For Pacifica - random quotes on Arabic and Qur'an

[interprete]

وحقر عنده ما كان من سواه يستعظمه

I'm not sure about this. Is it something like "whatever came from someone else than him (i.e. Ibn Battutah) was despised in his (the caliph's) eyes (i.e. the caliph didn't care for anything that didn't come from Ibn Battutah; isn't that a bit harsh and unlikely?)" or "the caliph despised within himself..."? "... thinking highly of him (of Ibn Battutah)"?

Tough one, my two possible yet uncertain readings would be:
-with form 1 حقر = and to him (عنده) the things he used to admire from other people than him (I assume the Caliph) became insignificant/despicable.
-with form 2 = and he (the Caliph) debased (in Battuta’s eyes) what he admired in other people (previously).

I went and looked for possible tashkeel, and found both حقر with and without shadda, but also found مَن instead of مِن, which I can’t make sense of.

 

[interprete]

Incidentally this sentence is a nice illustration of the problem I was talking about earlier about pronouns.

 

[Pacifica]

Since the caliph was the subject of the previous clause, I assumed he would be the subject here too... but I suppose I should stop making this type of Latin-minded assumptions.

 

[Pacifica]

I find this language both amazing and awkward.

 

[Pacifica]

Another problem I'm having is that I'm not sure where dependence on a subordinate conjunction or relative pronoun stops. For instance, do the clauses وحقر عنده ما كان من سواه يستعظمه، وحقق لديه ما كان من فضله يتوهمه still depend on the earlier ما underlined here?

فغمره من إحسانه الجزيل، وامتنانه الحفي الحفيل، ما أنساه الماضي بالحال، وأغناه عن طول الترحال، وحقر عنده ما كان من سواه يستعظمه، وحقق لديه ما كان من فضله يتوهمه
​

I think yes but I wouldn't swear it.

You don't usually have this sort of ambiguity in Latin because either the verbs in a subordinate clause will be in a different mood, or things will be clarified by the word/clause order or the use of some particle. But in Arabic almost every clause starts with و anyway, clauses just succeed one another linearly, and there often isn't any difference in mood.

 

[interprete]

Since the caliph was the subject of the previous clause, I assumed he would be the subject here too... but I suppose I should stop making this type of Latin-minded assumptions.

No no, that’s also the assumption of those who read حقر with a shadda on it.

I find this language both amazing and awkward.

MSA is objectively a lot clearer and more systematized than CA, honestly.

Another problem I'm having is that I'm not sure where dependence on a subordinate conjunction or relative pronoun stops.

Yes that’s a common problem, and I don’t think there is any hard and fast rule, sometimes only context can tell. In this instance it would make sense to read all the rest as dependent on ما (he showered him with his virtue and expansive gratitude, which made him forget his past for the present, dispense with long journeys, diminished in his eyes what he used to glorify in (the caliph’s) equals, and verified for him the virtue that he suspected in him (the caliph). I guess.

 

[Clemens]

Sounds a bit like in Ancient Rome: only Marcuses and Publiuses and Gaiuses (and just a few others) everywhere.

It's not that there aren't a broad choice of names in Arabic, so much as they tend to choose the same few popular ones. I think in Latin there really was a restricted number of names to choose from, yes?

 

[Clemens]

I find this language both amazing and awkward.

What do you range under each heading?

 

[Pacifica]

It's not that there aren't a broad choice of names in Arabic, so much as they tend to choose the same few popular ones. I think in Latin there really was a restricted number of names to choose from, yes?

Hm, I guess so.

What do you range under each heading?

Amazing:

- All the different verb forms and the way you can give special meanings to a root simply by changing the vowels, doubling a consonant, adding prefixes and infixes etc. I particularly like form-2 verbs (in case you hadn't noticed)!

- The impersonal passive (it's long been one of my favorite features in Latin too).

- Cognate accusative.

- The beautiful script.

- The sound of it.

Awkward:

- What I said above about run-on wa-wa-wa-was. It feels too linear somehow; unlike Latin where clauses tend to be neatly nested within one another.

- The way relative clauses are formed, especially definite ones where the relative pronoun doesn't suffice and is repeated with an enclitic pronoun.

- The fact that finite verbs can be used where a participle would seem more logical or at least more elegant. Why say "I saw him he walks" or "I was I sit" when you could (more logically to my mind) say "I saw him walking" or "I was sitting"?

 

[Clemens]

- The impersonal passive (it's long been one of my favorite features in Latin too).

Arabic only had an impersonal passive, doesn't it?

- The beautiful script.

- The sound of it.

Completely agree, although most people's handwriting is far from beautiful. It looks like a squiggle with some random marks hovering above and below.

- What I said above about run-on wa-wa-wa-was. It feels too linear somehow; unlike Latin where clauses tend to be neatly nested within one another.

Yes ... an Egyptian colleague once told me that the basic assumptions of how a text or argument is put together are very different than in European languages. He described it as more meandering and less hierarchical.

- The fact that finite verbs can be used where a participle would seem more logical or at least more elegant. Why say "I saw him he walks" or "I was I sit" when you could (more logically to my mind) say "I saw him walking" or "I was sitting"?

This kind of confused me too at first. I suspect we're just bringing the assumptions of our Indo-European languages to the situation. I think in Arabic you even say "I was (I) work," to mean "I used to work." I remember Arab students being frustrated by all the nuances of English verb tenses and forms.

 

[Pacifica]

Arabic only had an impersonal passive, doesn't it?

Only? I'm not sure what you mean. It has both personal and impersonal passives.

Completely agree, although most people's handwriting is far from beautiful. It looks like a squiggle with some random marks hovering above and below.

Lol.

I suspect we're just bringing the assumptions of our Indo-European languages to the situation.

Presumably. But I'd be so bold as to say the Indo-Europeans are the ones who got this right, sorry.

I think in Arabic you even say "I was (I) work," to mean "I used to work."

Yes.

I remember Arab students being frustrated by all the nuances of English verb tenses and forms.

English is exquisitely nuanced in respect to tenses. It beats Latin and, I think, many other languages.

 

[Pacifica]

Only? I'm not sure what you mean. It has both personal and impersonal passives.

Perhaps you're referring to the fact that the Arabic passive never has an expressed agent (you can't say e.g. "Caesar was killed by conspirators). That's not what "impersonal passive" means. An impersonal passive verb is a passive verb in the third person singular without any concrete subject but just an impersonal "it", the meaning of the construction being merely that the action happens, as in sic itur ad astra = thus "is it gone" to the stars; i.e., thus does one go to the stars.

 

[Pacifica]

sic itur ad astra

Unfortunately, though, it seems the Arabic impersonal passive doesn't quite work in a translation of that particular phrase (I asked about it a while ago). But it still exists in some other contexts and I'm glad of it!

 

[Clemens]

Perhaps you're referring to the fact that the Arabic passive never has an expressed agent (you can't say e.g. "Caesar was killed by conspirators). That's not what "impersonal passive" means. An impersonal passive verb is a passive verb in the third person singular without any concrete subject but just an impersonal "it", the meaning of the construction being merely that the action happens, as in sic itur ad astra = thus "is it gone" to the stars; i.e., thus does one go to the stars.

Ah, yes, I misunderstood the term. I meant, as you guessed, that there is no expressed agent.

 

[interprete]

Perhaps you're referring to the fact that the Arabic passive never has an expressed agent (you can't say e.g. "Caesar was killed by conspirators).

In CA you can't. In MSA you can, using من طرف or من قِبَل to introduce the agent. But now that I think of it even in CA you could just wrote إن قيصر قتله متآمرون, I *think*.

 

[Clemens]

I think it's interesting that the Arabic terms for active and passive voice are the "known" and "unknown" forms.

 

[interprete]

I think it's interesting that the Arabic terms for active and passive voice are the "known" and "unknown" forms.

Yes it made perfect sense in CA but has become a bit questionable in more recent states of the language...

 

[Clemens]

Yes it made perfect sense in CA but has become a bit questionable in more recent states of the language...

I assume it means the agent of the verb is what is unknown?

As I'm sure you know, I don't think many Arabs regard MSA as a valid form of Arabic. Whenever I asked any Arab about grammar, they always spoke of CA and never regarded their own dialect or even what we call MSA as "real" Arabic.

 

[interprete]

I assume it means the agent of the verb is what is unknown?

As I'm sure you know, I don't think many Arabs regard MSA as a valid form of Arabic. Whenever I asked any Arab about grammar, they always spoke of CA and never regarded their own dialect or even what we call MSA as "real" Arabic.

I don’t think it is that clear-cut. Many Arabs, usually not well-versed in Arabic linguistics, will by default extol the glories of CA and lament the shame of modern Arabic and its dialects, in this typical Arab tendency to claim that ’we were so much better before’ which they display in pretty much all aspects of their lives. I think it’s just the current Arab mindset which is plagued by the inescapable contradiction that Islam is supposed to be the most advanced way of living and organizing economies and societies, yet the glory of the islamic world is long gone and they are reminded of this on a daily basis.
Yet good MSA is actually very well regarded by highly educated Arabs and I do not recall ever reading or hearing a learned opinion to the effect that MSA is not ’proper’ Arabic. Naguib Mahfouz was heavily criticized for inserting Egyptian Arabic dialogues in some of his novels, but his MSA in other circumstances was never called into question. Even Al-Azhar, which is supposed to be the beacon of Islamic knowledge, communicates in MSA (and out of curiosity I went to their website looking for cases of passive voice with a specific agent, and found a good many instances including, ironically maybe, one about the teaching of Arabic:

مجلة کلية اللغة العربية بالمنصورة مجلة علمية محکمة صدر أول عدد لها عام 1980، وهي تُمول تمويل ذاتي وتنشر أبحاثا متخصصة في العلوم العربية وآدابها والتاريخ والحضارة بعد أن تقوم بتحکيم هذه الأبحاث من قِبل عدد من الأساتذة المتخصصين في نفس المجال.

قسم التاريخ والحضارة - اللغة العربية - المنصورة

Al-Jazeera are almost unanimously applauded in the Arab world for the quality of their فصحى, they even dedicate some of their programming to various documentaries and shows on Arabic poetry, ancient Arabic literature and the like. Yet they use من قبل and من طرف constantly. I think that apart from those people who have received a very conservative islamic education where they were taught that anything different from Qur’anic Arabic is wrong, without having actually learned much by way of Arabic literature and linguistics, people who are actually competent in the field readily recognize that Qur’anic Arabic itself is closer to pre-classical Arabic (with usage cases that would be deemed ungrammatical by CA standards) than to CA proper, and that similarly MSA has brought about a better systematization of some rules which for centuries had been left to the appreciation (or individual preference) of writers. The situation I believe is comparable to that of French, where you have some close-minded (and often not that knowledgeable) purists who don’t even really know why a given rule should be kept and a given usage should be condemned, and then you have the likes of Grevisse who actually know what they’re talking about who show them that ’the Emperor has no clothes’. Same with Arabic as far as I can tell.

EDIT: in wanting to give a spectacular example, I read it too fast and now realize it’s not an actual passive form, so here are the other examples I found! :

site:http://www.azhar.edu.eg "من قبل" - Google Search

 

[Pacifica]

فغمره من إحسانه الجزيل، وامتنانه الحفي الحفيل، ما أنساه الماضي بالحال، وأغناه عن طول الترحال، وحقر عنده ما كان من سواه يستعظمه، وحقق لديه ما كان من فضله يتوهمه​

Tum chalifa eum ampla sua benignitate cumulavit et tam amice, grate diligenterque recepit ut eum ad oblivionem praeteritorum praesentibus induceret et longa peregrinatione liberaret, quaeque ille in aliis admiratus erat ei sui comparatione vilia redderet atque eius de sua virtute spem non vanam fuisse probaret.