ভূমিকা

He said that is why we see massive difference in length when some Arabic passage is translated into a non-Arabic language. The Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said, “Speech has been made comprehensive for me”. Basically we have three distinct sources for meanings, only one of which is because of the words themselves: A meaning originating from the base letters of a word i.e. wherever and in whichever pattern those letters are found, the base letter meaning will be present e.g.

the base letters ‘kaf, taa, and baa’ express the meaning of writing. Wherever these letters are found, the ‘base letter meaning’ of writing will be there. In Arabic almost all combinations of three consonants have meaning. It is the job of the dictionary to give us this base letter meaning. A meaning coming from the pattern. The letters themselves are all consonants. Consonants alone can not be pronounced. For instance, try pronouncing the letter ‘b’ without adding a vowel to it!

The moment a sound comes out, one realizes it’s either ‘ba’, ‘be’ or the like which has been pronounced, not just the letter ‘b’ by itself. The reality is all consonants need to be coupled with vowels in order to become syllables and thus pronounceable. This is the nature of human utterance. By definition, a syllable is the sound produced by coupling a consonant with a vowel. This is nothing more than a manifestation of human limitations.

In other languages, this ‘vowelling’ which arose out of pure necessity is mostly random and carries little significance. However, in Arabic it is this very vowelling which Ibn Khaldun is calling our second meaning, namely the ‘pattern meaning’. ‘ ك ’, ‘ ت , and ‘ ب ’ we said expresses the meaning of ‘to write’. In Arabic there are literally dozens, if not hundreds of ways to vowel those three letters, some of which include the addition of ‘non-base’ letters.

All of these patterns carry distinct meaning.