Talk:Classification of Arabic languages

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Untitled

I've splitted the page into Arabic languages and Ancient North Arabian. --Koryakov Yuri 12:06, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maltese

Maltese is not a third branch of this family. It descends from Siculo-Arabic, which is a dialect of Maghrebi Arabic, which is a variety of the Arabic macrolanguage. Yes, it's a separate language from Arabic, but mutual intelligibility and ethnic identity do not change its lineage.

Also, if we're not going to separate out Judeo-Arabic because it's already covered under 'varieties of Arabic', shouldn't we remove Standard Arabic as well? kwami (talk) 18:56, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Maltese, yes, it is a third branch. I do not think you are understanding this. It is linguistically impossible for Maltese to simultaneously be classified under the Arabic language, yet not exist as a dialect of it at the same time. In linguistics, when a language is classified under another, it is a "dialect" (like American English under English, or Egyptian Arabic under Arabic).

French is descended from Latin. That doesn't make it a dialect of Latin. A third branch would make it a sister of Arabic rather than a daughter. kwami (talk) 19:14, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll make a comparison. Latin is a language. Languages that came from Latin are now called Romance languages.

Arabic is a language. Languages that came from Arabic are now called Arabic languages. mɪn'dʒi:klə (talk) 19:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to our usage, 'Arabic languages' is the superset, so it's not a close comparison. But either way, Maltese is an Arabic language. kwami (talk) 19:18, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please check my example of English and Norse on the Maltese discussion page. mɪn'dʒi:klə (talk) 19:20, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your English/Norse example is completely false. Maltese is a descendant of ARABIC, not of "Arabic languages" which includes Ancient North Arabic. (Taivo (talk) 19:55, 14 January 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Secondly, yes, either remove all the varieties covered by that page, or add all of them. We can't pick and choose which ones we feel like listing. mɪn'dʒi:klə (talk) 19:08, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course we can. We have plenty of partial exemplar lists. kwami (talk) 19:14, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient North Arabian to be subsumed under Arabic Languages as a category

I removed this:

Old or Ancient North Arabian, a number of closely related extinct dialects of pre-Islamic Arabia:^[1]^[2]

on account of Ahmad al-Jallad's work. Wikipedia's movement on the classification of Arabian Semitica has been cautious - justifiably so, given the cranks out there. But I think we no longer need such caution. So my request to the editors of the Arabic project here is to delete "Ancient North Arabian" as a category, although the article itself is valuable and should stay. Instead this article on "Arabic languages" should take over that category's function. I'm also thinking it were better to rename this article to "ArabiAN languages". --Zimriel (talk) 22:15, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Macdonald, M. C. A. (2000). "Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. Vol. 11. Retrieved 28 July 2014. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)
^ Macdonald, M. C. A. (2004). "Ancient North Arabian". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Languages. Cambridge University Press. pp. 488–533. ISBN 0-521-56256-2.

OA is not CA

In the end of the section "Views on classif..." there is a statement that equates Old Arabic with Classical Arabic. Yet this is not one and the same thing. The passage should be reformulated. Yak-indolog (talk) 21:54, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have attended to the above mentioned issue and reformulated by removing the "also called Old Arabic" part. To preserve a mention of Old Arabic in the article, I have incorporated it to the introduction of the article, where diglossia was mentioned. As MSA should also be mentioned, I added the mention of it in that passage about diglossia.

A user "A455bcd9" vandalised this work by reverting the edit with the argument "MSA has nothing to do with Islamic conquest" or something to the effect. (The person must have been drunk or drugged to come to the conclusion this article is about conquest. And also lazy - s/he could have removed the mention of MSA and the important point of my edit - disequating CA with OA - would be preserved) Since I do not want to spend my time quarelling with people who "work" this way, I do not try to renew my edit and forget about this article. It is thus left to someone else who understands what I stated above, and knows Old Arabic is not just another name for Classical Arabic but serves to denote (also) older stages of the language, to reformulate the article so that it does not contain this misleading equation. @A455bcd9, do it yourself , when you get sober Yak-indolog (talk) 19:56, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

1. WP:NOPA ("The person must have been drunk or drugged" "do it yourself , when you get sober")

2. That being said, you were right for the OA vs CA bit and I re-instated it. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 16:53, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Macdonald, M. C. A. (2000). "Reflections on the linguistic map of pre-Islamic Arabia". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. Vol. 11. Retrieved 28 July 2014. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help)

[2] Macdonald, M. C. A. (2004). "Ancient North Arabian". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Languages. Cambridge University Press. pp. 488–533. ISBN 0-521-56256-2.

[1]

[2]