What others said about Arabic Via a reliable witness
On the Arab grammarians:
“The rules laid down by the Arab grammarians, with tireless effort and admirable devotion, set out and portrayed classical Arabic in all its aspects – its sounds, its forms, the structure of its sentences and the meanings of its words – in a complete and comprehensive picture, so that their basic rules reached a level of perfection that leaves no room for anyone to add.”
Johann Fück
1894–1974
German Arabist, professor at Halle, historian of Arabic style.
In Arabic
ولقد تكفّلت القواعدُ التي وضعها النحاةُ العرب، في جهدٍ لا يعرف الكلل وتضحيةٍ جديرةٍ بالإعجاب، بعرض اللغة الفصحى وتصويرها في جميع مظاهرها، من ناحية الأصوات والصيغ وتركيب الجمل ومعاني المفردات، على صورةٍ محيطةٍ شاملة، بحيث بلغت القواعدُ الأساسيّة عندهم مستوًى من الكمال لا يسمح بزيادةٍ لمستزيد.
Source
ʿArabiya (Berlin 1950), Arabic tr. Ramadan ʿAbd al-Tawwab, Cairo: al-Khanji, 1980, p. 14
The English is ours, from the reported Arabic.
From Ramadan ʿAbd al-Tawwab’s Arabic translation of Fück’s German, checked letter by letter against the print; the English is our translation.
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