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Encyclopedia > Arabic language

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"Arabic" redirects here. For other uses, see Arabic (disambiguation).
Arabic
العربية al-‘arabiyyah 
al-‘Arabiyyah in written Arabic (Naskh script):  
Pronunciation: /alˌʕa.raˈbij.ja/
Spoken in: Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Western Sahara, Yemen as one of the official languages; Iran and Turkey by the local Arab minorities; it is also the liturgical language of Islam.
Total speakers: Estimates of native speakers between 186 and 207 million and as many as 246 million non-native speakers [1]. 
Ranking: 2 [2] to 6[3] (native speakers)
Language family: Afro-Asiatic
 Semitic
  West Semitic
   Central Semitic
    Arabic 
Writing system: Arabic alphabet 
Official status
Official language in: Official language of 25 countries, the third most after English and French[4]
List
Regulated by: Egypt: Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo

Syria: Arab Academy of Damascus (the oldest)
Iraq: Iraqi Science Academy
Sudan: Academy of the Arabic Language in Khartum
Morocco: Academy of the Arabic Language in Rabat (the most active)
Jordan: Jordan Academy of Arabic
Libya: Academy of the Arabic Language in Jamahiriya
Tunisia: Beit Al-Hikma Foundation
Israel: Academy of the Arabic Language (first ever in a non-Arab country)[1] Image File history File links Flag_of_the_African_Union. ... Anthem Let Us All Unite and Celebrate Together [1] Administrative Centre Working languages Arabic English Spanish French Portuguese Swahili Membership 53 African states Leaders  -  Chairman Jakaya Kikwete  -  Jean Ping Establishment  -  as the OAU May 25, 1963   -  as the African Union July 9, 2002  Area  -  Total 29,757,900 km² (1st1... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_League_of_Arab_States. ... Headquarters Cairo, Egypt1 Official languages Arabic Membership 22 Arab states 2 observer states Leaders  -  Secretary General Amr Moussa (since 2001)  -  Council of the Arab League Sudan  -  Speaker of the Arab Parliament Nabih Berri Establishment  -  Alexandria Protocol March 22, 1945  Area  -  Total 13,953,041 (Western Sahara Included) = 13,687,041... Image File history File links Flag_of_OIC.svg Beschreibung The flag of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). ... OIC redirects here. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_United_Nations. ... UN redirects here. ... The Academy of the Arabic Language (مجمع اللغة العربية) is an academy in Cairo founded in 1934 in order to develop and regulate the Arabic language in Egypt and the Arab World. ... Arab Academy of Damascus (Arabic: مجمع اللغة العربية بدمشق) is the oldest academy regulating the Arabic language, established in 1918 during the reign of Faisal I of Syria. ... The Jordan Academy of Arabic (Arabic: ) is one of the Arabic language regulators based in Amman, Jordan. ...

Language codes
ISO 639-1: ar
ISO 639-2: ara
ISO 639-3: ara – Arabic (generic)
see varieties of Arabic for the individual codes 
Image:Arabic speaking world.svg
Distribution of Arabic as sole official language (green) and one of several official languages (blue)
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Arabic (الْعَرَبيّة al-ʿarabiyyah or just عَرَبيْ ʿarabī), in terms of the number of speakers, is the largest living member of the Semitic language family. Classified as Central Semitic, it is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic and has its roots in a Proto-Semitic common ancestor. In ISO 639-3, modern Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage with 27 sub-languages. These varieties are spoken throughout the Arab world, and Standard Arabic is widely studied and used throughout the Islamic world. ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... 14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... The Central Semitic languages are an intermediate group of Semitic languages, of which the most prominent members are Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. ... Hebrew redirects here. ... Aramaic is a group of Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. ... Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language of the Semitic languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... ISO 639-3 defines some languages as macrolanguages. ... The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... Arab States redirects here. ... Modern Standard Arabic is the dialect of Arabic used in almost all writing and in formal spoken contexts. ... The Islamic world is the world-wide community of those who identify with Islam, known as Muslims, and who number approximately one-and-a-half billion people. ...


Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested epigraphically since the 6th century. It has been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since the 7th century. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Arabic language family consists of The Arabic macrolanguage (ISO 639-3 ara), including the living varieties of Arabic as well as Classical Arabic and Standard Arabic. ... A fairly substantial number of Arabian inscriptions survive from the pre-Islamic era; however, very few are in the Arabic alphabet. ... A literary language is a register of a language that is used in writing, and which often differs in lexicon and syntax from the language used in speech. ... A sacred language is a language, frequently a dead language, that is cultivated for religious reasons by people who speak another language in their daily life. ... For people named Islam, see Islam (name). ...


Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world, as Latin has contributed to most European languages. It has also borrowed from those languages, as well as Persian and Sanskrit from early contacts with their affiliated regions. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy, with the result that many European languages have also borrowed numerous words from it. Arabic influence is especially strong in Spanish and Portuguese due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of caliphate government in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus). For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... A caliphate (from the Arabic خلافة or khilāfah), is the Islamic form of government representing the political unity and leadership of the Muslim world. ... The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe, and includes modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar. ... Al-Andalus is the Arabic name given the Iberian Peninsula by its Muslim conquerors; it refers to both the Caliphate proper and the general period of Muslim rule (711–1492). ...

Contents

Literary and Modern Standard Arabic

Main article: Literary Arabic

The term "Arabic" may refer to either literary Arabic ((al-)fuṣḥā الفصحى) or the many localized varieties of Arabic commonly called "colloquial Arabic." Arabs consider literary Arabic as the standard language and tend to view everything else as mere dialects. Literary Arabic (اللغة العربية الفصحى translit: al-luġatu l-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā "the most eloquent Arabic language"), refers both to the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East and to the language of the Qur'an. (The expression media here includes most television and radio, and practically all written matter, including books, newspapers, magazines, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.) "Colloquial" or "dialectal" Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties derived from Classical Arabic, spoken across North Africa and the Middle East, which constitute the everyday spoken language. These sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are typically unwritten, although a certain amount of literature (particularly plays and poetry) exists in many of them. They are often used to varying degrees in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows. Literary Arabic or classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab countries and is the only form of Arabic taught in schools at all stages. Literary Arabic ( the Eloquent Arabic language) or Standard Arabic is the literary and standard register of Classical Arabic used in writing. ... Literary Arabic ( the Eloquent Arabic language) or Standard Arabic is the literary and standard register of Classical Arabic used in writing. ... The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... DIN 31635 is a DIN standard for the transliteration of the Arabic language. ...  Northern Africa (UN subregion)  geographic, including above North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... The Qur’ān [1] (Arabic: , literally the recitation; also sometimes transliterated as Quran, Koran, or Al-Quran) is the central religious text of Islam. ... The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ...  Northern Africa (UN subregion)  geographic, including above North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... The first TIME magazine cover devoted to soap operas, dated January 12, 1976. ... A talk show (U.S.) or chat show (Brit. ...


The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught literary Arabic. When speaking with someone from the same country, many speakers switch back and forth between the two varieties of the language (code switching), sometimes even within the same sentence. When educated Arabs of different nationalities engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan or Saudi speaking with a Lebanese), both switch into Literary Arabic for the sake of communication. Look up Diglossia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Code-switching is a term in linguistics referring to alternation between one or more languages, dialects, or language registers in the course of discourse between people who have more than one language in common. ...


Like other languages, literary Arabic continues to evolve. Classical Arabic (especially from the pre-Islamic to the Abbasid period, including Qur'anic Arabic) can be distinguished from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as used today. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt (with varying degrees of success) to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by Classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and to use the vocabulary defined in Classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-Arab.) However, many modern terms would have been mysterious to a Classical author, whether taken from other languages (for example, فيلم film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, هاتف hātif "telephone" = "caller"). Structural influence from foreign languages or from the colloquial varieties has also affected Modern Standard Arabic. For example, MSA texts sometimes use the format "A, B, C, and D" when listing things, whereas Classical Arabic prefers "A and B and C and D," and subject-initial sentences may be more common in MSA than in Classical Arabic. For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Modern Standard Arabic is the form of Arabic currently used in Arabic books, newspapers and nearly all written media. ... Sibawayh (سيبويه Sîbawayh in Arabic, سیبویه Sibuyeh in Persian) was a linguist of Persian origin born ca. ...


Influence of Arabic on other languages

Main article: Influence of Arabic on other languages

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages as diverse as Berber, Kurdish, Persian, Swahili, Urdu, Hindi (especially the spoken variety), Turkish, Malay and Indonesian, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitāb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed. In addition, Spanish and Portuguese both have large numbers of Arabic loan words, and English has quite a few, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese[5] and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules. Arabic has had a great influence on other languages, especially in vocabulary. ... The Berber languages (or Tamazight) are a group of closely related languages mainly spoken in Morocco and Algeria. ... The Kurdish language (Kurdish: Kurdî or کوردی) is a term used for a range of different dialects of a language spoken by Kurds. ... Farsi redirects here. ... This article is about the language. ... Urdu ( , , trans. ... Hindi (DevanāgarÄ«: or , IAST: , IPA:  ), an Indo-European language spoken all over India in varying degrees and extensively in northern and central India, is one of the 22 official languages of India and is used, along with English, for central government administrative purposes. ... Not to be confused with the Malayalam language, spoken in India. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Nubi language (also called Ki-Nubi) is a Sudanese Arabic-based creole language spoken in Uganda around Bombo and Kenya around Kibera by the descendants of Emin Pashas Sudanese soldiers, settled there by the British. ...


The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit "prayer" < salat), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq "logic"), economic items (like English "sugar") to placeholders (like Spanish fulano "so-and-so") and everyday conjunctions (like Urdu and Hindi lekin "but".) Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as salat 'prayer' and imam 'prayer leader.' In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic. For example, most Arabic loanwords in Urdu/Hindi entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri. Some words in English and other European languages are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them are commonly-used words like "sugar" (sukkar), "cotton" (quṭn) and "magazine" (maḫāzin). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali" and "zenith." Some words in common use, such as "intention" and "information", were originally calques of Arabic philosophical terms. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Uyghur (‎/Uyghurche//, or ‎/Uyghur tili//)[1] is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan or Uyghurstan), formerly also “Sinkiang” and “Chinese Turkestan,” a Central Asian region administered by China. ... For the World of Warcraft ex-NPC, see Captain Placeholder. ... Kabyle is a Berber language (Kabyle: ,  , pronounced ) spoken by the Kabyle people. ... Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more. ... Kanuri is a Nilo-Saharan language which is spoken by about 4 million people in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... This article is about sugar as food and as an important and widely-traded commodity. ... For other uses, see Cotton (disambiguation). ... Makhzen (Arabic: ‎) is a Moroccan Arabic term for the governing elite in Morocco, centered around the king and consisting of royal notables, businessmen, wealthy landowners, tribal leaders, top-ranking military personnel, security service bosses, and other well-connected members of the establishment. ... This article is about the branch of mathematics. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For other uses, see Alchemy (disambiguation). ... Alkaline redirects here. ... In broad terms, the zenith is the direction pointing directly above a particular location (perpendicular, orthogonal). ... // In linguistics, a calque (pronounced ) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: verbum pro verbo) or root-for-root translation. ...


Arabic was also influenced by other languages including Persian, Berber language and Egyptian. The influences from Berber and Egyptian on Arabic happened mainly before Islam, making these influences not directly noticeable by non-linguists. Also many Arab writers make the mistake of identifying most of loan words in Arabic as being of Persian origin. Look up Persian in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Afro-Asiatic - Berber The Berber languages (or Tamazight) are a group of closely related languages mainly spoken in Morocco and Algeria. ...

See also: list of Arabic loanwords in English.

Star names are not included. ...

Arabic and Islam

Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Traditionally, Muslims deem it impossible to translate the Qur'an in a way that would reflect its exact meaning. Some schools of thought maintain that it should not be translated at all. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Arab Druze, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans. The Qur’ān [1] (Arabic: , literally the recitation; also sometimes transliterated as Quran, Koran, or Al-Quran) is the central religious text of Islam. ... A Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam. ... For people named Islam, see Islam (name). ... The majority of Arab Christians (Arabic,مسيحيون عرب) live in the Middle East where, although Islam is undoubtedly the preponderant religion, significant religious minorities exist in a number of countries. ... Religions Druzism Scriptures Rasail al-hikmah (Epistles of Wisdom), Quran Languages Arabic. ... Languages Hebrew, Dzhidi, Judæo-Arabic, Gruzinic, Bukhori, Judeo-Berber, Juhuri and Judæo-Aramaic Religions Judaism Related ethnic groups Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions and Arabs. ... Mandaeanism is a pre-Christian religion which has been classified by scholars as Gnostic. ...


Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. A Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam. ...


History

Modern Arabic is considered to be part of the Arabo-Canaanite sub-branch of the central group of West Semitic languages.[6] While Arabic is not the oldest of the Semitic languages, it shares many features with the common ancestor for all Semitic languages in the Afro-Asiatic group of languages, Proto-Semitic whose phonological, morphological, and syntactic features have been determined by linguists.[7] Many linguists consider Arabic to be the most conservative of the modern Semitic languages because of how completely it preserves the features of Proto-Semitic.[7] 12th century Hebrew Bible script The Semitic languages are a family of languages spoken by more than 250 million people across much of the Middle East, where they originated, and North and East Africa. ... 14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ... Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language of the Semitic languages. ...


The earliest texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic. Proto-language may refer to either: a language that is the common ancestor of a set of related languages (a language family), or a system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language. ... The Arabic language family consists of The Arabic macrolanguage (ISO 639-3 ara), including the living varieties of Arabic as well as Classical Arabic and Standard Arabic. ... Ash Sharqiyah, known as Eastern Province is the largest province of Saudi Arabia, located in the east of the country on the coasts of the Persian Gulf, and has borders with Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen. ... Petra, the Nabataean capital The Nabataeans, a people of ancient Arabia, whose settlements in the time of Josephus gave the name of Nabatene to the border-land between Syria and Arabia from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. ... The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. ... The ancient South Arabian alphabet (also known as musnad) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in ca. ... The Lihyanites were a tribe of northern pre-Islamic Arabia, known from Old North Arabian inscriptions dating to ca. ... The Thamud (Arabic: ثمود) were an early Arabian people. ... Sinai Peninsula, Gulf of Suez (west), Gulf of Aqaba (east) from Space Shuttle STS-40 The Sinai Peninsula (in Arabic, Shibh Jazirat Sina) is a triangle-shaped peninsula lying between the Mediterranean Sea (to the north) and Red Sea (to the south). ... The Thamud are a people mentioned in the Quran as rejecting their Prophet Saleh. ... Safaitic is the name given to an Old North Arabian dialect, preserved in the form of inscriptions which are written in a type of South Semitic script. ... Petra, the Nabataean capital The Nabataeans, a people of ancient Arabia, whose settlements in the time of Josephus gave the name of Nabatene to the border-land between Syria and Arabia from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. ... As Sulayyil is a city in Ar Riyad Province, Saudi Arabia. ...


By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet. The Lakhmids (Arabic: ) less commonly Muntherids (Arabic: ) were a group of Arab Christians who lived in Southern Iraq, and made al-Hirah which was a fabulous city with many castles and bath-houses and Palm gardens their capital in (266). ... language|Arabic]]:الغساسنة) were [[Arab Christian|Arab it is assumed that the Ghassanids adopted the religion of Christianity from the native Aramaeans and Romans. ... A fairly substantial number of Arabian inscriptions survive from the pre-Islamic era; however, very few are in the Arabic alphabet. ...


Dialects and descendants

Main article: Varieties of Arabic

"Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern—especially Egyptian—films and other media). The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... Arab States redirects here. ... A literary language is a register of a language that is used in writing, and which often differs in lexicon and syntax from the language used in speech. ... Maghrebi Arabic is a cover term for the dialects of Arabic spoken in the Maghreb, including Western Sahara, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya. ... A Bedouin man in Sinai Peninsula The Bedouin, (from the Arabic (), pl. ...


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. The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family that comprises all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ...


The major dialect groups are:

Other varieties include: Egyptian Arabic (Marī مصري) is part of the Arabic macrolanguage of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. ... Maghrebi Arabic is a cover term for the dialects of Arabic spoken in the Maghreb, including Western Sahara, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya. ... Algerian Arabic is the dialect or dialects of Arabic native to Algeria. ... Moroccan Arabic, also known as Darija, is the language spoken in the Arabic-speaking areas of Morocco, as opposed to the official communications of governmental and other public bodies which use Modern Standard Arabic, as is the case in most Arabic-speaking countries, while a mixture of French and Moroccan... Tunisian Arabic is a Maghrebi dialect of the Arabic language, spoken by some 9 million people. ... Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related spoken varieties of Arabic as spoken in Libya. ... Levantine Arabic (sometimes called Eastern Arabic) is a group of Arabic dialects spoken in the 100 km-wide eastern-Mediterranean coastal strip known as the Levant, i. ... Palestinian Arabic is a Levantine Arabic dialect subgroup spoken by Palestinian Arabs. ... The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, commonly called Jordan, is a country in the Middle East. ... Probably the most divergent of all Arabic dialects is Cypriot Maronite Arabic, still spoken by most of the 130 elderly Maronite Catholics in Kormakiti (Korucam) in Northern Cyprus, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. ... Iraqi Arabic is a dialect of Arabic used in Iraq. ... Khuzestani Arabic is a dialect of Arabic spoken in the Iranian province of Khuzestan. ... Baharna Arabic is a dialect of the Arabic language spoken by the Baharna Shia of Bahrain and the Saudi Eastern Province, and also in Oman. ... Gulf Arabic (also known as Khaliji, Qatari) is a variety of the Arabic language spoken around both shores of the Persian Gulf, mainly in Kuwait, eastern and central Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and parts of Oman. ...

  • Ḥassānīya حساني (in Mauritania, Mali and Western Sahara)
  • Sudanese Arabic سوداني (with a dialect continuum into Chad)
  • Hijazi Arabic حجازي (western Saudi Arabia)
  • Najdi Arabic نجدي (Najd region of central Saudi Arabia)
  • Yemeni Arabic يمني (Yemen to southern Saudi Arabia)
  • Andalusi Arabic أندلسي (Iberia until 17th century)
  • Siculo Arabic صقلي (Sicily, South Italy until 14th century)
  • Maltese مالطي, which is spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. Apart from its phonology, Maltese bears considerable similarity to urban varieties of Tunisian Arabic, however in the course of history, the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.

Ḥassānīya is a Bedouin dialect derived from the Arabic dialect spoken by the Beni Hassān tribes, who extended their authority over most of the Mauritanian Sahara between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. ... Sudanese Arabic, as spoken throughout much of northern Sudan, is the result of a mixing of Egyptian Arabic and Arabic from the Arabian peninsula with local languages (El Rutana). ... A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. ... Hezaji Arabic is a variety of the Arabic language spoken in the cregions of western Saudi Arabia . ... Najdi Arabic (Arabic: ‎) is a variety of the Arabic language spoken in the desert regions of central and eastern Saudi Arabia. ... Yemeni Arabic is the variety of Arabic spoken in Yemen. ... Andalusi Arabic was a dialect of the Arabic language spoken in Al-Andalus, the regions of Spain under Muslim rule. ... Siculo-Arabic was a dialect of Arabic spoken in Sicily between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries. ... Tunisian Arabic is a Maghrebi dialect of the Arabic language, spoken by some 9 million people. ... Sicilian (, Italian: ) is a Romance language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz redirects here. ...

Sounds

Main article: Arabic phonology

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See Help:IPA for a pronunciation key. The Arabic language has a standard pronunciation, which is basically the one used to recite the Quran. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ...

The phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Standard Arabic. There are minor variations from country to country. Modern Standard Arabic is the dialect of Arabic used in almost all writing and in formal spoken contexts. ...


Vowels

Arabic has three vowels, with long and short forms of /a/, /i/, and /u/. There are also two diphthongs: /aj/ and /aw/. In phonetics, a diphthong (in Greek δίφθογγος) is a vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...


Consonants

Standard Arabic consonant phonemes
  Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Inter-dental Dental (incl. alveolar) Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn-
geal		 Glottal
 plain  emphatic
Plosive voiceless       ت ‎ t̪ ط‎ t̪ˁ     ك‎ k ق ‎ q   ء ʔ
voiced ب‎ b     د‎ d̪ ض‎ d̪ˁ ج‎ dʒ¹          
Fricative voiceless   ف f ث θ س‎ s ص‎ sˁ ش‎ ʃ   خ‎ x   ح‎ ħ ه‎ h
voiced     ذ ð ز z ظ ðˁ     غ ɣ   ع ʕ  
Nasal م m     ن n              
Lateral       ل l ²          
Trill       ر r              
Approximant و w           ي j        

See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart. In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lips and the upper teeth, or viceversa. ... Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx. ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... Emphatic consonant is a somewhat imprecise term commonly used in Semitic linguistics to describe pharyngealized or velarized, and ejective consonants, or consonants that historically had one of these properties. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... Hamza () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing languages such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and others. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ...

  1. [dʒ] is pronounced as [ɡ] by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced as [ʒ].
  2. /l/ is pronounced [lˁ] only in /ʔalːaːh/, the name of God, i.e. Allah, when the word follows a, ā, u or ū (after i or ī it is unvelarized: bismi l-lāh /bismilːaːh/).
  3. /ʕ/ is usually a phonetic approximant.
  4. In many varieties, /ħ, ʕ/ are actually epiglottal [ʜ, ʢ] (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
  5. /x/ is considered to be a uvular sound (/χ/) by some linguists[citation needed].

Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" /tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, ðˁ/ are both velarized [tˠ, dˠ, sˠ, ðˠ] and pharyngealised [tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, ðˁ]. This simultaneous velarization and pharyngealization is deemed "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists.[8] In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, /dˁ/ is written ‹D›; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, ‹ḍ›. The Levant The Levant (IPA: ) is an imprecise geographical term historically referring to a large area in the Middle East south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and by the northern Arabian Desert and Upper Mesopotamia to the east. ... Allah is the Arabic language word for God. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... An epiglottal consonant is a consonant that is articulated with the aryepiglottal folds (see larynx) against the epiglottis. ... Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant. ... Pharyngealisation is a secondary feature of phonemes in a language. ...


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: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."


Syllable structure

Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV) - and closed syllables (CVC). Every syllable begins with a consonant, except in the case where the phrase begins with the definite article, for example, "the director" would be pronounced [al mudiːr]. When a word ends in a vowel and the following word is the definite article, then the initial vowel of the article is elided and the consonant closes the final syllable of the preceding word, for example, baytu –l mudiir “house (of) the director”, which becomes [baytul mudi:r].


Stress

Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length. The basic rules are:

  • Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
  • Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.
  • If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.
  • In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)

For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", <