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His full name was Ibrahim b. Nasif b. ‘Abdullah b. Nasif b. Janbolad b. Sa‘d al-Yaziji al-Himsi, and he was born in Beirut on March 2, 1847. Being born and raised in a family containing many men of letters, he received a good education from his early childhood onwards. After starting to write poetry in his childhood and as a teenager, he gave it up to focus on studies of the Arabic language and literature. The versatility of this person, who can be described as an author, poet, linguist, critic, teacher, journalist, scientist (explorer and astronomer) and artist, was topped by his studies of the Arabic language. al-Yaziji devoted almost his entire life to Arabic and has made significant efforts to resolve the problems encountered in the language while making comments and recommendations for its correct use and preservation. At the time when Ibrahim al-Yaziji was alive, the deficiencies, lack of development and deterioration of the Arabic language had become impossible to ignore, and al-Yaziji, like other authors of his time, was bothered by this situation. The existing dictionaries were far from meeting the needs of authors and translators, and this made it very difficult to write about many of the new issues in the modern world. Arabic had always been known to have a rich reservoir of words, expressions and descriptions, but as Arab society had failed to adopt new technologies, the words generated related to the innovations in such fields as science and industry had no Arabic equivalents, leading to a need for systematic efforts to bring Arabic up to date with modern life. According to al-Yaziji, this could first be done with ishtiqaq, through which equivalents can be derived for foreign words from existing Arabic words. This is necessary, as when there is no equivalent in Arabic for a foreign word, the foreign word would be taken as is, leading to an inevitable distortion of the language. For Arabic to keep up with the times through its own resources, al-Yaziji drew attention to some of the inflections overlooked in morphology books, being of the opinion that putting these inflections to work would help fill in the current gap. When ishtiqaq was not possible, ta‘rib was been the next course of action, meaning Arabization or Arabicization, and refers to the assimilation of foreign words into Arabic with modifications to make them compatible with the language. There are two methods of ta‘rib that are particularly important. The first, adopted by Sibawayh and most linguists, is to replace letters that do not exist in the Arabic language with their closest Arabic counterparts. Most of the Arabized words in this category are common nouns, and this method aims to prevent a foreign element from entering Arabic. The second method, advocated by Ibn Khaldun, was to adopt foreign words without amendments. As most words in this category are proper nouns, amending them could lead to problems with recognition. The aim of this second method, which advocates for the direct adoption of foreign words, is to prevent changes in the language of the people. These two methods would appear to be at odds at first glance, but in practice they were used in different fields, depending on the nature of the foreign words in question. Ta‘rib applies only to names, and cannot be applied to verbs, in that Arabic verbs have a special structure that is without comparison in other languages. Due to this unique character of the roots and inflections of Arabic verbs, for a foreign verb to be Arabized, it may have to undergo significant changes to be compatible with these rules, which may even take the form of amending the order of syllables. When this happens, the foreign origin of the word may be forgotten, and people may mistake them for spontaneously created words. This, in turn, would mean a foreign element entering the language and distorting it. Of course, this is not limited to a single verb entering the language. As Arabic is based on ishtiqaq, other word forms with special inflections will also enter the language, such as those for verbal nouns, active participles, passive participles, resembling participles, hyperboles, time nouns, place nouns and utilitarian nouns. Accordingly, the leniency shown in the Arabization of nouns should not be shown in the case of verbs. Arabizing verbs is thus discouraged, although there are many verbs derived from Arabized nouns. The most important contribution of al-Yaziji in this field was his Arabization of 38 foreign words that needed to undergo ta‘rib. Ibrahim al-Yaziji viewed himself as an innovator/reformer. According to Yusuf Kazma Huri, Ibrahim al-Yaziji was the first person to establish that the “naht” art form can be created with three-letter verbs. According to al-Yaziji, three-letter verbs have in fact two different, overlapping roots. The author thought that this view could be considered odd, being the first time it was being argued, but stood by his argument and supported it with examples. Regarding colloquial and standard Arabic, he was of the opinion that the widespread use of colloquial use would lead almost to the replacement of standard Arabic, thus posing a serious threat to the language, and he expressed his concerns in this regard. At the time (19th century), foreigners wanted to write Arabic using the Latin alphabet, arguing that the Arabic alphabet was difficult to write, and advocated the use of the colloquial as the language of education, suggesting that the detailed grammar of standard Arabic made it too difficult to learn. They were of the opinion that colloquial Arabic would serve as a better scientific language than standard Arabic, in that it contained also modern/foreign words as well. al-Yaziji evaluated and countered all of these arguments being made in particular by foreigners and called upon the Arab people to protect their language. al-Yaziji also examined and evaluated the claims of Arabs, Jews, Assyrians and Armenians that their language was the source of all Semitic languages, reaching the conclusion that none of these languages were the source from which the others originated, but that all originated from a common source. In his treatise on the issue, he compared and contrasted Arabic and Hebrew. |
