Comment by slibhb
1 day ago
I didn't write "God only speaks Arabic" in Islam. That's your intepretation of my post. All I meant was that Arabic has special status in Islam.
> Weird to say Arabic hasn’t innovated or evolved considering the wild variety of dialects spoken in the modern world.
I didn't say Arabic has not innovated or evolved; only that it "has lagged behind other languages in terms of innovation". My belief is that that is due to linguistic conservatism, and linked to Islamism (or, at minimum, the centrality of Islam in Arab culture). Also related to this is the existence of Fusha, its place in Arab culture, and its branding as "modern standard Arabic".
I didn't conflate anything. While a script and a language are not the same, it's not a coincidence that Arabic is often written today in a script that is very close to Quranic script. And -- to really kick the hornet's nest -- it's also not a coincidence that there have been so few outstanding Arab writers (in Arabic) in the past 100 years. One novelist and a couple poets.
> And -- to really kick the hornet's nest -- it's also not a coincidence that there have been so few outstanding Arab writers (in Arabic) in the past 100 years. One novelist and a couple poets.
Now, reading that point one might ask the question if writing has been properly funded, or if the priority of cultural funding in the Arab world has been lower than, say, the funding of architecture and other forms of art. And on top of that, I'd also have a serious look at the market size, especially when compared with English-language writing.