ABSTRACT
There is a direct line of descent from classical Arabic, the language of the Koran, to modern Arabic; so that across 1,400 years (in the Islamic calendar) the script is recognizably the same, the grammar has changed remarkably little (by comparison with, for example, German or English) and even the vocabulary has shown an astonishing integrity and consistency. It is the Koran which has preserved the essence of written Arabic, and it is also the elevated status accorded to the original language of Islam which has prevented the Arabic dialects from becoming as far apart from each other as the dialects of Latin. Whereas Italian and French are not now mutually comprehensible, the speakers of dialects of Arabic over an enormous area can understand each other. Peasants from Muscat and Morocco
respectively would certainly have problems with each other’s dialects, but even peasants and certainly educated people throughout the Peninsula, the Levant, Iraq, Egypt, the Sudan and some parts of N. Africa can make themselves understood to each other without necessarily resorting to classical Arabic.
