Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
A few days ago, fellow YouTuber Arabic101 made a response video to my most recent YouTube video. I wanted to make this post just to address a few of the things claimed in his video, as many viewers have reached out asking for a response.
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TL;DR: It seems that many Muslims who saw my video were instilled with some doubts towards the proper pronunciation of á¸Äd during Qurâanic recitation. This was never my intention - I have no training and little familiarity with tajwid or related Islamic disciplines. The video was meant to highlight linguistic evidence towards an alternate pronunciation of á¸Äd, NOT to imply that this pronunciation should be used in religious recitation. It is perfectly possible to believe that Arabic speakers a thousand years ago may have pronounced the letter the way described in the video without implying that the Prophet pronounced it this way.
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Ok, now Iâm gonna get into the weeds a bit; I invite you to watch the original video first.
Regarding Arabic being called the âlanguage of á¸Äd,â Arabic101 makes a large point about á¸Äd not being the rarest sound, and how the epithet âlanguage of á¸Ädâ does not imply as such. I agree - but thatâs the point of the video! I was trying to correct the notion that many Arabic speakers have regarding that sound. For example, I made a video over a year ago going over all the Arabic sounds in MSA, and one of the top comments claims âFun fact: the letter Řś (Dhad) /d?/ doesn't exist in any other language, that's why some people nickname Arabic language as "Ůغ؊ اŮ؜اد" (The language of Dhad).â Similar comments with thousands of likes can be found in the TikTok video I made on the same subject. Many Arabic speakers reiterate the myth of âlanguage of á¸Ädâ implying á¸Äd only exists in Arabic, and I thought it would serve as a nice hook. Also, when I called á¸Äd the rarest sound, I meant rare in a cross-linguistic sense, as in the sound is rare across the world's languages, not that the sound is rarely found within the Arabic language. Funnily enough, the letter ظ is both rarer cross-linguistically and within Arabic. And yet, the myth about the âlanguage of á¸Ädâ persists.
The next point is on the classification of Standard Arabic. Arabic101 claims that Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic (the language of the Qurâan) are the same, but this is incorrect. Though they are very similar, especially grammatically, there are many differences, including in pronunciation. I wonât go into detail here, but I encourage you to look into it. So, when I say that á¸Äd is a plosive in âModern Arabic,â I am not claiming it is a plosive in Classical Arabic.
Then, thereâs a lot of discussion on the proper pronunciation according to Qurâanic recitation. This, I think, is the crux of the disagreement - the proposed pronunciation I give is not intended to supplant the one as used by modern Muslim scholars. For those who are unfamiliar, tajwid is the Islamic science of learning how to recite the Qurâan as it was pronounced by the Prophet. By no means do I, a non-Muslim with no training in tajwid, claim to reject or cast doubt on proper Qurâanic recitation. We know that dialectal variation of Arabic existed all across the peninsula well before the time of the Prophet. It is not unreasonable to think - in fact, it is by many experts believed - that the proper Arabic of Qurâanic recitation differs from much of the spoken Arabic at the time. The fact that jim is a moon letter despite phonetically resembling the sun letters, for example, suggests that the Prophetâs pronunciation of the letter was different than many other speakersâ. Moreover, much of the Arabic loanwords mentioned in my video (evidence which Arabic101 conveniently neglects to mention) were almost certainly spread by lay Arabic speaking peoples, not learned through Qurâanic recitation.
There are a few other minor points in there, but largely I donât think itâs worth belaboring them. Arabic101 makes the point that I claim á¸Äd may have been pronounced like a ây,â which is not really what I said/meant there, but I didn't make my point very clearly and shouldâve phrased it better. He also talks about how my âstrongest evidence,â the fact that the rare sound exists in an extant dialect, doesnât necessarily imply an ancient pronunciation retained, but could also refer to a novel, innovative pronunciation. Though there is good reason to think that this is indeed an ancient pronunciation retained (check out the source from which this information came from for more), he is absolutely right that it could be an innovation.
As a final point, I wanna address something that Arabic101 didnât say, but that many of the comments did. That being, that my perspective of á¸Ädâs pronunciation is a largely âorientalistâ point of view that ignores evidence and Islamic science. The truth is, this perspective on á¸Ädâs pronunciation is believed by a number of both western and eastern scholars. It is based on plenty of evidence that I plainly provided in the description of the original video, and in no way diminishes the Qurâanic realization.
Ok, thatâs about it; I hope this addresses most peopleâs concerns!
EDIT: It's also come to my attention that Arabic101 has previously spread some misinformation regarding Arabic. If you go to his channel for tajwid so be it, but I'd avoid any linguistic insights.
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Some updates!
1) THE SILVER PLAY BUTTON CAME IN THE MAIL :D thank you guys again, unboxing this was genuinely a surreal experience!! But as if 100k wasn't cool enough...
2) 200k subs!!!! Thank you guys again, I don't even know what to say at this point; never did I think the channel would get this much growth this quickly! It's such a joy to be able to create stuff you love to an audience of people who enjoy it :)
3) I've been saying this for ages now, but I'm ACTUALLY going to post some longer form content soon! I'm in the final stages of editing a video (looking like roughly 12 minutes right now) about a certain facet of Arabic linguistics. I'll be honest, the audio quality is kinda rough, the editing is iffy (still trying to figure out how to use Premiere Pro đ
), and I'm still not sure how to properly script-write and pace longer form stuff on linguistics. BUT, it's a learning process! So if it doesn't turn out great this go around, then hopefully I'll be able to implement changes for next time. Constructive criticism is as always welcome! Hoping to get the vid published in the next few days đ¤
Thanks again for all the support!!
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100,000 subs?? That's INSANE!!
Thank you guys so much... I really don't have the words to express how grateful I am. The past year has been incredible, and hitting 100k is a dream come true! I cannot thank y'all enough for the endless support.
I graduated from college just last week (đĽł) so I should have a lot more time this summer for making videos: especially long form content, which I've been itching to do for a while now. I'm also going through some of my old videos and remastering a few, since I had a pretty bad sense of pacing and presentation when I first started out (plus, all videos I uploaded before like August are reuploads of TikTok, which have a built in watermark and are way lower quality).
If you ever have a video idea or suggestion for the future of the channel, please let me know! It's become pretty hard to read all the comments, but I try to scan as many as I can, and I periodically check DMs on TikTok and Insta.
Thank you guys again, seriously. 100k is impossible to fathom.
<3
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A month ago, I made a video about Tsevhu, a language which could be written by drawing koi fish and water ripples. The creator of Tsevhu, Koa, just released this awesome tutorial for Koiwriting - check it out!
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10,000 subs⌠wow!
Thank you guys so much for the support! I honestly didnât see this coming at all, Iâve been posting on YouTube since May 2023 and got like 300 subs in the first 7 months, and out of nowhere the past few days have just skyrocketed this channel!! Iâm so happy to see so many people interested in languages (or other content that I make!) so thanks for subscribing and Iâm looking forward to continuing!
I plan on trying to post a real YouTube video (not just a long short, but some genuine longform content) sometime this month, which Iâm excited for, but Iâll still be making short form stuff!
Thanks again guys, the thought that Iâve gotten this many subscribers is still hard to fathom đ
Iâm very grateful đđđ
Edit: 20,000 subs just two days later 𤯠thanks you guys!!!!
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Videos about linguistics - or anything else I find interesting, tbh