Another of the tongue’s maladies is affected, showy speech—rolling one’s words and puffing out the cheeks, or addressing laypeople with rare, arcane Arabic terms merely to be seen and praised (“How knowledgeable he is in Arabic!”) or for some other motive. A person should instead speak as ordinary people do, in language that they understand, even if that means using the colloquial dialect when speaking to the general public. If, however, he is addressing students of knowledge in a learning session, then he should employ as much proper Arabic as he is able.

In the second section that the author cites, the Prophet ﷺ said, “Ruined are the pedantic ones, ruined are the pedantic ones, ruined are the pedantic ones.” The pedantic one (al-mutanattiʿ) is the person who affects loftiness in speech, statement, action, or opinion—or in anything else that people regard as an unwarranted departure from what is customary. All of this falls under the refined manners that Islam has laid down. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.