Classical Tongues Research Articles

Home in the Poetry of Saudi Arabia Poets: Abdus-Salam Hafeth an Example of a Distinguished Arab (5)

The term "homeland" refers to the place and things that a poet associates with his humanity, including his dreams, suffering, and singing of his triumphs. This study seeks to illuminate some literary traits of contemporary Saudi Arabic poetry, with a focus on the Saudi poet Abdus-Salam Hashem Hafeth and one of his poems. It emphasizes the idea of "homeland" in particular as an instance of the position of contemporary Saudi Arabic poetry. One may say that among Arab writers, critics, and poets, Saudi poetry is currently in a favorable situation. The researcher aims to highlight, on the one hand, the poet's wisdom by utilizing his beautiful city – Al Madinah – as a sign of his love for his vast country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, by using it as a depiction of the poet's adoration. On the other hand, the researcher endeavors to explore the brilliance of the poet in exploiting the classical Arabic language in his poem. The research begins with an introduction before analyzing the subtitle, Arabic Poetry: The Tongue of the Arabs. An overview of eternal Saudi poetry and the Saudi Poets' Conceptions of Homeland follows. Then the study tracks a concise outline of Al-Madinah Al Monawarah as a Landmark of Thought as well as Abdus-Salam Hafeth as a Man and a Poet. The main body of the study uses a critical-analytical approach to assess the poem 'Nostalgia, Oh My Home' (الشوق يا وطني) with a special reference to some verse lines of the poem, which focuses on the notion of "homeland" as the poem's main theme and the Arabic poetic language as the classical tongue. The research concludes briefly with a few observations and a conclusion.

English Classical: The Reform of Poetry in Elizabethan England

English Classical: The Reform of Poetry in Elizabethan England STEPHEN ORGEL Roger ascham, writing in the 1560s, in the course of a treatise on education, urged the reform of English poetry on classical models: “Our English tongue, in avoiding barbarous rhyming, may as well receive right quantity of syllables, and true order of versifying . . . as either Greek or Latin. . . .”1 He cites as an example of right quantity of syllables and true order of versifying this translation by the scholar and poet William Watson of a verse from the Odyssey: All travelers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses. For that he knew many men’s manners, and saw many cities. This does not sound much like English poetry, but if we count it out we can see that it does, more or less, follow the quantitative rules. The trouble is that the rules have little to do with English pronunciation. Vowels are long by position (followed by two consonants) regardless of how they are pronounced ; moreover, Watson makes vowels long if they are stressed (such as the a in “travelers” and “manners” and the i in “cities”), again regardless of how they are pronounced. For the Elizabethans, this was a problem not with the rules, but with English, both in its dissimilarity from the classical tongues and in the variety of spelling and pronunciation at the time—proponents of quantitative verse in English observe that a necessary first step would be to stabilize the language, as Gabriel Harvey wrote to Edmund Spenser, “there is no one more regular and justifiable direction, either for the assured and infallible certainty of our English artificial prosody particularly , or generally to bring our language into art and to arion 27.2 fall 2019 frame a grammar or rhetoric thereof, than first of all universally to agree upon one and the same orthography.”2 But even with a stable orthography, the application of quantitative rules to English is problematic. To begin with, it is not clear in what sense an English vowel can be said to be long or short—to consider the vowels in stressed syllables invariably long, as Watson does, is entirely arbitrary. There is obviously a difference between the a sound in “rat” and in “rate”; such vowels are now described as short and long, but in pronunciation, they may or may not be of equal extension : thus, the a in “rate” is not, in speaking, longer than the a in “rat,” it is simply pronounced differently; whereas the i in “rise” is certainly longer than the i in “rid.” If quantity means length, English vowels are too erratic to serve—Harvey observed to Spenser that in some quantitative hexameters Spenser had sent him, “the,” “ye” and “he” were treated as short, but “me” was long.3 The issue is especially vexed in the case of vowels that are long by position. The most common examples in English are the -ing endings of participles, which are invariably unaccented and stubbornly short when spoken. In fact, Thomas Campion confronted precisely this problem; and his way of dealing with it gives a clear sense of how willed the whole quantitative system in English necessarily was: For though we accent the second [syllable] of Trumpington short, yet is it naturally long, and so of necessity must be held of every composer .4 What can “naturally” mean here? Are the rules of Latin prosody laws of nature? Harvey had a clear sense of the practical problems, writing to Spenser, “in short, this is the very short and long: position neither maketh short nor long in our tongue,” and concludes that some other rule must be found for English “that should as universally and canonically hold amongst us as position doth with the Latins and Greeks.”5 The larger assumption behind Ascham’s and Harvey’s proposals for a new poetry was that the “barbarous” England 44 english classical of the time could be rectified by the application of classical rules. A return to the classics held out the promise of culture and civility—not only in poetry, of course, but poetry seemed a particularly clear example. Nobody thought the transformation would be easy; a hectoring...

A Bifurcation Approach to the Synchronization of Coupled Van der Pol Oscillators

We undertake a bifurcation analysis of a velocity coupled system of two classical nonidentical Van der Pol oscillators to understand the appearance and structure of $1$:$k$ parameter regions with synchronized states as we vary the coupling and the frequency mismatch. These regions include multistability of solutions and are formed by classical tongues bordered by curves of limit point bifurcation of periodic orbits with an isola structure and an additional subregion surrounded by curves of torus bifurcations and a curve characterized by a geometrical tangency condition. Symmetry arguments explain the difference between the even and odd $k$ cases.

Nationalism and the Reception of Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik by English‐Speaking Audiences

Grimm ‘arrived’ in Britain in the 1830s, more than a decade after his pioneering insights into the nature of language first appeared in the Deutsche Grammatik. This essay offers a comprehensive survey of Grimm's British reception to determine why, and in what ways, the German grammarian's theories permeated British‐speaking consciousness at this particular historical juncture. It is especially concerned to relate Grimm to a fundamental shift that occurred in popular and scholarly perceptions of language in Britain in the 1830s and early 1840s, when the status of English changed from that of poor cousin to Latin and Greek, to equal sibling with the classical tongues. The nationalistic uses and misuses of Grimm in this process of revision will be drawn into sharp focus.

Jack Fellman: The Revival of a Classical Tongue: Eliezer Ben- Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language

La revivigo de la parola hebrea lingvo estas rekonita kiel la sola sukcesinta de sia tipo. Gi estis ofte esplorita kaj priverkita, tamen plej ofte romantike. Laü Fishman, la suk-ceso ce la hebrea kuragigas aliajn grupojn al klopodoj savi sian lingvon. Sed oni gis nun ne verkis plenan sciencan monografîon, kun dokumentado, pri la temo. Fellman ofertas la longe atenditan verkon, ne teknikan, legindan far lingvistoj, lingvoplanistoj kaj nefakuloj. La enkondukaj capitroj prezentas la pozicion de la hebrea antaü la reviviga movado; la devenon de Ben-Jehuda; kaj la konfuzan lingvan situacion en Palestino je la alveno de Ben-Jehuda kaj poste. La kavar capitro estas la plej longa kaj grava. Temas pri "la sep pasoj de Ben-Jehuda." Sekvas detala pritrakto de unu tia paso, la revivigo de la hebrea en la lernejoj, kaj fina capitro pri la efiko de ciu paso. Fakte, estus preferinde prezenti prijugon pri la efiko de ciu paso en la koncerna capitro mem, ne poste. La verko de Fellman bone plenumas la deziron de priskribo de la laboro de Ben-Jehuda. Sed scienca priskribo de la hisotria fenomeno de la revivigo de la hebrea daüre mankas. La plej grava paso en la revivigo estis la enkonduko de la hebrea en la judajn lernejojn. Tio fakte dankigas, ne al Ben-Jehuda, sed al la instruistoj en la agrikulturaj kolonioj. La aliaj pasoj de Ben-Jehuda, kiel lia kreo de la unua hebrealingva familia hejmo, -konsiderata miraklo - estis fakte senefikaj. Egale senefikaj estis lia granda vortaro-projekto kaj la akademio, kiun li fondis. Do ses el liaj sep pasoj estis vere sen influo en la revivigo. Unu paso, lia hebrea jurnalo, efikis en la enkonduko de neologismoj. La nesukceso de la kvin au ses ceteraj pasoj bazigas en la naturo de la lingvorenovigo. La nuna recenzanto aliloke en ci tiu revuo montris, ke lingvoplanaj agentejoj kodigas la lingvon kaj, cefe samtempe, normigas gin, tiel almenaü parte funkciigante gin. Rigardante la laboron de Ben-Jehuda, ni trovas, ke li malsukcesis en la funkciigo, sed parte efikis en la kodigo - t.e. ce la jurnalo kaj la pli praktika, malpli granda vortaro. Sajnas, ke unuopulo au malgranda grupo povas sukcesi ce la kodigo, sed la funkciigo de planata lingvo postulas pli multajn partoprenantojn, kiel evidentas en la lingvoplanado de aliaj landoj. Do, la libro de Fellman estas pristudo pri kelkaj efîkoj en la frua enkodigo de la modema hebrea, sed ne de ties funkciigo. Temas, do, pri historio de Ben-Juheda, ne de la revivigo de la hebrea. Ene de tiu limo, gi estas kontribuo al la kompreno de unu aspekto de so cilingvistika fenomeno preskau mirakla.

Foreign Language Teaching and International Conciliation

Not so long ago ours was a country of many languages and dialects. Today it is, no doubt, on the verge of becoming, at least in its ceaselessly expanding urban areas, the most linguistically monolithic part of the civilized world. A dwindling microscopic minority still study the classical tongues. Were it not for the religious seminaries, Greek studies would long since have vanished to the point of extinction. The fate of Latin is only somewhat less dire. And what shall we say about the modern languages other than English? Fortunately, scholarly concern with and proficiency in them are widespread and notable. But so far as one is able to make out, the amount which in practical life sticks to the ribs of high school and college students is about as slight as is the aroma of a cup of Ersatzkaffee. Certainly when our people get scattered about the wide world, with which they are now perforce concerned in multifarious ways, they are like nothing so much as Missouri farmers after an ice storm that has snapped all the telephone wires and coated all the roads.

Sir D‘Arcy Thompson, C.B., F.R.S

WHEN D‘Arcy Wentworth Thompson died at the age of eighty-eight, in his home in St. Andrews on June 21, his passing left a gap in many circles that had few points of contact with each other, for he had a wider range of intellectual interests and attainments than almost any other scientific man of our time. By profession he was a zoologist, and there have been few more learned ; but he had a quite unusual familiarity with the whole circle of the sciences, joined to an inherited aptitude for, and love of, the classical tongues, and he was constantly surprising his friends by his unexpected knowledge of recondite corners of literature, history and art. He wrote and spoke in a style of effortless felicity, a trifle Victorian perhaps, but, as some of us think, none the Worse for that. He loved teaching and he taught to the very last, for even in his final illness he gathered his honours students in his sick-room for talks that none of them will forget.

News and Views

THE brochure entitled “Broadcast English I. Recommendations to announcers regarding certain words of doubtful pronunciation,” which was recently published by the British Broadcasting Corporation, is a scholarly production, and one that should appeal to a wider audience than that for which it is primarily intended. Though the pen is the able one of Mr. A. Lloyd James, of the School of Oriental Studies, the voice is that of the expert committee, which includes, among others, the Poet Laureate and Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, and was appointed by the Corporation in 1926. Speech, it is pointed out, is governed by local convention and public taste, and although most people think there are right and wrong ways of speaking, these adjectives are only applicable where the different considerations of propriety all lead to the same conclusion. “The higher a community climbs in the social scale, the greater is the uniformity in its speech.” There is no standard pronunciation of English, so there cannot be one and only one right way of pronunciation. Our language is rich in alternative pronunciations of equal authority, and the task of the B.B.C. has been that of deciding between them. The special difficulties of the task originate in the discrepancy between sound and written symbol, the presence of many foreign words, the relationship between the value of a symbol in the modern language and the value it had in a classical tongue, and the absence of any principle to govern the incidence of stress.

The Need for a Universal Language

NOBODY, not even Prof. Kent or Mr. Heron-Allen, really wants Latin as a universal language. Latin is dead; its natural development has ceased and could not possibly meet the growing needs of international thought. Every one recognises that the classical tongue, if it is to satisfy modern needs, must have its grammar simplified and its vocabulary, especially of abstract terms, enlarged. But the features which are to be changed are those which give Latin its peculiar savour and the educational value that some would claim for it. “Modernised Latin” is not Latin at all; it is a hybrid jargon as artificial as Volapuk or Esperanto, as devoid of literary tradition, as incapable of artistic expression, as subject to national and individual vagaries. Of this last defect, of which he accuses Esperanto, Mr. Allen gives a crushing example. Few but English speakers would understand statio for railway-station; few but blundering schoolboys would use quae as a substantive for quis.

Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia

IT is almost, if not quite, an act of presumption to attempt to review Prof. Robertson Smith's book. The subject (the development of the family in early Arabia) is exceedingly obscure. The evidence is mainly drawn from books whose very names I never heard of before. In matters of Greek and Roman antiquities the evidence is handy, and may be estimated by one who only knows the usual classical tongues. In matters of early India, we have, at least, the German translations of the Veda and Mure's Sanskrit texts to help us, and Prof. Max Muller's English works, and all that Bergaigne, and Whitney, and Barth have written. But Prof. Robertson Smith's Arabian writers are wholly inaccessible to the ordinary anthropologist. He cannot presume to criticise the sources and testimonies, and I make no such pretension. One has to take the author's statements as he gives them, with the confidence inspired by his great renown as an Orientalist, and by the assent which, it is understood, other famous Eastern scholars give to his method and conclusions. Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. By Robertson Smith. (Cambridge: University Press, 1885.)