Arabic ( '''' or '''') is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century CE. 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, most closely related to Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic and Phoenician. Written Arabic 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.
Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. 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 300 million first language speakers (according to some estimates, as high as 340 million), more than that of any other Semitic language. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic, with more than 50 million 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 Persian, Turkish, Kazakh, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Malay and Hausa. 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 Romance languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, owing to both the proximity of European and Arab civilizations and 700 years of Muslim/Moorish 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 counterpart 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, like English and Mandarin Chinese, 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 complex 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 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, 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, Hausa, Hindustani, Italian, Indonesian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kutchi, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sindhi, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish Urdu and Wolof 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", Hausa which uses "littafi", Tagalog which uses "aklat", Hebrew which uses "sefer", Gujarati which uses "chopdi", Marathi which uses "pustak", Malayalam which uses "pustakam" and Bengali which uses "boi".
In addition, English has many Arabic loanwords, 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, candy, carat, cipher, coffee, cotton, ghoul, hazard, jar, kismet, lemon, loofah, magazine, mattress, sherbet, sofa, sumac, tariff and many other words. Other languages such as Maltese and Kinubi derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
Terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" < salat) ( ''''), academic terms (like Uyghur ''mentiq'' "logic"), economic items (like English ''coffee'') 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 "coffee" (''qahwah''), "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 ''kitāb'' (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, many cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from Iranian, notably Middle Persian or Parthian, and to a lesser extent, (Classical) Persian, and Hellenistic Greek (''kimiya'' has as origin the Greek chymia, meaning in that language the melting of metals); see Histoire de la Médecine de l`Antiquité au XXe siècle, Roger Dachez, Tallandier 2008, p. 251), ''alembic'' (distiller) from ambix (cup), ''qalam'' (pen, pencil, feather) from kalamata (cane), ''almanac'' (climate), from almenichiakon (calendar) (for the origin of the last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Foundations of Islam, Seuil, L'Univers Historique 2002. Some arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare`s above-cited book:
- ''rahman'' (merciful), from Hebrew and Aramaic, where it had a similar meaning, but also meant the very proper name of the unique God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims from the Arabian peninsula (the Arabs themselves used it similarly: during the life of Prophet Muhammad, and by others, e.g., Musailima ibn Habib) who were the initiators of another monotheistic sect, whose only one God was called in his own name ''Ar-Rahman''.
- ''nabi'' (prophet), old non-Arab term that came into Arabic from Aramaic and Hebrew before the emergence of Islam.
- ''medina'', word of Aramaic or Hebrew origin; Alfred-Louis de Prémare explains in The Foundations Of Islam (p. 101) that the Jews were long before Arabs a sedentary population of 'Arabian desert'.
- ''jizya'', the tax imposed by the caliphate on individuals of religion other than Islam (dhimmis), a tax in addition to the levy on agricultural land (kharadjy). The term comes from the Syriac (gzita), which is in turn borrowed from Persian (gazit).
- ''kharaj'', ''kharadji'', land tax originally imposed only on non-Muslims, which comes from the Persian term "kharazh", a term which designate the act by which the wealthy citizens were taxed, some times imposed upon states, Strapis were supposed to collect them.
- ''jazeera'', as in the well-known form ''Al Jazeera'', means ''island'' and has its origin in Syriac ''gazīra/gzīrta''.
- ''faruk'' (Savior), is the naturalized form of the Aramaic word ''poruk'', which in the Syriac Bible (Peshita) means the Savior or Liberator. Once naturalized, the term produced mnemonic derivatives or shortcuts, so the ''f-r-q'' (meaning cutting) became a folk etymological explanation for ''faruk'': the Savior was one who cuts (separates) the truth from falsehood.
- ''munafiq'' (hypocrite), a term borrowed from Ethiopian, where it had the sense of heretical sect.
- ''lāzaward'' is taken from Persian ''lājward'', the name of a blue stone, lapis lazuli. This word was borrowed in several European languages to mean (light) blue - azure in English, ''azur'' in French and ''azul'' in Spanish.
As, throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of Latin in Europe, many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc. were coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots, especially in Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when 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 Qur'an 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 and the
Ghassanids in southern
Syria appeared. 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
|
|
|
|
|-
!
Western Libyan
|
|
|
|
|-
!
Egyptian
|
|
|
|
|-
!
Urban Palestinian
|
|
|
|
|-
!
Lebanese/Syrian
|
|
|
|
|-
!
Iraqi
|
|
|
|
|-
!
Saudi (Hijazi)
|
|
|
|
|-
!
Kuwaiti
|
|
|
|
|}
Koine
According to
Charles A. 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., ''jāb'' "bring" < ''jāʾ 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.
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 southwestern Iran (Khuzestan).
North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, northern Syria 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, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Cyprus, and Turkey.
Gulf Arabic
Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 3.6 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.
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 (1,000,000+ speakers), spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, Qatif, and Al Ahsa, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic and Gulf 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.
Samaritan arabic - spoken by only several hundred in the Nablus region
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. Both forms are types of Arabic, yet each form is significantly different from the other. 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 normally 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 tends 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 distance 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 tends 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
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! rowspan="2" |
! colspan="2" |
| ! rowspan="2" |
! rowspan="2" |
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! rowspan="2" |
! rowspan="2" |
| ! plain
|
emphatic">Dental consonant |
! rowspan="2" |
! rowspan="2" |
! rowspan="2" |
! rowspan="2" |
! rowspan="2" |
! rowspan="2" |
| ! plain
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emphatic
|
emphatic consonant>emphatic
|
! plain
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| ! colspan=2 |
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| Plosive
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! voiceless
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| voice (phonetics)>voiced
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3
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| ! rowspan=2 |
! voiceless
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6
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4
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| voice (phonetics)>voiced
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| ! colspan=2 |
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2
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| ! colspan=2 |
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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 mostly non-Arabic 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 it is not the final syllable.
If the final syllable is super heavy and closed (of the form CVVC or CVCC) it receives stress.
If no syllable is heavy or super heavy, 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 in this language, despite forming part of the formal paradigm of nouns and verbs. The following levels of pronunciation exist:
Full pronunciation
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 plosives , (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 plosive in Gulf Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). In Iraqi Arabic it sometimes retains its original pronunciation and is sometimes rendered as a voiced velar plosive, depending on the word. 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, bookshop"
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.
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"
|+Most of these forms are exclusively Classical Arabic
! 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
Gaddafi-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 scripts to
Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern versions 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
| + 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
|
! ISO 233-2
| 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
|
j
|
g
|
.g
|
gh/3'/8
|
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 "a thousand and nine-hundred and five and seventy" or, more eloquently, "five and seventy and nine-hundred and a thousand."
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
| English
| ! Arabic
|
Arabic diacritics>Arabic (vowelled)
|
Romanization of Arabic>Romanization (DIN 31635)
|
! IPA
|
| English |
or |
or | | (varies) |
(varies)
|
| Yes |
| | |
|
|
| No |
| | |
|
|
| Hello |
| | |
|
|
| Peace (Usually Islamic) |
| | |
|
|
| 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 countries where Arabic is an official language
List of French words of Arabic origin
List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin
List of replaced loanwords in Turkish
Arabic grammar
(إﻋﺮﺍﺏ)
References
Bibliography
Mohamed Badawi / Christian A. Caroli: ''As-Sabil: Grundlagen der arabischen Grammatik'', Konstanz 2011.
External links
Documents
* Arabic phrasebook at Wikitravel
* Arabic: a Category III language Languages which are difficult for native English speakers
*Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing
* Google Ta3reeb – Google Transliteration
* Transliteration Arabic language pronunciation applet
* USA Foreign Service Institute Arabic basic course
* Learn Arabic (Organization teaching grammar vocabulary and phrases)
* Learning Arabic as a Foreign Language With a Studied Plan
Category:Central Semitic languages
Category:Languages of Algeria
Category:Languages of Bahrain
Category:Languages of Chad
Category:Languages of Comoros
Category:Languages of Djibouti
Category:Languages of Eritrea
Category:Languages of Iraq
Category:Languages of Israel
Category:Languages of Jordan
Category:Languages of Kuwait
Category:Languages of Lebanon
Category:Languages of Libya
Category:Languages of Mauritania
Category:Languages of Morocco
Category:Languages of Oman
Category:Languages of Qatar
Category:Languages of Saudi Arabia
Category:Languages of Somalia
Category:Languages of Somaliland
Category:Languages of Sudan
Category:Languages of Syria
Category:Languages of the United Arab Emirates
Category:Languages of Tunisia
Category:Languages of Yemen
Category:Languages of Trinidad and Tobago
Category:Requests for audio pronunciation (Arabic)
Category:Stress-timed languages
Category:Subject–verb–object languages
ace:Bahsa Arab
kbd:Хьэрыпыбзэ
af:Arabies
als:Arabische Sprache
am:ዓረብኛ
ang:Arabisc sprǣc
ar:لغة عربية
an:Idioma arabe
arc:ܠܫܢܐ ܥܪܒܝܐ
frp:Arabo
ast:Árabe
gn:Áraveñe'ẽ
az:Ərəb dili
bn:আরবি ভাষা
bjn:Bahasa Arap
zh-min-nan:A-la-pek-gí
map-bms:Basa Arab
be:Арабская мова
be-x-old:Арабская мова
bcl:Arabe
bg:Арабски език
bo:ཨ་རབ་སྐད།
bs:Arapski jezik
br:Arabeg unvan
ca:Àrab
cv:Арап чĕлхи
ceb:Inarabigo
cs:Arabština
ny:Chiarabu
co:Lingua àraba
cy:Arabeg
da:Arabisk (sprog)
de:Arabische Sprache
dv:ޢަރަބި
nv:Ásáí Bizaad
dsb:Arabska rěc
et:Araabia keel
el:Αραβική γλώσσα
eml:Areb
es:Idioma árabe
eo:Araba lingvo
ext:Luenga árabi
eu:Arabiera
fa:زبان عربی
hif:Arbii bhasa
fo:Arábiskt mál
fr:Arabe
fy:Arabysk
ga:An Araibis
gv:Arabish
gag:Arab dili
gd:Arabais
gl:Lingua árabe
gan:阿拉伯語
got:𐌰𐍂𐌰𐌱𐌹𐍃𐌺𐍃
hak:Â-lâ-pak-ngî
xal:Арабмудин келн
ko:아랍어
haw:‘Ōlelo ‘Alapia
hy:Արաբերեն
hi:अरबी भाषा
hsb:Arabšćina
hr:Arapski jezik
io:Arabiana linguo
ilo:Pagsasao nga Arábiko
id:Bahasa Arab
ia:Lingua arabe
iu:ᐊᕋᕕ
os:Араббаг æвзаг
is:Arabíska
it:Lingua araba
he:ערבית
jv:Basa Arab
kl:Arabiamiutut
kn:ಅರಬ್ಬೀ ಭಾಷೆ
krc:Араб тил
ka:არაბული ენა
kk:Араб тілі
kw:Arabek
rw:Icyarabu
sw:Kiarabu
kv:Араб кыв
kg:Kilabu
ku:Zimanê erebî
ky:Араб тили
lad:Lingua arábiga
lbe:Аьраб маз
lez:Араб чӀал
lo:ພາສາອາຣັບ
la:Lingua Arabica
lv:Arābu valoda
lt:Arabų kalba
lij:Lengua àraba
li:Arabisch
ln:Liarabi
lmo:Arab
hu:Arab nyelv
mk:Арапски јазик
mg:Fiteny arabo
ml:അറബി ഭാഷ
mt:Lingwa Għarbija
mi:Reo Ārapi
mr:अरबी भाषा
arz:لغه عربى
mzn:عربی
ms:Bahasa Arab
mdf:Арабонь кяль
mn:Араб хэл
my:အာရပ်ဘာသာ
nah:Arabiatlahtōlli
nl:Arabisch
ne:अरबी भाषा
new:अरबी भाषा
ja:アラビア語
ce:Jarboyn mott
pih:Erabek
no:Arabisk
nn:Arabisk
nrm:Arabe
oc:Arabi
pa:ਅਰਬੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ
pnb:عربی
ps:عربي ژبه
koi:Араб кыв
km:ភាសាអារ៉ាប់
pms:Lenga aràbica
nds:Araabsche Spraak
pl:Język arabski
pt:Língua árabe
kaa:Arab tili
crh:Arap tili
ro:Limba arabă
qu:Arabya simi
rue:Арабскый язык
ru:Арабский язык
sah:Араб тыла
se:Arábagiella
sa:अरबी
sco:Arabic
sq:Gjuha arabe
scn:Lingua àrabba
simple:Arabic language
sk:Arabčina
sl:Arabščina
cu:Аравьскъ ѩꙁꙑкъ
szl:Arabsko godka
so:Carabi
ckb:زمانی عەرەبی
sr:Арапски језик
sh:Arapski jezik
su:Basa Arab
fi:Arabian kieli
sv:Arabiska
tl:Wikang Arabe
ta:அரபு மொழி
kab:Taɛrabt
tt:Ğäräp tele
te:అరబ్బీ భాష
th:ภาษาอาหรับ
tg:Забони арабӣ
tr:Arapça
tk:Arap dili
uk:Арабська мова
ur:عربی زبان
ug:ئەرەب تىلى
vi:Tiếng Ả Rập
fiu-vro:Araabia kiil
wa:Arabe
zh-classical:阿拉伯語
war:Inarabo
wuu:阿拉伯语
yi:אראביש
yo:Ède Lárúbáwá
zh-yue:阿剌伯話
diq:Erebki
bat-smg:Arabu kalba
zh:阿拉伯语
![Şanlıurfa (often simply known as Urfa in daily language), formerly cited as Edessa or in Kurdish; Riha , or in Armenian Urhai, Arabic الرها ar-Raha) is a city with 462,923 inhabitants (2006 estimate[1]) in south-eastern Turkey, and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province. Urfa is situated on a plain under big open skies, about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. The climate features extremely hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters.](http://web.archive.org./web/20120531023125/http://cdn6.wn.com/pd/f5/dc/24a449638477eb9a39acbf0ffb25_medium.jpg "Şanlıurfa (often simply known as Urfa in daily language), formerly cited as Edessa or in Kurdish; Riha , or in Armenian Urhai, Arabic الرها ar-Raha) is a city with 462,923 inhabitants (2006 estimate[1]) in south-eastern Turkey, and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province. Urfa is situated on a plain under big open skies, about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. The climate features extremely hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters.")
