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
- views: 21663