# Where specifically did Arabic originate from?



## Moseley

In which region? I've heard that Arabic had made it's transition from the African languages, so naturally Egypt should be the originators of Arabic geographically wise?


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## dkarjala

This is an unsettled question. Arabic is grammatically lumped in with languages that developed in the area of Syria. The transition from African languages would have happened at the time of the common Semitic tongue - so way before recorded history. The only issue with Arabic as a conservative language from the Northwest area is that its plural system (broken plurals) functions like Ethiopian Semitic and Old and New South Arabian languages (the non-Arabic tongues in south Yemen, Oman and the island of Soqotra - 'old' and 'new', by the way, are not genetically related, it seems). 

Scholars have gone back and forth for some time; however, I believe that the verbal system clearly gives Arabic an origin in the Levant. The real question is if broken plurals were common to all Semitic languages or were somehow adopted by Arabic. You can read about this all you want if you have access to journals or a library as the literature is full of ideas.

Edit: I should give the other perspective as well; namely, that Arabic is a Southwest Semitic Language that developed along with ancestors of South Arabian and Ethiopic before branching off. People that hold this theory usually, after Ratcliffe, cite the fact that the broken plural systems are too similar to have been borrowed by Arabic. According to this theory, the language that eventually became Arabic would have started in the southern Arabian peninsula and spent a lot of time in contact with Semitic tongues of the Levant before becoming Arabic as we know it.


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## Moseley

I wasn't aware that some Yemeni speak a language other than Arabic, is that widespread in certain areas of Yemen?


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## dkarjala

Look at the map on the wiki for Modern South Arabian languages and please do see my edit above.


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## إسكندراني

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1686519
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1907342


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## Hemza

Those languages of Yemen etc are "Arabic", but just a different kind. I heard that Classical Arabic is the variant of the North of Arabian peninsula which "took the power" over other Arabic languages.


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## dkarjala

Hemza said:


> Those languages of Yemen etc are "Arabic", but just a different kind. I heard that Classical Arabic is the variant of the North of Arabian peninsula which "took the power" over other Arabic languages.



They are "Arabic" only in the same sense that English is Dutch or Swedish, i.e., according to the second theory above, they share a common mother language and Arabic, Old and New South Arabian and the Ethopian languages all started out as a single language group there - 'Arabic' is thus the result of a certain group moving out of Yemen and adopting grammatical features from languages in Syro-Palestine. 

There are many misconceptions in the previous threads that ignore a lot of evidence. It is very clear from epigraphic evidence that what we call "Classical Arabic" was a poetic register adopting features of various dialects and purposely archaic. Certainly, the language spoken in the cities of the Hejaz in the 7th century was more conservative than the dialects now spoken in the Arab diaspora; however, it is quite clear from the writing system, inscriptions and anecdotal evidence that the city-dwellers had already abandoned many "Classical" features in their spoken idiom. This explains, among other things, why Muhammad's being sent out to the desert as a child was one of the reasons for his personal eloquence. Of no dispute in all of this is that the language that we call "Arabic" was a North Arabian dialect.


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## Hemza

dkarjala said:


> They are "Arabic" only in the same sense that English is Dutch or Swedish, i.e.,



Your example is unsuitable, because Dutch is spoken in Belgium and Netherlands and Swedish, in Sweden, while Southern Arabic languages are spoken in Arabian peninsula, so they're still Arabic languageS.

I wasn't speaking about similarities or differences of the languages (Southern and Northen) in Arabian peninsula, it's just that what we call "Arabic" today was just one of the languages which were (and some are still) spoken in Arabian peninsula. For example, the "shu7u7" language is native to a tribe in Emirates, it's not Arabic (Standard Arabic) but it's an "Arabic language". Do you see what I mean?


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## dkarjala

Hemza said:


> Your example is unsuitable, because Dutch is spoken in Belgium and Netherlands and Swedish, in Sweden, while Southern Arabic languages are spoken in Arabian peninsula, so they're still Arabic languageS.



Geography isn't important for language relationships. Is English an Australian language? 

What I am saying is that English and Dutch and Swedish all used to be groups of the same language, which we refer to as Proto-Germanic. Some moved to Scandinavia, some to England, etc., and they evolved into separate languages and language families.

Similarly, according to the Arabian theory, Arabic and the Yemeni languages and the Ethiopian languages all started as one language in Yemen. Then some moved to Africa, some to the north, and became the separate languages and groups we know today.

In other words, Arabic is to South Arabian languages as French is to Romanian - you can't define one with the other, but have to move back through history to the original Latin-speaking groups that gave birth to both. The language we call Arabic wasn't dominant in any way over others until, as you alluded to, the Arabs of the north began running trade routes and forming sedentary civil societies.

If I persist in misunderstanding you, I apologize.


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## Hemza

dkarjala said:


> Geography isn't important for language relationships. Is English an Australian language?
> 
> What I am saying is that English and Dutch and Swedish all used to be groups of the same language, which we refer to as Proto-Germanic. Some moved to Scandinavia, some to England, etc., and they evolved into separate languages and language families.
> 
> Similarly, according to the Arabian theory, Arabic and the Yemeni languages and the Ethiopian languages all started as one language in Yemen. Then some moved to Africa, some to the north, and became the separate languages and groups we know today.
> 
> In other words, Arabic is to South Arabian languages as French is to Romanian - you can't define one with the other, but have to move back through history to the original Latin-speaking groups that gave birth to both. The language we call Arabic wasn't dominant in any way over others until, as you alluded to, the Arabs of the north began running trade routes and forming sedentary civil societies.
> 
> If I persist in misunderstanding you, I apologize.



It's ok, don't apologize 

We can compare how now Standard Arabic is widely known compared to other  Arabian languages, as how Standard French (Parisian one) crushed  through politics, other French languages. You see now what I mean? There  is the official French language (the standard one which is spoken everywhere). But  other French languages are sometimes COMPLETELY different from Standard  French and impossible to understand. Despite this, we still call them "French languages", because  they're native to the French territory? So I apply the same idea to  Arabian languages and standard Arabic. They're all native to Arabian  peninsula, so they're ALL "Arabic languages" (I'm not saying they're  "Arabic" as we call it now). That's why I told you that I'm not speaking  about relations between language to make my statement.


About origin of current Arabic, in general, language which are adopted in an area, is the dominant language: it can be dominant through the number of speakers of by the power of the speakers. You probably knows the Nabateans? They were very powerful thanks to the Frankincense sell. And they came from the South of Peninsula (Yemen-Oman) to settle in the North, so as you said, Arabic language we know today, could came from the South and moved to the North and thanks to power of civilizations which lived there, has prospered. That's just a hypothesis.


Ps: Nabateans used to write with Aramaic letters, but their language was closer to Arabic. Also, there is no borders for languages, so further we move to the North, more people were probably speaking Arabic with aramaic features then a mix, then Aramaic with Arabic features.

Ps2: Sorry for probably mistakes, English isn't my native language.


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## Gavril

Hemza said:


> It's ok, don't apologize
> 
> We can compare how now Standard Arabic is widely known compared to other  Arabian languages, as how Standard French (Parisian one) crushed  through politics, other French languages. You see now what I mean? There  is the official French language (the standard one which is spoken everywhere). But  other French languages are sometimes COMPLETELY different from Standard  French and impossible to understand. Despite this, we still call them "French languages",


 
I don't think we do call them "French Languages", though -- the term _Gallo-Romance _is more common for this meaning.



> because  they're native to the French territory? So I apply the same idea to  Arabian languages and standard Arabic. They're all native to Arabian  peninsula, so they're ALL "Arabic languages" (I'm not saying they're  "Arabic" as we call it now). That's why I told you that I'm not speaking  about relations between language to make my statement.



But isn't this what the term "Arab*ian*" is for -- i.e., to distinguish between one language (Arabic), originally spoken in the northern Arabian peninsula, and the larger group of languages (Arabian) spoken all over this peninsula?

I'm sorry if I interrupted the discussion between you and Dkarjala, it just seemed to me that the disagreement was hinging on the difference between "Arabian" and "Arabic".


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## WadiH

^ The problem is that Arabic does not have this distinction between "Arab", "Arabic" and "Arabian".  There is just one word: "'Arabiyy".


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## Hemza

Gavril said:


> I don't think we do call them "French Languages", though -- the term _Gallo-Romance _is more common for this meaning.
> 
> But isn't this what the term "Arab*ian*" is for -- i.e., to distinguish between one language (Arabic), originally spoken in the northern Arabian peninsula, and the larger group of languages (Arabian) spoken all over this peninsula?
> 
> 
> 
> I'm sorry if I interrupted the discussion between you and Dkarjala, it just seemed to me that the disagreement was hinging on the difference between "Arabian" and "Arabic".



To be exact, we call them "Varieties of French" (variétés du Français) but some are also other languages (basque, occitan, etc) in spite of this, they're still called "varieties of French".

"Arabian" means "all over Arabian peninsula", while "Arabic" means all Arabic speaking countries. At least, that's how I see it.


It's ok, no problem


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## Moseley

But Arabic like all languages probably did branch off some African language?


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## WadiH

No, Arabic branched off some old member of the Semitic language family, as discussed above, either in Northern Arabia / Syria or in southern Arabia.


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## Hemza

Moseley said:


> But Arabic like all languages probably did branch off some African language?



Why African languages? African languages are not semitic languages (except today,languages of Ethiopia, Erythrea and at less extent, Kenya and Tanzania). For example, Berber dialects and Coptic are not semitic, so I don't see how it could comes from Africa...


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## Moseley

Hemza said:


> Why African languages? African languages are not semitic languages (except today,languages of Ethiopia, Erythrea and at less extent, Kenya and Tanzania). For example, Berber dialects and Coptic are not semitic, so I don't see how it could comes from Africa...




Well the early Homo Sapiens came from parts of Africa, so likely it has an African origin, really far back though.


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## Hemza

So it means that ALL languages descents from African languages. I don't think.
First: we're not sure human comes from Africa, it's just a supposition, but it's another debate (I'm myself part African, so no offense ^^).
Secondly: languages could have been developped independantly of what was spoken in Africa (if the theory is correct)


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## vinyljunkie619

Yep.  The language family was once called Hamito-Semitic, now called Afro-Asiatic.  African is bundled up right in there. Berber and Arabic have a common long prehistoric ancestor.


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## dkarjala

Hemza said:


> It's ok, don't apologize
> So I apply the same idea to  Arabian languages and standard Arabic. They're all native to Arabian  peninsula, so they're ALL "Arabic languages" (I'm not saying they're  "Arabic" as we call it now). That's why I told you that I'm not speaking  about relations between language to make my statement.



That's fine. The _mot juste_ in English is "Arabian".



> Nabateans used to write with Aramaic letters, but their language was closer to Arabic. Also, there is no borders for languages, so further we move to the North, more people were probably speaking Arabic with aramaic features then a mix, then Aramaic with Arabic features.



Nabatean is a dialect of Aramaic. The Arabic language spoken influenced it a lot, and some inscriptions were written with a few Arabic words, and some were written entirely in Arabic. I have actually read facsimiles of these texts, and they are really fun. Arabic script is, in fact, borrowed directly from the Nabatean script.



> Sorry for probably mistakes, English isn't my native language.



Pas besoin de t'excuser...moi, si je tentais d'écrire tout ce tu as écrit là-dessus en français, je ferais sans doute beaucoup plus de fautes!



> Why African languages? African languages are not semitic languages  (except today,languages of Ethiopia, Erythrea and at less extent, Kenya  and Tanzania). For example, Berber dialects and Coptic are not semitic,  so I don't see how it could comes from Africa...



There is no controversy about this. One group of African languages, Afroasiatic, gave birth to the Semitic branch. We know from epigraphic and reconstructive evidence that the Ethiopian languages came to Africa from the Arabian peninsula. That doesn't change the fact that the family must have started in Africa. Berber and Coptic (which is Egyptian) are also in the Afro-Asiatic family. Just like Latin, Old German and Sanskrit all come from a common Indo-European tongue, Semitic and the languages you mention also did. Also included are Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic languages.


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## Hemza

dkarjala said:


> There is no controversy about this. One group of African languages, Afroasiatic, gave birth to the Semitic branch. We know from epigraphic and reconstructive evidence that the Ethiopian languages came to Africa from the Arabian peninsula. That doesn't change the fact that the family must have started in Africa. Berber and Coptic (which is Egyptian) are also in the Afro-Asiatic family. Just like Latin, Old German and Sanskrit all come from a common Indo-European tongue, Semitic and the languages you mention also did. Also included are Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic languages.



Not all linguists think that all those languages come from Africa, it's just an hypothesis. I'm not saying it's false, it's just that no one can affirm that it's true nor false. Also, "afro asiatic family" and "indo european tongue" are also just hypothesis, there is no proof of their existence . I think that if there is similarities between African languages and semitic languages, it could also be due to influence. I'm not saying there is no link between them, of course, I'm not linguist, but when I see Berber texts, I don't see any similarities with Arabic nor Ethiopian nor swahili (just examples). But if you prove me the opposite, I would be glad to change my point of view 

Between, sorry to do off-topic, but about origin of humanity in Africa, it's just an hypothesis, because it's in Africa that we found the oldest bones of a human. So it doesn't mean human can't come from another place, or numerous places.

Ps: thank you, but you seem to be good in French too


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## Hulalessar

Hemza said:


> To be exact, we call them "Varieties of French" (variétés du Français) but some are also other languages (basque, occitan, etc) in spite of this, they're still called "varieties of French".



That is a statement which would cause the eyebrows of some inhabitants of Bilbao to be raised so high that they would be in danger of taking off.

"Basque and Occitan are languages of France"

No problem with that.

"Basque and Occitan are French languages"

A bit problematic as it is uncertain whether "French" refers to the nationality or the language.

"Basque and Occitan are varieties of French"

"French" has only one meaning. It refers to language and neither Basque nor Occitan are varieties of the French language - at least not unless you take "French language" to mean something very wide in which case it would have to include German. The point can be made with the following argument:

_French is descended from Latin

Basque is French

Therefore Basque is descended from Latin_

The conclusion is patently false. The argument is founded on an equivocation; "French" does not mean the same thing in each premise.

"Arab", "Arabian" and "Arabic" each have several meanings some of which may in certain contexts coincide. Whilst I do not wish to be dogmatic, I think that when discussing languages it is helpful to restrict "Arabic" to refer to the Central Semitic language(s) of that name and "Arabian" to mean "of or pertaining to the Arabian Peninsula". The South Arabian languages are South Semitic languages and therefore belong to a different branch from Arabic. Referring to them as Arabic rather than Arabian is apt to suggest that they are more closely to Arabic than is the case - Hebrew is more closely related to Arabic.


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## berndf

Hemza said:


> First: we're not sure human comes from Africa, it's just a supposition, but it's another debate (I'm myself part African, so no offense ^^).


No, this question is very firmly settled. All species of the genus homo originated in Africa. There were just different emigration waves of different species of the genus. But it doesn't matter, the emigration of our species, homo sapiens, took place much earlier than the times we can trace our modern language groups back to. As vinyljunkie pointed out correctly, Semitic is part of a larger group with its non-Semitic representatives in Africa, among them historically important languages like ancient Egyptian. If you look at the distribution of the entire group, a North-African origin of the group is not implausible but we don't know for sure.


dkarjala said:


> That's fine. The _mot juste_ in English is "Arabian".


Exactly. Observing this terminological distinction saves us a lot of hassle. In French you have _*la* langue Arabe_ and _*les* langues Arab*iques*_. The distinction is the same.

@Hemza: In historical linguistics, the distinctions is quite important. Most modern scholars don't think of Arabic as a South-Semitic language any more but assign it to a newly propose a group called Central Semitic which contrasts with South Semitic (South Arabian and Ethiopian languages) and East Semitic (extinct, most important representative is Akkadian). Central Semitic contains languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Aramaic.



dkarjala said:


> Nabatean is a dialect of Aramaic. The Arabic language spoken influenced it a lot, and some inscriptions were written with a few Arabic words, and some were written entirely in Arabic. I have actually read facsimiles of these texts, and they are really fun. Arabic script is, in fact, borrowed directly from the Nabatean script.


I think there is little doubt that the popular spoken language of the Nabateans was Arabic but they had no tradition of writing this language but wrote in a dialect of Aramaic, the lingua franca or the region, until the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Younger (5th and 6th centuries) Nabatean inscriptions are usually in Greek. The speed of the transition from Aramaic to Geek inscriptions suggest that Nabatean Aramaic did not play a significant role in the daily life of the people.


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## Hemza

Oh, sorry if I hurt you by speaking about Basque like that .
I made a mistake, I wanted to say Occitan and Basque are "France languages", I mean that those languages are spoken in France (and also, Spain and Italia): as I already said, I'm not comparing languages. I'm speaking about the nationality, the territory: Basque and Occitan are languages which are spoken in France, so they are part of France languages. That's why I include Southern Arabic in the category "Arabic languageS". But I think it's just a problem of name: you call them "Arabian languages", I call them "Arabic languages", but we're speaking about the same thing. Of course, I'm not saying that your statement is incorrect, but I think mine is not false .


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## Hemza

berndf said:


> Exactly. Observing this terminological distinction saves us a lot of hassle. In French you have _*la* langue Arabe_ and _*les* langues Arab*iques*_. The distinction is the same.
> 
> @Hemza: In historical linguistics, the distinctions is quite important. Most modern scholars don't think of Arabic as a South-Semitic language any more but assign it to a newly propose a group called Central Semitic which contrasts with South Semitic (South Arabian and Ethiopian languages) and East Semitic (extinct, most important representative is Akkadian). Central Semitic contains languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Aramaic.



Oh, I see know. I admit I was wrong. Thank you for debating, I see where I made mistakes .

If you class Southern Arabian with Ethiopian languages in one category (South Semitic), do you think they are (or were) quite similar? I don't know a lot of Ge'ez, Tigré, etc.
Also, do you consider Swahili to be a semitic language, or at least, a high influenced language (by Arabic)?


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## berndf

Ethiopian languages are of course very different from Modern South Arabian, there have been many centuries of separate development. But they are nevertheless regarded as belonging to the same historical sub group of Semitic. Swahilli is strongly influenced by Arabic but that doesn't make it a Semitic language. It is classified as a Bantu language.


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## Moseley

How cool would it have been to have some the more older/obsolete languages still retained? I think it would have been pretty interesting to see, I don't know much about the makeup of Arabia before the advent of Islam, my impression is it was just a tribal region throughout the Hijaz, Najd and Yemen. I'm sure the Persians ruled parts at one point but mostly it was autonomous and governed itself. Also if any history buff can correct me, isn't true that the Romans didn't venture far into the Arabian Peninsula because of the desert terrain?


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## dkarjala

berndf said:


> I think there is little doubt that the popular spoken language of the Nabateans was Arabic but they had no tradition of writing this language but wrote in a dialect of Aramaic, the lingua franca or the region, until the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Younger (5th and 6th centuries) Nabatean inscriptions are usually in Greek. The speed of the transition from Aramaic to Geek inscriptions suggest that Nabatean Aramaic did not play a significant role in the daily life of the people.



Of course what you say is true. Still, "Nabataean" refers to a group of texts representing a dialect of Aramaic with more or less prominent intrusions from the Arabic substrate. That's all I was saying. As we both know, I think, the formal written vernacular is seldom the same dialect as the people - and often a different language altogether. Syriac, for example, was clearly not the day-to-day language of Aramaic-speaking Christians during its writing.


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## dkarjala

berndf said:


> @Hemza: In historical linguistics, the distinctions is quite important. Most modern scholars don't think of Arabic as a South-Semitic language any more but assign it to a newly propose a group called Central Semitic which contrasts with South Semitic (South Arabian and Ethiopian languages) and East Semitic (extinct, most important representative is Akkadian). Central Semitic contains languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Aramaic.



I want to mention that Old South Arabian languages are usually grouped with Central (that is, they are not directly related to Modern South Arabian) since Nebes showed in 1994 that they seem to use the modified preterite and not the reduplicated form of the imperfect.


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## WadiH

Hemza said:


> If it can help you, I know that Persians ruled 7ejaz. But I don't know if it was only Persian administration or if Persians settled there.
> About Romans, they have been stopped by the desert (I think it's today what is called "Nafud", between Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia).



I've never heard of the Persians ruling the Hejaz.  Bahrain fell under Persian rule at various points in history and there were Persian governors (or Arab ones ruling on behalf of Persia) in eastern Arabia, Oman and Yemen at the dawn of Islam.  The Romans didn't reach the Nafud desert but they infiltrated (or had vassals) in the northern edges of the Hejaz and the lands of the Nabateans (the Roman province of Arabia).


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## Hemza

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I've never heard of the Persians ruling the Hejaz.  Bahrain fell under Persian rule at various points in history and there were Persian governors (or Arab ones ruling on behalf of Persia) in eastern Arabia, Oman and Yemen at the dawn of Islam.  The Romans didn't reach the Nafud desert but they infiltrated (or had vassals) in the northern edges of the Hejaz and the lands of the Nabateans (the Roman province of Arabia).



Yup, I'm going to delete my message, because I'm aware I'm wrong: I thought the Sassanid empire ruled Hejaz, I have just checked on my book about history of Iran, there is no such thing, but they say that they ruled Western Yemen and Egypt.


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## ancalimon

Hemza said:


> Not all linguists think that all those languages come from Africa, it's just an hypothesis.



I agree. I don't even think that there is proof that humans could speak when they supposedly left Africa.

There is also the religious belief that the home of Adam (who is either the first human being or the first human that became aware according to Islam) is Kaaba.


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## WadiH

Even if the common ancestor of the Afro-Asiatic language family developed in Africa, the immediate ancestors of Arabic did not and so we cannot say that Arabic developed in Africa anymore than we can say that Hebrew, Syriac or Akkadian developed there.


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## Moseley

ancalimon said:


> I agree. I don't even think that there is proof that humans could speak when they supposedly left Africa.
> 
> There is also the religious belief that the home of Adam (who is either the first human being or the first human that became aware according to Islam) is Kaaba.



With all due respect, I think religious beliefs should be let by the wayside when thinking about the origin of language, I've heard some Imams try and hold to the view that Arabic was the first language of mankind which is completely wrong. Also, Islamic traditions state Adam (and probably Eve) were white, when most likely if they did exist and were the first modern humans they also certainly had to be African.


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## killerbee256

ancalimon said:


> I agree. I don't even think that there is proof that humans could speak when they supposedly left Africa.
> 
> There is also the religious belief that the home of Adam (who is either the first human being or the first human that became aware according to Islam) is Kaaba.


It depends what you define as "Human" as there were several waves of hominid migration from Africa. Anatomically modern humans undoubtedly had language, if the more primitive hominids did is up for debate. The origin of Arabic is tied with the origin of proto-semitic, the most popular thesis these days is the Levant and another is Ethiopia. Both makes sense as Semitic is closely related to languages in Africa.


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## إسكندراني

Moseley said:


> With all due respect, I think religious beliefs should be let by the wayside when thinking about the origin of language, I've heard some Imams try and hold to the view that Arabic was the first language of mankind which is completely wrong. Also, Islamic traditions state Adam (and probably Eve) were white, when most likely if they did exist and were the first modern humans they also certainly had to be African.


It's interesting how you ended your paragraph in contradiction to the view you presented at the start of it. But in any case, I have never heard anyone claim to know Adam PBUH's skin colour. Crucially, one must have a sense of historical perspective and realise that speaking about the origins of humanity is of no relevance to anything that happened linguistically over the past 10 thousand years.


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## Hemza

Moseley said:


> With all due respect, I think religious beliefs should be let by the wayside when thinking about the origin of language, I've heard some Imams try and hold to the view that Arabic was the first language of mankind which is completely wrong. Also, Islamic traditions state Adam (and probably Eve) were white, when most likely if they did exist and were the first modern humans they also certainly had to be African.



Please, don't oppose "white" against "African", I'm myself African, and I'm completely white . Like all Black skinned people are not all Africans (see Pacific people and some Indians and Arabs). Anyways, about the topic, I never heard that Islamic tradition state that Adam and Eve were white, I don't know where did you find this.


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## ancalimon

Hemza said:


> Please, don't oppose "white" against "African", I'm myself African, and I'm completely white . Like all Black skinned people are not all Africans (see Pacific people and some Indians and Arabs). Anyways, about the topic, I never heard that Islamic tradition state that Adam and Eve were white, I don't know where did you find this.



I'm thinking that black skin appeared after white skin. Parts of body that sees sun light least (palms, under feet) are white among black skinned people.


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## killerbee256

ancalimon said:


> I'm thinking that black skin appeared after white skin. Parts of body that sees sun light least (palms, under feet) are white among black skinned people.


No darker skin was first, skin tone of populations becomes lighter the farther north you go. It has to do with UV light and the production of vitamin d. Darker skin provides more protection from UV light then does lighter skin, however darker skin is less efficient at producing vitamin D, as you go father north less there is less UV light and light in general so there is active selective pressure for lighter skin, which is better at producing vitamin d. Further more we all descend from humans who left Africa, and those humans had dark skin. relic populations such as Negritos and Aboriginal Tasmanians represent some the first migrations out of Africa. Notice they look very much like Africans. And why are we talking about this? This has little to do with the origin of Arabic.


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