[T]here was no such thing as Arabic, singular; rather there were – and still are – many Arabics. ‘Arabic’ was never a neatly espaliered sub-branch of Semitic or a homogenous collection of shoots, but a gnarled and multiply engrafted outgrowth bearing some very old and very odd features. The very diversity of the ‘dialect bundle’ that became Arabic reflects the sense of ’arab as a mixed bunch, a genetic and linguistic omnium gatherum, and one that had been absorbing new members regularly from very early times.[27]