The linguistic habitus

Ibn Khaldun's theory of learning the Arabic tongue is that meanings are within reach of everyone, and that what needs craft is the composition of speech to express them. ²

He compares speech to the vessels by which water is drawn: the water is one, and its quality differs according to the vessels. ²

In his view, the faculty of the tongue is not acquired except through much memorisation, and the quality of the faculty corresponds to the quality of what is memorised. Whoever memorises the poetry of the early poets has a higher faculty than one who memorises the poetry of the later ones. The poetic faculty arises through memorising poetry, and the faculty of writing through memorising rhymed prose and epistolary style. ²