# Qur'an - word frequency



## Lone_Wolf

Marhaba,

Firstly, I wish to express my awareness that their are what some say are _Stylistic_ differences between The Qur'an and books written in "Modern Standard Arabic". So just to be sure, my question is *not* about any of the _differences_ between The Qur'an (or more precisely the _Arabic_ of The Qur'an) and Modern Written Arabic. I also know that differences exist concerning word usage between The Qur'an and Modern Standard Arabic; i.e. meaning how The Quran uses and defines any given word over 1,400 years ago a certain way whereas in Modern Standard Arabic that same word would have a different connotation today. So I am not asking about differences in meanings and connotations either.

My question is as follows:

If we were to list the 3,000 - 4,000 most frequently used words in Modern Standard Arabic how many of those words (regardless of HOW they are used or defined) would be in The Qur'an?

In other words, The Qur'an has approximately 2,000 words built from different roots. So, if stock were taken of the 3,000 or 4,000 most frequent words of Modern Standard Arabic _How Many_ of The Qur'ans 2,000 words would be on that list?

If there isn't already an answer to this question how would one go about finding this out?

Sukran Jazeelan,
Wolf.


----------



## Palestinian

I don't know, but approxamitly a person who knows standard arabic would understand 98 percent of quraans words, but quraan use words that could bear 2 or more meanings, there is nothing like in any other arabic litreature. Anyway I would like to say that Quraan is in Classical or Old arabic while Standard arabic was affected by English expressions that never have been used prior to modern times


----------



## Lone_Wolf

Marhaba Palestinian,



> approxamitly a person who knows standard arabic would understand 98 percent of quraans words,



This sort of information is what I was wondering about and not the differences that exist between Classical and Modern Standard Arabic.

But thanks for the reply.

Regards,
L. Wolf.


----------



## AndyRoo

Hello Lone Wolf, here is a very unscientific attempt to answer your question:

MSA and classical Arabic are basically the same language so I think you could calculate this on crude percentages:

As a very rough guess, I'd say you need 20,000 words to understand 95% of MSA.

So I reckon if you learn 4,000 MSA words (=a fifth of 20,000) you would understand around 400 of the 2,000 Qur'an roots (i.e. a fifth of them).

Of course if your goal is to understand the Qur'an it would make more sense to focus on the Qur'an vocabulary.


----------



## Masjeen

well let me tell you that the Arabs do not distinguishing *between* Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic we call both of them "Fus7a" only the Western Linguistics do so.. I really don't know why the do that..

Only the local dialects are very different from "Fus7a" so that we do notdistinguishing between fus7a and local dialects.


----------



## Palestinian

They're right to do so but not because they're different, but because how expressions are formed. Modern Standard is very synthetic with expressions feeling like rigid molds you rephrase your words to fit. While classical feels more like folk talk, and classical uses less words to deliver the meaning than standard. And classical contained far more vocbulary than the MSA ever used (there is no problem to use old words in MSA but no one does so it's no longer a MSA word)

Let me give you an ex: try to read a newspaper or a contemprary book and compare it with say the Al Ja7ith's book "al bu5alaa2" or any other old book and you'll understand what I mean.

Are you familiar with Ka3b ibnu Zuhair's poetry?

Observe:

بانت سعاد فقلبي اليوم متبول، متيم إثرها لم يفد مكبول

If I would say it in MSA

رحلت سعاد فأصبح قلبي اليوم سقيم، متيم من بعدها لم يزل مقيدا

Su3ad has gone so my heart now is sick, longing after she went away and still tied up (to her).

You would argue that I've just used synonyms but that is the point, those words بانت، متبول،‏ مكبول، لم يفد‎ are quaint and no longer in use.


----------



## Masjeen

Palestinian said:


> they're right to do so but not because they're different, but because how expressions are formed. Standard is very synthetic with expressions feeling like rigid molds you rephrase your words to fit. While classical feels more like folk talk, and classical uses less words to deliver the meaning than standard.


 
You think incorrectly that the Fus7a is "synthetic with expressions" because it is a  Written language We do not use them in everyday life we use it only when we write.

 the Modern Standard Arabic as a term is unexist  in arabic


----------



## Palestinian

actually a lot of media refers to msa as Al Arabiyya Al 7adeetia. When i was young in school i mentioned to my teacher that there's a difference between the standard arabic we're using and the standard arabic with which ahaadeeth, old books, and old poetry used, He concurred and said that's the old arabic. You can't deny what is there.


----------



## Lone_Wolf

AndyRoo said:


> Hello Lone Wolf,



Hello AndyRoo.



> here is a very unscientific attempt to answer your question:
> 
> MSA and classical Arabic are basically the same language so I think you could calculate this on crude percentages:
> 
> As a very rough guess, I'd say you need 20,000 words to understand 95% of MSA.
> 
> So I reckon if you learn 4,000 MSA words (=a fifth of 20,000) you would understand around 400 of the 2,000 Qur'an roots (i.e. a fifth of them).
> 
> Of course if your goal is to understand the Qur'an it would make more sense to focus on the Qur'an vocabulary.



Thank You AndyRoo for the response and feedback.

Regards,
L. Wolf


----------



## Mahaodeh

AndyRoo's guess is extremely crude. The _most frequently used_ words differs very much from a _general fifth_ of the words. This is because the basic words are all from Classical Arabic and obviously the most frequently used in Classical Arabic are more or less the same ones. Hence, I would think that Palestinian's guess is much closer to reality.

By most frequently used I would understand the basic words (ex. قال فعل عمل بيت مات عاش الخ).

Having said that, I have some reservations regarding the numbers you started with. I don't think that the numbers of words in the Quran is only 2000 (after removing repeated words); up to my knowledge, the number of roots in the Quran is approx. 1800, assuming you have only two distinct words per root (which is rather a low number), that would make the words 3600. Keep in mind that while it's true that دار يدور در can all be considered one word, but دارَ ديار دور دورة دير دوائر دوار are distinct words from the same root, otherwise it would be like claiming that rotate, land, houses, course, monstry, circles and nausea are all the same word. Moreover, if you just count the words that have specific religious meanings (ex. صلاة صيام قصاص جنة نار ملائكة جن فرقان حجاب الخ) that would amount to a very large number of words, I don't want to make crude guesses but I wouldn't be surprised if they amount to a thousand or more.


----------



## AndyRoo

Mahaodeh said:


> AndyRoo's guess is extremely crude. The _most frequently used_ words differs very much from a _general fifth_ of the words. This is because the basic words are all from Classical Arabic and obviously the most frequently used in Classical Arabic are more or less the same ones. Hence, I would think that Palestinian's guess is much closer to reality.


 
I don't agree that if you learn the 4,000 most common MSA words you would understand 98% of the 2,000 unique roots in the Qur'an (and I don't think Palestinian meant that either). A lot of these roots would be less frequent roots, I should think.

By the way, according to this website: http://www.islamtutor.com/quran.php?p=quran-statistics-2 , there are 14717 unique words in the Qur'an.

There are some more statistics about the Qur'an on this webpage: http://www.mail-archive.com/comp-quran@comp.leeds.ac.uk/msg00223.html , which I think are quite accurate. It puts the number of unique words by stem at 12183 and the number of unique roots at 1685.


----------



## Palestinian

When I said 98 percent I meant you could understand Quraan if you had a thorough knowledge of arabic vocabulary but a 2 % which is not a little quantity of words are words that are unique and sone even arabs at time of Quraan never heared of and they Asked about what it meant


----------



## WadiH

One would just have to go through the Quraan word for word and compare it against one of your smaller and more modern MSA lexicons, and even then there would have to be judgment calls on whether or not a word occurs frequently enough in MSA to be considered an "MSA word."  We need to be realistic here and recognize that, with the exception of a few Quranic words (mostly words like صار) that have acquired the perception of being colloquial, no one is ever criticized for being too archaic if they use a "Quranic" word in MSA.


----------



## Mahaodeh

AndyRoo said:


> I don't agree that if you learn the 4,000 most common MSA words you would understand 98% of the 2,000 unique roots in the Qur'an (and I don't think Palestinian meant that either). A lot of these roots would be less frequent roots, I should think.



I didn't mean that, I meant that the 4000 most frequent words in MSA (which are mostly basic everyday words) have 98% of them sharing roots with words in the Quran, this is how I understood Lone_wolf's question. Obviously, some of the roots used in the Quran are not very frequent (ex. the root س ر ط), but the other way round applies even for most of the modern words (سيارة، إذاعة، حاسب آلي، سندات مصرفية، عولمة الخ).

I also wouldn't focus too  much on the 98%, what I meant is that it is closer than your 20%, not that it is an accurate number.




Wadi Hanifa said:


> One would just have to go through the Quraan word for word and compare it against one of your smaller and more modern MSA lexicons, and even then there would have to be judgment calls on whether or not a word occurs frequently enough in MSA to be considered an "MSA word."  We need to be realistic here and recognize that, with the exception of a few Quranic words (mostly words like صار) that have acquired the perception of being colloquial, no one is ever criticized for being too archaic if they use a "Quranic" word in MSA.





I totally agree with this.


----------



## Lone_Wolf

Mahaodeh said:


> I didn't mean that, I meant that the 4000 most frequent words in MSA (which are mostly basic everyday words) have 98% of them sharing roots with words in the Quran, this is how I understood Lone_wolf's question.



Yeah Mahaodeh, that was pretty much the gist of my question and the answer you've given I've found informative and helpful. Thank You.


----------



## Outlandish

Lone_Wolf said:


> Marhaba,
> 
> My question is as follows:
> 
> If we were to list the 3,000 - 4,000 most frequently used words in Modern Standard Arabic how many of those words (regardless of HOW they are used or defined) would be in The Qur'an?
> 
> In other words, The Qur'an has approximately 2,000 words built from different roots. So, if stock were taken of the 3,000 or 4,000 most frequent words of Modern Standard Arabic _How Many_ of The Qur'ans 2,000 words would be on that list?
> 
> If there isn't already an answer to this question how would one go about finding this out?
> 
> Sukran Jazeelan,
> Wolf.




Basically, if you are looking for the percentage of the most frequently used 4000 words in modern standard Arabic, you must expect words relating to topics such as politics, media, business, work, entertainment etc. Among them are words such as حكومة، شعب، جرائد، قصف، أسهم، أزياء، ،احتجاج، فن، كرة. 

Many of these words will be names of objects, things, tools and even concepts of daily life, like سيارة، خليوىّ أو محمول، طاولة، مكتب، عقار، مسطرة، لعبة.

Some would be words about feelings, like تعاطف، تشدد، ترقب، مفاجأة، استفزاز، تكاتف. 

Most words in this category are not found in the Qur'an as distinct  words.

On the other hand, the bulk of Quranic words are in use nowadays, only a few aren't. Some of the most basic words are, naturally, shared between MSA and the Qur'an, like قال، جاء، عاد، ذهب، جلس، قام، شرب، أكل، نام، بدأ، فنى and this group of words is the most frequently used in MSA, no doubt.


Supposing you are looking for distinct words, then you will have to exclude the  10% Quranic words (percentage arguable)  which are not used at all in MSA, like دمدم، قسورة، صيّب.  You will also have to put aside many of the words used in religious contexts because not all of them are among the most frequently used 4000 MSA words. There are more frequently used words other than  صراط، يمكث، دابة. I mean the topic which these 4000 words relate to will have you to exclude many words that are "used in both MSA & the Quran" but are "less frequent than other MSA words."

Yet if your search concerns words shared in both Quranic language and MSA by root, it will take you an exhaustive study of the roots and their derivatives in both language corpora.


----------



## Lone_Wolf

Marhaban Outlandish,



Outlandish said:


> Basically, if you are looking for the percentage of the most frequently used 4000 words in modern standard Arabic, you must expect words relating to topics such as politics, media, business, work, entertainment etc. Among them are words such as حكومة، شعب، جرائد، قصف، أسهم، أزياء، ،احتجاج، فن، كرة.
> 
> Many of these words will be names of objects, things, tools and even concepts of daily life, like سيارة، خليوىّ أو محمول، طاولة، مكتب، عقار، مسطرة، لعبة.
> 
> Some would be words about feelings, like تعاطف، تشدد، ترقب، مفاجأة، استفزاز، تكاتف.
> 
> Most words in this category are not found in the Qur'an as distinct  words.
> 
> On the other hand, the bulk of Quranic words are in use nowadays, only a few aren't. Some of the most basic words are, naturally, shared between MSA and the Qur'an, like قال، جاء، عاد، ذهب، جلس، قام، شرب، أكل، نام، بدأ، فنى and this group of words is the most frequently used in MSA, no doubt.
> 
> 
> Supposing you are looking for distinct words, then you will have to exclude the  10% Quranic words (percentage arguable)  which are not used at all in MSA, like دمدم، قسورة، صيّب.  You will also have to put aside many of the words used in religious contexts because not all of them are among the most frequently used 4000 MSA words. There are more frequently used words other than  صراط، يمكث، دابة. I mean the topic which these 4000 words relate to will have you to exclude many words that are "used in both MSA & the Quran" but are "less frequent than other MSA words."
> 
> Yet if your search concerns words shared in both Quranic language and MSA by root, it will take you an exhaustive study of the roots and their derivatives in both language corpora.



I think this may be the most informative and detailed answer yet. Thanks a million for your response Outlandish.

Ma'Ssalaama.


----------



## Outlandish

You're welcome and Marhaba to you Lone_Wolf


----------

