Arabic

Introduction

Green Dome

With 246 million speakers worldwide, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its closest living relatives are Hebrew and Aramaic. Arabic has been a written language since the 6th century AD, and is the liturgical language of Islam.

It is estimated that there are 246 million first-language speakers of all Arabic varieties. Of these, 206 million speak or understand Modern Standard Arabic as a second dialect.

Arabic is the official or co-official language of Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Mauritania, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In addition to the Arab countries, in which Arabic speakers are concentrated, large numbers of Arabic speakers live in Iran and France (about 600,000 speakers each), and a substantial number of speakers live in Israel and parts of Africa ( Ethnologue).

Mosque

Dialects

Egypt Pharoh

Egypt Sphynx

Hassan Mosque

Mesopotamia

Ancient Mesopotamia

Pyramids

The spoken (colloquial) languages of the people throughout the Arab world differ from the literary language, and to a greater or lesser extent from each other. The term Arabic refers to several varieties of the language, all of which play an important role in Arabic-speaking countries.. The use of language throughout the Arab world is characterized by diglossia, i.e., proficiency in a colloquial variety and in Modern Standard Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and colloquial varieties have specialized functions.

Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic is not a spoken language. The term refers to the written Arabic of the Qur'an and literature of the early period. Classical Arabic became the language of scholarship and religion with the spread of Islam. Its relation to the modern spoken varieties is similar to that of Latin to the modern Romance languages. It is used as the language of religious practice throughout the Islamic world. It is learned formally in school and has changed very little in its grammar since the 7th century AD.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or al-fuSHaa
MSA is the universal language of the Arab world. It is a direct descendant of Classical Arabic. MSA is used in formal speaking situations, such as sermons, lectures, news broadcasts, and speeches, and in all formal writing such as official correspondence, literature and newspapers. There are no native speakers of MSA, the vast majority of educated Arabs learn it through formal schooling. In addition, many Arabs without formal schooling in MSA can understand it. MSA is quite uniform throughout the Arab world and serves as a lingua franca for speakers of various colloquial dialects, many of whom would otherwise be unable to understand each other.
Colloquial (spoken) Arabic or 'aammiyya
This term refers to the regional varieties used in everyday communication and popular culture. All colloquial varieties are acquired by children as their first language. There are numerous spoken dialects that vary along geographical, socio-economic, and religious lines. Arabs from one region can usually undderstand dialects from other regions, depending on their geographical proximity, and command of MSA. Factors that differentiate colloquial varieties include the influence of languages that were spoken in the area prior to the arrival of the Arabs, neighboring languages, and languages of the colonial powers.
In general, there are four major spoken dialect groups, each of which contains numerous sub-dialects.

Maghrib	Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania
Egypt	Sometimes, Libya is assigned to this region
Levant	Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, parts of Iraq
Gulf	Saudi Arabia, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, parts of Iraq

Arabic varieties with 100,000 or more speakers are listed below.

Varieties	Number of speakers	Where spoken primarily
Modern Standard
Modern Standard Arabic	206,000 million second-language speakers	Throughout the Arab world
Spoken (colloquial)
Egyptian	46.3 million	Egypt
Algerian	21 million	Algeria
Moroccan	19.5 million	Morocco
Sudanese	19 million	Sudan
Sa'idi	18.9 million	Egypt
Mesopotamian	15.1 million	Iraq
North Levantine	14.3 million	Syria
Najdi	9.9 million	Saudi Arabia
Tunisian	9.2 million	Tunisia
Sanaani	7.6 million	Yemen
Ta'izzi-Adeni	6.9 million	Yemen
North Mesopotamian	6.3 million	Iraq
South Levantine	6.1 million	Jordan
Hijazi	6 million	Saudi Arabia
Libyan	4.5 million	Libya
Hassaniyya	2.8 million	Mauritania
Gulf	2.3 million	Iraq
Eastern Egyptian Bedawi	1.6 million	Egypt
Chadian	1 million	Chad
Omani	815,000	Oman
Hadrami	410,000	Yemen
Maltese	372,000	Malta
Judeo-Moroccan	259,000	Israel
Baharna	300,000	Bahrain
Algerian Saharan	100,000	Algeria
Judeo-Iraqi	100,000	Israel

Click here to learn more about the different varieties of Arabic.

Structure

Sound System

Arab Children

Arab Man

Arab Children

Arabic has largely preserved the * Proto-Semitic sound system.

Vowels
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has three vowels /i/, /u/, /a/ and three long vowels . Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning. However, the opposition between long and short vowels has been lost in some spoken varieties of Arabic. In addition, some varieties have added vowels such as /e/, /o/, and //. There are two diphthongs /ay/ and /aw/ which have become long vowels in most spoken dialects.

Consonants
Modern Standard Arabic has 29 consonants. Arabic consonants have several distinguishing features that can vary from dialect to dialect. Among the distinguishing characteristics of Arabic consonants are the following:

There is an opposition between voiceless, voiced, and emphatic stops and fricatives. Within Arabic, the emphatic consonants vary in phonetic realization from dialect to dialect, but are typically realized as pharyngealized consonants. Pharyngealization refers to a secondary articulation by which the pharynx is constricted during the articulation of the sound.
All consonants may be geminated, or doubled.
In general, consonant clusters are restricted.

x	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Interdental	Dental	Emphatic	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Stops	b	x	x	t-d	-	xx	k	q	x	?
Fricatives	x	f	-	s-z	-		x	-	-	h
Affricates		x	x	x	x	d	x	x	x	x
Nasals	m	x	x	n	xx	x	x	x	xx	x
Laterals	x	xx	x	l		x	x	x	x	x
Trill			x	r	xx	x		xx		x
Approximants	w	/w/	x	xx	xx	y	x	x	x	x

Arab Women

Arab Girl

Arab Boy

, , ,	emphatic consonants with no equivalents in English
?	similar to the sound between the vowels in the English uh-oh
-	th as in thin and th as in those respectively
q, , , ,	all pronounced in the back of the mouth with no equivalents in English.
	sh as in shop
d	j as in jay
q	may be voiced in some dialects, particularly in the more conservative Bedouin varieties
	usually occurs only in the name of God /?aāh/, although Gulf dialects have more occurrences of this sound.

Stress
There are three basic rules for the placement of word stress in Arabic:

if a word consists of CV (consonant + vowel) syllables, the first syllable bears the primary stress, e.g., kátaba.
if a word has only one long syllable, the long syllable receives the primary stress, e.g., ktib;
if a word has more than one long syllable, the long syllable closest to the end of the word bears the primary stress, e.g., /?lm/, 'pains.'

Grammar

Arab Women

Arab Children

Arab Man

Arab Women

Arab Man

Sheikh

Grammar
Spoken Arabic dialects vary in the degree to which they have simplified the grammar of Classical Arabic. There are three simplifications:

loss of the dual number in nouns, adjectives, and pronouns;
loss of case endings in nouns and adjectives;
loss of mood distinctions in the verb.

Noun phrase

Only MSA has retained the case system. MSA nouns have three cases: nominative, genitive and accusative. Only educated speakers of MSA master their use. None of the spoken dialects have retained the case system.
Arabic nouns are marked for definiteness/indefiniteness. Definiteness is marked by the article 'al-, while indefiniteness is usually indicated by the suffix -n which follows the case marker. Ths category is present in all dialects of Arabic, e.g.,

Nominative + definite
al-kitbu

'the book'

Nominative + indefinite
kitbun

'a book'

Modern Standard Arabic has three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. The dual number is used for objects that are normally paired. It has all but disappeared in colloquial varieties of Arabic. The plural is usually formed by adding a suffix to the end of a word. In some instances, the plural is expressed by changing the vowel structure of a word, e.g., kitb, ''book,' kutub, ''books.' This is called a broken plural. Broken plurals are found in other Semitic languages, but they are most frequent in Arabic.
Arabic has two genders: masculine and feminine.
Adjectives, pronouns, and verbs agree with nouns in case, gender and number. This feature is present in all dialects of Arabic.

Verb phrase
The verb system of Arabic is difficult to describe from the perspective of Indo-European languages. Some of its most salient features are listed below.

Person, mood, and aspect are marked by prefixes and suffixes.
There is one basic stem (Form I) plus nine derived stems, each with a range of meanings, such as reflexivity, and causativity. Each form has its own set of active and passive participles and verbal nouns.
Arabic has a past, or perfect, suffixed conjugation and a non-past, or imperfect, prefixed conjugation. The perfect can refer to present, pluperfect, or future. The imperfect can refer to present, past, or future. In addition to the opposition between the perfect and imperfect, colloquial Arabic dialects have also developed tense markers, e.g., Egyptian Arabic has a future tense marker. It must be noted that the problem of tense vs. aspect in Arabic has not been fully resolved.

Word order
The normal word order in Classical Arabic is Verb-Subject-Object. The usual word order in colloquial varieties is Subject-Verb-Object. Modern Standard Arabic has also become a Subject-Verb-Object language.

Vocabulary

Sphinx

Most of Arabic vocabulary, as in other Semitic languages, is formed by the application of vowels and affixes to three-consonant roots, for example, the root K-T-B produces kitb, 'book' and ktib, 'writer.'

Dialects of spoken Arabic differ in the extent to which they allow loanwords to come into their language. Modern Standard Arabic is the most conservative in this respect, and tends not to borrow words from other languages. New words are usually created from existing Arabic roots. Maghrib Arabic, on the other hand, is very accepting of loanwords.

There may be significant differences in vocabulary among the different varieties of Arabic, as in the example below:

English	Moroccan	Algerian	Tunisian	Saudi Arabian	Syrian	Nigerian
'now'	dba	druk	tawwa	daina	halla?	hatta

Click here to listen to some common words and phrases in Arabic.

Writing

Arabic Script

Qur'an

Arab Script

Writing
The Arabic script is based on the Nabataean alphabet which was used to write the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic. Nabateans added 6 symbols to the Aramaic alphabet to represent sounds that did not occur in Aramaic. The Nabataean alphabet contained only symbols for consonants. The Arabs added dots above and below the consonant to represent vowels.

The earliest Arabic inscription dates to 512 AD. Since then, the script has undergone several modifications. Its present form ( Naskh) first appeared in the 11th century AD, and has been used ever since, especially for print.

Several other unrelated languages use the Arabic script including Persian, Pashto, and Urdu who use an adapted version of the Arabic script, called Perso-Arabic. Turkish, Swahili, Hausa, and Uzbek are among languages that used the Arabic script, before they adopted the Latin or Cyrillic script.

The Arabic alphabet is a fairly accurate representation of the sound system of the language. It contains 28 symbols with additional letters for loanwords that contain sounds which do not occur in Arabic, e.g., /p/ and /g/. The basic features of the Arabic script are summarized below.

The Arabic script is consonant-based.
Words are written in horizontal lines from right to left.
Most letters change their shape depending on their position in a word.
The shape of some letters allows them to be joined, while the shape of others does not. Letters that can be joined are always joined in both hand-written and printed Arabic.
All but six letters can be attached to the preceding ones.
There are no capital letters.
The letters are simplified in handwritten form.
Vowel diacritics representing short vowels are only used in the Qur'an, religious texts, classical poetry, children's books, and textbooks for learners of Arabic.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Arabic.

Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Click here to learn about Arabic calligraphy.
Click here to see an animated Arabic alphabet.

artichoke

coffee

Alfalfa

Mummy

Sugar

Arabic words in English
There are many words of Arabic origin in English, spread over a variety of fields. Chaucer was the first to use loanwords from Arabic in his works. Most of them have entered English through other languages, notably French and Spanish. Below is a small sampling of Arabic loanwords.

English word	from Arabic
adobe	al-tob, 'the brick'
albacore	al bakara, 'the young camels'
alcove	al-qobbah, 'the vaulted chamber'
alfalfa	al-fisfisa, 'the fresh fodder'
algebra	al jebr, 'reunion of broken parts' (as in computation)
arsenal	dar as-sina'ah, 'house of manufacture, workshop'
artichoke	al-kharshof, 'the artichoke'
ayatollah	ayatu-llah, 'miraculous sign of God'
carob	kharrub, 'locust bean pod'
coffee	qahwah, 'coffee'
cipher	sifr, 'zero, empty, nothing
cotton	qutn, 'cotton
emir	amir, 'commander'
fedayeen	plural of fedai, 'devotee, zealot, one who risks life for a cause'
ghoul	ghul, 'evil spirit that robs graves and feeds on corpses'
harem	haram, 'women's quarters'
hashish	hashish, 'powdered hemp,' literally 'dry herb'
imam	imam, 'leader, one who precedes'
Islam	islam, 'submission' (to the will of God)
jihad	jahada, 'he waged war'
kismet	qismah, qismat, 'portion, lot, fate'
Koran (Qur'an)	qur'a, 'a reading, recitation, book'
lime	limah, 'citrus fruit'
mask	maskhara, 'buffoon'
mosque	masjid 'temple, place of worship'
mullah	mawla 'master'
mummy	mumiyah 'embalmed body'
Muslim	muslim, one who submits' (to the faith)
safari	safar, journey'
Sahara	çahra, 'desert'
sheikh	shaykh, 'chief,' literally, 'old man'
Shiite	shi'ah, ' followers,' members of the Shia sect of Islam who recognize Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, as the lawful successor of the Prophet
sofa	suffah, 'bench'
sugar	sukkar
Sunni	sunna "traditional teachings of Muhammad," Muslims who accept the orthodox tradition as well as the Qu'ran
tariff	taarif, 'inventory of fees to be paid'

Arabic numerals?
The so-called "Arabic numerals" were not invented by the Arabs, as is popularly believed. They were actually developed in India circa 400 BC. The numerals eventually found their way into Persia where they were picked up by Arab traders who referred to them as "Indian numerals," (arqam hindiyyah). The Arabic numeral system uses several different sets of symbols that can be divided into two main groups. West Arabic (European) numerals were developed in the Maghreb. East Arabic (Arabic-Indic) numerals were developed in what is now Iraq. The two set of symbols are shown below.

Arabic numbers

Resources

Click here to find out where Arabic is taught in the United States.
Click here to find materials for studying Arabic.

UCLA Language Materials Database lists materials forthe following varieties of Arabic:

Algerian	Lebanese	Saudi
Chadian	Libyan	Sudanese
Egyptian	Mauritanian	Syrian
Iraqi	Modern Standard	Tunisian
Jordanian	Moroccan	Yemeni
Kuwaiti	Palestinian

Online resources for the study of Arabic language and culture
Handbook for students of Arabic
Yamada Language Center Arabic guide
Wikipedia article on Arabic
UCLA language profile for Arabic
Ethnologue report on Arabic
Omniglot guide to Arabic alphabet
Languages-on-the-Web: Arabic lin ks
Marhaba: Welcome to Arabic
Arabic language and culture resources
Multimedia Materials

Click on the variety of Arabic to learn more about it on this website

Modern Standard Arabic
Eastern Arabic
Western Arabic
Egyptian Arabic
Gulf Arabic (coming soon)