What others said about Arabic Read in the original
“Until now you have been wading in the spring and the streams; now you will head for the Ocean, where you will have no means of sounding its depth with the lead, nor of sighting its shore. I mean the Arabic language, which I may not undeservedly call an Ocean, since it takes the other Oriental languages into itself, just as the Ocean swallows the rivers.”
Simon Ockley
1678–1720
English orientalist, professor of Arabic at Cambridge (1711–1720), author of «The History of the Saracens».
Original text — Latin
Hactenus in fonte & rivulis fuisti versatus, nunc in Oceanum tendes, ubi neque profunditatem bolo metiendi, neque conspiciendi littoris dabitur facultas. Linguam intelligo Arabicam, quam non immerito Oceanum dixerim, quippe quæ alias Linguas Orientales in se recipit, non secus ac fluvios absorbet Oceanus.
In Arabic
لقد كنتَ حتّى الآن تخوض في النبع والجداول، وأنت الآن ماضٍ إلى المحيط، حيث لا سبيلَ إلى قياس عمقه بالمِسبار، ولا إلى رؤية ساحله. أعني اللغةَ العربيّةَ، التي لا أكون مخطئاً إن سمّيتُها محيطاً، لأنّها تستوعب في نفسها لغاتِ المشرق الأخرى كما يبتلعُ المحيطُ الأنهار.
Source
Introductio ad linguas orientales, cap. X: De linguæ Arabicæ studio & ejus usu, Cambridge: Typis Academicis, impensis Joannis Owen, 1706, p. 115
The English translation is Voice of Arabic's, made from the original.
«The spring and the streams» are Hebrew and Syriac, studied in the preceding chapters.
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