopularity of dialect studies in the Arab 
world, scholars have started to publish grammatical descriptions of their own 
dialects and to analyse the sociolinguistic situation. While the emphasis in the 
curriculum of many universities in the Arab world is still on the philological study 
of Classical Arabic, a growing number of linguists, particularly in such fields as 
computer linguistics and psycholinguistics, are working within an international 
scholarly network.