Coordinates	53°12′″N19°12′″N
Name	Arabic
Nativename	''''
Pronunciation
Imagecaption	in written Arabic (Naskh script)
Region	Primarily in the Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa;liturgical language of Islam.
Speakers	More than 280 million native speakers
Familycolor	Afro-Asiatic
Fam2	Semitic
Fam3	Central Semitic
Stand1	Modern Standard Arabic
Dia1	Western (Maghrebi)
Dia2	Central (incl. Egyptian)
Dia3	Northern (incl. Levantine, Iraqi)
Dia4	Southern (incl. Gulf, Hejazi, Yemeni)
Script	Arabic alphabet, Syriac alphabet (Garshuni)
Nation	Official language of 26 states, the third most after English and French
Agency	: Supreme Council of the Arabic language in Algeria : Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo : Iraqi Academy of Sciences : Jordan Academy of Arabic : Academy of the Arabic Language in Jamahiriya : Academy of the Arabic Language in Rabat : Academy of the Arabic Language in Mogadishu : Academy of the Arabic Language in Khartoum : Arab Academy of Damascus (the oldest) : Beit Al-Hikma Foundation : Academy of the Arabic Language in Israel
Iso1	ar
Iso2	ara
Lc1	ara |ld1Arabic (generic)''(see varieties of Arabic for the individual codes)''
Ll1	none
Map	Arabic Language.PNG
Mapcaption	Distribution of Arabic as an official language in the Arab World. Majority Arabic speakers (blue) and minority Arabic speakers (green).
Notice	IPA}}

Arabic ( '''' or '''' ) is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book. This includes both the literary language (Modern Standard Arabic or ''Literary Arabic'', used in most written documents as well as in formal spoken occasions, such as lectures and radio broadcasts) and the spoken Arabic varieties, spoken in a wide arc of territory stretching across the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages, and also related to the South Semitic languages (e.g. Amharic in Ethiopia, Tigrinya in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Mehri in Yemen and Oman) and the extinct East Semitic languages (e.g. Akkadian, first attested nearly 5,000 years ago). The written language is distinct from and more conservative than all of the spoken varieties, and the two exist in a state known as diglossia, used side-by-side for different societal functions.

Many of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, and the varieties as a whole constitute a macrolanguage. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political and/or ethnic reasons. If considered multiple languages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, it counts more than 200 million first language speakers (according to some estimates, as high as 280 million), more than that of any other Semitic language. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would likely be Egyptian Arabic, with more than 50,000,000 native speakers — still greater than any other Semitic language.

The modern written language (Modern Standard Arabic) is derived from the language of the Quran (known as Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic). It is widely taught in schools, universities, and used to varying degrees in workplaces, government and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as ''Literary Arabic'', which is the official language of 26 states and the liturgical language of Islam. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the grammatical standards of Quranic Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpoint in the spoken varieties, and adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, especially in modern times.

Arabic is the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad script, and is written from right-to-left.

Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world, like Malay, Turkish, Urdu, Hausa, Hindi and Persian. During the Middle Ages, Literary 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, owing to both the proximity of European and Arab civilizations and 700 years of Arab rule in some parts of the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).

Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Greek, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, Turkish in medieval times and contemporary European languages in modern times. However, the current tendency is to coin new words using the existing lexical resources of the language, or to repurpose old words, rather than directly borrowing foreign words.

Classical, Modern Standard, and spoken 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. Theoretically, Classical Arabic is considered normative, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the ). In practice, however, modern authors almost never write in pure Classical Arabic, instead using a literary language with its own grammatical norms and vocabulary, commonly known as Modern Standard Arabic. This is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of 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 or Classical Arabic.

Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows:

Certain grammatical constructions of CA that have no counterpoint in any modern dialect (e.g. the energetic mood) are almost never used in MSA.

No modern spoken variety of Arabic has case distinctions. As a result, MSA is generally composed without case distinctions in mind, and the proper cases added after the fact, when necessary. (Because most case endings are noted using final short vowels, which are normally left unwritten in the Arabic script, it is unnecessary to determine the proper case of most words.) The practical result of this is that MSA is written in a strongly determined word order, and alternative orders that were used in CA for emphasis are rare. In addition, because of the lack of case marking in the spoken varieties, most speakers are not able to consistently use the correct endings in extemporaneous speech. As a result, spoken MSA tends to drop or regularize the endings except when reading from a prepared text.

In CA, the verb normally precedes the subject (VSO order); when the subject is fronted (SVO order), it is usually accompanied by the focusing particle ''''. MSA, following the spoken varieties, tends towards SVO order, and rarely uses ''''.

The numeral system in CA is extremely complex (rivaling that of the Russian language) and heavily tied in with the case system. This system is never used in MSA, even in the most formal of circumstances; instead, a significantly simplified system is used, approximating the system of the conservative spoken varieties.

MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g. '''' "to go") that is not present in the spoken varieties. However, when multiple Classical synonyms are available, MSA tends to prefer words with cognates in the spoken varieties over words without cognates. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined a large number of terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times (and in fact continues to evolve). Some words have been borrowed from other languages, notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling not real pronunciation (e.g. '''' "film" or '''' "democracy"). However, the current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g. '''' "branch", also used for the branch of a company or organization; '''' "wing", also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.) or to coin new words using existing lexical resources (e.g. '''' "corporation", '''' "socialism", both ultimately based on the verb '''' "to share, partner with"; '''' "university", based on '''' "to gather, unite"; '''' "republic", based on '''' "multitude"). An earlier tendency was to re-purpose older words that had fallen into disuse (e.g. '''' "telephone" < "invisible caller (in Sufism)"; '''' "newspaper" < "palm-leaf stalk").

''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 to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic. Historically, Algerian Arabic was taught in French Algeria under the name ''darija''.

Note that even during Muhammad's lifetime, there were dialects of spoken Arabic. Muhammad spoke in the dialect of Mecca, in the western Arabian peninsula, and it was in this dialect that the Quran was written down. However, the dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula were considered the most prestigious at the time, and so the language of the Quran was ultimately converted to follow the eastern phonology. It is this phonology that underlies the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. The phonological differences between these two dialects account for some of the complexities of Arabic writing, most notably the writing of the glottal stop or ''hamza'' (which was preserved in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech) and the use of '''' (representing a sound preserved in the western dialects but merged with '''' in eastern speech).

Language and dialect

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.

The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, similar to the issue with Chinese, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, etc. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a significant complicating factor: A single written form, significantly different from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites a number of sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language, despite significant issues of mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions.

From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages. This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages. Also, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to all non-Moroccans other than Algerians and Tunisians, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers. However, there is some mutual comprehensibility between conservative varieties of Arabic even across significant geographical distances. This suggests that the spoken varieties, at least, should linguistically be considered separate languages.

On the other hand, a significant difference between Arabic and the Romance languages is that the latter also correspond to a number of different standard written varieties, each of which separately informs the related spoken varieties, while all spoken Arabic varieties share a single written language. Indeed, a similar situation exists with the Romance languages in the case of Italian. As spoken varieties, Milanese, Neapolitan and Sicilian (among others) are different enough to be largely mutually incomprehensible, yet since they share a single written form (Standard Italian), they are often said by Italians to be dialects of the same language. As in many similar cases, the extent to which the Italian varieties are locally considered dialects or separate languages depends to a large extent on political factors, which can change over time. Linguists are divided over whether and to what extent to incorporate such considerations when judging issues of language and dialect.

Influence of Arabic on other languages

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is an important source of vocabulary for languages such as Baluchi, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, English, French, German, Gujarati, Hindustani, Italian, Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Malayali, Maltese, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sindhi, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for ''book'' ( '''') has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "livre", "libro", "llibre" and "livro", respectively, German and English which use the Germanic "Buch" and "Book", Tagalog which uses "aklat", Hebrew which uses "sefer", Gujarati which uses "chopdi", Marathi which uses "pustak" and Bengali which uses "boi".

In addition, English has many Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Examples of such words include admiral, adobe, alchemy, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, alkaline, almanac, amber, arsenal, assassin, banana, candy, carat, cipher, coffee, cotton, hazard, jar, jasmine, lemon, loofah, magazine, mattress, sherbet, sofa, sugar, sumac, tariff and many other words. 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 from the related (Semitic) languages 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). In addition, a substantial number of cultural, religious and political terms that have entered Arabic was borrowed from Iranian, notably Middle Persian or Parthian, and to a lesser extent, (Classical) Persian.

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, notably in 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

Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is closely associated with the religion of Islam because the Quran is written in the language, but it is nevertheless 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 Quranic script and recite the Qur'an. Among Non-Arab Muslims, translations of the Qur'an are most often accompanied by the original text.

Some Muslims present a monogenesis of languages and claim that the Arabic language was the language revealed by God for the benefit of mankind and the original language as a prototype symbolic system of communication, based upon its system of triconsonantal roots, spoken by man from which all other languages were derived, having first been corrupted. Statements spread in later centuries regarding the Arabic language being the language of Paradise are not considered authentic according to the scholars of Hadith and are widely discredited.

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-Fāw (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 script.

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 varieties within and outside of the Arabian peninsula, followed by that between sedentary varieties and the much more conservative Bedouin varieties. All of the varieties outside of the Arabian peninsula (which include the large majority of speakers) have a large number of features in common with each other that are not found in Classical Arabic. This has led researchers to postulate the existence of a prestige koine dialect in the one or two centuries immediately following the Arab conquest, whose features eventually spread to all of the newly conquered areas. (These features are present to varying degrees inside the Arabian peninsula. Generally, the Arabian peninsula varieties have much more diversity than the non-peninsula varieties, but have been understudied.)

Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian North African dialects (especially Moroccan Arabic) and the others. Moroccan Arabic in particular is nearly incomprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Algeria (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of 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.

Examples

{| class=wikitable ! Variety ! I love reading a lot ! When I went to the library ! I only found this old book ! I wanted to read a book about the history of women in France. |- ! Classical Arabic (liturgical or poetic only) | '''' | '''' | '''' | '''' |- ! Modern Standard Arabic | '''' | '''' | '''' | '''' |- ! Moroccan | | | | |- ! Tunisian | | | | |- ! Egyptian | | | | |- ! Lebanese | | | | |- ! Iraqi | | | | |- ! Saudi | | | | |- ! Kuwaiti | | | | |}

Koine

According to Charles Ferguson, the following are some of the characteristic features of the koine that underlies all of the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula. Although many other features are common to most or all of these varieties (see varieties of Arabic), Ferguson believes that these features in particular are unlikely to have evolved independently more than once or twice, and together suggest the existence of the koine:

Loss of the dual (grammatical number) except on nouns, with consistent plural agreement (cf. feminine singular agreement in plural inanimates).

Change of ''a'' to ''i'' in many affixes (e.g. non-past-tense prefixes ''ti- yi- ni-''; ''wi-'' "and"; ''il-'' "the"; feminine ''-it'' in the construct state).

Loss of third-weak verbs ending in ''w'' (which merge with verbs ending in ''y'').

Reformation of geminate verbs, e.g. ''ḥalaltu'' "I untied" → ''ḥalēt(u)''.

Conversion of separate words ''lī'' "to me", ''laka'' "to you", etc. into indirect-object clitic suffixes.

Certain changes in the cardinal number system, e.g. ''ḫamsat ʾayyām'' →''ḫams tiyyām'', where certain words have a special plural with prefixed ''t''. Also, unexpected emphatic ''ṭ'' in the numbers 13-19 (e.g. ''ḫamṣṭaʿšar'' "fifteen" < ''ḫamsat ʿašar'').

Loss of the feminine elative (comparative).

Adjective plurals of the form ''kibār'' "big" → ''kubār''.

Change of nisba suffix ''-iyy'' → ''i''.

Certain lexical items, e.g. ''ǧāb'' "bring" < ''ǧāʾ bi-'' "come with"; ''šāf'' "see"; ''ʾēš'' "what" (or similar); ''illi'' "(relative pronoun)".

Merger of and .

Dialect groups

The major dialect groups are:

Egyptian Arabic

Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 80 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic, due in large part to the widespread distribution of Egyptian films and television shows throughout the Arabic speaking world. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.

Maghrebi Arabic

Maghrebi Arabic includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 75 million North Africans in Morocco, ''Western Sahara'', Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is often difficult for speakers of Middle Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree.

Mesopotamian Arabic

Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq, eastern Syria and western Iran (Khuzestan).

North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria, northwestern Iran and southern Turkey.

Levantine Arabic

Levantine Arabic includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic. It is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey.

Gulf Arabic

Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 4 million people predominantly in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain. Also spoken in Iran's Bushehr and Hormozgan provinces.

Other

Other varieties include:

Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia.

Sudanese Arabic (19 million speakers), spoken in Sudan

Najdi Arabic (9.9 million speakers), spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia

Hejazi Arabic (7 million speakers), spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia.

Hassaniya Arabic (2.8 million speakers), spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and ''Western Sahara''

Bahrani Arabic (310,000 speakers), spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.

Judeo-Arabic dialects

Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered

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 script.

Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.

Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese language.

The Muslim Hui people in China had knowledge of archaic forms of Arabic. The Hui of Yunnan (Burmaese called them Panthays) were reported to be fluent in Arabic. During the Panthay Rebellion, Arabic replaced Chinese as official language of the rebel kingdom. In 1844 "The Chinese repository, Volume 13" was published, including an account of an Englishman who stayed in Ningbo in China. There he visited the local mosque, the Hui running the mosque was from Shandong, and he was a descendant of Muslims from the city of Medina. He spoke both Arabic and Chinese, and could read Arabic as well. In Tianjin, Hui could speak an old, archaic form of Arabic, when they met Arab Muslims in recent times, it was found out that Old Arabic and Modern Arabic were very different, so Modern Arabic is now being taught to Hui.

Sounds

It is important to distinguish between the pronunciation of the "formal" Literary Arabic (usually specifically Modern Standard Arabic) and the "colloquial" spoken varieties of Arabic. The two types of Arabic, but significantly different. The "colloquial" varieties are learned at home and constitute the native languages of Arabic speakers. The literary variety is learned at school; although many speakers have a native-like command of the language, it is technically not the native language of any speakers. Both varieties can be both written and spoken, although the colloquial varieties are rarely written down, and the formal variety is spoken mostly in formal circumstances, e.g. in radio broadcasts, formal lectures, parliamentary discussions, and to some extent between speakers of different colloquial varieties. Even when the literary language is spoken, however, it is normal only spoken in its pure form when reading a prepared text out loud. When speaking extemporaneously (i.e. making up the language on the spot, as in a normal discussion among people), speakers tend to deviate somewhat from the strict literary language in the direction of the colloquial varieties. In fact, there is a continuous range of "in-between" spoken varieties: from nearly pure Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), to a form that still uses MSA grammar and vocabulary but with significant colloquial influence, to a form of the colloquial language that imports a number of words and grammatical constructions in MSA, to a form that is close to pure colloquial but with the "rough edges" (the most noticeably "vulgar" or non-Classical aspects) smoothed out, to pure colloquial. The particular variant (or ''register'') used depends on the social class and education level of the speakers involved, and the level of formality of the speech situation. Often it will vary within a single encounter, e.g. moving from nearly pure MSA to a more mixed language in the process of a radio interview, as the interviewee becomes more comfortable with the interviewer. This type of variation is characteristic of the diglossia that exists throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

Literary Arabic

Although Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a unitary language, its pronunciation varies somewhat from country to country and from region to region within a country. The variation in individual "accents" of MSA speakers tend to mirror corresponding variations in the colloquial speech of the speakers in question, but with the distinguishing characteristics moderated somewhat. Note that it is important in descriptions of "Arabic" phonology to distinguish between pronunciation of a given colloquial (spoken) dialect and the pronunciation of MSA by these same speakers. Although they are related, they are not the same. For example, the phoneme that derives from Proto-Semitic /g/ has many different pronunciations in the modern spoken varieties, e.g. . Speakers whose native variety has either or will use the same pronunciation when speaking MSA, even speakers from Cairo, whose native Egyptian Arabic has , normally use when speaking MSA. of Persian Gulf is the only pronunciation which isn't pronounced in MSA, but instead .

Another example: Many colloquial varieties are known for a type of vowel harmony in which the presence of an "emphatic consonant" triggers backed allophones of nearby vowels (especially of the low vowels , which are backed to in these circumstances, and very often fronted to in all other circumstances). In many spoken varieties, the backed or "emphatic" vowel allophones spread a fair distance in both directions from the triggering consonant; in some varieties (most notably Egyptian Arabic), the "emphatic" allophones spread throughout the entire word, usually including prefixes and suffixes, even at a remove of several syllables from the triggering consonant. Speakers of colloquial varieties with this vowel harmony tend to introduce it into their MSA pronunciation as well, but usually with a lesser degree of spreading than in the colloquial varieties. (For example, speakers of colloquial varieties with extremely long-distance harmony may allow a moderate, but not extreme, amount of spreading of the harmonic allophones in their MSA speech, while speakers of colloquial varieties with moderate-distance harmony may only harmonize immediately adjacent vowels in MSA.)

Vowels

Modern Standard Arabic has six pure vowels, with short and corresponding long vowels . There are also two diphthongs: and .

As mentioned above, the pronunciation of the vowels differs from speaker to speaker, in way that tend to echo the pronunciation of the corresponding colloquial variety. Nonetheless, there are some common trends. Most noticeable is the differing pronunciation of and , which tend towards fronted , or in most situations, but a back in the neighborhood of emphatic consonants. (Some accents and dialects, such as those of Hijaz, have central in all situations.) The vowels and are often affected somewhat in emphatic neighborhoods as well, with generally more back and/or centralized allophones, but the differences are less great than for the low vowels. The pronunciation of short and tends towards and in many dialects.

The definition of both "emphatic" and "neighborhood" vary in ways that echo (to some extent) corresponding variations in the spoken dialects. Generally, the consonants triggering "emphatic" allophones are the pharyngealized consonants ; ; and , if not followed immediately by . Frequently, the fricatives also trigger emphatic allophones; occasionally also the pharyngeal consonants (the former more than the latter). Many dialects have multiple emphatic allophones of each vowel, depending on the particular nearby consonants. In most MSA accents, emphatic coloring of vowels is limited to vowels immediately adjacent to a triggering consonant, although in some it spreads a bit farther: e.g. '''' "time"; '''' "homeland"; '''' "downtown" (sometimes or similar).

In a non-emphatic environment, the vowel /a/ in the diphthong tends to be fronted even more than elsewhere, often pronounced or : hence '''' "sword" but '''' "summer"). However, in accents with no emphatic allophones of /a/ (e.g. in the Hijaz), the pronunciation occurs in all situations.

Consonants

+ Standardized Arabic consonant phonemes

! rowspan="2"

! colspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! plain

emphatic">Dental consonant

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! plain

emphatic

emphatic consonant>emphatic

! plain

! colspan=2

! rowspan=2

! voiceless

voice (phonetics)>voiced

3

! rowspan=2

! voiceless

4

voice (phonetics)>voiced

! colspan=2

2

! colspan=2

NOTE: The underlined variants in the above table indicate the pronunciations considered "standard" according to descriptions in linguistic sources; the same pronunciations are normally taught to foreigners learning Literary Arabic. (The sources disagree about whether the sounds indicated above as ~ and ~ are more standardly or , or are unclear.)

See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.

# This phoneme is represented by the Arabic letter '''' () and has many standard pronunciations. is characteristic of Iraq and most of the Arabian peninsula; occurs in the Levant and North Africa; and is used in Egypt and some regions in Yemen and Oman. Generally this corresponds with the pronunciation in the colloquial dialects. In some regions in Sudan and Yemen, as well as in some Sudanese and Yemeni dialects, it may be either or , representing the original pronunciation of Classical Arabic. Foreign words containing may be transcribed with , , , , , or , mainly depending on the regional spoken variety of Arabic. Note also that in northern Egypt, where the Arabic letter '''' () is normally pronounced , a separate phoneme occurs in a small number of European loanwords, e.g. "jacket". # is pronounced 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'' ). Some speakers velarize other occurrences of /l/ in MSA, in imitation of their spoken dialects. # The emphatic consonant was actually pronounced , or possibly — either way, a highly unusual sound. The medieval Arabs actually termed their language '''' "the language of the Ḍād" (the name of the letter used for this sound), since they thought the sound was unique to their language. (In fact, it also exists in a few other minority Semitic languages, e.g. Mehri.) # 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. # () can be pronounced as or even . In some places of Maghreb it can be also pronounced as .

Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" (), which exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization , so they may be written with the "Velarized or pharyngealized" diacritic () as: . 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 '''', which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: '''' "he accepted" vs. '''' "he kissed."

Syllable structure

Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)—and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC). The syllable types with three morae (units of time), i.e. CVC and CVV, are termed ''heavy syllables'', while those with four morae, i.e. CVVC and CVCC, are ''superheavy syllables''. Superheavy syllables in Classical Arabic occur in only two places: at the end of the sentence (due to pausal pronunciation), and in words such as '''' "hot", '''' "stuff, substance", '''' "they disputed with each other", where a long '''' occurs before two identical consonants (a former short vowel between the consonants has been lost). (In less formal pronunciations of Modern Standard Arabic, superheavy syllables are common at the end of words or before clitic suffixes such as '''' "us, our", due to the deletion of final short vowels.)

In surface pronunciation, every vowel must be preceded by a consonant (which may include the glottal stop ). There are no cases of hiatus within a word (where two vowels occur next to each other, without an intervening consonant). Some words do underlyingly begin with a vowel, such as the definite article ''al-'' or words such as '''' "he bought", '''' "meeting". When actually pronounced, one of three things happens: If the word occurs after another word ending in a consonant, there is a smooth transition from final consonant to initial vowel, e.g. '''' "meeting" . If the word occurs after another word ending in a vowel, the initial vowel of the word is elided, e.g. '''' "house of the director" . If the word occurs at the beginning of an utterance, a glottal stop is added onto the beginning, e.g. '''' "The house is ..." .

Stress

Word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic. It bears a strong relationship to vowel length. The basic rules for Modern Standard Arabic are:

A final vowel, long or short, may not be stressed.

Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.

Given this restriction, the last heavy syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.

If there is no such syllable, the first possible syllable (i.e. third from end) is stressed.

As a special exception, in Form VII and VIII verb forms stress may not be on the first syllable, despite the above rules: Hence '''' "he subscribed" (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), '''' "he subscribes" (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), '''' "he should subscribe (juss.)". Likewise Form VIII '''' "he bought", '''' "he buys".

Examples:'''' "book", '''' "writer", '''' "desk", '''' "desks", '''' "library" (but '''' "library" in short pronunciation), '''' (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = '''' (dialect), '''' (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = '''' (dialect), '''' (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", '''' (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = '''' (short form or dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: '''' "magazine", '''' "place".

These rules may result in differently-stressed syllables when final case endings are pronounced, vs. the normal situation where they are not pronounced, as in the above example of '''' "library" in full pronunciation, but '''' "library" in short pronunciation.

The restriction on final long vowels does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen from loss of original final ''-hu/hi''.

Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence '''' "school", '''' "Cairo". This also affects the way that Modern Standard Arabic is pronounced in Egypt. In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: '''' "two houses", '''' "their table", '''' "desks", '''' "sometimes", '''' "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.)

Levels of pronunciation

The final short vowels (e.g. the case endings ''-a -i -u'' and mood endings ''-u -a'') are often not pronounced, despite forming part of the formal paradigm of nouns and verbs. The following levels of pronunciation exist:

Full pronunciation

In full pronunciation, all endings are pronounced as written. This normally is used only in grammatical descriptions of the language.

Full pronunciation with pausa

This is the most formal level actually used in speech. All endings are pronounced as written, except at the end of an utterance, where the following changes occur:

Final short vowels are not pronounced. (But possibly an exception is made for feminine plural ''-na'', and shortened vowels in the jussive/imperative of defective verbs, e.g. ''irmi!'' "throw!".)

The entire indefinite noun endings ''-in -un'' (with nunation) are left off. The ending ''-an'' is left off of nouns preceded by a ''tāʾ marbūṭah'' ة (i.e. the ''-t'' in the ending ''-at-'' that typically marks feminine nouns), but pronounced as ''-ā'' in other nouns (hence its writing in this fashion in the Arabic script).

The ''tāʾ marbūṭah'' itself (typically of feminine nouns) is pronounced as ''h''. (At least, this is the case in extremely formal pronunciation, e.g. some Quranic recitations. In practice, this ''h'' is usually omitted.)

Formal short pronunciation

This is a formal level of pronunciation sometimes seen. It is somewhat like pronouncing all words as if they were in pausal position (with influence from the colloquial varieties). The following changes occur:

Most final short vowels are not pronounced. However, the following short vowels ''are'' pronounced:

*feminine plural ''-na''

*shortened vowels in the jussive/imperative of defective verbs, e.g. ''irmi!'' "throw!"

*second-person singular feminine past-tense ''-ti'', and likewise ''ʾanti'' "you (fem. sg.)"

*sometimes, first-person singular past-tense ''-tu''

*sometimes, second-person masculine past-tense ''-ta'', and likewise ''ʾanta'' "you (masc. sg.)"

*final ''-a'' in certain short words, e.g. ''laysa'' "is not", ''sawfa'' "(future-tense marker)"

The nunation endings ''-an -in -un'' are not pronounced. However, they ''are'' pronounced in adverbial accusative formations, e.g. '''' تقريباً "almost, approximately", '''' عادةً "usually". The ''tāʾ marbūṭah'' ending ة is unpronounced, ''except'' in construct state nouns, where it sounds as ''t'' (and in adverbial accusative constructions, e.g. '''' عادةً "usually", where the entire ''-tan'' is pronounced). The masculine singular nisba ending '''' is actually pronounced '''', and is unstressed (but plural and feminine singular forms, i.e. when followed by a suffix, still sound as ''''). ''Full endings'' (including case endings) occur when a clitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g. '''' "us/our").

Informal short pronunciation

This is the pronunciation used by speakers of Modern Standard Arabic in extemporaneous speech, i.e. when producing new sentences rather than simply reading a prepared text. It is similar to formal short pronunciation except that the rules for dropping final vowels apply ''even'' when a clitic suffix is added. Basically, short-vowel case and mood endings are never pronounced, and certain other changes occur that echo the corresponding colloquial pronunciations. Specifically:

All the rules for formal short pronunciation apply, except as follows.

The past tense singular endings written formally as ''-tu -ta -ti'' are pronounced ''-t -t -ti''. But masculine '''' is pronounced in full. Unlike in formal short pronunciation, the rules for dropping or modifying final endings are also applied when a clitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g. '''' "us/our"). If this produces a sequence of three consonants, then one of the following happens, depending on the speaker's native colloquial variety:

*A short vowel (e.g. ''-i-'' or ''-ǝ-'') is consistently added, either between the second and third or the first and second consonants.

*Or, a short vowel is added only if an otherwise unpronounceable sequence occurs, typically due to a violation of the sonority hierarchy (e.g. ''-rtn-'' is pronounced as a three-consonant cluster, but ''-trn-'' needs to be broken up).

*Or, a short vowel is never added, but consonants like ''r l m n'' occurring between two other consonants will be pronounced as a syllabic consonant (as in the English words "butter bottle bottom button").

*When a doubled consonant occurs before another consonant (or finally), it is often shortened to a single consonant rather than a vowel added. (But note that Moroccan Arabic never shortens doubled consonants or inserts short vowels to break up clusters, instead tolerating arbitrary-length series of arbitrary consonants, and hence Moroccan Arabic speakers are likely to follow the same rules in their pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic.)

The clitic suffixes themselves tend also to be changed, in a way that avoids many possible occurrences of three-consonant clusters. In particular, ''-ka -ki -hu'' generally sound as ''-ak -ik -uh''.

Final long vowels are often shortened, merging with any short vowels that remain.

Depending on the level of formality, the speaker's education level, etc., various grammatical changes may occur in ways that echo the colloquial variants:

Any remaining case endings (e.g. masculine plural nominative ''-ūn'' vs. oblique ''-īn'') will be leveled, with the oblique form used everywhere. (However, in words like '''' "father" and '''' "brother" with special long-vowel case endings in the construct state, the nominative is used everywhere, hence '''' "father of", '''' "brother of".)

*Feminine plural endings in verbs and clitic suffixes will often drop out, with the masculine plural endings used instead. If the speaker's native variety has feminine plural endings, they may be preserved, but will often be modified in the direction of the forms used in the speaker's native variety, e.g. ''-an'' instead of ''-na''.

*Dual endings will often drop out except on nouns, and then used only for emphasis (similar to their use in the colloquial varieties); elsewhere, the plural endings are used (or feminine singular, if appropriate).

Colloquial varieties

: ''The section below only refers to pronunciation''

Vowels

As mentioned above, many spoken dialects have a process of ''emphasis spreading'', where the "emphasis" (pharyngealization) of emphatic consonants spreads forward and back through adjacent syllables, pharyngealizing all nearby consonants and triggering the back allophone in all nearby low vowels. The extent of emphasis spreading varies. For example, in Moroccan Arabic, it spreads as far as the first full vowel (i.e. sound derived from a long vowel or diphthong) on either side; in many Levantine dialects, it spreads indefinitely, but is blocked by any or ; while in Egyptian Arabic, it usually spreads throughout the entire word, including prefixes and suffixes. In Moroccan Arabic, also have emphatic allophones .

Unstressed short vowels, especially , are deleted in many contexts. Many sporadic examples of short vowel change have occurred (especially /a/→/i/, and interchange /i/↔/u/). Most Levantine dialects merge short /i u/ into /ǝ/ in most contexts (all except directly before a single final consonant). In Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, short /u/ triggers labialization of nearby consonants (especially velar consonants and uvular consonants), and then short /a i u/ all merge into /ǝ/, which is deleted in many contexts. (The labialization plus /ǝ/ is sometimes interpreted as an underlying phoneme .) This essentially causes the wholesale loss of the short-long vowel distinction, with the original long vowels remaining as half-long , phonemically , which are used to represent ''both'' short and long vowels in borrowings from Literary Arabic.

Most spoken dialects have monophthongized original to (in all circumstances, including adjacent to emphatic consonants). In Moroccan Arabic, these have subsequently merged into original .

Consonants

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 . The Iraqi Arabic uses also sounds , and uses Persian adding letters, e.g.: '''' – ''a plum''; '' – ''a truffle'' and so on.

Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coalesced into a single phoneme . Many dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb) subsequently lost fricatives, converting into . Most dialects borrow "learned" words from the Standard language using the same pronunciation as for inherited words, but some dialects without interdental fricatives (particularly in Egypt and the Levant) render original in borrowed words as .

Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and : 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. is pronounced as an affricate in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen and Oman, in Morocco, Tunisia and the Levant, and , in most words in much of Gulf Arabic. usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Israel & the Palestinian Territories, 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'a, Omani, and Bahrani is pronounced .

Pharyngealization of the emphatic consonants tends to weaken in many of the spoken varieties, and to spread from emphatic consonants to nearby sounds. In addition, the "emphatic" allophone automatically triggers pharyngealization of adjacent sounds in many dialects. As a result, it may difficult or impossible to determine whether a given coronal consonant is phonemically emphatic or not, especially in dialects with long-distance emphasis spreading. (A notable exception is the sounds vs. in Moroccan Arabic, because the former is pronounced as an affricate but the latter is not.)

Grammar

Literary Arabic

As in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual morphology (i.e. method of constructing words from a basic root). Arabic has a nonconcatenative "root-and-pattern" morphology: A root consists of a set of bare consonants (usually three), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern in order to form words. For example, the word for "I wrote" is constructed by combining the root "write" with the pattern "I X'd" to form '''' "I wrote". Other verbs meaning "I X'd" will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. '''' "I read", '''' "I ate", '''' "I went", although other patterns are possible (e.g. '''' "I drank", '''' "I said", '''' "I spoke", where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix '''' is always used).

From a single root , numerous words can be formed by applying different patterns: '''' "I wrote" '''' "I had (something) written" '''' "I corresponded (with someone)" '''' "I dictated" '''' "I subscribed" '''' "we corresponded with each other" '''' "I write" '''' "I have (something) written" '''' "I correspond (with someone)" '''' "I dictate" '''' "I subscribe" '''' "We correspond each other" '''' "it was written" '''' "it was dictated" '''' "written" '''' "dictated" '''' "book" '''' "books" '''' "writer" '''' "writers" '''' "desk, office" '''' "library"

etc.

Nouns and adjectives

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).

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.

Verbs

Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive.

The past and non-past paradigms are sometimes also termed perfective and imperfective, respectively, indicating the fact that they actually represent a combination of tense and aspect. The moods other than the indicative occur only in the non-past, and the future tense is signaled by prefixing '''' or '''' onto the non-past. The past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g. past '''' vs. non-past ''''), and also use completely different sets of affixes for indicating person, number and gender: In the past, the person, number and gender are fused into a single suffixal morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number) are used. The passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.

The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, '''' "to write". Note that in Modern Standard Arabic, many final short vowels are dropped (indicated in parentheses below), and the energetic mood (in either long or short form, which have the same meaning) is almost never used.

+ Paradigm of a regular Form I Arabic verb, '''' "to write"
			Past	PresentIndicative	FutureIndicative	Subjunctive	! align="center"	! align="center"	! align="center"	! align="center"
Active	Singular
	1st
	2nd	masculine
		feminine
	3rd	masculine
		feminine
	Dual
	2nd	masculine & feminine
	3rd	masculine
		feminine
	Plural
	1st
	2nd	masculine
		feminine
	3rd	masculine
		feminine
Passive	Singular
	1st
	2nd	masculine
		feminine
	etc.
Nominal	Active Participle				Passive Participle			Verbal Noun

Derivation

Unlike in most languages, Arabic has virtually no means of deriving words by adding prefixes or suffixes to words. Instead, they are formed according to a limited (but fairly large) number of templates applied to roots.

For verbs, a given root can construct up to fifteen different verbs, each with one or more characteristic meanings and each with its own templates for the past and non-past stems, active and passive participles, and verbal noun. These are referred to by Western scholars as "Form I", "Form II", and so on through "Form XV" (although Forms XI to XV are rare). These forms encode concepts such as the causative, intensive and reflexive. These forms can be viewed as analogous to verb conjugations in languages such as Spanish in terms of the additional complexity of verb formation that they induce. (Note, however, that their usage in constructing vocabulary is somewhat different, since the same root can be conjugated in multiple forms, with different shades of meaning.)

Examples of the different verbs formed from the root '''' "write" (using '''' "red" for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects): {|class="wikitable" ! Form !! Past !! Meaning !! Non-past !! Meaning |- | I || '''' || "he wrote" || '''' || "he writes" |- | II || '''' || "he made (someone) write" || '''' || "he makes (someone) write" |- | III || '''' || "he corresponded with, wrote to (someone)" || '''' || "he corresponds with, writes to (someone)" |- | IV || '''' || "he dictated" || '''' || "he dictates" |- | V || '''' || ''nonexistent'' || '''' || ''nonexistent'' |- | VI || '''' || "he corresponded (with someone, esp. mutually)" || '''' || "he corresponds (with someone, esp. mutually)" |- | VII || '''' || "he subscribed" || '''' || "he subscribes" |- | VIII || '''' || "he copied" || '''' || "he copies" |- | IX || '''' || "he turned red" || '''' || "he turns red" |- | X || '''' || "he asked (someone) to write" || '''' || "he asks (someone) to write" |- |}

Form II is sometimes used to create transitive denominative verbs (verbs built from nouns); Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.

The associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic. This is similar to the process by which, for example, the English gerund "meeting" (similar to a verbal noun) has turned into a noun referring to a particular type of social, often work-related event where people gather together to have a "discussion" (another lexicalized verbal noun). Another fairly common means of forming nouns is through one of a limited number of patterns that can be applied directly to roots, such as the "nouns of location" in ''ma-'' (e.g. '''' "desk, office" < ''k-t-b'' "write", '''' "kitchen" < ''ṭ-b-x'' "cook").

The only three genuine suffixes are as follows: The feminine suffix ''-ah''; variously derives terms from women from related terms for men, or more generally terms along the same lines as the corresponding masculine, e.g. '''' "library" (also a writing-related place, but different than '''', as above).

The nisba suffix ''-iyy-''. This suffix is extremely productive, and forms adjectives meaning "related to X". It corresponds to English adjectives in ''-ic, -al, -an, -y, -ist'', etc.

The feminine nisba suffix ''-iyyah''. This is formed by adding the feminine suffix ''-ah'' onto nisba adjectives to form abstract nouns. For example, from the basic root '''' "share" can be derived the Form VIII verb '''' "to cooperate, participate", and in turn its verbal noun '''' "cooperation, participation" can be formed. This in turn can be made into a nisba adjective '''' "socialist", from which an abstract noun '''' "socialism" can be derived. Other recent formations are '''' "republic" (lit. "public-ness" < '''' "multitude, general public"), and the Qaddafi-specific variation '''' "people's republic" (lit. "masses-ness" < '''' "the masses", pl. of '''', as above).

Colloquial varieties

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.

The following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.

+Example of a regular Form I verb in Egyptian Arabic, ''kátab/yíktib'' "write"	Tense/Mood		! Past	! Present Subjunctive	! Present Indicative	! Future	! Imperative
Singular
1st		''katáb-t''	''á-ktib''	''bá-ktib''	''ḥá-ktib''
2nd	!masculine	''katáb-t''	''tí-ktib''	''bi-tí-ktib''	''ḥa-tí-ktib''	''í-ktib''
	!feminine	''katáb-ti''	''ti-ktíb-i''	''bi-ti-ktíb-i''	''ḥa-ti-ktíb-i''	''i-ktíb-i''
3rd	!masculine	''kátab''	''yí-ktib''	''bi-yí-ktib''	''ḥa-yí-ktib''
	!feminine	''kátab-it''	''tí-ktib''	''bi-tí-ktib''	''ḥa-tí-ktib''
Plural
1st		''katáb-na''	''ní-ktib''	''bi-ní-ktib''	''ḥá-ní-ktib''
2nd		''katáb-tu''	''ti-ktíb-u''	''bi-ti-ktíb-u''	''ḥa-ti-ktíb-u''	''i-ktíb-u''
3rd		''kátab-u''	''yi-ktíb-u''	''bi-yi-ktíb-u''	''ḥa-yi-ktíb-u''

See varieties of Arabic for more information on grammar differences in the spoken varieties.

Writing system

The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic 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'' had a dot underneath and ''qaf'' a single dot above 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 Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi finally fixed the Arabic script around 786, 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 script, 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.

Romanization

! ISO 233-2

+ Examples of different transliteration/transcription schemes	Letter	! Name	International Phonetic Alphabet>IPA	United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names>UNGEGN	Library of Congress>ALA-LC	! DIN 31635	SAS
BATR	! ArabTeX	Arabic chat alphabet>chat
!					,		'	e	'	2
						aa	aa / A	a	a/e/é
!		,	y		y; e	y; ii	y	y; i/ee; ei/ai
!					ç		c	_t	s/th
!		~~				j	j	^g	j/g/dj
!					H	.h	7
!		~				j	x	K	_h	kh/7'/5
!					đ	z'	_d	z/dh/th
!					x	^s	sh/ch
!					S	.s	s/9
!					D	.d	d/9'
!					T	.t	t/6
!		~			đ̣	Z	.z	z/dh/6'
!					ř	E	`	3
!		~			g	ğ	g	.g	gh/3'

There are a number of different standards for the romanization of Arabic, i.e. methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin script. There are various conflicting motivations involved, which leads to multiple systems. Some are interested in transliteration, i.e. representing the ''spelling'' of Arabic, while others focus on transcription, i.e. representing the ''pronunciation'' of Arabic. (They differ in that, for example, the same letter is used to represent both a consonant, as in "you" or "yet", and a vowel, as in "me" or "eat".) Some systems, e.g. for scholarly use, are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic script. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written ''sh'' in English. Other systems (e.g. the Bahá'í orthography) are intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. These less "scientific" tend to avoid diacritics and use digraphs (like ''sh'' and ''kh''). These are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems, and may lead to ambiguities, e.g. whether to interpret ''sh'' as a single sound, as in ''gash'', or a combination of two sounds, as in ''gashouse''.

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 script only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic script 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". 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", 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" just like in the German language (''vierundzwanzig'') and Classical Hebrew, 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 League. 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 worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around the world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, and 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

or

English	! Arabic	Arabic diacritics>Arabic (vowelled)	Romanization of Arabic>Romanization (DIN 31635)	! IPA
English	or	|	(varies)	(varies)
Yes	|
No	|
Hello	|
Peace(Usually Islamic)	|		}} (varies)	}} (varies)
How are you	|	}}	}}
Welcome	|
Goodbye	|
Please	|
Thanks	|
Excuse me	|
I'm sorry	|
What's your name?	|
How much?	|
I don't understand.	|
I don't speak Arabic.	|
I don't know.	|
I'm hungry.	|
Orange	|
Black	|
One	|
Two	|
Three	|
Four	|
Five	|
Six	|
Seven	|
Eight	|
Nine	|
Ten	|
Eleven	|

See also

Modern Standard Arabic

Arabic diglossia

Varieties of Arabic

Arabic–English Lexicon

Arabic influence on the Spanish language

Arabic literature

Arabist

Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

Glossary of Islam

List of arabophones

List of French words of Arabic origin

List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin

List of replaced loanwords in Turkish

Arabic grammar

(إﻋﺮﺍﺏ)

Macrolanguage

Notes

}} is the Literary Arabic name of the language(s) and is pronounced in Egypt: ; Libya: ; east central Arabia: ; Levant: ; Hijaz: ; Tunisia: ; Morocco: . Other variations in other geographic regions are also possible. }} is the Literary Arabic name as well as the colloquial and is pronounced in Egypt and Libya: ; east central Arabia: ; Lebanon: ; rest of Levant, ; Hijaz: ; Tunisia and Morocco: . Other variations in other geographic regions are also possible. In general, in pronunciation of Literary Arabic the last vowel is long .

References

External links

Documents

* Arabic phrasebook at Wikitravel

* Arabic grammar online

* A Review of Arabic Language Books and Methods

* Learn Arabic Language تعلم اللغة العربية 'biggest Arabic Learning resource"

* Arabic natural language processing publications

* Arabic: a Category III language Languages which are very difficult for native English speakers

* Arabic Vocabulary with pictures

*Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing

*Dr. Shaalan's talk about Rule-based approach in Arabic NLP: Tools, Systems and Resources

* ethnologue.com Encyclopedic reference work cataloging all the world’s 6,909 known living languages including Arabic

Tools

*Lane's Arabic–English Lexicon – An 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary in PDF format.

* Google Ta3reeb – Google Transliteration

* Transliteration Arabic language pronunciation applet

* Realtime Arabic transliteration

* Arabic Keyboard that you can use when your keyboard does not support Arabic. – It can feed the terms to google.

* Find Arabic Text on the internet

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Coordinates	53°12′″N19°12′″N
name	Aziza Jalal
background	solo_singer
birth name	Aziza Mohamed Jalal
born	1958
origin	Meknes, Morocco
genre	Arabic music
occupation	Singer
years active	1975—1985
label	Alam El Phan, Sawt Al Phan
Website	www.azizajalal.vze.com
notable instruments	}}

Aziza Jalal (born 1958) is a Moroccan singer.

Career

Aziza Jalal is a native of Meknes, Morocco. She began singing professionally at the age of 14 on Moroccan TV. Encouraged by her family, she began her career by participating in talent shows. Her first appearance on television was in the show "Mawaheb". Soon after, it was clear that Aziza Jalal had a divine voice and her fame on the Moroccan scene kept ascending and ascending.

Her best known works include "Halakt oyouni hna wa hnak".

Aziza's ambitions extended beyond Morocco. She visited Dubai and Egypt to expand her career. She met a Saudi doctor and unexpectedly left the music scene to turn into a devoted wife and mother. Aziza Jalal has stayed an enigma throughout these years because her aborted gift in the pinnacle of her success was something that her public never forgot.

Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:Arab people Category:Moroccan female singers Category:Moroccan pop singers Category:People from Meknes

ar:عزيزة جلال

Coordinates	53°12′″N19°12′″N
Name	Golda Meir
Order	4th
Office	Prime Minister of Israel
President
Term start	March 17, 1969
Term end	June 3, 1974
Predecessor	Yigal Allon (Acting)
Successor	Yitzhak Rabin
Office2	Minister of Foreign Affairs
Primeminister2
Term start2	June 18, 1956
Term end2	January 12, 1966
Predecessor2	Moshe Sharett
Successor2	Abba Eban
Birthname	Golda Mabovitch
Birth date	May 03, 1898
Birth place	Kiev, Russian Empire
Death date	December 08, 1978
Death place	Jerusalem, Israel
Ethnicity	Jewish
Party	Alignment
Otherparty
Spouse	Morris Meyerson (d. 1951)
Children	2
Alma mater	Milwaukee State Normal School (Now, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Religion	Judaism }}

Golda Meir ( or ;, earlier Golda Meyerson, born Golda Mabovitch (Голда Мабович); May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a teacher, ''kibbutznik'' and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel.

Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel on March 17, 1969, after serving as Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister. Israel's first and the world's third woman to hold such an office, she was described as the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics years before the epithet became associated with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Former prime minister David Ben-Gurion used to call Meir "the best man in the government"; she was often portrayed as the "strong-willed, straight-talking, grey-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people."

In 1974, after the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War, Meir resigned as prime minister. She died in 1978.

Early life

Golda Mabovitch () was born on May 3, 1898 in Kiev, Russian Empire, in present day Ukraine, to Blume Neiditch and Moshe Mabovitch, a carpenter. Meir wrote in her autobiography that her earliest memories were of her father boarding up the front door in response to rumors of an imminent pogrom. She had two sisters, Sheyna and Tzipke, as well as five other siblings who died in childhood. She was especially close to Sheyna. Moshe Mabovitch left to find work in New York City in 1903. In his absence, the rest of the family moved to Pinsk to join her mother's family. In 1905, Moshe moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in search of higher-paying work and found employment in the workshops of the local railroad yard. The following year, he had saved up enough money to bring his family to the United States.

Blume ran a grocery store on Milwaukee's north side, where by age eight Golda had been put in charge of watching the store when her mother went to the market for supplies. Golda attended the Fourth Street Grade School (now Golda Meir School) from 1906 to 1912. A leader early on, she organized a fund raiser to pay for her classmates' textbooks. After forming the American Young Sisters Society, she rented a hall and scheduled a public meeting for the event. She went on to graduate valedictorian of her class, despite not knowing English at the beginning of her schooling.

At 14, she studied at North Division High School and worked part-time. Her mother wanted her to leave school and marry, but she rebelled. She bought a train ticket to Denver, Colorado, and went to live with her married sister, Sheyna Korngold. The Korngolds held intellectual evenings at their home, where Meir was exposed to debates on Zionism, literature, women's suffrage, trade unionism, and more. In her autobiography, she wrote: "To the extent that my own future convictions were shaped and given form... those talk-filled nights in Denver played a considerable role." In Denver, she also met Morris Meyerson, a sign painter, whom she later married on December 24, 1917.

Return to Milwaukee, Zionist activism and teaching

In 1913, she returned to North Division High, graduating in 1915. While there, she became an active member of Young Poale Zion, which later became Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement. She spoke at public meetings, embraced Socialist Zionism and hosted visitors from Palestine.

She attended the teachers college, Milwaukee State Normal School, (now University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee) in 1916, and probably part of 1917. After graduating from Milwaukee State, she taught in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).

In 1917, she took a position at a Yiddish-speaking Folks Schule in Milwaukee. While at the Folks Schule, she came more closely into contact with the ideals of Labor Zionism. In 1913, she began dating Morris Meyerson. She was a committed Labor Zionist and he was a dedicated socialist. Together, they left their jobs to join a kibbutz in Palestine in 1921.

When Golda and Morris married in 1918, settling in Palestine was her precondition for the marriage. Golda had intended to make Aliyah straight away but her plans were disrupted due to all transatlantic passenger services being canceled due to the first world war. Instead she threw her energies into Poale Zion activities. A short time after their wedding, she embarked on a fund raising campaign for Poale Zion that took her across the United States.The couple moved to Palestine in 1921 together with her sister Shayna.

Aliyah

In the British Mandate of Palestine, the couple joined a kibbutz. Their initial application to kibbutz Merhavia in the Jezreel Valley was rejected, but in the end they were accepted. Her duties included picking almonds, planting trees, working in the chicken coops and running the kitchen. Recognizing her leadership abilities, the kibbutz chose her as its representative to the Histadrut, the General Federation of Labour. In 1924, she and her husband left the kibbutz and resided briefly in Tel Aviv before settling in Jerusalem. There they had two children, a son Menachem (born 1924) and a daughter Sarah (born 1926). In 1928, she was elected secretary of ''Moetzet HaPoalot'' (Working Women's Council), which required her to spend two years (1932–34) as an emissary in the United States. The children went with her, but Morris stayed in Jerusalem. Morris and Golda grew apart, but never divorced. Morris died in 1951.

Histadrut activities

In 1934, when Meir returned from the United States, she joined the Executive Committee of the Histadrut and moved up the ranks to become head of its Political Department. This appointment was important training for her future role in Israeli leadership.

In July 1938, Meir was the Jewish observer from Palestine at the Évian Conference, called by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss the question of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Delegates from the 32 invited countries repeatedly expressed their sorrow for the plight of the European Jews, but made excuses as to why their countries could not help by admitting the refugees. The only exception was the Dominican Republic, which pledged to accept 100,000 refugees on generous terms. Meir was disappointed at the outcome and remarked to the press, "There is only one thing I hope to see before I die and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore."

Pre-state political role

In June 1946, the British cracked down on the Zionist movement in Palestine, arresting many leaders of the Yishuv. They had been provoked by paramilitary Zionist activities. Meir took over as acting head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency during the incarceration of Moshe Sharett. Thus she became the principal negotiator between the Jews in Palestine and the British Mandatory authorities. After his release, Sharett went to the United States to attend talks on the UN Partition Plan, leaving Meir to head the Political Department until the establishment of the state in 1948.

In January 1948, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency was convinced that Israel would not be able to raise more than $7–8 million from the American Jewish community. Meir traveled to the United States and managed to raise $50 million, which was used to purchase arms in Europe for the nascent state. Ben-Gurion wrote that Meir's role as the "Jewish woman who got the money which made the state possible" would go down one day in the history books.

On May 10, 1948, four days before the official establishment of the state, Meir traveled to Amman disguised as an Arab woman for a secret meeting with King Abdullah of Transjordan at which she urged him not to join the other Arab countries in attacking the Jews. Abdullah asked her not to hurry to proclaim a state. Meir replied: "We've been waiting for 2,000 years. Is that hurrying?"

As head of the Jewish Agency Political Department, Meir called the mass exodus of Arabs before the War of Independence in 1948 as "dreadful" and likened it to what had befallen the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Ministerial career

Meir was one of 24 signatories (2of them women) of the Israeli declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. She later recalled, "After I signed, I cried. When I studied American history as a schoolgirl and I read about those who signed the Declaration of Independence, I couldn't imagine these were real people doing something real. And there I was sitting down and signing a declaration of establishment." Israel was attacked the next day by the joint armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Iraq in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Ambassador to Moscow

Carrying the first Israeli-issued passport, Meir was appointed Israel's ambassador to the Soviet Union. During her brief stint there, which ended in 1949, she attended high holiday services at the synagogue in Moscow, where she was mobbed by thousands of Russian Jews chanting her name. The Israeli 10,000 shekel banknote issued in November 1984 bore a portrait of Meir on one side and the image of the crowd that turned out to cheer her in Moscow on the other.

Labour minister

In 1949, Meir was elected to the Knesset as a member of Mapai and served continuously until 1974. From 1949 to 1956, she served as Minister of Labour, introducing major housing and road construction projects. In 1955, on Ben Gurion's instructions, she stood for the position of mayor of Tel Aviv. She lost by the two votes of the religious bloc who withheld their support on the grounds that she was a woman.

Foreign minister

In 1956, she became Foreign Minister under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Her predecessor, Moshe Sharett, had asked all members of the foreign service to Hebraicize their last names. Upon her appointment as foreign minister, she shortened "Meyerson" to "Meir," which means "illuminate." As Foreign Minister, Meir promoted ties with the newly established states in Africa in an effort to gain allies in the international community. But she also believed that Israel had experience in nation-building that could be a model for the Africans. In her autobiography, she wrote: "Like them, we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate, how to raise poultry, how to live together, and how to defend ourselves." Israel could be a role model because it "had been forced to find solutions to the kinds of problems that large, wealthy, powerful states had never encountered."

On October 29, 1957 she was slightly injured in the foot when a 'Mills grenade' was thrown into the debating chamber of the Knesset. David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Carmel were more seriously injured. The attack was carried out by 25 year old Moshe Dwek. Born in Aleppo, his motives were attributed to a dispute with the Jewish Agency, though he was also described as 'mentally unbalanced'.

In 1958, she was recorded as having praised the work of Pope Pius XII on behalf of the Jewish people shortly after the pontiff's death. Pope Pius's legacy as a wartime pope remains controversial to this day.

The same year, during the wave of Jewish migration from Poland to Israel, Meir sought to prevent disabled and sick Polish Jews from immigrating to Israel. In a letter sent to Israel's ambassador in Warsaw, Katriel Katz, she wrote: "A proposal was raised in the coordination committee to inform the Polish government that we want to institute selection in aliyah, because we cannot continue accepting sick and handicapped people. Please give your opinion as to whether this can be explained to the Poles without hurting immigration."

In the early 1960s, Meir was diagnosed with lymphoma. In January 1966, she retired from the Foreign Ministry, citing exhaustion and ill health, but soon returned to public life as secretary general of Mapai, supporting the Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, in party conflicts.

Premiership

After Levi Eshkol's sudden death on February 26, 1969, the party elected Meir as his successor. Meir came out of retirement to take office on March 17, 1969, serving as prime minister until 1974. Meir maintained the coalition government formed in 1967, after the Six-Day War, in which Mapai merged with two other parties (Rafi and Ahdut HaAvoda) to form the Israel Labour party.

In 1969 and the early 1970s, Meir met with many world leaders to promote her vision of peace in the Middle East, including Richard Nixon (1969), Nicolae Ceausescu (1972) and Pope Paul VI (1973). In 1973, she hosted the chancellor of West Germany, Willy Brandt in Israel.

In August 1970, Meir accepted a U.S. peace initiative that called for an end to the War of Attrition and an Israeli pledge to withdraw to "secure and recognized boundaries" in the framework of a comprehensive peace settlement. The Gahal party quit the national unity government in protest, but Meir continued to lead the remaining coalition.

Munich Olympics

In the wake of the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics, Meir appealed to the world to "save our citizens and condemn the unspeakable criminal acts committed." Outraged at the perceived lack of global action, she ordered the Mossad to hunt down and assassinate the Black September and PFLP operatives who took part in the massacre. The 1986 TV film ''Sword of Gideon'', based on the book ''Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team'' by George Jonas, and Steven Spielberg's movie ''Munich'' (2005) were based on these events.

Dispute with Austria

During the 1970s some Russian-Jewish emigrants were allowed to leave the Soviet Union for Israel by way of Austria. When seven of these emigrants were taken hostage at the Austria-Czechoslovakian border by Palestinian Arab terrorists in September 1973, Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky closed the Jewish Agency's transit facility in Schönau, Lower Austria. A few days later in Vienna, Meir tried to convince Kreisky to re-open the facility by reminding him of his own Jewish origin, and arguing against succumbing to terrorist blackmail. Kreisky refused to change his position, and Meir returned to Israel infuriated. A few months later Austria opened a new transition camp.

Yom Kippur War

In the days leading up to the Yom Kippur War, Israeli intelligence was not able to determine conclusively that an attack was imminent. However, on October 5, 1973, Meir received official news that Syrian forces were massing on the Golan Heights. The prime minister was alarmed by the reports, and felt that the situation reminded her of what happened before the Six Day War. Her advisers, however, assured her not to worry, saying that they would have adequate notice before a war broke out. This made sense at the time, since after the Six Day War, most Israelis felt it unlikely that the Arabs would attack. Consequently, although a resolution was passed granting her power to demand a full-scale call-up of the military (instead of the typical cabinet decision), Meir did not mobilize Israel's forces early. Soon, though, war became very clear. Six hours before the outbreak of hostilities, Meir met with Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan and general David Elazar. While Dayan continued to argue that war was unlikely and thus was in favor of calling up the air force and only two divisions, Elazar advocated launching a full-scale pre-emptive strike on Syrian forces.

Meir sided with Dayan, citing Israel's need for foreign aid. She believed that Israel could not depend on European countries to supply Israel with military equipment, and the only country that might come to Israel's assistance was the United States. Fearing that the U.S. would be wary of intervening if Israel were perceived as initiating the hostilities, Meir decided against a pre-emptive strike. She made it a priority to inform Washington of her decision. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger later confirmed Meir's assessment by stating that if Israel had launched a pre-emptive strike, Israel would not have received "so much as a nail."

Resignation

Following the Yom Kippur War, Meir's government was plagued by in-fighting and questions over Israel's lack of preparedness for the war. The Agranat Commission appointed to investigate the war cleared her of "direct responsibility," and related to her actions on Yom Kippur morning; }}

Her party won the elections in December 1973, but she resigned on April 11, 1974, bowing to what she felt was the "will of the people." and what she felt was a sufficient premiership as well as the pending pressures of forming a coalition; "Five years are sufficient...It is beyond my strength to continue carrying this burden." Yitzhak Rabin succeeded her on June 3, 1974.

In 1975, she published her autobiography, ''My Life''.

According to author Victor John Ostrovsky she had a long running affair with her minister without portfolio Yisrael Galili.

Death

On December 8, 1978, Meir died of lymphatic cancer in Jerusalem at the age of 80. Four days later, on December 12, Meir was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

Awards

In 1975, Meir was awarded the Israel Prize for her special contribution to society and the State of Israel. In 1974, Meir was awarded the honor of World Mother by American Mothers, Inc.

Legacy

Portrayals in film and theater

Meir's story has been the subject of many fictionalized portrayals. In 1977, Anne Bancroft played Meir in William Gibson's Broadway play ''Golda.'' The Australian actress Judy Davis played a young Meir in the television film ''A Woman Called Golda'' (1982), opposite Leonard Nimoy. Ingrid Bergman played the older Golda in the same film. In 2003, the American Jewish actress Tovah Feldshuh portrayed her on Broadway in ''Golda's Balcony'', Gibson's second play about Meir's life. The one-woman show was controversial in its implication that Meir considered using nuclear weapons during the Yom Kippur War. Valerie Harper portrayed her in the touring company and in the film version of ''Golda's Balcony''. Supporting actress Colleen Dewhurst portrayed her in the 1986 TV-movie ''Sword of Gideon''. In 2005, actress Lynn Cohen portrayed Meir in Steven Spielberg's film ''Munich.'' Later on, Tovah Feldshuh assumed her role once again in the 2006 English-speaking French movie O Jerusalem. She was played by the Polish actress Beata Fudalej in the 2009 film ''The Hope'' by Márta Mészáros.

Commemoration

Golda Meir School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Golda Meir Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Golda Meir Boulevard, Jerusalem, Israel (and various other streets, neighborhoods and schools in Israel)

Golda Meir Center for the Performing Arts, Tel Aviv

Golda Meir Square, New York City Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership at Metropolitan State College of Denver Golda Meir House, Denver, Colorado

Cultural references

In Israel, the term "Golda's shoes" (''na'alei Golda''), a reference to the sturdy orthopedic shoes that Golda favored, has become a euphemism for all that is ugly and old-fashioned.

Poll

In 2005, she was voted the 75th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website ''Ynet'' to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.

Published works

''This is Our Strength'' (1962) – Golda Meir's collected papers

''My Father's House'' (1972)

''My Life (1975). Putnam, ISBN 0-399-11669-9.

See also

Évian Conference

List of Israel Prize recipients

References

Biographies

External links

Prime Minister Golda Meir — Israeli Prime Minister's Office.

Knesset Member, Golda Meir — Knesset profile.

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Jewish Agency For Israel.

Women’s International Center.

Picturing Golda Meir — Photographs from the Collection at the UWM Libraries.

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Coordinates	53°12′″N19°12′″N
name	Manal al-Sharif (Manal Abed Masoud Almnami al-Sharif)
birth date	April 25, 1979
birth place	Makkah, Saudi Arabia
nationality	Saudi
residence	Khobar, Saudi Arabia
religion	Islam
known for	Defying female driving ban in Saudi Arabia
occupation	computer security consultant, Saudi Aramco
children	1 son (5 years old) }}

Manal al-Sharif is a women's rights activist from Saudi Arabia who helped start a women's right to drive campaign in 2011. A women's rights activist who had previously filmed herself driving, Wajeha al-Huwaider, filmed al-Sharif driving a car as part of the campaign. The video was posted on YouTube and Facebook. Al-Sharif was detained and released on 21 May and rearrested the following day. On 30 May, al-Sharif was released on bail, on the conditions of returning for questioning if requested, not driving and not talking to the media. ''The New York Times'' and ''Associated Press'' associated the women's driving campaign with the wider pattern of Arab world protests and the long duration of al-Sharif's detention with Saudi authorities' fear of protests.

Career

Manal al-Sharif graduated from King Abdulaziz University with a Bachelor of Science in computing and an 'expert' Cisco Career Certification. Since then, she has been an Internet Security Consultant working for Saudi Aramco, the Saudi national oil company.

Women's rights campaigns

In addition to her professional career, al-Sharif has campaigned for women's rights in Saudi Arabia for many years. According to the ''New York Times'', al-Sharif "has a reputation for pulling stunts to highlight the lack of rights for women". Regarding the 2011 women driving campaign, Amnesty International stated that "Manal al-Sharif is following in a long tradition of women activists around the world who have put themselves on the line to expose and challenge discriminatory laws and policies".

Background

, women in Saudi Arabia have limited freedom of movement and in practice are not allowed to drive motor vehicles. In 1990, dozens of women in Riyadh drove their cars in protest, were imprisoned for one day, had their passports confiscated, and some of them lost their jobs. In September 2007, the Association for the Protection and Defense of Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia, co-founded by Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, gave a 1,100 signature petition to King Abdullah asking for women to be allowed to drive. On International Women's Day 2008, Huwaider filmed herself driving and received international media attention after the video was posted on YouTube. Inspired by the Arab Spring, a woman from Jeddah, Najla Hariri, started driving in the second week of May 2011, stating "Before in Saudi, you never heard about protests. [But] after what has happened in the Middle East, we started to accept a group of people going outside and saying what they want in a loud voice, and this has had an impact on me."

2011 women driving campaign

In 2011, a group of women including Manal al-Sharif started a Facebook campaign named "Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself" or Women2Drive that says that women should be allowed to drive. The campaign calls for women to start driving from 17 June 2011. , about 12,000 readers of the Facebook page had expressed their support. Al-Sharif describes the action as acting within women's rights, and "not protesting". Wajeha al-Huwaider was impressed by the campaign and decided to help.

In late May, Al-Sharif drove her car in Khobar with al-Huwaider filming. The video was posted to YouTube and Facebook. In the video, al-Sharif stated, "This is a volunteer campaign to help the girls of this country [learn to drive]. At least for times of emergency, God forbid. What if whoever is driving them gets a heart attack?" She was detained by the religious police (CPVPV) on 21 May and released after six hours. , about 600,000 people had watched the video.

The YouTube video of al-Sharif's drive became inaccessible at its original location, the Facebook page for the campaign was deleted, and the Twitter account used by al-Sharif was "copied and altered". Supporters republished the original video and Facebook page and a summary of al-Sharif's five recommended rules for the 17 June campaign were published on a blog and by the ''New York Times''.

On 22 May, al-Sharif was detained again and the Director General of Traffic Administration, Major-General Suleiman Al-Ajlan, was questioned by journalists regarding traffic regulations related to women driving. Al-Ajlan stated that the journalists should "put the question" to members of the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia. RTBF suggested that al-Sharif had been sentenced to five days' imprisonment.

The ''New York Times'' described al-Sharif's campaign as a "budding protest movement" that the Saudi government tried to "swiftly extinguish". ''Associated Press'' said that Saudi authorities "cracked down harder than usual on al-Sharif, after seeing her case become a rallying call for youths anxious for change" in the context of the 2010–2011 Middle East and North Africa protests. Both news organisations attributed the long duration of al-Sharif's detention with Saudi authorities' fear of a wider protest movement in Saudi Arabia.

On 23 May, another woman was detained for driving a car. She drove with two women passengers in Ar Rass and was detained by traffic police in the presence of the CPVPV. She was released after signing a statement that she would not drive again. In reaction to al-Sharif's arrest, several more Saudi women published videos of themselves driving during the following days.

On 24 May, Amnesty International declared al-Sharif to be a prisoner of conscience and called for her immediate and unconditional release. On 26 May, authorities said that al-Sharif would remain in detention until 5 June 2011, according to lawyer Waleed Aboul Khair. Al-Sharif was conditionally freed on 30 May. Her lawyer Adnan al-Saleh said that she was charged with "inciting women to drive" and "rallying public opinion". , it is unknown whether or not the charges were dropped. The conditions of Al-Sharif's release include bail, returning for questioning if requested, not driving and not talking to the media. As possible reasons for al-Sharif's early release, ''The National'' cited al-Sharif having written a letter to King Abdullah, 4,500 Saudis signing an online petition to the King, and "an outpouring of indignation and disbelief by both Saudis and critics abroad that Ms al-Sharif was jailed for something that is not a moral or criminal offence."

2011 women prisoners campaign

Following her 30 May release from prison, al-Sharif started a Twitter campaign called "Faraj" to release Saudi, Filipino and Indonesian women prisoners in the Dammam women's prison who "are locked up just because they owe a small sum of money but cannot afford to pay the debt". Al-Sharif said that the women prisoners were mostly domestic workers who remained in prison after completing their prison terms, because they could not pay their debts and because their former Saudi employers did not help to release them or fund their flights to return to their countries of origin. She referred to 22 Indonesian women and named four women needing help and stated the amount of their debts. She called for donations to be made directly to the director of the Dammam women's prison in order to reimburse the women's debts and free them.

See also

Wajeha al-Huwaider

2011 Saudi Arabian protests

References

Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:Saudi Arabian feminists Category:Saudi Arabian women Category:Women's rights in Saudi Arabia Category:1979 births

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