Arabic

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This article is about the general language or language group. For the literary standard, see Modern Standard Arabic. For the various vernaculars, see varieties of Arabic. For the language family including Maltese, see Arabic languages.
Arabic
العَرَبِيَّة / عَرَبِيّ
ʻarabiyy / al-ʻarabiyyah
Arabic albayancalligraphy.svg
al-ʿArabiyyah in written Arabic (Naskh script)
Pronunciation /ʕaraˈbijː/, /ʔalʕaraˈbijːah/
Native to Countries of the Arab League, minorities in neighboring countries and some parts of Asia,Africa, Europe etc.
Native speakers
 420 million (2016)[1]
Standard forms
Dialects
Arabic alphabet
Arabic Braille
Syriac alphabet (Garshuni)
Hebrew alphabet (Judeo-Arabic languages)
Greek alphabet (Cypriot Maronite Arabic)
Latin script (Maltese, Lebanese Arabic, Tunisian Arabic)
Signed Arabic (national forms)
Official status
Official language in
 Modern Standard Arabic is an official language of 28 states, the third most after English and French[2]
Regulated by
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ar
ISO 639-2 ara
ISO 639-3 ara
Glottolog arab1395[3]
Linguasphere 12-AAC
Dispersión lengua árabe.png
Dispersion of native Arabic speakers as the majority (green) or minority (chartreuse) population
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.

Arabic (Arabic: العَرَبِيَّة‎‎, Al-ʻarabiyyah [ʔalʕaraˈbijːah] ( listen) or Arabic: عَرَبِيّ‎‎ ʻarabiyy [ʕaraˈbijː] ( listen)) is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world.[4] It named after the Arabs, a term initially used to describe peoples living from Mesopotamia in the east to the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, and from northwestern Arabia to the Sinai in the south.

Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible,[5] 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 or religious reasons (see below). If Arabic is considered a single language, it is perhaps spoken by as many as 422 million speakers (native and non-native) in the Arab world,[6] making it one of the six most-spoken languages in the world. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic[7] with 89 million native speakers[8]—still greater than any other Afroasiatic language. Arabic also is a liturgical language of 1.6 billion Muslims.[9][10] It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.[11]

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 and universities, and is 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 counterpart in the spoken varieties, and has 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 written with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad script and is written from right-to-left although the spoken varieties are sometimes written in ASCII Latin from left-to-right with no standardized forms.

Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. Some of the most influenced languages are Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Kurdish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Hindi, Malay, Maldivian, Indonesian, Pashto, Punjabi, Tagalog, Sindhi and Hausa and some languages in parts of Africa. 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. Many words of Arabic origin are also found in ancient languages like Latin and Greek. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages, mainly Spanish and Portuguese owing to both the proximity of Christian European and Muslim Arab civilizations and 800 years of Arabic culture and language in the Iberian Peninsula, referred to in Arabic as al-Andalus. Balkan languages, including Greek, have also acquired a significant number of Arabic vocabulary through contact with Ottoman Turkish.

Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, Kurdish in medieval times and contemporary European languages in modern times, mostly English and French.

Classification[edit]

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages (Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Phoenician), the Ancient South Arabian languages, and various other Semitic languages of Arabia such as Dadanitic. The Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in terms of grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include:

  1. The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation (qatala) into a past tense.
  2. The conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation (yaqtul) into a present tense.
  3. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms (e.g., a present tense formed by doubling the middle root, a perfect formed by infixing a /t/ after the first root consonant, probably a jussive formed by a stress shift) in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms (e.g., -u for indicative, -a for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, -an or -anna for energetic).
  4. The development of an internal passive.

There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of the northern Hijaz. These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor, Proto-Arabic. The following features can be reconstructed with confidence for Proto-Arabic:[12]

  1. negative particles m *mā; lʾn *lā-ʾan > CAr lan
  2. mafʿūl G-passive participle
  3. prepositions and adverbs f, ʿn, ʿnd, ḥt, ʿkdy
  4. a subjunctive in -a
  5. t-demonstratives
  6. leveling of the -at allomorph of the feminine ending
  7. ʾn complementizer and subordinator
  8. the use of f- to introduce modal clauses
  9. independent object pronoun in (ʾ)y
  10. vestiges of nunation

→§←

History[edit]

Arabic history[edit]

Main article: Old Arabic

Arabia boasted a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in a script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic. Finally, on the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B, Thamudic D, Safaitic, and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are in fact early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic.[13]

Aramaic also held prestige as a written language in parts of northern and eastern Arabia in antiquity. In the northwestern frontier, the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic and its associated script had become familiar to the ancestors of the Arabs. In the earliest Nabataean inscriptions, Arabic names and idioms are attested. Starting from the 1st century CE, fragments of Old Arabic prose are attested in the Nabataean script across northern and central Arabia. Throughout late antiquity, the use of the Ancient North Arabian scripts and their associated languages declines in Arabia and an Old Arabic written standard in a transitional Nabataeo-Arabic script emerges.

Middle Arabic, Neo-Arabic, and Classical Arabic[edit]

In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged, already standardized in actual fact, which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from the ‘learned’ tradition (Classical Arabic).[14] This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations are termed Middle Arabic. The so-called rajaz poetry of pre-Islamic is a good example of the use of a sophisticated variety of Middle Arabic. The same can be said, some centuries later, about the Andalusian zajal.[14]

Middle Arabic was structurally connected to the so-called Neo-Arabic dialects, a catch-all term for the modern varieties of Arabic and their immediate ancestors. Charles Ferguson’s koine theory (Ferguson 1959), claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprung up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on the eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories.[15]

In the late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal ‘poetic koine’ distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd, probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra. During the first Islamic century the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Furthermore, it is clear that the orthography of the Qurʾān was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to utilize a traditional writing system for recording a non-standardized form of Classical Arabic. The standardization of Classical Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al-Kitāb, is based first of all upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to the Qurʾān and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya.[15] By the 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world.

Modern Arabic[edit]

During the colonial era, the European powers occupying Arab nations actively encouraged the public spread and use of colloquial Arabic dialects and suppressed the use and teaching of classical Arabic. This caused great diversity in dialects throughout the near east, northern Africa, and even eastern European dialects of Arabic like Czech Arabic and Slavo-Anderski Arabic.[16] After wiping out a third of the Algerian population between 1830 and 1872 for example, the French then closed all Qur'anic schools and banned public usage of Arabic; Arabic was actually declared a foreign language in 1938 and while about half the population was literate in Arabic at the beginning of French colonization, 90% of the native population was illiterate in both Arabic and French by its end in the 1960s.[17]

Classical, Modern Standard and spoken Arabic[edit]

See also: List of Arabic dictionaries

Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic and colloquial or dialectal Arabic. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran, 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 Lisān al-ʻArab). 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 (MSA).

MSA is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" (فُصْحَى fuṣḥá) 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 Modern Standard Arabic.
  • 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 are 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 Standard 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 cannot 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.
  • 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., dhahaba 'to go') that is not present in the spoken varieties. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined a large number of terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve.[18] Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فيلم fīlm 'film' or ديموقراطية dīmūqrāṭiyyah 'democracy').

However, the current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح jināḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots (استماتة istimātah 'apoptosis', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into the Xth form, or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah '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; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible, and some linguists consider them distinct languages.[19] The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows,[20] 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, which is spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic, but is not mutually intelligible with any other variety of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic. .

Flag of the Arab League, used in some cases for the Arabic language.
Flag used in some cases for the Arabic language

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 hamzah (which was preserved in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech) and the use of alif maqṣūrah (representing a sound preserved in the western dialects but merged with ā in eastern speech).[citation needed]

Language and dialect[edit]

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 school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native, mutually unintelligible "dialects";[21][22][23][24][25] these dialects linguistically constitute separate languages which may have dialects of their own.[26] 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, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot.[27] 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.[28]

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.[29] 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, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages.

Influence of Arabic on other languages[edit]

See also: List of Arabic loanwords in English

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries, because it is the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Quran. Arabic is also an important source of vocabulary for languages such as Baluchi, Bengali, Berber, Bosnian, Catalan, Chechen, Dagestani, English, French, German, Gujarati, Hausa, Hindustani, Italian, Indonesian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kutchi, Malay, Malayalam, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sicilian, Sindhi, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbek, and Wolof, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken.[citation needed]

In addition, English has many Arabic loanwords, some directly, but most via 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.[citation needed] Other languages such as Maltese[30] and Kinubi derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammatical rules.

Terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit, "prayer", from salat (صلاة ṣalāh)), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq, "logic"), and economic items (like English coffee) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano, "so-and-so"), everyday terms (like Hindustani lekin, "but", or Spanish taza and French tasse, meaning "cup"), and expressions (like Catalan a betzef, "galore, in quantity"). 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 صلاة (salat), "prayer", and إمام (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 though Persian is an Indo-Iranian language. 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" (قهوة qahwah), "cotton" (قطن quṭn), and "magazine" (مخازن makhāzin). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali", "zenith", and "nadir".

Arabic words also made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara. Variants of Arabic words such as كتاب kitāb ("book") have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.[31]

Since throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of Latin in Europe, many of the Arabic concepts in the fields of science, philosophy, commerce, etc. were coined from Arabic roots by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators, and then found their way into other languages. This process of using Arabic roots, especially in Kurdish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued through to the 18th and 19th centuries, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.

Influence of other languages on Arabic[edit]

The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages Aramaic,[32] 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 languages, notably Middle Persian, Parthian, and (Classical) Persian,[33] and Hellenistic Greek (kīmiyāʼ has as origin the Greek khymia, meaning in that language the melting of metals; see Roger Dachez, Histoire de la Médecine de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle, Tallandier, 2008, p. 251), alembic (distiller) from ambix (cup), 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:

  • madīnah/medina (مدينة, city or city square), a word of Aramaic or Hebrew origin מדינה (in which it means "a state");
  • jazīrah (جزيرة), as in the well-known form الجزيرة "Al-Jazeera," means "island" and has its origin in the Syriac ܓܙܝܪܗ gazīra.
  • lāzaward (لازورد) is taken from Persian لاژورد lājvard, 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.

Arabic alphabet and nationalism[edit]

There have been many instances of national movements to convert Arabic script into Latin script or to Romanize the language.

Lebanon[edit]

The Beirut newspaper La Syrie pushed for the change from Arabic script to Latin script in 1922. The major head of this movement was Louis Massignon, a French Orientalist, who brought his concern before the Arabic Language Academy in Damacus in 1928. Massignon's attempt at Romanization failed as the Academy and population viewed the proposal as an attempt from the Western world to take over their country. Sa'id Afghani, a member of the Academy, mentioned that the movement to Romanize the script was a Zionist plan to dominate Lebanon.[34][35]

Egypt[edit]

After the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for a way to reclaim and re-emphasize Egyptian culture. As a result, some Egyptians pushed for an Egyptianization of the Arabic language in which the formal Arabic and the colloquial Arabic would be combined into one language and the Latin alphabet would be used.[34][35] There was also the idea of finding a way to use Hieroglyphics instead of the Latin alphabet, but this was seen as too complicated to use.[34][35] A scholar, Salama Musa agreed with the idea of applying a Latin alphabet to Arabic, as he believed that would allow Egypt to have a closer relationship with the West. He also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances in science and technology. This change in script, he believed, would solve the problems inherent with Arabic, such as a lack of written vowels and difficulties writing foreign words that made it difficult for non-native speakers to learn.[34][35] Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid and Muhammad Azmi, two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for Romanization.[34][36] The idea that Romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al Aziz Fahmi in 1944. He was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo.[34][36] However, this effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cultural tie to the Arabic alphabet.[34][36] In particular, the older Egyptian generations believed that the Arabic alphabet had strong connections to Arab values and history, which is easy to believe due to the long history of the Arabic alphabet (Shrivtiel, 189).

Arabic and Islam[edit]

Classical Arabic is the language of poetry and literature (including news), it's also mainly the language of the Quran. Arabic is closely associated with the religion of Islam because the Quran was written in Arabic, but it is nevertheless also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans. Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Classical Arabic as their native language, but many can read the Quranic script and recite the Quran. Among non-Arab Muslims, translations of the Quran 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 system of symbolic communication, based upon its system of triconsonantal roots, spoken by man from which all other languages were derived, having first been corrupted.[37][38] Judaism has a similar account with the Tower of Babel.

Dialects and descendants[edit]

Different dialects of Arabic.
Main article: Varieties of Arabic

Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken dialects 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 hardly comprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Libya (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[edit]

Transcription is a broad IPA transcription, so minor differences were ignored for easier comparison.

ana inhib algraia wajed

Variety I love reading a lot When I went to the library I didn't find this old book I wanted to read a book about the history of women in France
Literary Arabic in Arabic script
(dialects are written in other non-standardized spellings)		 أَنَا أُحِبُّ ٱلْقِرَاءَةً كَثِيرًا‎ عِنْدَمَا ذَهَبْتُ إِلَى ٱلْمَكْتَبَةِ‎ لَمْ أَجِدُ هٰذَا ٱلْكِتَابَ ٱلْقَدِيمَ‎ كُنْتُ أُرِيدُ أَنْ أَقْرَأَ كِتَابًا عَنْ تَارِيخِ ٱلْمَرْأَةِ فِي فَرَنْسَا‎
Classical Arabic
(liturgical or poetic only)		 ʔanaː ʔuħibːu l-qiraːʔata kaθiːraː ʕindamaː ðahabtu ʔilaː l-maktabah lam ʔaɟidu haːðaː l-kitaːba l-qadiːm kuntu ʔuriːdu ʔan ʔaqraʔa kitaːban ʕan taːriːxi l-marʔati fiː faransaː
Modern Standard Arabic ʔana(ː) ʔuħɪbb al-qɪraːʔa kaθiːran ʕɪndama(ː) ðahabtu ʔɪlaː l-maktaba lam ʔad͡ʒɪd haːða(ː) l-kɪtaːb al-qadiːm kuntu ʔuriːdu ʔan ʔaqraʔ kɪtaːb ʕan taːriːx al-marʔa fiː faransa(ː)
Yemeni Arabic (Sanaa) ˈʔana bajn aˈħibb el-geˈraːje ˈgawi ˈlaw ma ˈsert saˈla: el-ˈmaktabe ma leˈge:t-ʃ ˈðajje al-keˈtaːb el-gaˈdiːm kont ˈaʃti ˈʔagra keˈtaːb ʕan taˈriːx al-ˈmare wastˤ faˈraːnsa
Gulf Arabic (Kuwait) ʔaːna waːyid aħɪbb aɡraː lamman rɪħt il-maktaba ma lɪɡeːt hal kɪtaːb ɪl-gadiːm kint abiː aɡra kitaːb ʕan tariːx il-ħariːm ib faransa
Gilit Mesopotamian (Baghdad?) ˈaːni aˈħibb el-qˈraːja ˈkulliʃ ˈlamman ˈreħit lel-maktaba ma liˈɡeːt haːða l-ketaːb al-qadiːm redet aqra ketaːb ʕan tariːx al-niswan eb-fransa
Hijazi Arabic (Medina) ˈana marra aˈħubb al-ɡiraːja ˈlamma ruħt al-ˈmaktaba ma liɡiːt haːda l-kitaːb al-ɡadiːm kunt abɣa aɡra kitaːb ʕan tariːx al-ħariːm fi faransa
Western Syrian Arabic (Damascus) ʔana ktiːr b'ħəbb lᵊ-ʔraːje ˈlamma ˈrəħt ʕal-ˈmaktabe ma laʔeːt ha-l-ᵊkˈtaːb lᵊ-ʔˈdiːm kaːn ˈbaddi ʔra ktaːb ʕan taˈriːx ᵊl-ˈmara bᵊ-ˈfraːnsa
Lebanese Arabic (Beirut?) ktiːr bħɪbb ɪl-ʔɪˈreːje ˈlamma ˈreħɪt ʕal-ˈmaktabe ma lʔeːt ha-l-ɪkˈteːb le-ʔˈdiːm keːn ˈbaddi ʔra kteːb ʕan teˈriːx ɪl-ˈmara bi-ˈfraːnsa
Urban Palestinian (Jerusalem) 'ʔana ba'ħebb l-ᵊʔ'raːje ktiːr ˈlamma ˈruħᵊt ʕal-ˈmaktabe ma laˈʔeːtᵊʃ ha-l-ᵊkˈtaːb ᵊl-ʔaˈdiːm kaːn ˈbeddi ˈʔɑʔrɑ ktaːb ʕan taˈriːx ᵊl-ˈmɑrɑ fi fˈransa
Rural Palestinian (West Bank) 'ʔana ba'ħebb l-ᵊk'raːje kθiːr ˈlamma ˈruħᵊt ʕal-ˈmatʃtabe ma laˈkeːtᵊʃ ha-l-ᵊtʃˈtaːb ᵊl-kaˈdiːm kaːn ˈbeddi ˈʔɑkrɑ tʃtaːb ʕan taˈriːx ᵊl-ˈmɑrɑ fi fˈransa
Egyptian (metropolitan) ana bæħebb el-ʔerɑːjæ ʔɑwi ˈlæmmæ̯ ˈroħt el-mækˈtæbæ ma-lˈʔet-ʃ l-keˈtæːb el-ʔæˈdiːm dæ ˈænæ ˈkont-e ˈʕæwz-ˈaʔra kˈtæːb ʕæn tæˈriːx el-setˈtaːt fe fæˈrænsæ
Libyan Arabic (Tripoli?) ana nħəb il-ɡraːja halba lamma mʃeːt lil-maktba malɡeːtiʃ ha-li-ktaːb lə-ɡdiːm kunt nibi naɡra ktaːb ʔleː tariːx ə-nsawiːn fi fraːnsa
Tunisian (Tunis) nħɪb lɪqrɑːjæ bɑrʃæ wæqtɪlli mʃiːt lɪlmæktbæ mæl-qiːtʃ hæ-lɪktɛːb lɪqdiːm kʊnt nħɪb næqræ ktɛːb ʕlæ tɛrix lɪmræ fi frɑːnsæ
Algerian (Algiers?) eːna nħebb l-qraːja bezzef ki ruħt l il-maktaba ma-lqiːt-ʃ ha l-kteːb l-qdiːm kunt ħaːb naqra kteːb ʕala tariːx l-mra fi fraːnsa
Moroccan (Rabat?) ana ʕziz ʕlija bzzaf nqra melli mʃit l-lmaktaba ma-lqiːt-ʃ had l-ktab l-qdim kent baɣi nqra ktab ʕla tarix l-mra f-fransa
Maltese (Valletta) ɪnħɔpː nɐʔrɐ ħɐfnɐ mɛtɐ mɔrt ɪl-lɪbrɛrɪjɐ mɐ sɪbtʃ dɐn ɪl-ktiɛp ʔɐdɪm rɪdt nɐʔrɐ ktiep dwɐr l-ɪstɔrjɐ tɐl-mɐrɐ fɪ frɐntsɐ
Maltese (Valletta)
(in Maltese orthography)		 Inħobb naqra ħafna. Meta mort il-librerija Ma sibtx dan il-ktieb qadim. Ridt naqra ktieb dwar l-istorja tal-mara fi Franza.

Koine[edit]

According to Charles A. Ferguson,[39] 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, 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., khamsat ayyām 'five days' → kham(a)s tiyyām, where certain words have a special plural with prefixed t.
  • 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' < jāʼa bi- 'come with'; shāf 'see'; ēsh 'what' (or similar) < ayyu shayʼ 'which thing'; illi (relative pronoun).
  • Merger of /ɮˤ/ and /ðˤ/.

Dialect groups[edit]

Phonology[edit]

Main article: Arabic phonology

History[edit]

Bilingual traffic sign in Qatar.

Of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost: */ʒ/,[clarification needed] which merged with /ʃ/.[43] But the consonant */ʒ/ is still found in many colloquial Arabic dialects. Various other consonants have changed their sound too, but have remained distinct. An original */p/ lenited to /f/, and */ɡ/ - consistently attested in pre-Islamic Greek transcription of Arabic languages[44] - became palatalized to /ɡʲ/ or /ɟ/ by the time of the Quran and /d͡ʒ/, /ɡ/, /ʒ/ or /ɟ/ in MSA (see Arabic phonology#Local variations for more detail).[45] An original voiceless alveolar lateral fricative */ɬ/ became /ʃ/.[46] Its emphatic counterpart /ɬˠ~ɮˤ/ was considered by Arabs to be the most unusual sound in Arabic (Hence the Classical Arabic's appellation لُغَةُ ٱلضَّاضِ lughat al-ḍād or "language of the ḍād"); for most modern dialects, it has become an emphatic stop /dˤ/ with loss of the laterality[46] or with complete loss of any pharyngealization or velarization, /d/. (The classical ḍād pronunciation of pharyngealization /ɮˤ/ still occurs in the Mehri language and the similar sound without velarization, /ɮ/, exists in other Modern South Arabian languages.)

Other changes may also have happened. Classical Arabic pronunciation is not thoroughly recorded and different reconstructions of the sound system of Proto-Semitic propose different phonetic values. One example is the emphatic consonants, which are pharyngealized in modern pronunciations but may have been velarized in the eighth century and glottalized in Proto-Semitic.[46]

Reduction of /j/ and /w/ between vowels occurs in a number of circumstances and is responsible for much of the complexity of third-weak ("defective") verbs. Early Akkadian transcriptions of Arabic names shows that this reduction had not yet occurred as of the early part of the 1st millennium BC.

The Classical Arabic language as recorded was a poetic koine that reflected a consciously archaizing dialect, chosen based on the tribes of the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, who spoke the most conservative variants of Arabic. Even at the time of Mohammed and before, other dialects existed with many more changes, including the loss of most glottal stops, the loss of case endings, the reduction of the diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ into monophthongs /eː, oː/, etc. Most of these changes are present in most or all modern varieties of Arabic.

An interesting feature of the writing system of the Quran (and hence of Classical Arabic) is that it contains certain features of Muhammad's native dialect of Mecca, corrected through diacritics into the forms of standard Classical Arabic. Among these features visible under the corrections are the loss of the glottal stop and a differing development of the reduction of certain final sequences containing /j/: Evidently, final /-awa/ became /aː/ as in the Classical language, but final /-aja/ became a different sound, possibly /eː/ (rather than again /aː/ in the Classical language). This is the apparent source of the alif maqṣūrah 'restricted alif' where a final /-aja/ is reconstructed: a letter that would normally indicate /j/ or some similar high-vowel sound, but is taken in this context to be a logical variant of alif and represent the sound /aː/.

Literary Arabic[edit]

The "colloquial" spoken varieties of Arabic are learned at home and constitute the native languages of Arabic speakers. "Formal" Literary Arabic (usually specifically Modern Standard Arabic) 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.

Recording of a poem by Al-Ma'arri titled "I no longer steal from nature"

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., [d͡ʒ ~ ʒ ~ j ~ ɡʲ ~ ɡ]. Speakers whose native variety has either [d͡ʒ] or [ʒ] will use the same pronunciation when speaking MSA. Even speakers from Cairo, whose native Egyptian Arabic has [ɡ], normally use [ɡ] when speaking MSA. The [j] of Persian Gulf speakers is the only variant pronunciation which isn't found in MSA; [d͡ʒ~ʒ] is used 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 /aː/, which are backed to [ɑ(ː)] in these circumstances and very often fronted to [æ(ː)] 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[edit]

Modern Standard Arabic has six pure vowels, with short /a ɪ u/ and corresponding long vowels /aː iː uː/. There are also two diphthongs: /aj/ and /aw/.

The pronunciation of the vowels differs from speaker to speaker, in a way that tends to reflect the pronunciation of the corresponding colloquial variety. Nonetheless, there are some common trends. Most noticeable is the differing pronunciation of /a/ and /aː/, which tend towards fronted [æ(ː)], [a(ː)] or [ɛ(ː)] in most situations, but a back [ɑ(ː)] in the neighborhood of emphatic consonants. Some accents and dialects, such as those of the Hijaz, have central [ä(ː)] in all situations. The vowels /u/ and /ɪ/ are often affected somewhat in emphatic neighborhoods as well, with generally more back or centralized allophones, but the differences are less great than for the low vowels. The pronunciation of short /u/ and /i/ tends towards [ʊ~o] and [i~e~ɨ] in many dialects.

The definition of both "emphatic" and "neighborhood" vary in ways that reflect (to some extent) corresponding variations in the spoken dialects. Generally, the consonants triggering "emphatic" allophones are the pharyngealized consonants /tˤ dˤ sˤ ðˤ/; /q/; and /r/, if not followed immediately by /i(ː)/. Frequently, the uvular fricatives /x ɣ/ also trigger emphatic allophones; occasionally also the pharyngeal consonants /ʕ ħ/ (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., وقت waqt [wɑqt] 'time'; وطن waṭan [wɑtˤɑn] 'homeland'; وسط المدينة wasṭ al-madīnah [wæstˤɑl-mædiːnɐ] 'downtown' (sometimes [wɑstˤɑl-mædiːnæ] or similar).

In a non-emphatic environment, the vowel /a/ in the diphthong /aj/ tends to be fronted even more than elsewhere, often pronounced [æj] or [ɛj]: hence سيف sayf [sajf ~ sæjf ~ sɛjf] 'sword' but صيف ṣayf [sˤɑjf] 'summer'. However, in accents with no emphatic allophones of /a/ (e.g., in the Hijaz), the pronunciation [äj] occurs in all situations.

Consonants[edit]

Consonant phonemes of Modern Standard Arabic
Labial Dental Denti-alveolar Palato-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
 plain  emphatic
Nasal m n
Stop voiceless t tˤ k q ʔ
voiced b d dˤ d͡ʒ
Fricative voiceless f θ s sˤ ʃ x ~ χ ħ h
voiced ð z ðˤ ɣ ~ ʁ ʕ
Trill r
Approximant l (ɫ) j w

The phoneme /d͡ʒ/ is represented by the Arabic letter jīm (ج) and has many standard pronunciations. [d͡ʒ] is characteristic of north Algeria, Iraq, also in most of the Arabian peninsula but with an allophonic [ʒ] in some positions; [ʒ] occurs in most of the Levant and most North Africa; and [ɡ] is used in most of Egypt and some regions in Yemen and Oman. Generally this corresponds with the pronunciation in the colloquial dialects.[47] In some regions in Sudan and Yemen, as well as in some Sudanese and Yemeni dialects, it may be either [ɡʲ] or [ɟ], representing the original pronunciation of Classical Arabic. Foreign words containing /ɡ/ may be transcribed with ج‎, غ‎, ك‎, ق‎, گ‎, ݣ‎ or ڨ‎, mainly depending on the regional spoken variety of Arabic or the commonly diacriticized Arabic letter. Note also that in northern Egypt, where the Arabic letter jīm (ج) is normally pronounced [ɡ], a separate phoneme /ʒ/, which may be transcribed with چ, occurs in a small number of mostly non-Arabic loanwords, e.g., /ʒakitta/ 'jacket'.

/θ/ (ث) can be pronounced as [t] or even [s]. In some places of Maghreb it can be also pronounced as [t͡s].

/x/ and /ɣ/ (خ,‎ غ) are velar, post-velar, or uvular.[48]

In many varieties, /ħ, ʕ/ (ح,‎ ع) are actually epiglottal [ʜ, ʢ] (despite what is reported in many earlier works).

/l/ is pronounced as velarized [ɫ] in الله /ʔallaːh/, the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, ā, u or ū (after i or ī it is unvelarized: بسم الله bismi l–lāh /bismillaːh/). Some speakers velarize other occurrences of /l/ in MSA, in imitation of their spoken dialects.

The emphatic consonant /dˤ/ was actually pronounced [ɮˤ], or possibly [d͡ɮˤ][49]—either way, a highly unusual sound. The medieval Arabs actually termed their language lughat al-ḍād '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.)

Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" /tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, ðˤ/ (ط,‎ ض,‎ ص,‎ ظ), which exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization [tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, ðˤ] as well as varying degrees of velarization [tˠ, dˠ, sˠ, ðˠ], so they may be written with the "Velarized or pharyngealized" diacritic ( ̴ ) as: /t̴, d̴, s̴, ð̴/. This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists.[50] In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, /dˤ/ is written ⟨D⟩; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, ⟨ḍ⟩.

Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: قبل qabala 'he accepted' vs. قبّل qabbala 'he kissed'.

Syllable structure[edit]

Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)—and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC) and (CVCC). The syllable types with two morae (units of time), i.e. CVC and CVV, are termed heavy syllables, while those with three 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 حارّ ḥārr 'hot', مادّة māddah 'stuff, substance', تحاجوا taḥājjū 'they disputed with each other', where a long ā 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 -nā '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 [ʔ]). There are no cases of hiatus within a word (where two vowels occur next to each other, without an intervening consonant). Some words do have an underlying vowel at the beginning, such as the definite article al- or words such as اشترا ishtarā 'he bought', اجتماع ijtimāʻ '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., اجتماع al-ijtimāʻ 'meeting' /alid͡ʒtimaːʕ/.
  • If the word occurs after another word ending in a vowel, the initial vowel of the word is elided, e.g., بيت المدير baytu (a)l-mudīr 'house of the director' /bajtulmudiːr/.
  • If the word occurs at the beginning of an utterance, a glottal stop [ʔ] is added onto the beginning, e.g., البيت هو al-baytu huwa ... 'The house is ...' /ʔalbajtuhuwa ... /.

Stress[edit]

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 inkatab(a) 'he subscribed' (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), yankatib(u) 'he subscribes' (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), yankatib 'he should subscribe (juss.)'. Likewise Form VIII ishtarā 'he bought', yashtarī 'he buys'.

Examples:kitāb(un) 'book', kā-ti-b(un) 'writer', mak-ta-b(un) 'desk', ma-kā-ti-b(u) 'desks', mak-ta-ba-tun 'library' (but mak-ta-ba(-tun) 'library' in short pronunciation), ka-ta-bū (Modern Standard Arabic) 'they wrote' = ka-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-bū-h(u) (Modern Standard Arabic) 'they wrote it' = ka-ta-bū (dialect), ka-ta-ba-tā (Modern Standard Arabic) 'they (dual, fem) wrote', ka-tab-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) 'I wrote' = ka-tabt (short form or dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-jal-la-(tan) 'magazine', ma-ḥall(-un) "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 mak-ta-ba-tun 'library' in full pronunciation, but mak-ta-ba(-tun) '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 mad-ra-sah 'school', qā-hi-rah 'Cairo'. This also affects the way that Modern Standard Arabic is pronounced in Egypt. In the Arabic of Sanaa, stress is often retracted: bay-tayn 'two houses', mā-sat-hum 'their table', ma-kā-tīb 'desks', zā-rat-ḥīn 'sometimes', mad-ra-sat-hum 'their school'. (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)

Levels of pronunciation[edit]

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[edit]
Full pronunciation with pausa[edit]

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 and -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 tāʼ 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[edit]

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 anti 'you (fem. sg.)'
    • sometimes, first-person singular past-tense -tu
    • sometimes, second-person masculine past-tense -ta and likewise anta '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., taqrīban تَقْرِيبًا 'almost, approximately', ʻādatan عَادَةً '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., ʻādatan عَادَةً 'usually', where the entire -tan is pronounced).
  • The masculine singular nisbah ending -iyy is actually pronounced -ī and is unstressed (but plural and feminine singular forms, i.e. when followed by a suffix, still sound as -iyy-).
  • Full endings (including case endings) occur when a clitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g., -nā 'us/our').
Informal short pronunciation[edit]

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 ʾanta 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., -nā '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 ab 'father' and akh 'brother' with special long-vowel case endings in the construct state, the nominative is used everywhere, hence abū 'father of', akhū '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[edit]

Further information: Varieties of Arabic

Vowels[edit]

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 [ɑ(ː)] 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 /j/ or /ʃ/; while in Egyptian Arabic, it usually spreads throughout the entire word, including prefixes and suffixes. In Moroccan Arabic, /i u/ also have emphatic allophones [o~ɔ e~ɛ].

Unstressed short vowels, especially /i u/, 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 /ŭ/.) This essentially causes the wholesale loss of the short-long vowel distinction, with the original long vowels /aː iː uː/ remaining as half-long [aˑ iˑ uˑ], phonemically /a i u/, which are used to represent both short and long vowels in borrowings from Literary Arabic.

Most spoken dialects have monophthongized original /aj aw/ to /eː oː/ (in all circumstances, including adjacent to emphatic consonants). In Moroccan Arabic, these have subsequently merged into original /iː uː/.

Consonants[edit]

In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic [v] is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic [p] became [f] extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Kurdish) distinguish between [p] and [b]. The Iraqi Arabic also uses sounds [ɡ], [t͡ʃ] and uses Persian adding letters, e.g.: گوجة gawjah – a plum; چمة chimah – a truffle and so on.

Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes [ɮˤ] and [ðˤ] coalesced into a single phoneme [ðˤ]. Many dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb) subsequently lost interdental fricatives, converting [θ ð ðˤ] into [t d dˤ]. 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 [θ ð ðˤ dˤ] in borrowed words as [s z zˤ dˤ].

Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular plosives /q/, /d͡ʒ/ (Proto-Semitic /ɡ/), and /k/:

  • ق /q/ 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 [ʔ] in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar plosive [ɡ] in Persian Gulf, Upper Egypt, parts 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 [k], as do Shiʻi Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to [d͡ʒ] or [ʒ]. It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive [ʁ] in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for /q/ maintain the [q] pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
  • ج /d͡ʒ/ is pronounced as an affricate in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced [ɡ] in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen and Oman, [ʒ] in Morocco, Tunisia and the Levant, and [j], [i̠] in most words in much of the Persian Gulf.
  • ك /k/ usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to /t͡ʃ/ in many words in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes /-ak/ ('you', masc.) and /-ik/ ('you', fem.), which become /-ak/ and /-it͡ʃ/, respectively. In Sana'a, Omani, and Bahrani /-ik/ is pronounced /-iʃ/.

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 [ɑ] 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 /t/ vs. /tˤ/ in Moroccan Arabic, because the former is pronounced as an affricate [t͡s] but the latter is not.)

Grammar[edit]

Examples of how the Arabic root and form system works.
Main article: Arabic grammar

Literary Arabic[edit]

Main article: Modern Standard 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 to form words. For example, the word for 'I wrote' is constructed by combining the root k-t-b 'write' with the pattern -a-a-tu 'I Xed' to form katabtu 'I wrote'. Other verbs meaning 'I Xed' will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. qaraʼtu 'I read', akaltu 'I ate', dhahabtu 'I went', although other patterns are possible (e.g. sharibtu 'I drank', qultu 'I said', takallamtu 'I spoke', where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix -tu is always used).

From a single root k-t-b, numerous words can be formed by applying different patterns:

  • katabtu 'I wrote'
  • kattabtu 'I had (something) written'
  • kātabtu 'I corresponded (with someone)'"
  • aktabtu 'I dictated'
  • iktatabtu 'I subscribed'
  • takātabnā 'we corresponded with each other'
  • aktubu 'I write'
  • ukattibu 'I have (something) written'
  • ukātibu 'I correspond (with someone)'
  • uktibu 'I dictate'
  • aktatibu 'I subscribe'
  • natakātabu 'we correspond each other'
  • kutiba 'it was written'
  • uktiba 'it was dictated'"
  • maktūb 'written'
  • muktab 'dictated'
  • kitāb 'book'
  • kutub 'books'
  • kātib 'writer'
  • kuttāb 'writers'
  • maktab 'desk, office'
  • maktabah 'library, bookshop'
  • etc.

Nouns and adjectives[edit]

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[edit]

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 six moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive, shorter energetic and longer energetic), the fifth and sixth moods, the energetics, exist only in Classical Arabic but not in MSA.[51] 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, 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 sa- or sawfa onto the non-past. The past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g., past katab- vs. non-past -ktub-), 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, kataba '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[edit]

Unlike most languages, Arabic has virtually no means of deriving words by adding prefixes or suffixes to words. Instead, they are formed according to a finite (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 k-t-b 'write' (using ḥ-m-r 'red' for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):

Most of these forms are exclusively Classical Arabic
Form Past Meaning Non-past Meaning
I kataba 'he wrote' yaktubu 'he writes'
II kattaba 'he made (someone) write' yukattibu "he makes (someone) write"
III kātaba 'he corresponded with, wrote to (someone)' yukātibu 'he corresponds with, writes to (someone)'
IV ʾaktaba 'he dictated' yuktibu 'he dictates'
V takattaba 'nonexistent' yatakattabu 'nonexistent'
VI takātaba 'he corresponded (with someone, esp. mutually)' yatakātabu 'he corresponds (with someone, esp. mutually)'
VII inkataba 'he subscribed' yankatibu 'he subscribes'
VIII iktataba 'he copied' yaktatibu 'he copies'
IX iḥmarra 'he turned red' yaḥmarru 'he turns red'
X istaktaba 'he asked (someone) to write' yastaktibu '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. maktab 'desk, office' < k-t-b 'write', maṭbakh 'kitchen' < ṭ-b-kh 'cook').

The only three genuine suffixes are as follows:

  • The feminine suffix -ah; variously derives terms for women from related terms for men, or more generally terms along the same lines as the corresponding masculine, e.g. maktabah 'library' (also a writing-related place, but different from maktab, as above).
  • The nisbah 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 nisbah suffix -iyyah. This is formed by adding the feminine suffix -ah onto nisba adjectives to form abstract nouns. For example, from the basic root sh-r-k 'share' can be derived the Form VIII verb ishtaraka 'to cooperate, participate', and in turn its verbal noun ishtirāk 'cooperation, participation' can be formed. This in turn can be made into a nisbah adjective ishtirākī 'socialist', from which an abstract noun ishtirākiyyah 'socialism' can be derived. Other recent formations are jumhūriyyah 'republic' (lit. "public-ness", < jumhūr 'multitude, general public'), and the Gaddafi-specific variation jamāhīriyyah 'people's republic' (lit. "masses-ness", < jamāhīr 'the masses', pl. of jumhūr, as above).

Colloquial varieties[edit]

Main article: Varieties of Arabic

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

Writing system [edit]

Main articles: Arabic alphabet and Arabic Braille
Islamic calligraphy written by a Malay Muslim in Malaysia. The calligrapher is making a rough draft.

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 faʼ 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 ruqʻah, which is commonly used in handwriting.[52]

Calligraphy[edit]

Main article: Islamic 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 Quran 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 Quran, a hadith, or simply a proverb. 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.

In modern times the intrinsically calligraphic nature of the written Arabic form is haunted by the thought that a typographic approach to the language, necessary for digitized unification, will not always accurately maintain meanings conveyed through calligraphy.[53]

Romanization[edit]

Main article: Romanization of Arabic
Examples of different transliteration/transcription schemes
Letter IPA UNGEGN ALA-LC Wehr DIN ISO SAS -2 BATR ArabTeX chat Malay
ء ʔ ʼ ʾ ˈ, ˌ ʾ ' e ' 2 '
ا aː ā ʾ ā aa aa / A a a/e/é a/o
ي j, iː y y; ī y; e y; ii y y; i/ee; ei/ai y; i
ث θ th ṯ ç ṯ c _t s/th ts
ج d͡ʒ~ɡ~ʒ j ǧ ŷ j j ^g j/g/dj j
ح ħ ḩ ḥ H .h 7 h
خ x kh ḵ ḫ ẖ j x K _h kh/7'/5 kh
ذ ð dh ḏ đ z' _d z/dh/th dz
ش ʃ sh š x ^s sh/ch sy
ص sˤ ş ṣ S .s s/9 sh
ض dˤ ḑ ḍ D .d d/9' dh
ط tˤ ţ ṭ T .tu t/6 th
ظ ðˤ~zˤ z̧ ẓ đ̣ Z .z z/dh/6' zh
ع ʕ ʻ ʿ ř E ' 3 '
غ ɣ gh ḡ ġ g j g .g gh/3'/8 gh

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 ي 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 with intuitive pronunciation of Arabic names and phrases.[54] These less "scientific" tend to avoid diacritics and use digraphs (like sh and kh). These are usually simpler 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. The ALA-LC romanization solves this problem by separating the two sounds with a prime symbol ( ′ ); e.g., as′hal 'easier'.

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[edit]

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 (٠‎ – ١‎ – ٢‎ – ٣‎ – ٤‎ – ٥‎ – ٦‎ – ٧‎ – ٨‎ – ٩‎) 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[edit]

Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in the 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.

See also: Arabic Language International Council

As a foreign language[edit]

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 to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions[citation needed] of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. 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.[citation needed] A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries.[55]

Arabic speakers and other languages[edit]

In Bahrain, Arabic is largely used in educational settings.

Historically, Arab linguists considered the Arabic language to be superior to all other languages, and took almost no interest in learning any language other than Arabic[citation needed]. With the sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati - who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab - scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior.[56]

In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of the Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises."[57] Arab-American professor Franck Salamah went as far as to declare Arabic a dead language conveying dead ideas, blaming its stagnation for Arab intellectual stagnation and lamenting that great writers in Arabic are judged by their command of the language and not the merit of the ideas they express with it.[58]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Notes

  1. ^ "Världens 100 största språk 2010" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2010), in Nationalencyklopedin
  2. ^ Wright (2001:492)
  3. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Arabic". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. 
  4. ^ "Al-Jallad. The earliest stages of Arabic and its linguistic classification (Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, forthcoming)". Retrieved 2016-10-27. 
  5. ^ "Arabic language." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009.
  6. ^ "World Arabic Language Day". UNESCO. 18 December 2014. Retrieved 12 February 2014. 
  7. ^ Egyptian Arabic at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  8. ^ "The World Factbook". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2015-09-14. 
  9. ^ "Executive Summary". Future of the Global Muslim Population. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 22 December 2011. 
  10. ^ "Table: Muslim Population by Country | Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project". Features.pewforum.org. 2011-01-27. Retrieved 2014-05-18. 
  11. ^ "UN official languages". Un.org. Retrieved 18 October 2015. 
  12. ^ Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2015-03-27). An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions. BRILL. ISBN 9789004289826. 
  13. ^ "Al-Jallad. The earliest stages of Arabic and its linguistic classification (Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, forthcoming)". Retrieved 2016-07-15. 
  14. ^ a b "Middle Arabic - Brill Reference". referenceworks.brillonline.com. Retrieved 2016-07-17. 
  15. ^ a b "Polygenesis in the Arabic Dialects - Brill Reference". referenceworks.brillonline.com. Retrieved 2016-07-17. 
  16. ^ John Andrew Morrow, Islamic Images and Ideas: Essays on Sacred Symbolism, pg. 257. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4766-1288-1
  17. ^ John Andrew Morrow, Islamic Images and Ideas, pg. 258.
  18. ^ Kaye (1991:?)
  19. ^ "Arabic Language." Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009.
  20. ^ Jenkins, Orville Boyd (18 March 2000), Population Analysis of the Arabic Languages 
  21. ^ Janet C. E. Watson, The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic, Introduction, pg. xix. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-160775-2
  22. ^ Proceedings and Debates of the 107th United States Congress Congressional Record, pg. 10,462. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2002.
  23. ^ Shalom Staub, Yemenis in New York City: The Folklore of Ethnicity, pg. 124. Philadelphia: Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, 1989. ISBN 978-0-944190-05-0
  24. ^ Daniel Newman, Arabic-English Thematic Lexicon, pg. 1. London: Routledge, 2007. ISBN 978-1-134-10392-8
  25. ^ Rebecca L. Torstrick and Elizabeth Faier, Culture and Customs of the Arab Gulf States, pg. 41. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009. ISBN 978-0-313-33659-1
  26. ^ Walter J. Ong, Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture, pg. 32. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8014-6630-4
  27. ^ Clive Holes, Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties, pg. 3. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-1-58901-022-2
  28. ^ Nizar Y. Habash,Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing, pgs. 1–2. San Rafael: Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2010. ISBN 978-1-59829-795-9
  29. ^ Bernard Bate, Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic: Democratic Practice in South India, pgs. 14–15. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-231-51940-3
  30. ^ EB staff. "Maltese language – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 4 May 2010. 
  31. ^ Gregersen (1977:237)
  32. ^ See the seminal study by Siegmund Fraenkel, Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen, Leiden 1886 (repr. 1962)
  33. ^ See for instance Wilhelm Eilers, "Iranisches Lehngut im Arabischen", Actas IV. Congresso des Estudos Árabes et Islâmicos, Coimbra, Lisboa, Leiden 1971, with earlier references.
  34. ^ a b c d e f g Shrivtiel, Shraybom (1998). The Question of Romanisation of the Script and The Emergence of Nationalism in the Middle East. Mediterranean Language Review. pp. 179–196. 
  35. ^ a b c d Shrivtiel, p. 188
  36. ^ a b c Shrivtiel, p. 189
  37. ^ "Arabic – the mother of all languages – Al Islam Online". Alislam.org. Archived from the original on 30 April 2010. Retrieved 4 May 2010. 
  38. ^ Coffman, James (December 1995). "Does the Arabic Language Encourage Radical Islam?". Middle East Quarterly. Retrieved 5 December 2008. 
  39. ^ Ferguson, Charles (1959), "The Arabic Koine", Language, 35 (4): 616–630, doi:10.2307/410601 
  40. ^ Arabic, Egyptian Spoken (18th ed.). Ethnologue. 2006. 
  41. ^ Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander Maltese (1997:xiii) "The immediate source for the Arabic vernacular spoken in Malta was Muslim Sicily, but its ultimate origin appears to have been Tunisia. In fact Maltese displays some areal traits typical of Maghrebine Arabic, although during the past eight hundred years of independent evolution it has drifted apart from Tunisian Arabic".
  42. ^ Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander Maltese (1997:xiii)
  43. ^ Lipinski (1997:124)
  44. ^ Al-Jallad, 42
  45. ^ Watson (2002:5, 15–16)
  46. ^ a b c Watson (2002:2)
  47. ^ Watson (2002:16)
  48. ^ Watson (2002:18)
  49. ^ Ferguson, Charles (1959), "The Arabic Koine", Language, 35 (4): 630, doi:10.2307/410601 
  50. ^ e.g., Thelwall (2003:52)
  51. ^ Rydin, Karin C. (2005). A reference grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  52. ^ Hanna & Greis (1972:2)
  53. ^ Osborn, J.R. (2009). "Narratives of Arabic Script: Calligraphic Design and Modern Spaces". Design and Culture. 1 (3). 
  54. ^ Kharusi, N. S. & Salman, A. (2011) The English Transliteration of Place Names in Oman. Journal of Academic and Applied Studies Vol. 1(3) September 2011, pp. 1–27 Available online at www.academians.org
  55. ^ "Reviews of Language Courses". Lang1234. Retrieved 12 September 2012. 
  56. ^ Kees Versteegh, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition, pg. 106. Part of Landmarks in Linguistic Thought series, vol. 3. New York: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 978-0-415-15757-5
  57. ^ Suleiman, p. 93
  58. ^ Franck Salamah, Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon, Introduction, pg. xvi. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7391-3740-6

Bibliography

External links[edit]

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