Public Grammatical Errors in Al-Azhari’s Dictionary Tahtheeb Allughah: A Linguistic Study

Abstract

The research aims to study the grammatical errors committed by common people and deals with twenty-seven issues, in which it found some of Al-Azhari’s thoughts and his approach to errors and corrections. It included an introduction, preface, and two sections, the first concerned with studying issues in linguistic and lexical control, and the second dealing with issues in connotation and meaning. Through these issues, Al-Azhari’s interest in studying what happens to the language, presenting it to the speech of the Arabs, citing what is authentic from it, and benefiting from the narrations of scholars and their opinions in accepting and rejecting it appeared. Therefore, the majority in his ruling was that he took a strict approach in accepting common expressions. Al-Azhari’s sources of refinement were diverse, in which he combined direct hearing from the Arabs, narration from trustworthy linguists, and quoting from their authentic books, the most prominent of them: Al-Asma’i and Abu Hatim Al-Sijistani, Al-Layth, Ibn Al-Sakit, Abu Ubaid Al-Qasim bin Salam and others. Al-Azhari’s terms and expressions varied in judging the language usage of the common people, including describing it as a mistake, or as an error, or that it is not the speech of the Arabs, or the common people say such-and-such, and the correct thing is such-and-such, or this is nothing, or he says: “and among what the common people put in the wrong place...”, and similar descriptions.