The origins of the Arabic alphabet
To objectify the current international influence of the Arabic language, it is important to understand that the power of this language is explained by its history .
420 million people worldwide (if we add the people who speak it as a second foreign language) are Arabic speakers. Furthermore, Arabic is the sacred language of Islam , practiced by 1.3 billion people. As you can see, the influence of the Arab world is considerable.
The Phoenician and Aramaic origin of the Arabic alphabet: The origins of the Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet and calligraphy evolved over centuries. It seems that the Arabic alphabet comes from the Aramaic, which in turn comes from the Phoenician. The alphabet of the Phoenicians, an ancient people originating in modern-day Lebanon, spawned the Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, and Latin alphabet. You did not know? Latin (and therefore Spanish), Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, therefore, come from Lebanon and Syria!
Historians agree on the Aramaic origin of the Arabic alphabet , but do not know if it has a Nabataean or Syrian root. The origins of Arabic writing are still debated.
The slow and gradual development of Arabic
The hypothesis is that in the V or VI century BC. A., Some Semitic tribes of the North called Nabataeans that settled down in present Jordan (Petra), used a form of Arabic alphabet, an Aramaic tinged with Arabicisms.
Pre-Islamic Arabic comes from the Nabataeans, a people located in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, from the 5th century BC. C to Roman times.
The Aramaic letters were gradually joined together to fit into the papyrus format. In the 4th century, the Arabic language replaced Aramaic . Later, in the 6th century (in 512), the first written proof of the Arabic alphabet appears and has been extended thereafter. Gradually go from having 22 to 28 signs. Then, the dots appear above the letters joined at the base.
Thus, learning the Arabic alphabet requires a real effort to write vowels and consonants with their own phonological system, and work on their pronunciation. The main difficulty in learning the Arabic alphabet, or aliphate (from alif , the first letter) is in the form that the letters take according to their position in the word:
isolated
at first
in the middle
in the end
Do you dare to learn the Arabic alphabet ?
