What others said about Arabic Read in the original
On the pre-Islamic odes:
“It is probable, however, that the poets greatly enriched the language by absorption of dialect forms, and that they helped to fix its usages. The syntactical construction of the poems especially attains a degree of refinement unknown to any other Semitic language […].”
Sir Hamilton A. R. Gibb
1895–1971
Scottish Arabist, professor at Oxford and Harvard, member of the Cairo Arabic Language Academy.
In Arabic
والمرجَّحُ أنّ الشعراءَ أغنوا اللغةَ إغناءً كبيراً بما استوعبوه من صِيَغ اللهجات، وأنّهم أعانوا على تثبيت استعمالاتها. وقد بلغ التركيبُ النحويُّ في هذه القصائد خاصّةً درجةً من التهذيب لم تعرفها لغةٌ ساميّةٌ أخرى…
Source
Arabic Literature: An Introduction, ch. 3, London: Oxford University Press, 1926, p. 15
'The poems' are the pre-Islamic odes; the sentence goes on to contrast the looser syntax of spoken Arabic.
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