Why do people still speak Arabic, but not Latin?
Friday, August 21st, 2009 at
1:25 pm
They both very old languages, and they've endured many rises and falls of civilizations and power.
However people still speak Arabic, and Latin has changed to make fundamental parts of other languages, but there is no culture that speaks Latin as a primary language.
Help me understand.
Thank You!
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Tagged with: arabic • civilizations • languages • latin
Filed under: Written and Spoken Latin
Latin was the native language of the Romans, who spread it petty much throughout their empire. After the collapse of Rome, the language "died." Actually, Latin didn’t really die, it just turned into Italian, French, Spanish, and several other languages. Or, more accurately, it turned into dozens of local dialects, which gradually merged to form those more familiar languages. This dialect formation had been going on for centuries. Indeed, educated Romans had often bemoaned the increasinly incomprehensible versions of Latin which were developing in the provinces. The dialects evolved through the absorbtion by the local Latin speakers of words and grammar from the conquered peoples. Although the barbarians who overran the empire were mostly unable to impose their own language on the, by then, romanized locals, they did effect numerous changes in the local form of Latin. As a result, by Charlemagne ’s day (c. 800), the changes had become so great that in much of Europe the common people could no longer understand sermons in Church, albeit that they were being delivered in what was once Vulgar (low class) Latin As a result, the Emperor decreed that henceforth sermons were to be in the "lingua latina rustica" (the country-people’s Latin). In other words, preach to the people in the language spoken in the area. It is durng this period that the first writings genuinely identifiable as French, and later Spanish, and still later Italian are to be found. Of the Romance (literally "the Roman’s") languages of Western Europe, French moved furthest from Latin, Italian the least.
http://www.answerbag.com/a_view.php/36201
So, Latin initially spread because of the Roman empire conquering other civilizations, but it became integrated into other languages with the fall of the Roman empire. Latin was a liturgical language for some churches, but the many Protestant denominations diluted its strength to where it is really not used widely as the main liturgical language.
One of the reasons that Arabic is still in use in my opinion is that the peoples who speak Arabic have tended to be tribal and have tended to maintain fundamentalist orientations. While Islam has spread worldwide, the peoples who speak Arabic have not spread worldwide as conquerers. So, Arabic remains as a language spoken by some groups because these groups tended to stay together in one geographic region rather than conquering other civilizations in the traditional sense of how the Romans conquered other civilizations. Wikipedia points out that:
Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of salah), it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Oriental Jews, and smaller sects such as Iraqi Mandaeans. Even so, a majority of the world’s Muslims do not actually speak Arabic, but only know some fixed phrases of the language, such as those used in Islamic prayer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language
Arabic is language of quran and almost every muslim knows something from quran …. Arabic is changing itself with the time being but latin is dead….
I think the difference is only in the names of the languages. Otherwise the situation is the same. Today’s Spanish, Italian and French are probably no more different from Latin as todays Arabic is to the Arabic spoken and written 2000 years ago.
I don’t know Arabic, but I think there are dialects that are as different from each other as Spanish is from Italian.
I’d argue simply that the Quran anchored the Arabic language, but no scripture anchored Latin in the same way for two reasons: 1) the Bible was not written in a single time by a single author in a single language, and hence translation was necessary, and 2) the Catholic church sought to squash the wide-spread reading of the Bible, seeking that their adherents go through the clergy to get interpretations of the Bible. By contrast, reading the Quran directly and aloud is a central part of Islamic education, and many people have managed to memorize the Quran verbatim. The Bible is too big for such practices.
The only reason is that Arabic is a religious language of muslims. And it is almost very important to learn Arabic for every muslim. And in the world there r almost 1.3 billion muslims.
the other reason is that Arabic is living language and it chanhed time to time according to the needs. it has a very rich culture.