Abstract: The article is devoted to the study of works of two philosophers and linguists A.A. Potebnja and Al-Jahiz "Thought and Language" and "The Book of Eloquence and Interpretation". Their ideas in the field of the philosophy of language turned out to be meaningful and advanced for their time, Al-Jahiz managed to synthesize the views of previous Arabic and Persian scholars, applying them to Arabic, he managed to draw logical conclusions about the system of the Arabic literary language and collect a four-volume collection of Arabic poems and sayings. His teachings covered not only grammar, but such areas as dialectology, paralinguistics, proverbs and sayings, eloquence up to experimental linguistics. The most important contribution of the Arab scientist, which has not yet been fully studied by modern scientists, is his exhaustive definition of articulate sound as a thought-organizing part of the human body. The purpose of our study is to identify similarities and differences in the views of scientists regarding the sounds of speech and their differences from the sounds of other animals.