La Traslitterazione greca del salmo 78,77 di Damasco e la diglossia nel mondo arabo

This paper focuses on the psalm 78,77 found in Damasco written in Arabic and transcribed in Greek and the diglossic situation in the Arabic language, paying particular attention on the origin and the development of Arabic and its dialects spoken at present day from Marocco to Iraq. The aim of the first chapter is to define the terms “Classic Arabic”, called fuSHa, “Dialect” known as al-lahğa and the roles that they play in the Arabic World. The chapter 2 points out the origin of Arabic, analysing the nature of such language. Starting from the early attestations in which Arabic was not homogeneous, the research outlines the social and historical contexts in which Arabic grew up and becoming the unitary idiom of Preislamic Poetry at first stage, of the Koran at second stage. From this, some questions raise: if Arabic at the beginning was made up of different dialects or varieties, how did poets succeed in writing the Preislamic Poetry in an identical language? And also, was Classic Arabic spoken before the raise of Islam or was being elaborated to fix the Holy Koran? What kind of language was being exported during the Islamic Conquest from which, present dialects originated? The purpose of section 3 is to try to answer these questions through the theories of the most important scholars and philologists. Also, the research focuses on the real pronunciation of the Greek of viii C.E. in Syria analysing the psalm in which some differences with the language of today emerge.