Standard written Arabic’s prestige crushed the limited written-vernacular Arabic experiment

Evidence

But by the sixteenth century, we frequently find laments for the loss of Arabic, and the writing of the Romance vernacular in Arabic characters (literatura aljamiada) was beginning to be widespread among crypto-Muslims. Written vernacular Arabic of the kind just referred to is a significant and unusual development, but it was destined never to have more than the most limited of use because of the immense gravitational attraction always exercised by standard written Arabic. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 614

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel to diglossia dynamics: standard written varieties absorbing vernaculars — compare classical Chinese vs. baihua, Latin vs. vernaculars, fusha vs. dialects. — connects to: The loss of writing’s prestige paradoxically drove oral languages to imitate writing. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 819