What others said about Arabic Via a reliable witness
In the introduction to his dictionary, naming what the Arab dictionaries lacked, since their authors collected only the pure language, while granting in the same paragraph their fine sense of language:
“All the words current in a language have equal rights in it.”
August Fischer
1865–1949
Leipzig Arabist who worked for the Cairo Arabic Language Academy on a historical dictionary of classical Arabic.
In Arabic
إنّ جميع الكلمات المتداولة في لغةٍ ما، لها حقوقٌ متساويةٌ فيها.
Source
al-Muʿjam al-lughawi al-tarikhi, part 1, author's introduction, Cairo: Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya, 1967, p. 7
The Arabic is the Cairo Academy's text; the German original was never published. The English is ours, from the Arabic.
Fischer wrote his introduction in German; the Academy published it in Arabic after his death and the German was never printed, so this is the Academy's text. The English is ours, from the Arabic. The rule he states is about any language, not Arabic in particular.
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