# Linguistic Pollution



## Arrius

In a thread on the "All Languages" Forum, one of the participants made the remark that there was "a notorious lack of purism in today's Turkish language. Though I know no Turkish, this shocked me a little, as I had once read that one of Kemal Atatürk's many swingeing reforms was to kick out thousands of Arab and Persian words from the language in an attempt to restore it to its pristine state, to the extent that it became difficult for later generations to read old books written in the decades before the reform. Nevertheless, I sympathise with the leader's attempt to clean up his nation's language and regret that his good work should now begin to unravel, and I have had to start a new thread to find out how this is happening.

Arabic in much of the Middle East also used to be full of Turkish and Persian words left over as a hangover from the disintegrated Ottoman Empire. By the end of WW II these were well on their way to being replaced by the pure Arabic lexis they had unnecessarily ousted. "Ousted" is the operative word, for there is no objection to foreign words that have been in a language from its youth or when it was evolving as a distinct language. Nor to necessary neologisms, for many of which modern Arabic has generally coined its own term with indigenous ingredients.

Spanish and Portuguese have much Arabic in them from the time when they were emerging as new languages from the Latin and their speakers were governed by the Moors. However, they seem today to be quite resistant to foreign intrusion and restrict English, for instance, to glamorous advertisements and pop on the radio.

French has the "Académie" to protect it and manages to keep out unneeded foreign trash, though slightly less successfully than it did.
On the other hand, the noble German tongue daily absorbs new words and even whole phrases - nay, sometimes it even invents an "English" word like "Handy" for a mobile 'phone, that is unknown anywhere in the English-speaking world. Moreover, every new infiltrating noun has to be allotted one of three genders, but the rules for that have never been easy. The Germans seem to appear to associate the avoidance of an adulterated language with patriotism, which since the trauma of WW II they have been very nevous about.

British English is being colonised by American, but at least that is a valid form of the same language, many of the changes came originally from the mother country, and it will lead to greater homogeneity.
Linguists may say that change is natural: yes, but it can happen too fast. Arabs can easily read the Koran written 1,500 years ago. The Greeks with a bit of preparation can, I believe, still get a lot out of the plays of Aristophanes, whilst the Brits and Americans find Shakespeare almost a foreign language.

Let us know if you think your language is threatened by foreign elements, how you regard this phenomenon, and your opinions on what has been said above.


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## cuchuflete

My opinion on what has been said above is that it is silly.  Languages are, for the most part, organic.  They expand from within and from without.  English is the language I know best, and it has benefited greatly from the incorporation of foreign words, long after its initial formation.  During the days of the British Empire, words from colonial possessions made their way back to the U.K., and are today normal and useful parts of standard English vocabulary.

Spanish has adopted, long after the reconquest, a number of words from other languages, including French and English.  The Spanish language is richer for it in some cases, where no equivalent Spanish word existed previously, and diminished when a fashionable foreign word has replaced a perfectly valid and useful Spanish word.  

The notion of linguistic purity is ridiculous.  Latin may be free of intrusions from other languages.  Living languages are, and should be, eclectic.


Writing on my _ordenador_, housed in my _bungalow_.
Cuchuflete


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## Kajjo

Latin has quite lot of greek intrusions, by the way. 

Kajjo


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## maxiogee

Arrius said:


> Let us know if you think your language is threatened by foreign elements, how you regard this phenomenon, and your opinions on what has been said above.



Yes, and isn't it marvellous.
Without 'foreign' words Irish would have to invent forms for telefis and radio and many other novelties.

What's wrong with adopting 'foreign' words. Didn't English grow out of a continual amalgam of the language of anyone any English-speaker ever felt had a bettter way of saying something, or had 'just the right word' for an item or concept.

The English of today may be hugely influenced by American usage, but there are still people on both sides of the Atlantic who use words (recognised by their counterparts) in ways the other doesn't understand or appreciate. This is only extending the distance across which 'dialect' operates. The north of England and the extreme South-west harboured dialects which were mutually unintelligible (partly because of accent) in years gone by. Now a Londoner cannot understand what a really hip Californian might be trying to say.


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## PABLO DE SOTO

The attempt to avoid linguistic pollution is a lost battle in our global world.
I think languages must be open structures to the rest of the world.
I believe in languages created by the speakers,not by the authorities who can decide to purify the speech from foreign influences.
There is no pure language to me.
Spanish is a latin derived language,but it has a lot of arabic words.
Then ,should it change "alfombra" for a more latin word?
In which moment of the history do we decide the language is the pure one?


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## Frank06

Hi,


Arrius said:


> Though I know no Turkish, this shocked me a little, as I had once read that one of Kemal Atatürk's many swingeing reforms was to kick out thousands of Arab and Persian words from the language in an attempt to restore it to its pristine state, to the extent that it became difficult for later generations to read old books written in the decades before the reform. Nevertheless, I sympathise with the leader's attempt to clean up his nation's language and regret that his good work should now begin to unravel...


First of all, what is the "pristine state" of Turkish (or any language) but a figment of the mind? Can you please give a thorough description of 'pristine Turkish' (or 'pristine language X' -- any of the languages you discussed in your mail)?
Secondly, Kemalist language purification was a highly politically and ideologocially inspired movement. Do you really think that politicians should mingle with language to that (Kemalist) extent? To the extent that Atatürk himself had to abandon his own purified "Özturk" in his own speeches because nobody understood him anymore?? 
[The 'solution' for that problem was the invention of the Sun Language Theory, not really a step forward, to put it very mildly.]
Following article (The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success by Prof. Geoffrey Lewis) might put Kemalist purifications into a proper perspective. See here for a basic impression on the closely connected SLT.



> "Ousted" is the operative word, for there is no objection to foreign words that have been in a language from its youth or when it was evolving as a distinct language. Nor to necessary neologisms, for many of which modern Arabic has generally coined its own term with indigenous ingredients.


I find your description of the "youth" of a language very Romantic but also very arbitrary, and I don't think there is any linguistic motivation to use this kind of vague categories. 

But I might be wrong and I'd like to ask you to explain a bit more. In the case of Turkish or mutatis mutandis English: when were they evolving into a separate language?
Let's take English: according to your standards, pre-1066 English was already "a distinct language", hence let's kick out the Romance/Latin words? If not, why not?
 [I don't even want to start about the problems of labeling languages].



> Let us know if you think your language is threatened by foreign elements, how you regard this phenomenon, and your opinions on what has been said above.


I think what threatens language, and more importantly, language users (because _they _are central in this story, not some idealised, biassed and [fil in yourself] false idea of a 'pristine language') is the kind of purifications based on illogical, emotional and irrational grounds as the ones you describe, rather than influence from another language, which is so incredibly normal and natural that there simply IS NO pure language, free from outside influence.

But maybe we just have just very different (opposite?) ideas of what linguistic pollution means .

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Outsider

Arrius, I'm afraid your use of the word "pollution" has condemned your thread. Everyone has already pidgeonholed you, and the answers you'll get will be ideologically charged.



Arrius said:


> Spanish and Portuguese have much Arabic in them from the time when they were emerging as new languages from the Latin and their speakers were governed by the Moors. However, they seem today to be quite resistant to foreign intrusion and restrict English, for instance, to glamorous advertisements and pop on the radio.


That's an interesting observation. I think the Arabic contribution to Spanish and Portuguese was made in the formative period of the two languages, and that's why those words of Arabic origin don't sound out of place.

I think, however, that all languages feel the pressure of foreign influence, and nowadays especially of English influence. In the end, you can find tasteful and tasteless loanwords in any language.

The case of German is interesting. Perhaps it's because it's closely related to English that German speakers feel more natural using English words in their everyday speech than a Spaniard, a Portuguese, or an Italian would.

Initially, I thought you were going to ask about Turkish only.


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## Athaulf

Outsider said:


> That's an interesting observation. I think the Arabic contribution to Spanish and Portuguese was made in the formative period of the two languages, and that's why those words of Arabic origin don't sound out of place.



However, I don't think that what you call the "formative period" was in any way special in this regard in comparison to any other periods in the history of the Ibero-Romance languages (and the Vulgar Latin before that, and Old Latin yet earlier, etc.). It's just that those borrowings were allowed to go through the natural process in which the borrowed word is distorted until it comfortably matches the phonology and morphology of the host language, so that it no longer appears foreign to anyone unaware of its etymology. 

Nowadays, however, people take much greater care to properly transcribe the foreign words and avoid distorting them, so that the recent borrowings from English etc. are artificially made to stick out. Most people who use Anglicisms know at least some English and will consciously avoid distorting them excessively even in speech. However, I'm sure that if the modern English borrowings were restricted to the spoken Spanish or Portuguese and used by people who don't know their original English forms, they would very soon become as native-sounding as the ancient Arabic ones. 

In spoken Croatian, for example, there are many 20th century borrowings from German whose originals  would sound extremely out of place to a Croatian speaker. However, in only a generation or so, they have morphed to the extent that most of them sound entirely natural. For example, from German _bügeln_ (= _to iron_) came the Croatian _peglati_, a word that I can recognize as non-Slavic only because I know its etymology.


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## Outsider

Athaulf said:


> However, I don't think that what you call the "formative period" was in any way special in this regard in comparison to any other periods in the history of the Ibero-Romance languages (and the Vulgar Latin before that, and Old Latin yet earlier, etc.). It's just that those borrowings were allowed to go through the natural process in which the borrowed word is distorted until it comfortably matches the phonology and morphology of the host language, so that it no longer appears foreign to anyone unaware of its etymology.


The Arabic influence on Spanish and Portuguese was much greater in those first centuries than at any later date. Also, in those times people had no qualms about adapting foreign words into the phonology of their language.
Nowadays, as you note, people like to keep words close to the original, which is commendable in some cases (such as with proper nouns), but also creates an obstacle to assimilation in other cases.


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## Athaulf

Outsider said:


> The Arabic influence on Spanish and Portuguese was much greater in those first centuries than at any later date. Also, in those times people had no qualms about adapting foreign words into the phonology of their language.



Come to think of it, it's a very interesting phenomenon: in the pronunciation of foreign, especially English borrowings, it seems like people are nowadays treading a fine line between awkward pronunciation and coming off as unsophisticated. At least it's like that in Croatian -- try faithfully reproducing the proper English pronunciation (let alone accent!), and you'll come off as stuck-up smart-ass, and yet, distort it to the point where it sounds genuinely Croatian, and you'll be laughed at as a bumpkin.  Someone should definitely study this phenomenon in a systematic way.



> Nowadays, as you note, people like to keep words close to the original, which is commendable in some cases (such as with proper nouns), but also creates an obstacle to assimilation in other cases.


I don't think it's really commendable even in the case of proper nouns. The names of persons and geographical entities that had some sort of international significance centuries ago have happily existed in entirely different forms in different languages until the present day (observe e.g. the names of saints, great medieval rulers, or major European rivers and cities). I don't see any need for uniformity at the expense of awkward and difficult pronunciation and spelling.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Arrius said:


> Spanish and Portuguese have much Arabic in them from the time when they were emerging as new languages from the Latin and their speakers were governed by the Moors.


So borrowing is okay if somebody decides a handfull of centuries later that it was done in the 'formative' years?


> However, they seem today to be quite resistant to foreign intrusion and restrict English, for instance, to glamorous advertisements and pop on the radio.


Well, wait (1000 years) and see...

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Etcetera

Arrius said:


> Linguists may say that change is natural: yes, but it can happen too fast. Arabs can easily read the Koran written 1,500 years ago. The Greeks with a bit of preparation can, I believe, still get a lot out of the plays of Aristophanes, whilst the Brits and Americans find Shakespeare almost a foreign language.


And the Russians are in the same boat with the Brits and Americans. Old Slavonic texts are pretty difficult to read unless you have a special training. What is most disturbing, Old Slavonic is still used by the Russian Orthodox Church. Imagine listening to a church service in a language you can't perfectly understand!



> Let us know if you think your language is threatened by foreign elements, how you regard this phenomenon, and your opinions on what has been said above.


Well, Russian has acquired a lot of foreign words in the past two decades, mainly from English. For example, most of business and computer terms come from English. Frankly, I find it perfectly natural. Why invent long and clumsy neologisms when you can simply take a short and elegant foreign word? 
And anyway, a foreign loanword is much better that all the abbreviations widely used in the USSR, especially during the first years of its existence.


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## Arrius

The title of my (first) thread was deliberately provocative, and WOW! have I set the cat among the pigeons! I expected and respect contrary points of view including being called silly (which I find extremely mild), but some of what I said may have been overlooked,e.g. "Nor (is there any objection) to necessary neologisms": "ordenador" may or may not have derived from French "ordinateur" but it sounds very Spanish and, of course, was an essential introduction; the Hindu "bungalow" has passed through English to many languages and refers to a novel (to the West)type of dwelling, originally with ethnic overtones, so that is fine too. Even the "purist" Arabic has adopted "combyutor" (sic) but also uses a homespun word meaning "electronic brain" as an alternative. Another member mentions the absorption by Latin of lexis from Greek: of course, every educated Roman knew Greek, which provided his (related) language with words for new ideas. Once more, even Arabic the erstwhile custodian of Hellenic civilisation, has the verb "falsafa" (to philosophise) also derived from Greek. My main concern was with the introduction of foreign words for meanings that can already be well expressed by the language receiving them without recourse to such importation. This phenomenon in German has reached epidemic proportions, so that adverts in the press sometimes consist of over 50% , usually American, English.
Thank you all for responding so incredibly quickly. Your replies are most interesting and I shall study them further at leisure. I shall now sit back and see if the sparks continue to fly.


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## Arrius

It seems to have gone quiet, so I shall venture to reply at least to Frank.

Thank you for the links which were both interesting and enlightening. I had thought that the pre-reform situation of Turkish was similar to that of Levantine Arabic of the same era, with hundreds of foreign words for which there were good Arabic equivalents in use in other arabophone countries. But I can see from the articles you cite that much of the Persian and Arabic vocabulary was as deeply embedded in Turkish as Norman French and Latin in basically Germanic English, so that its removal might bring the whole edifice tumbling down. Kemal Atatürk seems to have been a bit of a charlatan in this respect and botched the job, which became very difficult for others to patch up again. He reminds me somewhat of the Führer, who called for the exclusion of similar foreign words from German. It is said he wished to replace "Nase" (nose) from Latin "nasum" by "Gesichtserker" (protuberance of the face), unaware that Erker came from Latin "arcus". Fortunately, being an intransigent monoglot, he didn't really know which words were foreign, and as a Viennese used more words of French origin in his speeches than would have a real German.

However, your Professor Lewis does say:"Has it (the reform) liberated the (Turkish) language from the yoke of foreign languages? - Yes, most of the vocabulary of the younger writers is that of the new Turkish." Admittedly, Lewis is referring only to the written language and very careful speech of the educated, but I should think this might well facilitate the inter-intelligibility with the other Turkic languages in the areas in the now defunct USSR, giving Turkish a far greater importance than formerly.

I think that bodies like the Académie Française and the Academia Real are doing a good job in keeping a watchful eye on their respective languages, rather like inspectors of weights and measures. English, which now belongs to everybody, cannot in practice have such an institution to guard it from abuse - after all, the British don't even have a written constitution. But these august and learned bodies are not to be compared with the aforementioned dilettante dictators.

Ik dank U wel, mijn vriend, tot siens,
Arrius


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## cuchuflete

Are you trying to stir things up for the sake of stirring things up?



> I think that bodies like the Académie Française and the Academia Real are doing a good job in keeping a watchful eye on their respective languages, rather like inspectors of weights and measures.


While these "august and learned bodies" are putting their respective weights and measures seals on the balances, the customers and vendors have their thumbs on the plate.

Honest weight!


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## modus.irrealis

Linguistic purism is a complete non-starter for me, since nobody seems to know what it means nor is it ever applied consistently. And the opposite is not a virtue for me either. I just don't see how the level of resistance towards loanwords can be good or bad.



Arrius said:


> The Greeks with a bit of preparation can, I believe, still get a lot out of the plays of Aristophanes, whilst the Brits and Americans find Shakespeare almost a foreign language.



I would be very surprised if that were true. With Arabic speakers, it's possible, because I understand Modern Standard Arabic is very close (or identical?) to the language of the Koran, and so if you're educated, you'll know the language, but that says very little about the way the language has changed. Would an uneducated Arabic speaker who only knows one of the modern dialects of Arabic be able to understand the Koran?



Arrius said:


> He reminds me somewhat of the Führer, who called for the exclusion of similar foreign words from German. It is said he wished to replace "Nase" (nose) from Latin "nasum" by "Gesichtserker" (protuberance of the face), unaware that Erker came from Latin "arcus".



And unaware, evidently, that Nase has a perfectly good Germanic pedigree.


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## Arrius

cuchuflete said:


> Are you trying to stir things up for the sake of stirring things up?
> 
> While these "august and learned bodies" are putting their respective weights and measures seals on the balances, the customers and vendors have their thumbs on the plate.
> 
> Honest weight!


 
1) No, I just like to sharpen my blunt and rusty intellect against keener ones like your own and learn new things in the process.
2) Alas, I agree the task of those who wish to preserve the integrity of their language is indeed a difficult, if not a hopeless one.
3) Thank you for the most apposite photo of the young man weighing fish - very jolly. But one man's fish is another man's poisson.


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## Outsider

modus.irrealis said:


> Linguistic purism is a complete non-starter for me, since nobody seems to know what it means nor is it ever applied consistently.


I think it's fairer to say that linguistic purism means different things to different people. I've noticed more than once that people who proclaim themselves "descriptive, not prescriptive" often have their own unconscious purisms, too. The magic word "register" can excuse away many idiosyncrasies. And when that doesn't apply, "logic", "clarity" or "politeness" may also be given as pretexts for prescription.



modus.irrealis said:


> And the opposite is not a virtue for me either. I just don't see how the level of resistance towards loanwords can be good or bad.


If it's inconsequential either way, then there should be no reason to argue with it, right? It's just a natural aspect of language, like so many others, and should be allowed to act free and uncensored.


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## Sepia

The funny thing about German is that we may have basically are English but with a totally different meaning - or no real meaning at all in English like the mentioned mobile - our Handy.

And then again we use German words for a lot of things where almost every other culture uses a foreign word. "Computer" is one of them. Sure we have adopted the word "computer" but in most cases people say "Rechner". Basically that word means a calculator, but in the right context we understand it as "computer".

What Spanish is concerned one should not forget that various areas that now is Spain used to be under the rule of some Arab culture. This of course has influence on a lot of things, including the language. Besides a lot of things came to Spain by way of trade with Arab merchant nations. Much more than today. Of course you need words for the stuff you buy and resell without having to check some library in Madrid or something - like carpets e.g. - alfombra.
Now it is easier to check up if somebody already has a word for this or that. I think that also explains why Arab may have had more influence earlier than foreign languages have today on the Spanish language.


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## jmx

Athaulf said:


> Come to think of it, it's a very interesting phenomenon: in the pronunciation of foreign, especially English borrowings, it seems like people are nowadays treading a fine line between awkward pronunciation and coming off as unsophisticated. At least it's like that in Croatian -- try faithfully reproducing the proper English pronunciation (let alone accent!), and you'll come off as stuck-up smart-ass, and yet, distort it to the point where it sounds genuinely Croatian, and you'll be laughed at as a bumpkin.  Someone should definitely study this phenomenon in a systematic way.


Exactly the same happens in Spanish with English loanwords.


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## maxiogee

Arrius said:


> 2) Alas, I agree the task of those who wish to preserve the integrity of their language is indeed a difficult, if not a hopeless one.



You make it sound like you see the 'task' as one worth undertaking, even if difficult.
What defines 'linguistic integrity' in your opinion?

What does it matter if a neologism formed in a language is a totally new construction, unrooted in any language, or if it derives from a concept current in another language?

People cast about them for words which best express their ideas. If one (or more) of those ideas is best expressed by a word from another language then they will use it - regardless of what committees, academies or dictionaries decree.


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## PABLO DE SOTO

jmartins said:


> Exactly the same happens in Spanish with English loanwords.


 

I think this happens in most languages.
When you adopt a term from English,when you pronounce you do it in the Spanish way.
Air bag is "erbag",Jogging is "yoguin" and so on,if anyone says it with the perfect english pronunciation it would be considered as pedantic or snobbish.

The same happens with city names,personal names etc.
Although I know how "Liverpool " or "Tony Blair" sound in English,when speaking Spanish I say "Tony Bler",but never    "Bla-ir" or"Liverpo-ol" as they are read in Spanish spelling.


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## panjabigator

Post 1947, the governments of India and Pakistan have campaigned on purifying their respective national languages, Hindi and Urdu, of foreign elements.  This is more than evident in Hindi and Urdu news, which almost become separate languages; you really have to be educated to understand both.  

Learners of Hindi often complain that the language they learn is not reflective of what they may hear by their friends or in the movies.  This is probably because the words they hear the most are Urdu whereas the words they learn in class are Hindi.  An example is the word "surprise."  In Hindi class, I learned the word आश्चर्य /aashchary/ which is descendant from Sanskrit, but I have grown up with the word /hairaan/ which is straight from Arabic (I think it is 7airan).  The Sanskrit word is preferred by the government even though the Urdu word is more commonly used.

But I guess one most learn the standard to really understand the colloquial.


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## modus.irrealis

Outsider said:


> I think it's fairer to say that linguistic purism means different things to different people. I've noticed more than once that people who proclaim themselves "descriptive, not prescriptive" often have their own unconscious purisms, too. The magic word "register" can excuse away many idiosyncrasies. And when that doesn't apply, "logic", "clarity" or "politeness" may also be given as pretexts for prescription.



You're right about it meaning different things to different people, but I guess what bothers me is the arbitrariness of some point of views, where I really don't see what motivates people to say X is bad and Y is wrong.

I also agree with you that there is a lot of prescriptivism that hides behind descriptivism, and that somehow just because people do something, it's automatically not bad. A good example from English might be "infer" vs. "imply" where I think a useful distinction is being lost when people start using them as synonyms.



> If it's inconsequential either way, then there should be no reason to argue with it, right? It's just a natural aspect of language, like so many others, and should be allowed to act free and uncensored.


I agree - I have no problem with languages that decide to "purify" themselves, just as I have no problem with languages that decide not to. And it's not that I think all change is good either (like my example above), it's just that I fail to see why linguistic "pollution" is a bad thing in and of itself.


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## Arrius

"Would an uneducated Arabic speaker who only knows one of the modern dialects of Arabic be able to understand the Koran?"(modus irrealis)

The Koran or Qur'an was written in the ancient dialect of the prophet and on this, Classical and Modern Standard Arabic are based. An uneducated Arab peasant would hear it recited slowly and clearly in the same way wherever was his home and whatever his dialect, and he should be able to recognise at least some of the words. He will hear verses of it in his five daily prayers , and it will be quoted to him as a text in sermons (possibly in his dialect), which should fill in some of the gaps. If he can read - you didn't say illiterate - he will be expected to read it regularly and it is a pious thing to learn it all off by heart, after which one may call oneself Hafiz. Thus it isn't really like the old Latin liturgy which many of the faithful were in the dark about.


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## modus.irrealis

Arrius, what if this Arabic speaker is not Muslim and has had no exposure to the Koran? And if he can read, doesn't that mean he knows more than just his modern dialect, since as far as I know the only written language is Modern Standard Arabic? But maybe this is too hypothetical a question.


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