What others said about Arabic Read in the original
“Arabic lets itself be encroached upon almost nowhere, because it has its prestige as a language of religion and a language of civilization.”
Antoine Meillet
1866–1936
French linguist, the leading comparativist of the Indo-European languages of his generation.
Original text — French
L'arabe ne se laisse entamer presque nulle part parce qu'il a son prestige de langue religieuse et de langue de civilisation.
In Arabic
العَرَبِيَّةُ لَا تَكَادُ تَتَرَاجَعُ أَمَامَ لُغَةٍ فِي أَيِّ مَوْضِعٍ، لِأَنَّ لَهَا هَيْبَةَ لُغَةِ الدِّينِ وَلُغَةِ الحَضَارَة.
Source
Les langues dans l'Europe nouvelle, Paris: Payot, 1918, p. 146
The English translation is Voice of Arabic's, made from the original.
The version in circulation
إنّ اللغة العربيّة لم تتراجع عن أرضٍ دخلتها لتأثيرها الناشئ من كونها لغةَ دينٍ ولغةَ مدنية… ولم تبقَ لغةٌ أوربّيّةٌ واحدةٌ لم يصلها شيءٌ من اللسان العربيّ المبين، حتّى اللغةُ اللاتينيّةُ الأمُّ الكبرى، فقد صارت وعاءً لنقل المفردات العربيّة إلى بناتها.
Usually cited from: أنور الجندي، الفصحى لغة القرآن، ص٣٠٣–٣٠٤
How it differs from the original: The first clause is Meillet's (minus "almost"). The rest — that no European language was left untouched and that Latin carried Arabic words to its daughters — is not in his book and runs against what he wrote there.
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