Verified answer

Linguistically the concept of foreign words in languages is described as ‘borrowing’ . The idea of borrowing words is a universal observation that applies to all languages. English is a good example of this; take the word ‘Philosophy’. It comes from the Greek words ‘Philo’ which means love of and ‘Sophia’ which means wisdom. The concept of ‘foreign’ or ‘borrowed’ words comes from the fact that different races, cultures and peoples come in contact with one another .

What was specific about the Arabs at the time of revelation was that they came into contact with other cultures due to trade and had subsequently borrowed certain words. These foreign words in the Qur’an had already been naturalized into the Arabic language before the revelation of the Qur’an These words were already in use in the Arabic language. According to Imam Shafi’i these words had been fully integrated into Arabic and were already a part of the language .

These foreign words include:

طور=Mount (Qur’an 95:2) borrowed from Syriac

سندس وا سبرق=Heavy silk and light silk (Qur’an 18:31) from Persian

سينين=Sinai (Qur’an 95:2) from Nabatean

رقيم=The Inscription (Qur’an 18:9) from Greek

يم=The Sea (Qur’an 7:136) from Coptic

دري=Brilliant (Qur’an 24:35) from Abyssinian

هدنا=To turn onto someone (Qur’an 7:156) from Hebrew[8]

With reference to the Qur’anic statement that it is a “Plain Arabic Qur’an” al-Suyuti believes that the presence of a few foreign words does not make it any less Arabic then the presence of foreign words in a Persian Poem would not make it any less Persian . Additionally the reference to “Plain Arabic” is to the Qur’an as a whole, and not the individual words in it.

To conclude, claims made by some critics are debased by understanding the nature of languages and how they naturalize foreign words into their vocabulary. This phenomenon happens as a result of different cultures and races integrating and coming together. Furthermore the Qur’an can be described as ‘plain Arabic’ because the foreign words in the Qur’an had already been naturalized and were already part of the Arabic language before revelation.

Latin wasn't written in arabic letters.

Languages CONSTANTLY evolve from others! English came first from German, but was strongly influenced by French and lesser so by other European languages. Then, when it came to America, it evolved further when the multitude of foreign languages came in.

If true, it's truly an amazing discovery. We know for a fact that languages spring up from nothing, suddenly appearing in a civilization where no language existed before. No language has ever 'evolved' from another, so something like this could not be easily explained.