the view that “languages are divinely imparted,” as held by many jurists of our school and others, such as Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and Abū Muhammad al-Maqdisī. This is also the position of al-Ashʿarī, Ibn Fūrak, and others. But does “divine imparting” mean speaking, making known, or both? This too is disputed, as explained earlier.
Those who say that languages are uncreated maintain that they are “divinely imparted” and that teaching takes place through direct speech. Thus, Allah would have spoken all the names, and Allah’s speech is uncreated.
These ignorant, misguided people said: “Human speech consists only of combinations of letters and names, which are uncreated. Therefore, it too is uncreated.”
They thus based their position on the premises that the letters of the alphabet are uncreated and that the names composed of these letters are uncreated. They also believed that human speech consists only of combinations of names and letters, which are uncreated. Hence they said: “Human speech is uncreated because its constituent elements are uncreated.”
When pressed, they may say that the arrangement and combination are created, whereas the material itself that is arranged and combined is beginningless. They then suppose that the materials so arranged and combined are more integral to what is called speech than the combination and arrangement themselves, just as the parts of a house are more integral to what the word denotes than their assembly, even though the word “house” denotes both the parts and their assembly.