The Curious History of Written Arabic

We find many references to "Arabs" and "Arabias" in ancient literatures, but always by foreign writers not by the Arabs themselves. Why is this? We first hear of an Arab in an Assyrian document of the 9th century BC, but it is not until 1200 years later, in the 4th century AD, that "Arabs" are first mentioned in Arabic. It seems very likely that at least some of the Nabataeans spoke Arabic yet they used the Aramaic language and script for writing. But, at the same time, the nomads on the edge of their kingdom were writing their dialects of Arabic in scripts of their own. Why didn't the Nabataeans do the same and save us all a great deal of trouble by using a script suited to the Arabic language, rather than the Nabataean Aramaic script which did not have enough letters? This paper will examine the relationship between Arabic and writing through the centuries, in the hope of providing some answers.
The speaker : Michael Macdonald is an Honorary Fellow of WolfsonCollege, Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is also on the Board of the International Association for the Study of Arabia (www.theiasa.com/). He has worked for the last 45 years on the languages, scripts, inscriptions, and history of ancient Arabia and its neighbours and has led epigraphic surveys in Syria, and continues to lead them in Jordan and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia where he is the director of the British section of the Saudi-British-German Epigraphy and Landscape in the Hinterland of Taymāʾ project.

[@user-fl4nw3ub7b]

The oldest language in ME is the Al-Fusha Arabic. From these language all other dialects like Aramaic, asyric, Phoenician, etc. These are not languages but dialects of the Al-Fusha. It is already established linguistically. The mistakes the European historians made in the past is that they ascribed every writing to a language. Writing is not the same as language. You can write down a language in different writings. Furthermore after the colonisation of the ME they had no deep knowledge of al the different tongs so they made own stories. Those stories are still educated on universities till this time unfortunately. Even the word Hebrew is Arabic from Abara ( crossing a piece of land or crossing a river or whatever crossings! Ask the Arab linguistics , they know their language the best, in stead of repeating Shlutzer or his sort of “ historians” ! He came with Semitic languages wich has no historical proofs. He took the name from the Old Testament and begun to make a juicy story about the Arabs. He didn’t know the culture, the religion, the language and history of the region. He called them Semitic languages and Semitic people. Maybe was Sam the name of his dog. No historical or archeological proof of the name Sam in the ME!

[@rgap3944]

The oldest Middle East language is Aramaic later Parsi ( pasi community zorastrian’s religious language is Parsi) which is later become Arabic the writing is like Parsi and words are Aramaic something like that there is only Parsi language before Muhammed nabi in Saudi north areas because the xorastains captured that area there is no evidence Quran written in Arabic . Most probably syriac .or Aramaic .. s as md later Muhammed nabi translated to Arabic very later 9th century

[@KellieEverts-ss8uz]

I've looked at Hebrew letters in script and many letters and pronouncement s are the same but ofcourse the accent may be changed

[@athene_noctua.]

super ! very interesting. thanks