What others said about Arabic Via a reliable witness
At the start of his book on Sibawayh:
“Defining and describing this language in its ideal form was the chief achievement of the book that has kept Sibawayh’s name alive for twelve centuries, and it remains the founding document of everything that came after it in Arabic.”
Michael G. Carter
British Arabist, author of a doctoral thesis on Sibawayh’s Kitab (1968) and of Sībawayhi (2004).
In Arabic
تحديدُ هذه اللغة ووصفُها في صورتها المثاليّة كان الإنجازَ الأهمّ للكتاب الذي خلَّد سيبويه اثنيْ عشر قرناً، وما يزال الوثيقةَ التأسيسيّة لكلّ التطوّرات اللاحقة في اللغة العربيّة.
Source
Carter, Sībawayhi, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 2, as translated by Muhammad al-Wuhaydi in al-Munjaz al-ʿarabī al-lughawī wa-l-adabī fī l-dirāsāt al-ajnabiyya (Proceedings of the Third International Conference, King Saud University, Riyadh, 2020), p. 219
The English is ours, from the reported Arabic.
From Muhammad al-Wuhaydi’s Arabic translation; the English here is our rendering of the Arabic, not Carter’s own wording.
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