Région Tabuk, Arabie Saoudite Табук региона, Саудовская Аравия Tabuk bölgesi, Suudi Arabistan Tabuk علاقے، Tabuk kanda, TABUK CITY SAUDI ARABIA "Arabic" redirects here. For other uses, see Arabic (disambiguation). This article is about the language. For the literary standard, see Modern Standard Arabic. For vernaculars, see Varieties of Arabic. For others, see Arabic languages. Arabic العربية/عربي/عربى al-ʻarabīyah/ʻarabī Arabic albayancalligraphy.svg al-ʿArabīyah in written Arabic (Naskh script) Pronunciation /al ʕarabijja/, /ʕarabiː/ Native to Majorities in the countries of the Arab League, minorities in neighboring countries: Israel, Iran, Turkey, Eritrea, Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, South Sudan, Ethiopia Native speakers 295 million (2010)[1] Language family Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Standard forms Modern Standard Arabic Dialects Western (Maghrebi) Central (incl. Egyptian, Sudanese) Northern (incl. Levantine, Mesopotamian) Southern (incl. Gulf, Hejazi, Najdi, Yemeni) Writing system Arabic alphabet Arabic Braille Syriac alphabet (Garshuni) Hebrew alphabet (Judaeo-Arabic) Official status Official language in Standard Arabic is an official language of 27 states, the third most after English and French[2] List[show] Regulated by List[show] Language codes ISO 639-1 ar ISO 639-2 ara ISO 639-3 ara Arabic speaking world.svg Use of Arabic as the sole official language (green) and an official language (blue) This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. This article contains Arabic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. Arabic (العربية al-ʻarabīyah [alʕaraˈbijja] ( listen) or عربي/عربى ʻarabī [ˈʕarabiː] ( listen)) is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD. This includes both the literary language and varieties of Arabic spoken in a wide arc of territory stretching across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. Arabic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family. The literary language is called Modern Standard Arabic or Literary Arabic. It is currently the only official form of Arabic, used in most written documents as well as in formal spoken occasions, such as lectures and news broadcasts. However, this varies from one country to the other. In 1912, Moroccan Arabic was official in Morocco for some time, before Morocco joined the Arab League. Arabic languages are Central Semitic languages, most closely related to Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Phoenician. The standardized 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,[3] both written and orally, 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 (see below). 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 perhaps is spoken by as many as 422 million[4] first language speakers, making it one of the half dozen most populous languages in the world. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety

• published: 25 Apr 2013
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