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>Muslims believe that Arabic as written in the 7th century A.D. is the language of divine revalation. This has served as a tremendously conservative force on wr
by Causality1 7y ago
>Muslims believe that Arabic as written in the 7th century A.D. is the language of divine revalation. This has served as a tremendously conservative force on written Arabic, with two important consequences.
>The first is that texts from over a thousand years ago remain accessible to modern readers. If you're an English speaker, where even texts from 200 years ago can be rough going, this is quite a treat.
The former has less to do with the latter than you might imagine. Many languages without a supposed divine mandate are also readable many hundreds of years later. English is in the minority in that regard, in that its history of being influenced strongly by conquest locks off its older writings to modern eyes.
- ggm 7y agoHad the experience in the National Palace Museum Taiwan of both Taiwanese and elder Chinese (the ones who don't only speak simplified but can handle traditional) looking at thousand-plus year old artifacts and mumbling to themselves, way beyond what an english speaker will try and do with roman or greek inscription.
- iso1337 7y agoThose older texts were written in Classical Chinese, so there's still a barrier in terms of context and education to fully understanding them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese