What others said about Arabic Read in the original
“Who does not see the magnitude of this task, above all in Arabic? For that language is not only the richest of all, but has also produced almost innumerable writers, who, differing in age and temperament and far removed from our ways, cannot but be often obscure.”
Georg Wilhelm Freytag
1788–1861
Professor of Oriental languages at Bonn, compiler of the four-volume Lexicon Arabico-Latinum.
Original text — Latin
At quis non videt huius rei magnitudinem praesertim in lingua Arabica? Ea enim lingua non solum ditissima est omnium, sed scriptores etiam protulit paene innumerabiles, qui quum sint diversi et aetate et ingenio et a nostris moribus maxime alieni, non possunt quin sint saepius obscuri.
In Arabic
ليست لغةُ العرب أغنى لغاتِ العالم فحسبُ، بل إنّ الذين نبَغوا في التأليف بها لا يكاد يأتي عليهم العَدُّ، وإنّ اختلافَنا عنهم في الزمان والسجايا والأخلاق أقام بيننا — نحن الغرباءَ عن العربيّة — وبين ما ألّفوه حجاباً لا يتبيّن ما وراءه إلّا بصعوبة.
Source
Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, t. I, praefatio, Halle: C. A. Schwetschke et filius, 1830, p. VI
The English translation is Voice of Arabic's, made from the original.
The version in circulation
ليست لغةُ العرب أغنى لغات العالم فحسب…
Usually cited from: أنور الجندي، الفصحى لغة القرآن، ص٣٠٣ — منسوباً إلى «فرنباغ»
How it differs from the original: The circulated Arabic is faithful to the Latin; «فرنباغ» is a corruption of Freytag's name.
The original is Latin, then the language of scholarship in Europe.
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