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Quotes About Arabic

In Arabic 'the written symbol is considered to be identical with the sound indicated by it'. Letters are not just phonetic; they are phonic, acoustic,'… script that fills the ears of him that sees it', as poet al-Mutanabbi was to call them.
~ Tim Mackintosh-Smith
By AD 800, so redeemed was Arabic from the contempt in which it had once been held that its sound had come to rank as the very music of power, and its cursives as things of pure beauty, refined to a rare and exquisite perfection by the art of its calligraphers. Among the Arabs, the written word was on the verge of becoming a mania. One scholar, when he died in 822, left behind him a library that filled a whole six hundred trunks.
~ Tom Holland
but the script he saw written all about him, on the signposts and facades of Alexandria, was musical, all right. It ran complicated scales on the optic nerve. Everywhere, the Arabic alphabet wiggled and popped, enlivening crumbling architecture with outbursts of linguistic jazz, notations from the DNA songbook, energetic markings as primal as grunts and as modern as the abstract electricity of synthesizer feedback.
~ Tom Robbins
Especially after the Twin Towers, we're so terrified of 'Arabic' people. And talk about stereotypical negative portrayals of people of certain groups, if you look at the portrayal of Arabic people in Hollywood films, it's just appalling. They've always been just the easiest of targets - along with native Africans and what have you.
~ Jonathan Demme
Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot.
~ John Updike
Learn the Arabic language; it will sharpen your wisdom.
~ Umar
I was at Edinburgh doing history of art, Spanish and Arabic. I was originally supposed to do Italian instead of Arabic but when I went to see one of the lecturers they told me I should really do something more curveball. So I did.
~ Sophie Cookson
Everybody needs to understand that I learned Arabic from the United States Army as a second language. I never spoke it at home.
~ John Abizaid
Akkadian, the language spoken by Sargon I, the first Assyrian king in 2300 BC, is a close relative of the Arabic spoken by his successor in this same land, Saddam Hussein, in AD 2000; another close relative, the Middle East's old lingua franca, Aramaic, bridges the gap between the decline of Akkadian around 600 BC and the onset of Arabic with the Muslims around AD 600. They are all sister languages within the very close Semitic family.
~ Nicholas Ostler
The Muslim heaven features prominently in the Quran, Arabic poetries and Hadith. The Jewish heaven, though, is still a mystery; it's mystic.
~ Joshua Cohen
Le catalogue des Å"uvres d'Avicenne comporte environ 500 titres, 456 rédigés en arabe et 23 en persan. Sur cet ensemble, 160 livres nous sont parvenus. Son Livre de l'arbitrage équitable en 20 volumes, détruit lors du sac d'Ispahan (1034), répondait à... 28 000 questions !
~ Christian Godin
No, eso es árabe, tonto! ¡Tenía razón Bacon cuando decía que el primer deber de un sabio es el de estudiar las lenguas! —¡Pero tampoco vos sabéis árabe! —replicaba yo picado. Y Guillermo respondía: —¡Pero al menos me doy cuenta cuando algo está en árabe!
~ Umberto Eco
William snapped, 'Drop it; we're looking for a Greek book!' 'This?' I asked, showing him a work whose pages were covered with abstruse letters. And William said, 'No, that's Arabic, idiot! Bacon was right: the scholar's first duty is to learn languages!' 'But you don't know Arabic, either!' I replied, irked, to which William answered, 'At least I understand when it IS Arabic!
~ Umberto Eco
I started with Arabic, the language of the Koran. Only one in five Muslims is an Arab; yet Arabic is the language in which the world's more than one billion Muslims—a fifth of the world's population—talk to God.
~ Geraldine Brooks
The nature of the Arabic language meant that a precise translation of the Koran was unobtainable. I found myself referring to two quite different English interpretations—George Sale's for a feel for the poetry of the work, and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall's for a clearer sense of what the text actually said about sex and marriage, work and holy war.
~ Geraldine Brooks
actually translates to "peace," because in Arabic it is based on the same root word, salam. That word, salam, can be found in the traditional greeting assalamualaikum ("Peace be upon you"). But as
~ Glenn Beck
They quickly discerned the advantages of utilizing columns of numbers or place numbers in the style of Arabic numerals, and they introduced the use of zero, negative numbers, and algebra in China.
~ Jack Weatherford
the word algorithm was derived from al Khwarizm
~ Jack Weatherford
To write a word or a phrase or a sentence in Arabic is like crafting an equation, because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information.
~ Terry Moore
Iran is not in any sort of routine groupings. It's not an Arab country. It's not part of the Indian subcontinent. So it's in a neighborhood where it has some unique characteristics. We are a country which embraced Islam, learned Arabic, but didn't change its language or its culture... That's what keeps us unique.
~ Mohammad Javad Zarif
The name Cthulhu provides an important and fascinating parallel with pre-Islamic mystical Sufi practice. Cthulhu is very close to the Arabic world Khadhulu (also spelled al qhadhulu). Khadhulu is translated as 'Betrayer,' 'Forsaker,' or 'Abandoner.' Many Sufis and Muqarribun writings use this term 'Abandoner.' In Sufi and Muqarribun writings 'abandoner' refers to the power that fuels the practices of Tajrid 'outward detachment' and Tafrid 'interior solitude.
~ Laurence Galian
Humanity's form is drawn from twenty-eight letters comprise the Arabic alphabet. Each section of the human form is represented by one of these letters. When the Murid becomes the Complete Human Being, he or she becomes the eternal mother source of the Qur'an revealed to Muhammad (Peace be upon him). The inner pilgrimage to Macca (al-Mukarramah) is accomplished when the Murid becomes the Complete Human Being.
~ Laurence Galian
The basic elements of DNA—hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon—translate directly to key letters of the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets. In these languages, our genetic code spells the ancient name of God. The same name lives within all humans, regardless of their beliefs, actions, lifestyle, religion, or heritage. This relationship was described in sacred texts, such as the Hebrew Sepher Yetzirah, at least 1,000 years before modern science verified such connections.
~ Gregg Braden
My show in Egypt was called, 'The Show,' or, 'Al Bernameg' in Arabic. Basically, it was a political satire show. It started on Internet by three, four-minute episodes, and then it evolved into a live show in a theater, which was something that was unprecedented in the Arab world.
~ Bassem Youssef