Soren wrote on Sep 17^th, 2010 at 9:42am:

Here ... here

Soren,

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The recorded part is completely irrelevant. When we look at how "old" or "conservative" a language is, the attested history of the language is not that useful, especially in the case of Semitic languages. Akkadian for instance is perhaps the oldest attested Semitic language, yet it's one of the least conservative in many respects. This is largely due to the fact that for much of it's recorded history, it was spoken by a people heavily influenced by Sumerian, which severely eroded the Semitic aspects of the language, especially the phonology. Ancient Hebrew likewise was spoken by people who lived amongst speakers of other languages, earlier on probably Hittites, Egyptians and the "sea peoples" who inhabited the Levantine coast. And later they even did away with Hebrew as their spoken language and adopted a Persianised version of Aramaic.

Now contrast this to the Arabs, who lived for most of their history in the relatively isolated deserts of the Arabian peninsula, which is itself considered to be the homeland of the Semitic peoples. Very little outside influence managed to affect the language of the Arabs, and that is why their language is so pristine and conservative. Add to this the fact that one of the things they valued most was eloquence and adeptness at poetry. It is well known fact that of the original 29 phonemes postulated for proto-Semitic, formal Arabic (known as Fus-ha) has maintained 28 of them, even until this very day. Ancient south Arabian (what was spoken in Yemen and parts of Oman in ancient times) actually maintained all 29 of them in most of it's dialects as did Ancient North Arabian in some of it's dialects (this was probably the ancestor of modern formal Arabic). In contrast, ancient Biblical Hebrew had already lost about 5 of them and by the early Christian period had lost another 2. By the time of the standardisation of the Hebrew alphabet, only 23 of the original Semitic phonemes still existed in Hebrew, one letter actually doubled for 2 phonemes, hence the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet we see. Today a further 2 or 3 phonemes have merged even further, but are still represented graphemically, whilst yet others have become mixed up and mispronounced, since the modern Hebrew language is not a naturally spoken language but an artificially revived language. The modern day speakers of Hebrew are mostly native speakers of European languages, who learnt Hebrew, or their children.

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It has? For instance? This should be interesting...

My fore-advice soren would be not to speak about that of which you clearly have little or no knowledge

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A few millenia? I think you've got your dates mixed up.

The oldest attested Hebrew writings go back to about the 10th. century B.C, whilst the oldest Arabic inscriptions go back to about the 8th. century B.C. Perhaps what you meant to say was "a few more centuries"? Or perhaps you mixed up alphabet and language? Being under the impression that since Arabic-alphabet inscriptions didn't appear until the early Christian period, therefore the Arabic language was never recorded until this time? A common enough mistake I guess.

Also you seem to be under the impression that merely recording a language preserves it's linguistic features. This is not the case at all. Although it is a step towards standardisation of a language, it does not guarantee the language will remain conservative. Look at how much modern English has changed since the time of Chaucer. I understand Arabic of 2000 years ago better than I understand the English of 500 years ago, and I am a native English speaker.

An important fact to keep in mind too is that Hebrew in it's earliest attested forms was already quite 'eroded', and had already merged several phonemes long before it was even first recorded. This became quite evident when European Linguists began studying Hebrew in comparison to other Semitic languages (previously believing it to be the original language of the Garden of Eden) and realised it was a very eroded language that could not have preceded the other Semitic languages, since it was so much less conservative than them. When Ugaritic was discovered in Syria in the early 20th. century, it became quite apparent that Arabic was the most conservative Semitic language in existence. This is because although Ugaritic was a Canaanite dialect (as is Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite etc), it was phonetically almost identical to Arabic. It maintained 27 of the original Semitic phonemes, only 1 less than Arabic. And etymologicaly it agreed pretty much 100% with Arabic.

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I shall be seated, and will eagerly await your response, especially the details about the "significant changes" Arabic has supposedly undergone in the last 1400 years.

abu_rashid wrote on Sep 18^th, 2010 at 6:35am:


You are confusing "people flocking to Islam" with "Islamic people are flocking to the West". Not the same thing.

What you observe as an increase in Muslim numbers is due to Muslims fleeing Islamic countries for the sanaty, safety and prosperity of non-Muslim countries.

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That image is of the distribution of spoken dialects, they have always existed, alongside formal Arabic. The Arabic language itself remains pristine and unchanged. When I watch al-Jazeerah or listen to a Friday sermon, or flick through kids schoolbooks, what I find is the exact same language that was documented in the Qur'an and Hadith 1400 years ago, and also pretty much what is in those 800 B.C inscriptions (although there's some minor variation in those pre-Islamic inscriptions).

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So to put that in another way... you can't find a single example of these so called "significant changes"?? thought about as much.

In other words you have a penchant for speaking out of turn, and out of somewhere else...

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And likewise the script of the 3000 year old Hebrew isn't the script Hebrew uses today. That means little. A script is merely a means of encoding a language, and does not really affect the language at all, so long as it can be decoded efficiently again.

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Well the dialects and formal Arabic are not really mutually exclusive, they are described more as being rough points on a spectrum of varying degrees of formal and informal speech. Regardless, the Arabic language with it's 28 original Semitic phonemes exists and is what is taught to children at school, what is read on the news at night, and what pretty much all Arabic books, magazines and other material are written in. It maintains the most conservative and uniquely Semitic grammar out of all the Semitic languages, that is far more pristine than even the 3000 year old Hebrew inscriptions.

That's all that's relevant to this discussion.

Can't you just be a good sport and admit you got a little out of your depth and made a bit of a himar of yourself?

In short- By percentage growth: Unknown
By real person growth: Christianity
By percentage growth the fastest growing religions in the world are the smaller religions. This is because with a smaller sample size, every additional adherent accounts for a higher percentage increase.
Therefore, by percentage growth we are uncertain what the fastest growing religions in the world are. However, logically speaking with statistics in mind by percentage growth the larger religions including Christianity (2.2 Billion Adherents), Islam (1.3 Billion) and Hinduism (900 million) are the least likely to be the fastest by percentage growth. An example to illustrate this point is Deism in the United States of America. Although in the period of 1990-2000 it experienced a growth rate of 717% the amount of new followers was very small and the large percentage increase is attributed to a smaller sample size.
The alternative measure for fastest growing religion in the world is growth by the number of new adherents. That is, the religion to gain more new believers each period would be the fastest growing religion.
As it stands the fastest growing religion by this measure is Christianity. Using the most up to date figures we determine that on average in 2007 Christianity gained 7-8million more adherents than any other religion (i.e. Islam, followed by Hinduism at 17million less).
In conclusion, the fastest growing religion by percentage growth is unknown as smaller religions are not usually account for. By number of new adherents per period Christianity is the fastest growing religion.
A side note, any argument that a religion is true because it is the largest or fastest growing is a logical fallacy. The amount of adherents or growth rate does not imply validity.