NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Arabophone

Arabic (اللغة العربية al-luġatu l-ʿarabiyyah or just عربي ʿarabī), is the largest member of the family of Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew, Amharic, and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab world and is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world. Classical Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century and is the liturgical language of Islam. Because of its liturgical role, Arabic has lent many words to other Islamic languages, akin to the role Latin has in Western European languages. During the Middle Ages Arabic was also 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. The Arabic script is written from right to left. The Academy of the Arabic Language (مجمع اللغة العربية) is an academy in Cairo founded in 1934 in order to develop and regulate the Egypt. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages â€” Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... Image File history File links Arabic_speaking_world. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word Ï†Ï‰Î½Î®, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of sounds and the human voice. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical Shem, Hebrew: ×©×, translated as name, Arabic: Ø³Ø§Ù…) was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. ... The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic). ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Hebrew redirects here. ... Amharic (አማርኛ) is a Semitic language spoken in Northern Central Ethiopia, where it is the official language. ... Aramaic is a group of Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. ... Map of Arab League states in dark green with non-Arab areas in light green and Somalia and Djibouti in striped green due to their Arab League membership but non-Arab population. ... 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. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... 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. ... This Buddhist stela from China, Northern Wei period, was built in the early 6th century. ... 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. ... Islam (Arabic: ) is a monotheistic religion based upon the Quran, its principal scripture, whose followers, known as Muslims (Ù…Ø³Ù„Ù…), believe God (Arabic: Ø§Ù„Ù„Ù‡ ) sent through revelations to Muhammad. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... 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. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing the Arabic language, which is the language of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. ... Some writing systems of the world, such as Arabic and Hebrew, are written in a form known as right-to-left (RTL), in which writing begins at the right-hand side of a page and concludes at the left-hand side. ...

Literary and Modern Standard Arabic

The term "Arabic" may refer either to literary Arabic (fuṣḥā) or to 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 all 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 daily across North Africa and the Middle East, which constitute the everyday spoken language. These sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are not typically written, 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. Fuṣḥa is the standard Arabic language, to be contrasted with spoken varieties of Arabic. ... 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. ... 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 QurÄn [1] (Arabic: â€Ž , literally the recitation; also called The Noble Quran; also transliterated as Quran, Koran, and 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. ... 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 cover devoted to soap operas: Dated January 12, 1976, Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes of Days of our Lives are featured with the headline Soap Operas: Sex and suffering in the afternoon. A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television... 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–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 (to an equal or lesser degree). This diglossic situation facilitates code switching in which a speaker switches back and forth unaware between the two varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. In instances in which highly educated Arabs of different nationalities engage in conversation only to find their dialects mutually unintelligible (e.g. a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), both should be able to code switch into Literary Arabic for the sake of communication. In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where, in a given society, there are two (often) closely-related languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. ... This article or section needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ...

Like other languages, literary Arabic continues to evolve and one can distinguish Classical Arabic (especially from the pre-Islamic to the Abbasid period, including Qur'anic Arabic) and Modern Standard Arabic 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 Lisan al-Arab.) However, the exigencies of modernity have led to the adoption of numerous terms which would have been mysterious to a Classical author, whether taken from other languages (eg فيلم film) or coined from existing lexical resources (eg هاتف hātif "telephone" < "caller"). Structural influence from foreign languages or from the colloquials has also affected Modern Standard Arabic: for example, MSA texts sometimes use the format "X, X, X, and X" when listing things, whereas Classical Arabic prefers "X and X and X and X", and subject-initial sentences are significantly 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. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Sibawayh (سيبويه Sîbawayh in Arabic, سیبویه Sibuyeh in Persian) was a linguist of Persian origin born ca. ...

The influence of Arabic on other languages

The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries dominated by Islam or Islamic power. 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 /kita:b/ is used in all the languages listed, apart from Malay and Indonesian (where it specifically means "religious book"). The Berber languages (or Tamazight) are a group of closely related languages mainly spoken in Morocco and Algeria. ... The Kurdish language is an Iranian language spoken in the region called Kurdistan, including Kurdish populations in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. ... Persian, (local name: FÄrsÄ« or PÄrsÄ«), is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see below for derivation) is a Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. ... (Ø§Ø±Ø¯Ùˆ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. ... Hindi (Devanagari: à¤¹à¤¿à¤¨à¥à¤¦à¥€ or à¤¹à¤¿à¤‚à¤¦à¥€; IPA: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union government of India [1][2]. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and Gujarati... // Headline text Bold text Not to be confused with the Malayalam language, spoken in India. ...

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 lekin "but".) Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most religious terms used by Muslims around the world 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 mediated by other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic; for example, most Arabic loanwords in Urdu entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Uyghur (â€Ž//, or â€Ž//)[1] is a Turkic language spoken by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang (also called East Turkestan or Uyghuristan), formerly also â€œSinkiangâ€ and â€œChinese Turkestan,â€ a Central Asian region administered by China. ... For the World of Warcraft ex-NPC, see Captain Placeholder. ... Kabyle is a Berber language (Kabyle: Ø«Ø§Ù‚Ø¨Ø§ÙŠÙ„ÙŠØ« , taqbaylit, 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. ...

In common with other European languages, many English words are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them every-day vocabulary like "sugar" (sukkar), "cotton" (quṭn) or "magazine" (maḫāzin). More recognizable are words like "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali" and "zenith" (see list of English words of Arabic origin). The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Magnification of typical sugar showing monoclinic hemihedral crystal stucture. ... Cotton ready for harvest. ... Makhzen (Arabic: â€Ž) 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. ... Algebra is a branch of mathematics concerning the study of structure, relation and quantity. ... Functional group of an alcohol molecule. ... In the history of science, alchemy refers to both an early form of the investigation of nature and an early philosophical and spiritual discipline, both combining elements of chemistry, metallurgy, physics, medicine, astrology, semiotics, mysticism, spiritualism, and art. ... In chemistry, an alkali (from Arabic: al-qaly) is a basic, ionic salt of an alkali metal or alkali earth metal element. ... In broad terms, the zenith is the direction pointing directly above a particular location (perpendicular, orthogonal). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Arabic and Islam

The Qur'an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deem it impossible to translate in a way that would adequately reflect its exact meaning—indeed, until recently, some schools of thought maintained that it should not be translated at all. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are used by all Muslims, whatever their mother tongue. While Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of salah, prayer), it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews, and smaller sects such as Iraqi Mandaeans. The QurÄn [1] (Arabic: â€Ž , literally the recitation; also called The Noble Quran; also transliterated as Quran, Koran, and Al-Quran), is the central religious text of Islam. ... A Muslim (Arabic: Ù…Ø³Ù„Ù…, Turkish: MÃ¼slÃ¼man, Persian and Urdu: Ù…Ø³Ù„Ù…Ø§Ù†, Bosnian: Musliman) is an adherent of Islam. ... The following list consists of concepts that are derived from both Islam and Arab tradition, which are expressed as words in the Arabic language. ... Islam (Arabic: ) is a monotheistic religion based upon the Quran, its principal scripture, whose followers, known as Muslims (Ù…Ø³Ù„Ù…), believe God (Arabic: Ø§Ù„Ù„Ù‡ ) sent through revelations to Muhammad. ... Salah (also known as salat, solat, solah and several other spellings) (Arabic: ØµÙ„Ø§Ø©, Quranic Arabic: ØµÙ„ÙˆØ©) refers to the five daily ritual prayers that Muslims offer to Allah (God). ... Arab Christians are people who are ethnically Arab or culturally and linguistically Arabized and who follow the religion of Christianity. ... Mizrachi is also an organisation of the Religious Zionist Movement Mizrahi Jews or Oriental Jews (מזרחי eastern, Standard Hebrew Mizraḥi, Tiberian Hebrew Mizrāḥî; plural מזרחים easterners, Standard Hebrew Mizraḥim, Tiberian Hebrew Mizrāḥîm... Mandaeanism is a pre-Christian religion which has been classified by scholars as Gnostic. ...

A majority of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic, but only know some fixed phrases of the language, such as those used in Islamic prayer, without necessarily knowing their meaning. However, learning Arabic is an essential part of the curriculum for anyone attempting to become an Islamic religious scholar. A Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam. ...

Dialects and descendants

"Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, 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. ... 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 Bedouin man resting on a hillside at Mount Sinai Bedouin, derived from the Arabic (â€Ž), a generic name for a desert-dweller, is a term generally applied to Arab nomadic pastoralist groups, who are found throughout most of the desert belt extending from the Atlantic coast of the Sahara via...

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, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ...

Other varieties include: Egyptian Arabic (MarÄ«, Ù…ØµØ±ÙŠ) is part of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, descended mainly from a medieval dialect of Arabic. ... Maghreb arabic is a dialect of Arabic spoken in the Maghreb, including 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. ... Levantine Arabic is a group of Arabic dialects spoken in the 100 km-wide eastern-Mediterranean coastal strip, i. ... Palestinian Arabic is a Levantine Arabic dialect subgroup. ... 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 or The Persian Gulf Arabic is a variety of the Arabic language spoken around both shores of the Persian Gulf, mainly in Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and parts of Oman. ...

Maltese, 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. á¸¤assÄnÄ«ya is a Bedouin dialect derived from the Arabic dialect spoken by the Beni HassÄn tribes, who extended their authority over most of the Mauritanian Sahara between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. ... Andalusi Arabic was a dialect of the Arabic language spoken in Al-Andalus, the regions of Spain under Muslim rule. ... Sudan is the melting pot for African and Arabian cultures. ... 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 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. ... Tunisian Arabic is a Maghrebi dialect of the Arabic language, spoken by some 9 million people. ... Sicilian (, Italian: ) is the Romance language spoken in Sicily and southern Italy. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

Sounds

Vowels

Arabic has three vowels, with their long forms, plus two diphthongs: a [ɛ̈] (open e as in English bed, but centralised), i [ɪ], u [ʊ]; ā [æː], ī [iː], ū [uː]; ai (ay) [ɛ̈ɪ], au (aw) [ɛ̈ʊ]. Allophonically, after velarized consonants (see following), the vowel a is pronounced [ɑ], ā as [ɑː] (thus also after r), ai as [ɑɪ] and au as [ɑʊ]. In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... 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. ...

Consonants

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. ... 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. ... Pharyngealisation is a secondary feature of phonemes in a language. ... 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. ... 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 examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ...

The consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" /tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, ðˁ/ are either velarized [tˠ, dˠ, sˠ, ðˠ] or pharyngealised [tˁ, dˁ, sˁ, ðˁ]. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter e.g. /dˁ/ is written ‹D›; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it e.g. ‹ḍ›. The Levant Levant 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 referring to God, the Lord and, literally according to the Quran, to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Abrahamic religions. ... 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 marks lengthened consonants. Such consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: e.g. qabala "he received" and qabbala "he kissed".

Syllable structure

Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV) - and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC) and (CVCC). Every syllable begins with a consonant - or else a consonant is borrowed from a previous word through elision – especially in the case of the definite article THE, al (used when starting an utterance) or _l (when following a word), e.g. baytu –l mudiir “house (of) the director”, which becomes bay-tul-mu-diir when divided syllabically. By itself, "the director" would be pronounced /al mudiːr/.

Stress

Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length and syllable shape, and correct word stress aids intelligibility. In general, "heavy" syllables attract stress (i.e. syllables of longer duration - a closed syllable or a syllable with a long vowel). In a word with a syllable with one long vowel, the long vowel attracts the stress (e.g. ki-'taab and ‘kaa-tib). In a word with two long vowels, the second long vowel attracts stress (e.g.ma-kaa-'tiib). In a word with a "heavy" syllable where two consonants occur together or the same consonant is doubled, the (last) heavy syllable attracts stress (e.g. ya-ma-’niyy, ka-'tabt, ka-‘tab-na, ma-‘jal-lah, ‘mad-ra-sah, yur-‘sil-na). This last rule trumps the first two: ja-zaa-ʔi-‘riyy. Otherwise, word stress typically falls on the first syllable: ‘ya-man, ‘ka-ta-bat, etc. The Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, however, has some idiosyncrasies in that a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, so that mad-‘ra-sah carries the stress on the second-to-last syllable, as does qaa-‘hi-rah. Egyptian Arabic (MarÄ«, Ù…ØµØ±ÙŠ) is part of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, descended mainly from a medieval dialect of Arabic. ...

Dialectal variations

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 Maghreb 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) distinguish between [p] and [b]. The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... Persian, (local name: FÄrsÄ« or PÄrsÄ«), is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ...

Interdental fricatives ([θ] and [ð]) are rendered as stops [t] and [d] in some dialects (such as Levantine, Egyptian, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as [s] and [z] in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes [dˁ] and [ðˁ] coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use [dˁ] exclusively, while those with such fricatives use [ðˁ]. Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, [ðˁ] is rendered as [zˁ] (in the Middle East) or [dˁ] (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives.

Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render Standard [q] (a voiceless uvular stop). It retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop [ɡ] in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan); as a voiced uvular constrictive [ʁ] in Sudanese Arabic; and as a glottal stop [ʔ] in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Additionally, confessional differences may sometimes be distinguished: in the case of [q], some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as [k], as do Shia Bahrainis. Thus, Arabs instantly give away their geographical (and class) origin by their pronunciation of a word such as qamar "moon": [qamar], [ɡamar], [ʁamar], [ʔamar] or [kamar]. The Algerian bay (view from the west). ... The Algerian bay (view from the west). ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ...

Grammar

Arabic has three grammatical cases roughly corresponding to: nominative, genitive and accusative, and three numbers: singular, dual and plural. Arabic has two genders, expressed by pronominal, verbal and adjectival agreement. Numerals may agree with the same or different gender depending on the number's amount. Arabic is a Semitic language. ... In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Possessive case. ... The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... In linguistics, grammatical genders, also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once. ...

As in many other Semitic languages, Arabic verb formation is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself but contains the semantic core. The consonants k-t-b, for example, indicate 'write', q-r-ʾ indicate 'read', ʾ-k-l indicate 'eat' etc.; Words are formed by supplying the root with a vowel structure and with affixes. Traditionally, Arabic grammarians have used the root f-ʿ-l 'do' as a template to discuss word formation. The personal forms a verb can take correspond to the forms of the pronouns, except that in the 3rd person dual, gender is differentiated, yielding paradigms of 13 forms. In the terminology used to discuss the grammar of the Semitic languages, a triliteral is a root containing a sequence of three consonants. ... The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. ...

Arabic has two verbal voices, active and passive. The passive voice is expressed by a change in vocalization and is normally not expressed in unvocalized writing.

Writing system

The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (Nabataean), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively 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 other Semitic languages, is written from right to left. The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... The Aramaic alphabet is an abjad alphabet designed for writing the Aramaic language. ... 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 Coptic alphabet is an alphabet used for writing the Coptic language. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced , also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languagesâ€”Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainianâ€”and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... The Algerian bay (view from the west). ... Zaouia (Arabic زاوية corner), also spelled zawiya or zawiyah, is a Maghrebi and West African term for an Islamic religious school cum monastery, roughly corresponding to the Eastern term madrassa. In precolonial times, these were the primary sources for education in the area, and taught basic... In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical Shem, Hebrew: ×©×, translated as name, Arabic: Ø³Ø§Ù…) was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. ...

Calligraphy

After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration. The stylized signature of Sultan Abdul Hamid I of the Ottoman Empire was written in an expressive calligraphy. ... Events September 14 - Harun al-Rashid becomes the Abbasid caliph upon the death of his brother al-Hadi, and appoints Salim Yunisi as the Abbasid governor of Sindh and the Indus Valley A council is organized in Constantinople, but disturbed by soldiers Beatus of LiÃ©bana, Spanish monk, publishes his... some islamic king leader guy or something This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ...

Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as 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 alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. Two of the current masters of the genre are Hassan Massoudy and Khaled Al Saa’i. The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Ayah ( , plural Ayat ) is the Arabic word for sign or miracle. ... Hadith ( translit: ) are traditions relating to the words and deeds of Muhammad. ... Look up proverb in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Hassan Massoudy is an Iraqi calligrapher who has published many collections of his work. ...

Transliteration

There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. The more scientific standards allow the reader to recreate the exact word using the Arabic alphabet. However, these systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the English sh sound. At first sight, this may be difficult to recognize. Less scientific systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. In some cases, the sh or kh sounds can be represented by italicizing or underlining them -- that way, they can be distinguished from separate s and h sounds or k and h sounds, respectively. (Compare gashouse to gash.) Due to the fact that the Arabic language has a number of phonemes that have no equivalent in English or other European languages, a number of different transliteration methods have been invented to represent certain Arabic characters, due to various conflicting goals: A desire to stay consistent with traditional usage... The Arabic Chat Alphabet is used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons. ... Due to the fact that the Arabic language has a number of phonemes that have no equivalent in English or other European languages, a number of different transliteration methods have been invented to represent certain Arabic characters, due to various conflicting goals: A desire to stay consistent with traditional usage... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation (i. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

The system used by the US military, Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System or SATTS, solves some of these issues, as well as the need for special characters by representing each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. This system, while facilitating typing on English keyboards, presents its own ambiguities and disadvantages. SATTS is the Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System, a US military standard for the mapping of Arabic letters to the Latin alphabet. ...

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 alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometime known as IM Arabic. Map of Arab League states in dark green with non-Arab areas in light green and Somalia and Djibouti in striped green due to their Arab League membership but non-Arab population. ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet. ... E-mail, or email, is short for electronic mail and is a method of composing, sending, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. ... Ð˜Ð½Ñ‚ÐµÑ€ÐµÑÑ‚Ð½Ñ‹Ðµ Ð·Ð½Ð°ÐºÐ¾Ð¼ÑÑ‚Ð°Ð²! Ð—Ð°Ñ…Ð¾Ð´Ð¸Ð¼ Ð¸ Ð·Ð½Ð°ÐºÐ¾Ð¼Ð¸Ð¼ÑÑ! <a href=http://poiu. ... IRC redirects here. ... A screenshot of PowWow, one of the first instant messengers with a graphical user interface Instant messaging or IM is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. ... A received SMS being announced on a Nokia phone. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Arabic Chat Alphabet. ...

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", ayn. 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", or daal, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D. The Arabic Chat Alphabet is used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons. ...

References

Hans Wehrs Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, English-language U.S. edition. ...

Grammar

Contents

Literary and Modern Standard Arabic

The influence of Arabic on other languages

Arabic and Islam

Dialects and descendants

Sounds

Vowels

Consonants

Syllable structure

Stress

Dialectal variations

Grammar

Writing system

Calligraphy

Transliteration

References

Grammar

See also

External links

Contents

Literary and Modern Standard Arabic GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

The influence of Arabic on other languages

Arabic and Islam

Dialects and descendants

Sounds

Vowels

Consonants

Syllable structure

Stress

Dialectal variations

Grammar

Writing system

Calligraphy

Transliteration

References

Grammar

See also

External links

Literary and Modern Standard Arabic