Words about kalimat

My dad says that we humans are all plagiarists. We steal words (kalimat in Arabic) from each other to describe objects, emotions, actions--and usually do so without any attributions. Language-using, in this sense, is theft. 

That theft is a beautiful audio-visual crime: audio when humans make sounds to draw attention to a particular subject; visual when gesture or writing is used instead.

Disputes about the origins of language abound--some are religious, suggesting that the first language teacher was Allah (God) SUB7ANA WA TA3AL, the first student Adam 3ALAYHEE IL SALAT WAL SALAAM; others are evolutionary, explaining that the first "intelligent" beings discovered the unifying powers of pointing and noise-making, and from them developed communications systems.

I believe both have their roles in the universe of language and expression:

Words are divine. For anyone who has familiarity with the Qur'an, he or she knows that each letter (7arf) has a purpose in every word (kilma), sentence (jumla), verse/sign (aya), or chapter (surah) of which it is a member. There are several surahs that are announced with invidiual letters: "alif," "lam," "meem," for instance.  Scholars have spent countless hours studying the value of these letters, their placement in this holy book, the number of times they are repeated, and what they represent to and for the Ummah (Muslim brother- and sisterhood). 

Allah developed a DNA of sorts for each letter. Words are then, by their divine right and existence, scientific. When we speak or write or point, we participate in Allah's etymology. 

We also participate in words' evolution. Wordsmiths can be found in lecture halls, on stages, behind news desks, in publishing houses, in public restrooms, on street corners, and in apartments in Virginia. Word-making is a game we all play, some of us more famously than others. Read next how many different players were involved, according to the New York Times, in developing the word "rap" to describe the music style:  

"Rap began in the 14th century as an echoic noun, imitating the sound of a sharp blow. Early American English applied rap to a sharp rebuke, perhaps also the source of the 1903 sense of a criminal charge, along with the hope of "beating the rap."

As a verb, rap has long meant "to express orally." The poet Sir Thomas Wyatt wrote in 1541, "I am wont sometime to rap out on oath in an earnest talk." British prison slang used rap for "to say" as early as 1879, and Damon Runyon may have picked up that rap to use in a 1929 story: "I wish Moosh a hello, and he never raps to me but only bows, and takes my hat."

According to one theory, this talking rap came from British English into the American language, perhaps transferred through Caribbean English; another theory suggests that rap is a clipped alteration of repartee , a 1645 noun from French for "retort."

However rap entered American usage, it was widely adopted in black English by the 1960's. Eldridge Cleaver wrote in a 1965 letter, "In point of fact he is funny and very glib, and I dig rapping with him." Clarence Major, in his 1970 Dictionary of Afro-American Slang, defined rap as both verb and noun: "to hold conversation; a long, impressive monologue." Within a decade, the noun was used attributively in rap music , labeling the rhythmic rhyming lines set to an insistent beat."

This model also exemplifies how language is Darwinian: the use of certain words or certain nuances of words ebbs and flows with necessity: Words die in modern language after they've been deemed archaic and dispensable; their tombstones the lexicons and tapings that note their previous existences. As they are absorbed into the history of language, dead words become ancestral. Example: Whenever my dad wants to explain the meaning of an Arabic word to me [usually a word we heard in a song by AbdelHalim or Saba7 Fakhri  or Wadi3 El Safi],   

1. He first asks me what other words it sounds like.

2. Then he relates it to another word that I do know to establish a common root.

3. Then he explains the root.

4. Then he explains the iteration of the root that has been given to this word. 

These relationships are essential to fully understanding the word, and realizing its evolution... 

...And realizing how new words come to be born. Many start out as slang: "in" street-speak, developed by the young, and shunned by the old. By the time the slang-term reaches pubescence and is adopted by the middle-aged, and when it becomes middle-aged and can be found in books or conversations with those middle-aged humans, the word has atrophied, and has begun its demise. Words and their participation in language, therefore, is zeitgeist--a marker of the current land-and-sound-scapes of life. Words have life cycles, and reflect ours.

Words also have art. Arabic calligraphy is allowed to exist and claim a "khata," (calligrapher), such as Hassan Massoudy and Farah Behbehani and my grandfather Mohammad Yousef El-Khatib because it is so. Poetry and its boombox-carrying sibling, rap, are allowed to flow and name poets, such as Khalil Gibran and Mahmoud Darwish and Tamim Al-Barghouti, and rappers, such as Immortal Technique and Boikutt and Mahmoud Jrere for the same reason. ["Letters" by Mahmoud (DAM) shows how.]

Words--divine, scientific, and artistic--have life. And, as my dad says and writes*, we are all thieves who thrive by stealing from that life when we express anything--to each other or to ourselves. 

Here's to spiritual and intelligent and decorative thieving.

~~Word to your moms; kilma la umayatkom~~

[NOTE: The above slang "word" phrases died ages ago, but it has been my mission to bring them back to life. Call it vintage word-smithing. And, yes, I am wearing my "word" t-shirt as I type this, and thinking of the four words that I would get tattooed if not for the word "7aram." ]

*I've stolen many words from my dad. He's allowed me to share a theft with you. Below is a poem he wrote in 1994 about words--and it's copyrighted, so no stealing ;-)

(Untitled)

Hatim S. Khatib

"This silhouette, this famished sight, this 

emptiness that fills the world, this 

manufacture of man: this word.

Some carry weight along with might.

Some fill the ear with utter delight

While others are laden with human plight.

Some injure and kill and cause flight.

But that's how we eavesdropped, while 

millennium apart, on the whispering of 

history's lovers.

This unfueled vehicle which travels faster than 

all others.

It bounces off the farthest stars and, sweetened 

by babies' breaths, caresses the lips of 

mothers.

It's everything we know, everything we see

Everything we touch, everything we are.

It's more precious than gold,

This possession of rich and poor, of young and 

old.

It traverses the universe a zillion times as 

effortlessly as back and fro, from hold to 

hold.

It is the word. She is everything.

It abides God's mouth just as readily as that of 

a fool.

It's as gentle as a breath and just as readily it's 

so cruel.

It's an epithet; it's an epitaph;

It's so cheap; it's a jewel.

It's ugliness; it's chaos; and yet again it's a 

rule.

Tell me, sir, if the world can go another day, 

another minute, without a word.

Can we talk,

Can we whisper,

Can we walk,

Can we prosper

Without a word?

Can we sense,

Can we see,

Can we live,

Can we be

Without a word?

Which is nothing but an illusion--and so is 

life."