What others said about Arabic Read in the original
“The Arabick language, therefore, is almost wholly in our power; and, as it is unquestionably one of the most ancient in the world, so it yields to none ever spoken by mortals in the number of its words and the precision of its phrases.”
Sir William Jones
1746–1794
British philologist, founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, pioneer of comparative linguistics.
In Arabic
فاللغةُ العربيّةُ إذن في متناولنا كلُّها تقريباً؛ وكما أنّها بلا ريبٍ من أقدمِ لغاتِ العالَم، فإنّها لا تتأخّر عن لغةٍ نطَق بها البشرُ قطّ في كثرةِ ألفاظِها ودقّةِ عباراتِها.
Source
The Fourth Anniversary Discourse (1787): On the Arabs, in The Works of Sir William Jones, vol. III, London: Stockdale and Walker, 1807, p. 52–53
'In our power' refers to the European grammars and dictionaries he had just praised.
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