Modern Standard Arabic is the form of Arabic currently used in Arabic books, newspapers and nearly all written media. It is synonymous with Modern Written Arabic. It is also used on TV, especially in newsbroadcasts. TV shows translated into Arabic are almost always in Modern Standard 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. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... 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). ... Writing systems of the world today. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing Arabic and various other languages, together with various closely related scripts that typically differ in the presence or absence of a few letters. ... 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. ... 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 — 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. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, 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. ...

To most Arabs, Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic are one and the same. They rarely distinguish between the two. Linguists however, point to syntactic differences, as well as differences in vocabulary; but they do not claim they are separate languages. They have the same grammar, and morphology.

Modern Standard Arabic is generally the term used when someone is studying Arabic to read newspapers, write, translate, and or watch newsbroadcasts in Arabic. This term avoids the denotation of a language out of use that the term "Classical Arabic" entails. The term also avoids the ambiguity of "Arabic" which refers to the diverse dialects. This is the main reason the term has gained popularity on Arabic self-learning books. Classical Arabic is generally the term used to refer to the language studyed for religious purposes, or study of the most ancient Arabic texts (i.e. the Qur'an and before).

Although they are not different languages, there are differences that even native speakers notice. The most obvious is the number of currently archaic words, as well as constructs that aren't used anymore. However, Arabs who don't have trouble with these will probably attribute the differences to nothing more than style variation.

Linguistic Differences

The differences between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic as linguistic entities are mainly important to linguists. Arabs will argue that the language has not changed.

See also

• Arabic language
• Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
• Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System
• Varieties of Arabic
• Classical Arabic
• Fusha (language)

Arabic ( or just ), 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. ... The Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic by Hans Wehr is widely regarded as the foremost Arabic-English bilingual or translation dictionary and has particular usefulness for students of Modern Standard Arabic. ... SATTS is the Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System, a US military standard for the mapping of Arabic letters to the Latin alphabet. ... The Arabic language is classified as a Semitic language. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Fuṣḥa (فصحى) (pronounced like Fooṣ Ḥa where the ṣ and ḥ are emphatic consonants) is a collective term referring to the standardized, non-spoken varieties of the Arabic language, as opposed to the spoken varieties of Arabic. ...

External links

• Arabic Gems Learn about the intricacies and subtleties of Arabic linguistics and morphology.
• Learn Arabic WikiBook