Arabic, A Christian Language

To whom does a language belong? One might think it the possession of all who speak it. But as anyone who has learned a foreign language can attest, one receives such a language as an ill-fitting garment, awkward until broken in through sustained and strenuous effort. Or perhaps a language is the possession of those to whom it is native. Yet it often happens that the original character and meaning of ordinary speech is long forgotten, even by the language’s native speakers. In such transformations as “God be with ye” to “goodbye,” and in such unaccountable inventions as “shoddy” and its migration from noun to adjective, the dead assert their claim upon the languages of the living. Languages belong as much to those who made them as to those who use them, as much to the past as to the present, as much to the dead as to the living.