Arabic ( , ( ) or ) is a
Central Semitic language, thus
related to and classified alongside other
Semitic languages such as
Hebrew and the
Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of
speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language
family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a
first language, most of whom live in the
Middle East and
North Africa, and by 250 million more as a
second language. Arabic has many
different, geographically-distributed spoken
varieties, some of which are
mutually unintelligible.
Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools,
universities, and used in workplaces, government and the
media.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)
derives from
Classical Arabic, the
only surviving member of the
Old North
Arabian dialect group, attested in
Pre-Islamic Arabic
inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Classical Arabic
has also been a
literary language
and the
liturgical language of
Islam since its inception in the 7th
century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the
Islamic world. During the
Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of
culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and
philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed
many words from it.
Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean
languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and
Sicilian, due to both the
proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab
rule in the Iberian
peninsula
(see
Al-Andalus
).
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including
Hebrew,
Persian and
Syriac in
early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern
times.
Classical, Modern Standard, and colloquial Arabic
Arabic usually designates one of three main variants:
Classical Arabic;
Modern Standard Arabic;
colloquial or dialectal
Arabic.
Classical Arabic is the language
found in the
Qur'an and used from the period
of
Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of
the
Abbasid Caliphate. Classical
Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow
the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical
grammarians (such as
Sibawayh), and use the
vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the
Lisān al-Arab).
Based on Classical Arabic,
Modern
Standard Arabic (فصحى
fuṣḥā) is the
literary language used in most current,
printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across
North Africa and the
Middle East, and understood by most educated
Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less
strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic
and/or Classical Arabic.
Colloquial or
dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or
regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language.
Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these
sometimes differ enough to be
mutually unintelligible and some
linguists consider them distinct languages. The varieties are
typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media,
such as
soap operas and
talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain
forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising.
The only
variety of modern Arabic, through its descent from Siculo-Arabic, to have acquired official
language status is Maltese, spoken
in (predominately Roman Catholic)
Malta
and written with the Latin alphabet.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a
prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of
diglossia, which is 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 Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of
different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan
speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers
code-switch back and forth between the
dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even
within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their
familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve.
Many modern terms have entered into common usage; in some cases
taken from other languages (for example, فيلم
film) or
coined from existing lexical resources (for example, هاتف
hātif "telephone" "caller"). Structural influence from
foreign languages or from the colloquial varieties has also
affected Modern Standard Arabic. For example, texts in Modern
Standard Arabic sometimes use the format "A, B, C, and D" when
listing things, whereas Classical Arabic prefers "A and B and C and
D", and subject-initial sentences may be more common in Modern
Standard Arabic than in Classical Arabic. For these reasons, Modern
Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab
sources.
Influence of Arabic on other languages
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic
countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages
such as
Bengali,
Berber,
Cypriot
Greek,
Gujarati,
Hindustani (especially the spoken
variety),
Indonesian,
Kurdish,
Malay,
Marathi,
Pashto,
Persian,
Portuguese,
Punjabi,
Rohingya,
Sindhi,
Spanish,
Swahili,
Tagalog,
Turkish and
Urdu as
well as other languages in countries where these languages are
spoken. For example, the Arabic word for
book (/kitāb/)
has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception
of Spanish and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro"
and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In
addition,
English has quite a few
Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of
other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as
Maltese and
Kinubi
derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or
grammar rules.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber
"prayer"
salat), academic terms (like
Uyghur mentiq "logic"), economic
items (like English
sugar) to
placeholders (like Spanish
fulano
"so-and-so") and everyday conjunctions (like Hindustani
lekin "but", or Spanish
hasta "until"). Most
Berber varieties (such as
Kabyle),
along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most Islamic
religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as
salat 'prayer' and
imam 'prayer leader.' In
languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic
loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages
rather than being transferred directly from Arabic. For example,
most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani entered through Persian, and
many older Arabic loanwords in
Hausa
were borrowed from
Kanuri.Some words
in
English and other European
languages are derived from Arabic, often through other European
languages, especially
Spanish and
Italian. Among them are
commonly-used words like "
sugar"
(
sukkar), "
cotton" ( ) and
"magazine" (
). English words more
recognizably of Arabic origin include "
algebra", "
alcohol",
"
alchemy", "
alkali",
"
zenith" and "
nadir".
Some words in common use, such as "intention" and "information",
were originally
calques of Arabic
philosophical terms.
Arabic words also made their way into several West African
languages as Islam spread across the Sahara. Variants of Arabic
words such as
kitaab (book) have spread to the languages
of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab
traders.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most
important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are
Aramaic, which used to be the
principal, international language of communication throughout the
ancient Near and Middle East,
Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew
(mainly religious concepts).
As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe)
throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the
field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by
non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian
translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish
and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until
the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited
lands were under Ottoman rule.
Arabic and Islam
Arabic is the language of the
Qur'an. Arabic
is often associated with
Islam, but it is also
spoken by
Arab Christians,
Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi
Mandaeans.
Most of the world's
Muslims do not speak
Arabic as their native language but many can read the script and
recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic
consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak
to mankind" and is most notably understood by Muslims as being the
lingua franca of the afterlife.
History
The
earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the
Hasaean
inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th
century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its
Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the
epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by
6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from
southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic
texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai
, and not
actually connected with Thamud. Later
come the
Safaitic inscriptions beginning in
the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in
Nabataean inscriptions (which are,
however, written in Aramaic).
From about the 2nd century BC, a few
inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near
Sulayyil
) reveal a
dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but
Pre-Classical Arabic.By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms
of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq
, the
Ghassanids in southern Syria
the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia.
Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of
pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving
pre-Islamic Arabic
inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet.
Dialects and descendants
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken
varieties of Arabic used throughout the
Arab
world, which 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, in part 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
kayən all mean
"there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms
(
yakūn,
fīhi,
kā'in respectively), but
now sound very different.

Different Dialects of Arabic in the
Arab World
The major dialect groups are:
- Egyptian
Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt
. It
is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related
varieties are also spoken in Sudan
.
- Gulf Arabic,
spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian
Gulf and eastern Saudi
Arabia
.
- Iraqi Arabic,
spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq
. With
significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the
south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related
varieties are also spoken in Iran
, Syria
, and
Turkey
.
- North Mesopotamian
Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq,
northern Syria and southern Turkey.
- Levantine
Arabic, includes North
Levantine Arabic, South
Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot
Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon
, Syria
, Jordan
,
Palestine, Israel
, Cyprus
, and
Turkey
. It's
also called Mediterranean Arabic.
- Maghrebi
Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes
Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45
million North Africans in Morocco
, Western Sahara
, Algeria
, Tunisia
, Libya
, Niger
, and western
Egypt
; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near
Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence
in these dialects varies in degree.
Other varieties include:
- Andalusi
Arabic, spoken in Spain
until 15th
century, now extinct.
- Bahrani
Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in
Bahrain
, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to
a lesser extent in Oman
.
- Central
Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan
, Tajikistan
, and Afghanistan
, is highly endangered
- Hassaniya
Arabic, spoken in Mauritania
, some parts of Mali
and
Western
Sahara
- Hejazi Arabic,
spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia

- Judeo-Arabic
dialects
- Maltese,
spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta
, is the only
one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with
independent literary norms. In the course of its history the
language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological
features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue
written in the Latin alphabet.
- Najdi Arabic,
spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia

- Shuwa Arabic,
spoken in Chad
, Cameroon
, Niger
, Nigeria
, and Sudan
- Siculo Arabic,
spoken on Sicily, South Italy
until 14th
century, developed into Maltese
- Sudanese
Arabic, spoken in Sudan

- Yemeni Arabic,
spoken in Yemen
, southern
Saudi
Arabia
, Djibouti
, and Somalia
Sounds
The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of
Modern Standard Arabic. There are
minor variations from country to country. Additionally, these
dialects can vary from region to region within a country.
Vowels
Modern Standard Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms
of , , and . There are also two
diphthongs: and .
Consonants
See
Arabic alphabet for explanations
on the
IPA phonetic
symbols found in this chart.
- is pronounced by some speakers. This is especially
characteristic of the Egyptian, Omani and some Yemeni dialects. In
many parts of North Africa and in the Levant,
it is pronounced .
- is pronounced only in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, ā,
u or ū (after i or ī it is
unvelarized: bismi l-lāh ).
- In many varieties, are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many
earlier works).
- and are often post-velar though velar and uvular pronunciations
are also possible.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" exhibit
simultaneous
pharyngealization as
well as varying degrees of
velarization
. This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue
Root" by phonologists. In some transcription systems, emphasis is
shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written ‹D›; in
others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example,
.
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 indicates doubled consonants.
In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long
as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically
contrastive:
qabala "he accepted" vs.
qabbala "he
kissed."
Syllable structure
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV) -
and closed syllables (CVC). Every syllable begins with a consonant.
Syllables cannot begin with a vowel. Arabic phonology recognizes
the glottal stop as an independent consonant, so in cases where a
word begins with a vowel sound, as the definite article "al", for
example, the word is recognized in Arabic as beginning with the
consonant (glottal stop). When a word ends in a vowel and the
following word begins with a glottal stop, then the glottal stop
and the initial vowel of the word are in some cases elided, and the
following consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding
word, for example,
baytu al-mudi:r "house (of) the
director," which becomes .
Stress
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard
Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length. The
basic rules are:
- Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
- Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable
(containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is
stressed.
- If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is
stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable
is stressed.
- In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed.
(This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where
original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final
long vowels have arisen.)
For example:
ki-TAA-bun "book",
KAA-ti-bun
"writer",
MAK-ta-bun "desk",
ma-KAA-ti-bu
"desks",
mak-TA-ba-tun "library",
KA-ta-buu
(Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" =
KA-ta-bu
(dialect),
ka-ta-BUU-hu (Modern Standard Arabic) "they
wrote it" =
ka-ta-BUU (dialect),
ka-TA-ba-taa
(Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote",
ka-TAB-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" =
ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two
consonants:
ma-JAL-la "magazine",
ma-HALL
"place".
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (
Egyptian Arabic) dialect, for example, a
heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from
the end of a word, hence
mad-RA-sa "school",
qaa-HI-ra "Cairo".
In the Arabic of Sana
, stress is
often retracted: BAY-tayn "two houses",
MAA-sat-hum "their table", ma-KAA-tiib "desks",
ZAA-rat-hiin "sometimes", mad-RA-sat-hum "their
school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels
or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the
final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is
light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be
stressed.)
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
Maghrebi 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
Persian and
Turkish) distinguish between and .
Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some
dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb);
some of these dialects render them as and in "learned" words from
the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the
separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme,
becoming one or the other.
Predictably, dialects without
interdental fricatives use exclusively, while dialects with such
fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard
language, is rendered as (in Egypt & the Levant) or (in North
Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they
render the original velar and uvular stops , (
Proto-Semitic ), and :
- ق retains its original pronunciation in widely
scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the
Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige
dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and
Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic,
Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban
parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian
villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do
Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It
is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic.
Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the
pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational
overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
- ج retains its pronunciation in Iraq and much
of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt
and parts of Yemen, in Morocco and the Levant, and in some words in
much of Gulf Arabic.
- ك usually retains its original pronunciation,
but is palatalized to in many words in Palestine, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula.
Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and
(you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana
Arabic, is
pronounced .
Grammar
Compared with other
Semitic language
systems, Classical Arabic is distinguished by, "its almost (too
perfect) algebraic-looking grammar, i.e. root pattern and
morphology." Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical
cases (
nominative,
accusative, and
genitive [also used when the noun is governed
by a preposition]); three
numbers
(singular, dual and plural); two
genders (masculine and feminine); and three
"states" (indefinite, definite, and
construct). The cases of singular nouns
(other than those that end in long ā) are indicated by
suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for
accusative, /-i/ for genitive). The feminine singular is often
marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause.
Plural is indicated either through endings (the
sound plural) or internal modification (the
broken plural). Definite nouns include
all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns
which are
prefixed by the definite article
/al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long
ā) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/
or /-in/ (which is also referred to as
nunation or
tanwīn).
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or
third), gender, and number. They are
conjugated in two major paradigms
(termed
perfective and
imperfective, or
past and
non-past); two
voices (active and passive); and five
moods in the imperfective (
indicative,
imperative,
subjunctive,
jussive and
energetic). There are also two
participles (active and passive) and a
verbal noun, but no
infinitive. As indicated by the differing terms
for the two tense systems, there is some disagreement over whether
the distinction between the two systems should be most accurately
characterized as
tense,
aspect or a combination of the two. The
perfective aspect is constructed
using fused suffixes that combine person, number and gender in a
single morpheme, while the
imperfective
aspect is constructed using a combination of
prefixes (primarily encoding person) and
suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number). The
moods other than imperative are primarily marked by suffixes (/u/
for indicative, /a/ for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, /an/
for energetic). The imperative has the endings of the jussive but
lacks any prefixes. The passive is marked through internal vowel
changes. Plural forms for the verb are only used when the subject
is not mentioned, or is preceding it, and the feminine singular is
used for all non-human plurals.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked
for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the
plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular
feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for
person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent
pronouns and
enclitics. Enclitic pronouns
are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate
verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The
first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used
for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-ī/ after
consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all
respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically
considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a
verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its
semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly
mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic"
agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine
marking and vice versa.
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only
limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no
longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood
distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new
moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative
vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the
indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive. Modern Standard
Arabic maintains the grammatical distinctions of Literary Arabic
except that the energetic mood is almost never used; in addition,
Modern Standard Arabic sometimes drop the final short vowels that
indicate case and mood.
As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based
on a (usually)
triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but
contains the semantic core. The consonants , for example, indicate
write, indicate
read, indicate
eat, etc.
Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and
with affixes. (Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root
,
do, as a template to discuss word formation.) From any
particular root, up to fifteen different verbs can be formed, each
with its own template; these are referred to by Western scholars as
"form I", "form II", and so on through "form XV". These forms, and
their associated participles and verbal nouns, are the primary
means of forming vocabulary in Arabic. Forms XI to XV are
incidental.
Writing system
The Arabic alphabet derives from the
Aramaic script through
Nabatean, 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 (
zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other
Semitic languages (except for the
Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the
Ge'ez script), is written from right to
left. There are several styles of script, notably
Naskh which is used in print and by
computers, and
Ruq'ah which is commonly used
in
handwriting.
Calligraphy
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 calligraphy has 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. One of the current masters of the genre is
Hassan Massoudy
Transliteration
There are a number of different standards of
Arabic transliteration: methods of
accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the
Latin alphabet. There are multiple
conflicting motivations for transliteration. Scholarly systems are
intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of
Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the
original word in the
Arabic
alphabet. These systems are heavily reliant on
diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound
equivalently written
sh in English. 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.) At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize.
Less scientific systems often use
digraphs (like
sh and
kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice
the definiteness of the scientific systems. Such systems may be
intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor
linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. An
example of such a system is the
Bahá'í orthography. A third
type of transliteration seeks to represent an equivalent of the
Arabic spelling with Latin letters, for use by Arabic speakers when
Arabic writing is not available (for example, when using an ASCII
communication device).An example is the system used by the US
military,
Standard Arabic
Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, which represents
each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to
provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This
system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents
its own ambiguities and disadvantages. 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 systems,
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, sometimes
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.
Numerals
In most of present-day North Africa, the
Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used.
However in Egypt
and
Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( ) are in
use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued
position is placed on the right,
so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts.
Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to
right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion,
with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For
example, 24 is said "four and twenty", and 1975 is said "one
thousand and nine hundred and five and seventy."
Language-standards regulators
Academy of the Arabic
Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies
formed in Arab countries. The most active are in
Damascus and
Cairo. They
review language development, monitor new words and approve
inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries.
They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Studying Arabic
Because the
Quran is written in Arabic and all
Islamic terms are in
Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the
language. Arabic has been taught in many
elementary and
secondary schools, especially Muslim
schools, worldwide. Universities around the world have classes
teaching Arabic as part of their
foreign languages,
Middle Eastern studies,
religious studies courses.
Arabic language schools exist to
assist students in learning Arabic outside of the academic world.
Many Arabic
language schools are
located in the
Arab world and other
Muslim countries. Software and books
with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of
Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or
Arabic language school
classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also
provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the
Internet provide online classes for all
levels as a means of distance education.
Examples
English |
Arabic |
Romanization (ALA-LC) |
IPA |
English |
الإنكليزية
or الإنجليزية
|
|
|
Yes |
نعم |
|
|
No |
لا |
|
|
Hello |
مرحباً |
|
|
Welcome |
أهلاً |
|
|
Goodbye |
مع السلامة |
|
|
Please |
من فضلك |
|
|
Thanks |
شكرًا |
|
|
Excuse me |
عفوًا |
|
|
I'm sorry |
آسف |
|
|
What's your name? |
ما اسمك؟ |
|
|
How much? |
كم؟ |
|
|
I don't understand. |
لا أفهم |
|
|
I don't speak Arabic. |
لا أتكلم العربية |
|
|
I don't know. |
لا أعرف |
|
|
I'm hungry. |
أنا جائع |
|
|
Orange |
برتقالي |
|
|
Black |
أسود |
|
|
One |
واحد |
|
|
Two |
اثنان |
|
|
Three |
ثلاثة |
|
|
Four |
أربعة |
|
|
Five |
خمسة |
|
|
See also
Notes
References
External links