Sounds
&
Languages

Now, if you travel around Scotland,

you hear various sounds that belong here,

Scotland's music, with its folk songs and bagpipes,

and its language which comes in two kinds.

Some speak Gaidhlig,

but most people speak a Scottish version of English.

Yet even when they are speaking the same language,

the way that people say things in different places can sound quite different.

Over the years, local communities take on their own way of saying words,

so they have different accents,

and someone from Glasgow might find it hard to understand someone who comes from Aberdeen.

And so it was with the children of Adam and Eve as they wandered around the world,

and as they got further and further apart from each other

their different accents turned into completely different languages.

And as Islam spread around the world

after the time of Muhammad the Messenger,

although people may have changed their way of life,

becoming muslim didn't mean that they had to change everything about themselves,

so they kept their own songs,

and they kept on talking in all their many different languages.

Now when muslims came to Scotland,

they had to learn to speak the language that their new community spoke,

in whatever local accent they might use.

But their first language,

the language they knew best

was the language they learned from their mothers and their families when they were small,

a language people call their mother tongue.

And different languages have their own beauty,

so those children would pass on their mother tongue to their children in their turn,

a reminder of where their families came from

when they set out for Scotland long ago.

But at the heart of their Islam is the Qur'an,

the words of God, that were given to Muhammad the Messenger to speak.

And that was in his own language which was Arabic.

So in all the countries of the muslim world,

no matter what language is their mother tongue,

muslims everywhere have learned Arabic

so that they can understand the meaning of God's Wonderful Message.

?

?

?