Sound system
MSA has largely preserved the *Proto-Semitic sound system.

Vowels
MSA has three vowels /i/, /u/, /a/ and three long vowels . Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning. There are two diphthongs /ay/ and /aw/.

Consonants
MSA has 28 consonants. Among their distinguishing characteristics are the following:

• There is an opposition between voiceless, voiced, and emphatic stops and fricatives. Emphatic consonants are pronounced with a retracted mid-body of the tongue.
• Many consonants are pronounced in the back of the mouth, i.e., velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal sounds.
• All consonants may be geminated, or doubled.
• Consonant clusters cannot exceed two consonants and cannot occur at the beginning of words.

• , , , = are emphatic consonants pronounced with a retracted mid-body of the tongue. They have no equivalents in English.
• ? = is similar to the sound between the vowels in the English uh-oh.
• - = th as in thin and th as in those respectively
• q, , , , = are all pronounced in the back of the mouth and have no equivalents in English.
• = sh as in shop
• d = j as in jay

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

• 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

• MSA nouns have three cases: nominative, genitive and accusative. Case endings are present only in formal or literary language, and only educated speakers of MSA master their use.
• 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.

Nominative + definite	'al-kitbu	'the book'
Nominative + indefinite	kitbun	'a book'

• MSA nouns have three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. The dual number is used for objects that are normally paired.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.
• Nouns have two genders: masculine and feminine.
• Adjectives, pronouns, and verbs agree with nouns in case, gender and number.

Verb phrase
The Arabic verb system is difficult to describe from the perspective of Indo-European languages. Some of the most salient features of Arabic verbs 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. It must be noted that the problem of tense vs. aspect in Arabic verbs is not fully resolved.

Word order
The normal word order in MSA is Subject-Verb-Object.

kitb, '

ktib

Modern Standard Arabic is the quite conservative tends not to borrow words from other languages. New words are usually created from existing Arabic roots, while loanwords such as radyu 'radio' compete with native words such as midhyaa' 'broadcast.'

Click here to listen to some basic words in Arabic.