Man has known around 500 thousand languages over 160-200 thousand years of speech, of which the majority has disappeared leaving only 6909 remaining languages today, while many are under threat. The source of the figures above is a study by Professor Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University in Berkshire, England. He said that the most startling linguistic place in the world is Papua New Guinea, near Australia, where seven million people speak 830 different languages, or one-eighth of all the world's languages (According to recent news, Queen Elizabeth may have to intervene to end a quarrel between the country's two prime ministers). Professor Pagel said that English is the luckiest language, being the fourth most frequently spoken language after Mandarin, Hindi and Spanish, while being the first second language in the world - "so English is going to win". If winning here means becoming the world's first language, then this is possible. However, English will not replace all other languages, even in a century or a millennium. Personally, I believe that Arabic, the fifth most frequently spoken language in the world, is guaranteed to survive. For one thing, it is the language of the Noble Quran, and Islam is the only religion in the world whose adherents increase in number, instead of decreasing, as is the case with all other faiths. Modern university research on languages reminded me of Taha Hussein, and his book "On Pre-Islamic Poetry". When it was first published, the book sparked a huge controversy (I have a copy dated 1926), which was expected by the author: In the preface, and almost every chapter, we read Hussein saying that the supporters of old traditions will be incensed by the book, and that he thus expects fury and indignation, but that he also expects an enlightened minority to accept his work. Taha Hussein purports that the majority of pre-Islamic poetry is not really pre-Islamic. Since chroniclers are in agreement that Arabs were two segments, Qahtanite or South Arabian Arabs in Yemen, and Adnani or North-West Arabian Arabs in the Hijaz, then how could have the Yemeni Imru' al-Qays have composed poetry in the language of Adnan? Hussein attributed to Amro ibn al-Alaa the view that said that the two languages were distinct, while there is proof of this from chroniclers that confirm this, leaving no room for doubt or controversy. Hussein said that Quraysh was an independent political unit in pre-Islamic times, but that the language of Quraysh before Islam was of little importance, and had not spread beyond the Hijaz. But with the rise of Islam, Quraysh prevailed, and the hegemony of its language and dialect went hand in hand with its religious and political power. Taha Hussein believes that the Quran was the most sincere mirror of pre-Islamic life, and concludes by saying, “We believe that if there is such a thing as an Arabic text whose language is beyond doubt, and therefore is the most reliable authority on the Arabic language, then that text would be the Quran. It is the texts and words of the Quran that we must adduce for establishing the authenticity of so-called pre-Islamic poetry, rather than adducing this poetry [to establish the linguistic authority] of the Quran”. “On Pre-Islamic Poetry” sparked a huge debate at the time that is yet to be settled. The traditionalists were furious at Taha Hussein despite his prominent academic reputation, and I believe that he was forced to amend some of what he wrote in subsequent editions – and I don't know whether the edition I have is the original or amended one. (My tutor for the Master's Degree, which I did not finish because of the Lebanese Civil War, was Ihsan Abbas, the most prominent Professor of Arabic in his time. Yet, I was envious of Dr. Aisha Abd al-Rahman, or Bint al-Shati [Daughter of the Riverbank], because Dr. Taha Hussein was the chairman of the review committee of her doctoral thesis on Abu al-Alaa al-Maari's Risalat al-Ghufran [The Epistle of Forgiveness] at the Egyptian University). These days, hardly a year goes by without me participating in one or more conferences dedicated for preserving the Arabic language, and I shall take part in an upcoming conference organized by the International Council for the Arabic Language in collaboration with UNESCO (19-23/3/2012). While I participate with alacrity in such events, I am not at all motivated by any concern for the Arabic language being overshadowed by English and so forth. Indeed, Arabic shall endure as long as the Noble Quran, Islam and Muslims shall. Instead, I seek through these conferences to focus on the efforts aimed at maintaining Arabic, so that we can read and write correctly, instead of this hybrid language that we see today in the new media. [...] [email protected]
