# Origins of Fusha



## إسكندراني

FusHa̅ never really existed as a first language, even 1400 years ago before Arabic had spread beyond its native peninsula, it had many dialects and people tried to find a common ground between them (which happened to be Makkah - at the centre of the trade routes). Consider that Arabic evolved out of two distinct yet related (bc Semitic) root cultures (North Arabian - i.e. Assyrian etc. & South Arabian - i.e. Ethiopic etc.) and an Arab can easily come to grips with today's situation; every tribe (country) has it's tongue (dialect) and a proper 'posh' form is used as the formal intermediary. This proper form plays into every single Arabic dialect in a distinct way; certain techniques are acceptable and others aren't as we move from one country to the next. Hence why some native speakers on this thread have tried to put across that learning MSA thoroughly is a good idea, because it can be followed up with learning the perks every dialect attaches to MSA - allowing the learner to understand everyone quicker.
If I may give myself as an example: born in egypt I understood sudanese and syrian dialects very well without knowing more MSA than the average man, and the simplified MSA used on egyptian TV, print etc. - But only when learning a bit more MSA via the Qur'a̅n, pan-arab TV, heavy reading etc. -  could I then understand lybians and saudis. And then meeting people from Morocco who explained the little perks of their dialect allowed me to understand most of what they say. If I wanted to pick up, say, informal Iraqi (though we can already communicate by becoming a bit more formal) all I would need because of my knowledge of MSA is a bit of contact time, much easier than learning as if a separate language. (Hope I didn't TL;DR too many of those interested!)


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## Mahaodeh

إسكندراني said:


> FusHa̅ never really existed as a first language, even 1400 years ago before Arabic had spread beyond its native peninsula,



It must have been at some point in time - why would a group of people invent a language that no one speaks! That doesn't make sense.



إسكندراني said:


> it had many dialects and people tried to find a common ground between them (which happened to be Makkah - at the centre of the trade routes).



So what we call today fuS7a was spoken in Mecca, obviously as a first language to those living there!



إسكندراني said:


> Consider that Arabic evolved out of two distinct yet related (bc Semitic) root cultures (North Arabian - i.e. Assyrian etc. & South Arabian - i.e. Ethiopic etc.)



This contradicts the scientific consensus on the evolution of Arabic; I assume you have source for this new theory?


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## إسكندراني

where else did it come from in that case? Arabic didn't evolve out of nowhere, and it is somewhat unreasonable to claim that fusHa was the 'home dialect' for all 'arabs' at that time. Certainly in 'traditional' arab circles that is the common story on how arabic came to be; movement from yemen up to mix with northern dialects and become one language. ive never heard another theory, i would be interested if you directed me to one?
In any case why do you not agree that arab tribes always had their individual dialects? there is pre-islamic poetry which illustrates this variation


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## إسكندراني

also re Makkah, even the wealthy Meccans would have their kids educated in the desert with the local bedouins to avoid their language becoming 'tainted', which would imply even Meccans had a vulgar dialect beside their formal one


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## WadiH

إسكندراني said:


> FusHa̅ never really existed as a first language, even 1400 years ago before Arabic had spread beyond its native peninsula, it had many dialects and people tried to find a common ground between them (which happened to be Makkah - at the centre of the trade routes).



So, you're saying that FuSHa developed before Islam and that it was based on the dialect of Mecca?


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## Ihsiin

I was given to understand that fus7a was established as "standard" Arabic during the Islamic domination of Arabia, and as such was standardised to the language of the Quran, which would have been in the Hijazi dialect of the time.


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## WadiH

Ihsiin said:


> I was given to understand that fus7a was established as "standard" Arabic during the Islamic domination of Arabia, and as such was standardised to the language of the Quran, which would have been in the Hijazi dialect of the time.



So, under this view, FuSHa is identical to the dialect of the Hejaz?


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## Ihsiin

The dialect of Hijaz in the 7th century, yes.
I may be completely wrong, of course.


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## Mahaodeh

إسكندراني said:


> where else did it come from in that case?



How about Proto-Semitic? According to some linguists, according to others it comes from anther extinct northwestern Semitic language which decends from Proto-Semitic. It's connection to South Arabian languages (let alone Ethubic!) is through Porto-Semitic - Arabic is actually closer to Hebrew and Aramaic than it is to Hymiari or Saba'i or Ge'zeez.

At least this is my understanding.



إسكندراني said:


> it is somewhat unreasonable to claim that fusHa was the 'home dialect' for all 'arabs' at that time.



At what time exactly? I assume you mean the time of the Prophet - OK, even the Prophet never claimed that, however, it was the Lingua Franka of the Arabs and the native tong of some tribes.



إسكندراني said:


> Certainly in 'traditional' arab circles that is the common story on how arabic came to be; movement from yemen up to mix with northern dialects and become one language. ive never heard another theory, i would be interested if you directed me to one?



I assume that you mean by 'traditional Arab circles' the communities of the lay-people because specialists would never say that! With regards to the story, this is actually the first time I hear it, where did you get it from?

The 'folk history' story I hear is that Arabic is the language in Heaven and when Adam came to earth he spoke Arabic, then his children, through the years, changed it into dialects then into completely separate languages and it only stayed as it is in the Arabian Peninsula until the Prophet came.



إسكندراني said:


> In any case why do you not agree that arab tribes always had their individual dialects? there is pre-islamic poetry which illustrates this variation



I never said that there were no dialects, I just objected to two things: 1) the history of Arabic as you claimed and 2) that fuS7a was never anyone's native language. It certainly was the Prophet's native language, at least according to what historians report.

Now I object to another thing, the word '_always_' in "always had their individual dialects". It doesn't make sense - if they evolved from one language, at some point deep in history there were no dialects, right?


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## rayloom

Ihsiin said:


> The dialect of Hijaz in the 7th century, yes.
> I may be completely wrong, of course.




I think the source of the confusion is 2 things:

1-That the Quran is commonly said to have been revealed in the language of Quraish. Albeit with some minor modifications, like the pronunciation of the hamza where Quraish would usually just elide the hamza. 
Now similarly, It was common for dialectal features to usually be dropped in classical works (poetry & prose) even if the poet for instance spoke that dialect. 
Not a diglossia per se as is manifest in today's Arabic, but still a form of standardization!

2-The fact that the Hijaz was pivotal in such standardization, the great flux of Arabs from various regions and of different dialects into Makkah and Taif, for pilgrimage and the souq of Okaz, which in a sense standardized the language and preserved a certain classical norm and maintained mutual intelligibility between the different Arabic dialects.

To me (and this is my personal opinion), the reality is that Classical Arabic is not a uniform language, it has many variations, is not standardized and actually forms a continuum of classical Arabian languages which differ grammatically, lexically, phonetically and semantically. But share certain common features:
-preservation of the inflectional case endings.
-the definite article al-
-intelligibility to (most) Arabs of different dialectal backgrounds
-dropping of vulgar dialectal features which would cause a certain dialect to stand out, even if such features were archaic.


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## clevermizo

Mahaodeh said:


> Now I object to another thing, the word '_always_' in "always had their individual dialects". It doesn't make sense - if they evolved from one language, at some point deep in history there were no dialects, right?



Actually, just one point here, languages don't necessarily evolve directly one language into another like that. There are always dialect continua, at least if you're talking about spoken language. New languages can evolve by horizontal contact and transfer of features. In a loose sense a "dialect" is one of many spoken forms that as a group share a number of common features. For example, you could say that Spanish, French and Italian are dialects of Romance, and more locally, Spanish, Asturian, Galician and Catalan are dialects of Iberian Romance. Even more zoomed in, Mexican, Rioplatense, Caribbean, etc. are dialects of Spanish.

Arabic descends from dialects of Ancient North Arabian. I don't think it's possible to say it descends from specifically one language. Remember that "Proto-Semitic" is a reconstructed hypothetical language, which if it existed, was comprised naturally of a group of dialects possessing common features.

I think it is important here not to think of "dialects" as "different variations of a single language" but rather as "different spoken systems with shared features". This looser definition allows for a more comprehensive analysis.

For example, you've claimed before that you speak a mixed dialect of Arabic because of the dialects spoken by your family. You could imagine that in ancient times similar things occurred. Could you say that the way you speak is directly descended from one of those dialects? However now what you speak is something new perhaps, and shares features with other dialects, but whatever is novel you may pass on to your children or more simply to friends or other people you interact with.

Similarly in ancient times, suppose someone from Village A with Dialect A married someone from Village B with Dialect B, where Dialects A and B are both part of the family X, you may expect the children to speak exclusively A, exclusively B, or some mixture of both AB. So from two dialects, a new one was born. This isn't even considering the influence of wherever they live (perhaps village C with Dialect C), their friends, other relatives, etc. As you see the evolution from one generation to the next is quite complicated.

I think when discussing speaking systems (which usually evolve and change quickly over time), "dialect" is always a better word to use than "language" because I think "language" can evoke the idea of a standard written language, and that's not what's being discussed here. I don't disagree that fuṣħa may have been someone's native language in history, but before anyone writes it down, it's not fuṣħa - it's just someone's native dialect as part of the Arabic family of dialects.

Quite like archaeology and paleontology, it's all about the features you choose and who you're comparing to whom. I decide to name all the dialects from all the village spoken in this one valley Language Group A because they are all much more similar to one another than to anything spoken in Language Group B from a valley several kilometers east. However, A and B could be thought of as variations of one another when compared to group C which is even more different. So then A and B are perhaps larger dialectal variations of group D, and so forth, and so forth.


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## WadiH

I think this section from Kees Versteegh can serve as a useful starting point for this discussion: http://www.islamicnetwork.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_language_of_the_arabs/ .



rayloom said:


> 2-The fact that the Hijaz was pivotal in such standardization, the great flux of Arabs from various regions and of different dialects into Makkah and Taif, for pilgrimage and the souq of Okaz, which in a sense standardized the language and preserved a certain classical norm and maintained mutual intelligibility between the different Arabic dialects.



That has always struck me as an unscientific explanation.  How can pilgrimage and a souk make people speak the same language?


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## clevermizo

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I think this section from Kees Versteegh can serve as a useful starting point for this discussion: http://www.islamicnetwork.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_language_of_the_arabs/ .
> 
> 
> 
> That has always struck me as an unscientific explanation.  How can pilgrimage and a souk make people speak the same language?



I respect your scepticism, but remember that a souk is a meeting place for lots of people, all of whom must find a medium in which to communicate together in order to transact business. In fact, it's the perfect "laboratory" to make a new variety of speech which smooths over what might otherwise be larger differences between speaking groups. Now, whether that's historically accurate in this case, I can't say.


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## WadiH

clevermizo said:


> I respect your scepticism, but remember that a souk is a meeting place for lots of people, all of whom must find a medium in which to communicate together in order to transact business. In fact, it's the perfect "laboratory" to make a new variety of speech which smooths over what might otherwise be larger differences between speaking groups. Now, whether that's historically accurate in this case, I can't say.



I think the Arabs already belonged to one linguistic community, which facilitated the holding of souqs like Ukaz (there were apparently numerous souqs all over Arabia).


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## rayloom

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I think the Arabs already belonged to one linguistic community, which facilitated the holding of souqs like Ukaz (there were apparently numerous souqs all over Arabia).



They did belong to a single linguistic community which facilitated holding of such events in the far past. In turn, these major events and gatherings kept the languages of the tribes from diverging so far from one another.


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## 0m1

clevermizo said:


> Arabic descends from dialects of Ancient North Arabian. I don't think it's possible to say it descends from specifically one language. Remember that "Proto-Semitic" is a reconstructed hypothetical language, which if it existed, was comprised naturally of a group of dialects possessing common features.



Is that the consensus now though? Though admittedly not the most reliable, the literature I've read regarding the subject seems very confused regarding Ancient North Arabian and Old South Arabian- the latter often cited as completely unrelated to Arabic (exclusively West Semitic in this case), whereas others seem to imply some sort of connection between the two "types" of Arabian, even if only in a sprachbund sort of a way (furthermore there's the supposedly completely unrelated Modern South Arabian dialects, but that's definitely off-topic now).


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## إسكندراني

I am no expert on the subject, simply sharing the ideas which I have been brought up with as an egyptian arab; that Arabic has always had diglossia; fusHa spoken by an elite beside 'vulgar' dialects with incredible diversity - this doesn't mean i'm claiming these dialects weren't arabic, on the contrary I view arabic as always having had this diglossia because it allows incredible diversity without letting itself split into many languages.
Re the origins of Arabic it seems unreasonable to me that it 'evolved' solely from a north arabian dialect. given it may have not directly been assyrian, thamudic is geographically closer and disappeared at the right time for example - I couldn't give you a specific dialect since I am not a linguist, only a speculator - however am I wrong to say there was a migration north from Yemen around the time arabic began to develop? Also re the 'proto-semitic' comment, I agree - but that means nothing. Yemeni/Ethiopic languages of yore were just as semitic as north arabian languages.
In any case:
My intended point wasn't so much the origin of arabic, rather how much of a diglossia existed even before Muhammad ﷺ


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## WadiH

إسكندراني said:


> I am no expert on the subject, simply sharing the ideas which I have been brought up with as an egyptian arab; that Arabic has always had diglossia; fusHa spoken by an elite beside 'vulgar' dialects with incredible diversity - this doesn't mean i'm claiming these dialects weren't arabic, on the contrary I view arabic as always having had this diglossia because it allows incredible diversity without letting itself split into many languages.***
> My intended point wasn't so much the origin of arabic, rather how much of a diglossia existed even before Muhammad ﷺ



I agree with you that Arabic has always had a high tolerance for linguistic diversity.  However, I disagree with the notion that the Arabs had "diglossia" in the 7th century.  Even though this is a commonly-held theory, the evidence I've seen for it has not convinced me and is far too speculatory.  It also seems to rest on the assumption that the "dialects" of that period were analogous to the dialects of the modern Arab World and that, therefore, the difference between, say, the dialect of the Hejaz and the dialect of Al-Bahrayn was akin to the difference between the modern dialects of Cairo and Baghdad.  I don't believe that this is borne out by the evidence, except perhaps for some extreme cases like the Arabic of the "nabat" of Syria and Mesopotamia and the so-called "Himyaritic" Arabic dialects in the upper reaches of Yemen.  Aside from such extreme cases, nearly all of the dialectal differences recorded by the early Muslims are either phonological (and therefore would not appear in the Arabic writing system) or lexical (which would allow people from different dialects to borrow freely from other dialects and which helps account for Classical Arabic's large vocabulary).  There were grammatical differences too that were recorded, but these seem to be quite minor and are of the sort that are easily ironed out by transmitters rather than being major syntactical differences.  It seems, therefore, that the dialects were analogous to the dialects of pre-oil Arabia.  The language of poetry in both eras was therefore not some fixed standard that differed drastically from common speech and that people needed to learn through schooling.  Rather it was simply a slightly elevated register that formed organically based on the common traits of all of these dialects and incorporating the more prestigious lexemes and expressions.  Therefore, a verse of poetry may be read by different people in different ways even though in writing the verse appears exactly the same (due to phonetic/phonological differences), or slight variations on the verse may exist depending on dialect (where one pronoun or word is replaced by another depending on dialect without affecting the structure, metre or meaning).  Again, this was only possible because the dialects were essentially the same in terms of grammar and were therefore mutually intelligible in that respect.  I don't think one can describe this as a diglossic situation.

For a much more articulate discussion of this idea, see here (p. 52-59) (you can ignore the poetic quotations)


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