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|name=Arabic |nativename=العربية '''' |pronunciation=/alˌʕa.raˈbij.ja/ |caption=al-‘Arabīyyah in written Arabic |image= |states= Algeria , Bahrain , Egypt , Iraq , Jordan , Kuwait , Lebanon , Libya , Mauritania , Morocco , Oman , Qatar , Saudi Arabia , Somalia , Sudan , Syria , Tunisia , United Arab Emirates , Palestine (West Bank And Gaza) , Western Sahara ( SADR ), Yemen by a majority, and in many other countries, such as Israel , as a Minority Language ; it is also the the Liturgical Language of Islam . |region= Arab World . |speakers=206 million ( Ethnologue , native speakers of all dialects 1998 est.); 286 million (population of Arab countries, CIA World Factbook 2004 est.), excluding Arab minorities in other countries and bilingual speakers |rank=5 (by first language); slightly before Portuguese and Bengali |familycolor=Afro-Asiatic |fam2= Semitic |fam3= West Semitic |fam4= Central Semitic |script= Arabic Alphabet |nation= Algeria , Bahrain , Comoros , Chad , Djibouti , Egypt , Eritrea , Iraq , Israel , Jordan , Kuwait , Lebanon , Libya , Mauritania , Morocco , Oman , Palestine , Qatar , Western Sahara ( SADR ), Saudi Arabia , Somalia , Sudan , Syria , Tunisia , United Arab Emirates , Yemen ; A , Senegal ( Hassaniya ). International organizations: United Nations , Arab League , Organization Of Islamic Conference , African Union |agency= |iso1=ar|iso2=ara |lc1=ara|ld1=Arabic (generic) ''see Varieties Of Arabic for the individual codes''|ll1=none}} The Arabic language ( ), or simply '''Arabic''' ( ), is the largest member of the and Aramaic . It is spoken throughout the Arab World and is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic World . Arabic has been a Literary Language since at least the 6th Century and is the Liturgical Language of Islam . Quite a few English words are ultimately derived from Arabic, often through other Europe an languages, especially Spanish , among them every-day vocabulary like " Sugar " (''sukkar''), " Cotton " ('''') or " Magazine " ('' Makhzen ''). More recognizable are words like " Algebra ", " Alcohol " and " Zenith " (see List Of English Words Of Arabic Origin ). Literary and Modern Standard Arabic The term "Arabic" may refer either to and the Middle East and to the more articulate language of the Qur'an . (The expression ''media'' here includes most television and radio, and all written matter, including all books, newspapers, magazines, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.) "Colloquial" Or "dialectal" Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties derived from Classical Arabic, spoken daily across North Africa and the Middle East , which constitute the everyday spoken language. These sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are not typically written, although a certain amount of literature (particularly plays and poetry) exists in many of them. They are often used to varying degrees in informal spoken media, such as Soap Opera s and Talk Show s. Literary Arabic or classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab countries and is the only form of Arabic taught in schools at all stages. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of Diglossia –the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught literary Arabic (to an equal or lesser degree). This diglossic situation facilitates Code Switching in which a speaker switches back and forth unaware between the two varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. In instances in which Arabs of different nationalities engage in conversation only to find their dialects mutually unintelligible (e.g. a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), both should be able to code switch into Literary Arabic for the sake of communication. Since the written Arabic of today differs from the written Arabic of the Qur'an ic era, it has become customary in western scholarship and among non-Arab scholars of Arabic to refer to the language of the Qur'an as Classical Arabic and the modern language of the media and of formal speech as Modern Standard Arabic . Arabs, on the other hand, often use the term '''' to refer to both forms, thus placing greater emphasis on the similarities between the two. The difference between Arabic of the Qur'anic era and today's Classical Arabic is only in the degree of eloquence. The vocabulary and syntactic and grammatical rules are the same. Arabic and Islam It is sometimes difficult to translate Islam ic concepts, and concepts specific to Arab Culture , without using the original Arabic terminology. The Qur'an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslim s deem it impossible to translate in a way that would adequately reflect its exact meaning—indeed, until recently, some schools of thought maintained that it should not be translated at all. A List Of Islamic Terms In Arabic covers those terms which are too specific to translate in one phrase. While Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of Salah ), it is also spoken by Arab Christians , Oriental Mizrahi Jew s, and smaller sects such as Iraqi Mandaean s. Even so, a majority of the world's Muslims do not actually speak Arabic, but only know some fixed phrases of the language, such as those used in Islamic prayer. However, to counteract this trend, non-Arabic-speaking Muslims are strongly encouraged to learn the language. Classification and related languages Maltese , which is spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta , is the only surviving language to be derived primarily from Arabic, though it contains a large number of Italian and English borrowings. Dialects ''See Varieties Of Arabic for main article'' "Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the Literary Language . The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern—especially Egyptian—films and other media). One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance Languages , retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi ''aku'', Levantine ''fīh'', and North African ''kayen'' all mean "there is", and all come from Arabic (''yakūn'', ''fīhi'', ''kā'in'' respectively), but now sound very different. The major groups are:
Other varieties include:
Sounds The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Standard Arabic. Vowels Arabic has three vowels, with their long forms, plus two diphthongs: ''a'' (open ''e'' as in English ''bed'', but centralised), ''i'' , ''u'' ; ''ā'' , ''ī'' , ''ū'' ; ''ai'' (''ay'') , ''au'' (''aw'') . Allophonically , after velarized consonants (see following), the vowel ''a'' is pronounced , ''ā'' as (thus also after ''r''), ''ai'' as and ''au'' as . Consonants See Arabic Alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart. # is pronounced as by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant , it is pronounced as . # is pronounced only in , the name of God, i.e. Allah , when the word follows ''a'', ''ā'', ''u'' or ''ū'' (after ''i'' or ''ī'' it is unvelarised: ''bismi l-lāh'' ). # is usually a phonetic Approximant . # In many varieties, are actually Epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works). The consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" are either Velarised or Pharyngealised . In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter e.g. is written ‹D›; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it e.g. ‹›. Vowels and consonants can be (phonologically) short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark Shaddah , which marks lengthened consonants. Such consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: e.g. ''qabala'' "he received" and ''qabbala'' "he kissed". Syllable structure Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV) - and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC) and (CVCC). Every syllable begins with a consonant - or else a consonant is borrowed from a previous word through elision – especially in the case of the definite article THE, ''al'' (used when starting an utterance) or ''_l'' (when following a word), e.g. ''baytu –l mudiir'' “house (of) the director”, which becomes ''bay-tul-mu-diir'' when divided syllabically. By itself, definite ''mudiir'' would be pronounced . Stress Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length and syllable shape, and correct word stress aids intelligibility. In general, "heavy" syllables attract stress (i.e. syllables of longer duration - a closed syllable or a syllable with a long vowel). In a word with a syllable with one long vowel, the long vowel attracts the stress (e.g. ''ki-'taab'' and '' ‘kaa-tib''). In a word with two long vowels, the second long vowel attracts stress (e.g.''ma-kaa-'tiib''). In a word with a "heavy" syllable where two consonants occur together or the same consonant is doubled, the (last) heavy syllable attracts stress (e.g. ''ya-ma-’niyy'', ''ka-'tabt'', ''ka-‘tab-na'', ma-‘jal-lah,'' ‘mad-ra-sah'', ''yur-‘sil-na''). This last rule trumps the first two: ''ja-zaa-i-‘riyy''. Otherwise, word stress typically falls on the first syllable: '' ‘ya-man'', '' ‘ka-ta-bat'', etc. The Cairo ( Egyptian Arabic ) dialect, however, has some idiosyncrasies in that a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, so that ''mad-‘ra-sah'' carries the stress on the second-to-last syllable, as does ''qaa-‘hi-rah''. Dialectal variations In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghreb dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by ), while it is rendered in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan) and as a Glottal Stop in many prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Additionally, confessional differences may sometimes be distinguished: in the case of , some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as . Thus, Arabs instantly give away their geographical (and class) origin by their pronunciation of a word such as ''qamar'' "moon": , , or . Grammar ''See Arabic Grammar '' Writing system ''Main article: Arabic Alphabet '' The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (which variety - Nabataean or Syriac - is a matter of scholarly dispute), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic Script to Greek Script . Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the ''fa'' and ''qaf'' had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb , and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools ( Zaouia s) of West Africa. Arabic, like other Semitic languages, is written from right to left. Calligraphy ''See Arabic Calligraphy for a fuller overview.'' After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786 , by Khalil Ibn Ahmad Al Farahidi , many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration. Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin Alphabet , Arabic script is used to write down a Verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith , or simply a Proverb , in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. Two of the current masters of the genre are Hassan Massoudy and Khaled Al Saa’i . Transliteration ''See Arabic Transliteration and Arabic Chat Alphabet for more information.'' There are a number of different standards of . The more scientific standards allow the reader to recreate the exact word using the Arabic Alphabet . However, these systems are heavily reliant on Diacritic al marks such as "š" for the English ''sh'' sound. At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific, systems often use Digraph s (like ''sh'' and ''kh''), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. In some cases, the ''sh'' or ''kh'' sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them -- that way, they can be distinguished from separate ''s'' and ''h'' sounds or ''k'' and ''h'' sounds, respectively. (Compare ''gashouse'' to ''gash''.) During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab World , such as Personal Computers , the World Wide Web , Email , Bulletin Board System s, IRC , Instant Messaging and Mobile Phone Text Messaging . Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin Alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic Alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometime known as IM Arabic . To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع", ''ayn''. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet . Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", or ''daal'', may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as '''D'''. Literature
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