S32
The human being taught to speak
Sura al-Raḥmān names speech among the first gifts of the Most Merciful — "Created man, [And] taught him eloquence" (55:3–4) — and 90:8–10 ties the tools of seeing and speaking to the moral choice between "the two ways".
خَلَقَ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ٣ عَلَّمَهُ ٱلْبَيَانَ٤
Transliteration: khalaqa l-insāna · ʿallamahu l-bayāna
Created man, [And] taught him eloquence.
أَلَمْ نَجْعَل لَّهُۥ عَيْنَيْنِ٨ وَلِسَانًا وَشَفَتَيْنِ٩ وَهَدَيْنَٰهُ ٱلنَّجْدَيْنِ١٠
Transliteration: alam najʿal lahu ʿaynayni · walisānan washafatayni · wahadaynāhu l-najdayni
Have We not made for him two eyes? And a tongue and two lips? And have shown him the two ways?
وَعَلَّمَ ءَادَمَ ٱلْأَسْمَآءَ كُلَّهَا ثُمَّ عَرَضَهُمْ عَلَى ٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةِ فَقَالَ أَنۢبِـُٔونِى بِأَسْمَآءِ هَٰٓؤُلَآءِ إِن كُنتُمْ صَٰدِقِينَ٣١
Transliteration: waʿallama ādama l-asmāa kullahā thumma ʿaraḍahum ʿalā l-malāikati faqāla anbiūnī bi-asmāi hāulāi in kuntum ṣādiqīna
And He taught Adam the names - all of them. Then He showed them to the angels and said, "Inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful."
Translation: Saheeh International
; creating the human and teaching al-bayān come next.
"Have We not made for him two eyes? And a tongue and two lips? And have shown him the two ways?" (90:8–10), Meccan, in Sura al-Balad.
"And He taught Adam the names - all of them. Then He showed them to the angels and said, 'Inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful'" (2:31), Medinan.
Key words
Al-bayān (55:4, "eloquence"): clear expression, making plain what is inside. Al-najdayn (90:10, "the two ways"): literally two raised paths. Al-asmāʾ (2:31, "the names").
Whom they address
55 addresses its hearers with a repeated question about God's favours; 90 speaks of the human being in general.
Classical tafsir
Ibn Kathir on 55:1–4. He frames the opening: "Allah informs of His favors and His mercy for His creatures." He cites al-Hasan al-Basri on al-bayān: "Eloquent speech." He explains God "making it easy for them to speak and pronounce letters with the various parts of the mouth", naming the alveolar ridge, the tongue and the lips, and links this to teaching the Quran: "This refers to Allah teaching the Qur'an."
Al-Jalālayn on 55:4. "teaching him the coherent speech utterance."
Tanwīr al-Miqbās on 55:4. "Allah inspired him with the exposition of everything", and it mentions the names of every creature.
Mawdudi (modern, 20th century) reads al-bayān more widely, as including "the distinction between good and evil, virtue and vice".
Ibn Kathir on 90:8–10. The eyes are "for him to see with them"; the tongue "for him to speak with, and so that he can express that which is inside of him"; the lips help "with speaking, eating food, and beautifying his face and his mouth." "The two ways": "This refers to the two paths"; Ibn Masʿud (ra): "The good and the evil." Ibn ʿAbbas is listed among those with the same view. Tanwīr on 90:9: the tongue "with which he speaks", the lips "which he can join together or separate".
Ibn Kathir on 2:31. Ibn ʿAbbas (via al-Ḍaḥḥāk) said the names were "the names that people use, such as human, animal, sky, earth, land, sea"; asked whether this included "the names of the plate and the pot", he said, "Yes". Mujahid: "The name of the pigeon, the crow and everything." Zayd ibn Aslam's report has the names of angels; Tanwīr gives "the names of all his progeny". Ibn Kathir's own summary: God taught Adam (pbuh) "the names of everything, their proper names, the names of their characteristics, and what they do", which showed "Adam's superiority over them in knowledge". Al-Jalālayn: the names were taught by "placing knowledge of them into his heart."
Where they differ. On al-bayān: speech itself (al-Hasan via Ibn Kathir; al-Jalālayn), the exposition of everything (Tanwīr), or, in a modern reading, moral discernment (Mawdudi). On 2:31: the names of all things (Ibn ʿAbbas; Mujahid; Ibn Kathir), of the angels (Zayd ibn Aslam), or of Adam's descendants (Tanwīr). On 90:10, the early authorities cited agree: good and evil.
How it works
Each point is tied to "taught him eloquence" and "a tongue and two lips".
- Many muscles, one sentence. Established Speaking "involves a precise coordination of more than 100 laryngeal, orofacial, and respiratory muscles", controlled in part by a region of the motor cortex for the larynx (Simonyan & Horwitz, The Neuroscientist, 2011).
- Born able to hear every language. Established Patricia Kuhl (University of Washington): infants are "citizens of the world" who "can hear the differences between all the consonants and vowels used in any language"; they then "have to learn which sound distinctions are meaningful in their language" — English separates "r" and "l", Japanese does not. "Already by 12 months, infants have the rules down" (UW News, 2001, reporting Kuhl). Her 2004 review: "Young infants are sensitive to subtle differences between all phonetic units", followed by "The loss of discrimination for foreign-language distinctions".
- Learning is social. Established "Infants learn more easily from interactions with human beings speaking another language" (Kuhl, 2004). Language is learned from people, not just heard.
- Many tongues. Established "7,164 languages are in use today"; "Roughly 40% of languages are now endangered", and "just 23 languages account for more than half the world's population" (Ethnologue).
Points of awe
A baby can hear sound differences its parents no longer can, before tuning in to its own language around the first birthday (Kuhl).
Reflection
Al-Raḥmān opens with a short list of mercies: the teaching of the Quran, the creation of the human, and then al-bayān, the gift of making plain what is inside. Before the sun and moon, the stars and the trees, the sura names speech.
Ibn Kathir sees it in the body: letters shaped by tongue, ridge and lips. Al-Balad turns the same body into a question: "Have We not made for him two eyes? And a tongue and two lips? And have shown him the two ways?" The tools of seeing and speaking come first; the choice between good and evil comes right after. Speech is not neutral. What we say can be the first step on either path.
Science fills in how great the gift is. More than a hundred muscles move in time for one sentence. A baby is born able to hear the sounds of any human language, then learns, from the faces and voices around it, which ones matter. Seven thousand languages carry prayers, poems, jokes and laws.
2:31 adds the deepest layer. Adam (pbuh) was taught "the names - all of them", and Ibn Kathir saw in this his "superiority … in knowledge". To name a thing is to begin to understand it. For a believer, every word we speak uses a gift we did not make, and every word will be weighed. The reflection is simple: use it for the better of "the two ways".
Questions readers ask next
Why is speech counted as a blessing?
Al-Raḥmān lists it among the first mercies (55:3–4). Ibn Kathir explains it as God making it easy to speak and form letters with the mouth.
What are "the two ways" (90:10)?
"The good and the evil", said Ibn Masʿud (ra), via Ibn Kathir.
Did Adam (pbuh) learn a language?
The verse says he was taught "the names - all of them". Ibn ʿAbbas: the names people use, down to the plate and the pot; other reports say the names of the angels or of his descendants.
How do babies learn to speak?
They start able to hear the sound differences of all languages and, by about 12 months, have tuned in to their own (Kuhl). They learn best from live people (Kuhl, 2004).
Sources
- Saheeh International — 55:3–4, 90:8–10, 2:31.
- Ibn Kathir (abridged English), al-Jalālayn, Tanwīr al-Miqbās and Mawdudi's Tafhīm al-Qurʾān (English), on 55:4, https://surahquran.com/tafsir-english-aya-4-sora-55.html; on 90:9, https://surahquran.com/tafsir-english-aya-9-sora-90.html; on 2:31, https://surahquran.com/tafsir-english-aya-31-sora-2.html.
- University of Washington News, "How babies acquire building blocks of speech affects later reading and language ability, UW researcher tells White House summit on cognitive development" (26 July 2001), on Patricia Kuhl, https://www.washington.edu/news/2001/07/26/how-babies-acquire-building-blocks-of-speech-affects-later-reading-and-language-ability-uw-researcher-tells-white-house-summit-on-cognitive-development/.
- Patricia K. Kuhl, "Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code", Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5:831–843 (2004), key points, https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn1533.pdf.
- Kristina Simonyan & Barry Horwitz, "Laryngeal motor cortex and control of speech in humans", The Neuroscientist 17(2):197–208 (2011), https://simonyanlab.meei.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1073858410386727.pdf.
- Ethnologue, "How many languages are there in the world?", https://ethnologue.com/insights/how-many-languages.
- Patricia Kuhl's research on infant speech perception (University of Washington, I-LABS)
- Ethnologue, on the number of living languages
- Al-Rāzī and Ibn Kathīr on 55:3–4 and 90:8–10