{"history":[{"id":"a8e06815-40e8-432b-a337-c79e29c619a6","wordChanged":"[Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world)","newWord":":::summary\n![Arabic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Arabic///albayancalligraphy.svg)\n**Name:** Arabic \n**Nativename:** اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ · al-ʿarabiyyah \n**States:** [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world) and surrounding regions \n**Ethnicity:** [Arabs](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabs) \n**Speakers:** million native speakers of all [varieties](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic) \n**Date:** 2024 \n**Speakers 2:** million [L2 users](https://bliptext.com/articles/l2-speakers) of [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) (2023) \n**Speakers Label:** Speakers \n**Familycolor:** Afro-Asiatic \n**Fam 2:** [Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [West Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/west-semitic-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Central Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) \n**Dia 1:** [Central Asian](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-asian-arabic) \n**Dia 2:** [Chadian](https://bliptext.com/articles/chadian-arabic) \n**Dia 3:** [Egyptian](https://bliptext.com/articles/egyptian-arabic) \n**Dia 4:** [Levantine](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) \n**Dia 5:** [Maghrebi](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) \n**Dia 6:** [Mesopotamian](https://bliptext.com/articles/mesopotamian-arabic) \n**Dia 7:** [Peninsular](https://bliptext.com/articles/peninsular-arabic) \n**Dia 8:** [Saʽidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-idi-arabic) \n**Dia 9:** [Shirvani](https://bliptext.com/articles/shirvani-arabic) \n**Dia 1 0:** [Sudanese](https://bliptext.com/articles/sudanese-arabic) \n**Dia 1 1:** [Yemeni](https://bliptext.com/articles/yemeni-arabic) \n**Stand 1:** [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) \n**Script:** [Arabic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-alphabet) · Other official scripts · Latin script (Maltese alphabet) \n**Nation:** 27 states and territories · Algeria · Bahrain · Chad · Comoros · Djibouti · Egypt · Eritrea · Iraq · Jordan · Kuwait · Lebanon · Libya · Mauritania · Morocco · Oman · Palestine · Qatar · Saudi Arabia · Somalia · Sudan · Syria · Tunisia · United Arab Emirates · Yemen · Zanzibar (Tanzania) · Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (partially recognized state) · Somaliland (unrecognized state) · International Organizations · African Union · Arab League · Organisation of Islamic Cooperation · United Nations · Special status in Constitution · Iran · Pakistan \n**Minority:** Cyprus · Israel · Mali · Niger · Philippines · Senegal · South Africa \n**Agency:** Algeria: Supreme Council of the Arabic language in Algeria · Egypt: Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo · Israel: Academy of the Arabic Language in Israel · Iraq: Iraqi Academy of Sciences · Jordan: Jordan Academy of Arabic · Libya: Academy of the Arabic Language in Jamahiriya · Morocco: Academy of the Arabic Language in Rabat · Saudi Arabia: Academy of the Arabic Language in Riyadh · Somalia: Academy of the Arabic Language in Mogadishu · Sudan: Academy of the Arabic Language in Khartoum · Syria: Arab Academy of Damascus (the oldest) · Tunisia: Beit Al-Hikma Foundation \n**Iso 1:** ar \n**Iso 2:** ara \n**Iso 3:** ara \n**Lc 1:** arq \n**Ld 1:** [Algerian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/algerian-arabic) \n**Lc 2:** xaa \n**Ld 2:** [Andalusi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/andalusi-arabic) \n**Lc 3:** abv \n**Ld 3:** [Bahrani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/bahrani-arabic) \n**Lc 4:** avl \n**Ld 4:** [Bedawi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedawi-arabic) \n**Lc 5:** shu \n**Ld 5:** [Chadian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/chadian-arabic) \n**Lc 6:** acy \n**Ld 6:** [Cypriot Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cypriot-arabic) \n**Lc 7:** adf \n**Ld 7:** [Dhofari Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dhofari-arabic) \n**Lc 8:** arz \n**Ld 8:** [Egyptian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/egyptian-arabic) \n**Lc 9:** acm \n**Ld 9:** [Gelet Iraqi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/gelet-arabic) \n**Lc 1 0:** afb \n**Ld 1 0:** [Gulf Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/gulf-arabic) \n**Lc 1 1:** ayh \n**Ld 1 1:** [Hadhrami Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hadhrami-arabic) \n**Lc 1 2:** mey \n**Ld 1 2:** [Hassaniya Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassaniya-arabic) \n**Lc 1 3:** acw \n**Ld 1 3:** [Hejazi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejazi-arabic) \n**Lc 1 4:** apc \n**Ld 1 4:** [Levantine Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) \n**Lc 1 5:** ayl \n**Ld 1 5:** [Libyan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/libyan-arabic) \n**Lc 1 6:** ary \n**Ld 1 6:** [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic) \n**Lc 1 7:** ars \n**Ld 1 7:** [Najdi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/najdi-arabic) \n**Lc 1 8:** acx \n**Ld 1 8:** [Omani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/omani-arabic) \n**Lc 1 9:** ayp \n**Ld 1 9:** [Qeltu Iraqi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moslawi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 0:** aao \n**Ld 2 0:** [Saharan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/saharan-arabic) \n**Lc 2 1:** aec \n**Ld 2 1:** [Saʽidi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-idi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 2:** ayn \n**Ld 2 2:** [Sanʽani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/san-ani-arabic) \n**Lc 2 3:** ssh \n**Ld 2 3:** [Shihhi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/shihhi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 4:** sqr \n**Ld 2 4:** [Siculo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/siculo-arabic) \n**Lc 2 5:** arb \n**Ld 2 5:** [Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-arabic) \n**Lc 2 6:** apd \n**Ld 2 6:** [Sudanese Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/sudanese-arabic) \n**Lc 2 7:** acq \n**Ld 2 7:** [Taʽizzi-Adeni Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/ta-izzi-adeni-arabic) \n**Lc 2 8:** abh \n**Ld 2 8:** [Tajiki Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/tajiki-arabic) \n**Lc 2 9:** aeb \n**Ld 2 9:** [Tunisian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/tunisian-arabic) \n**Lc 3 0:** auz \n**Ld 3 0:** [Uzbeki Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/uzbeki-arabic) \n**Lingua:** 12-AAC \n**Imagescale:** 0.7 \n**Imagecaption:** i****n**** ****w****r****i****t****t****e****n**** ****A****r****a****b****i****c**** ****(****[****N****a****s****k****h**** ****s****c****r****i****p****t****]****(****h****t****t****p****s****:****/****/****b****l****i****p****t****e****x****t****.****c****o****m****/****a****r****t****i****c****l****e****s****/****n****a****s****k****h****-****s****c****r****i****p****t****)****) \n**Notice:** IPA \n**Ancestor:** [Proto-Afroasiatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-afroasiatic) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Proto-Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-semitic) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Proto-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-arabic) \n**Ancestor 4:** [Old Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-arabic) \n**Ancestor 5:** [Pre-classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/pre-classical-arabic) \n**Sign:** Signed Arabic [(different national forms)](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-sign-language-family) \n**Glotto:** arab1395 \n**Glottorefname:** Arabic \n**Map:** Arabic speaking world.svg \n**Mapcaption:** {{legend|#088A4B|Sole official language, Arabic-speaking majority}} · {{legend|#045FB4|Co-official language, Arabic-speaking majority}} · {{legend|#5599ff|Co-official language, Arabic-speaking minority}} · {{legend|#e6e6e6|Not an official language, Arabic-speaking minority}} \n:::\n\n# \n**Arabic** (,, or , ) is a [Central Semitic language](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) of the [Afroasiatic language family](https://bliptext.com/articles/afroasiatic-languages) spoken primarily in the Terorist-world.\nThe [ISO](https://bliptext.com/articles/international-organization-for-standardization) assigns language codes to 32 [varieties of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic), including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic), which is derived from [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic).\nThis distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as (اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ \"the eloquent Arabic\") or simply (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ).\nArabic is the [third most widespread official language](https://bliptext.com/articles/list-of-languages-by-the-number-of-countries-in-which-they-are-recognized-as-an-official-language) after English and French, one of six [official languages of the United Nations](https://bliptext.com/articles/official-languages-of-the-united-nations), and the [liturgical language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sacred-language) of [Islam](https://bliptext.com/articles/islam).\nArabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media.\nDuring the [Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-ages), Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy.\nAs a result, many European languages have [borrowed](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword) words from it.\nArabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in [European languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/languages-of-europe) (mainly [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-language-influence-on-the-spanish-language) and to a lesser extent [Portuguese](https://bliptext.com/articles/influence-of-arabic-on-other-languages), [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/influence-of-arabic-on-other-languages), and [Sicilian](https://bliptext.com/articles/sicilian-language)) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the [Al-Andalus](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus) era.\n[Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) is a Semitic language developed from a dialect of Arabic and written in the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-alphabet).\nThe [Balkan](https://bliptext.com/articles/balkans) languages, including Albanian, [Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/greek-language), Serbo-Croatian, and [Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language), have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with [Ottoman Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/ottoman-turkish).\nArabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims.\nThe most markedly influenced languages are [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language), [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language), [Hindustani](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindustani-language) ([Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu)), [Kashmiri](https://bliptext.com/articles/kashmiri-language), [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-languages), [Bosnian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bosnian-language), [Kazakh](https://bliptext.com/articles/kazakh-language), [Bengali](https://bliptext.com/articles/bengali-language), [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language) ([Indonesian](https://bliptext.com/articles/indonesian-language) and [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language)sian), [Maldivian](https://bliptext.com/articles/maldivian-language), [Pashto](https://bliptext.com/articles/pashto), [Punjabi](https://bliptext.com/articles/punjabi-language), [Albanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/albanian-language), [Armenian](https://bliptext.com/articles/armenian-language), [Azerbaijani](https://bliptext.com/articles/azerbaijani-language), Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, [Tagalog](https://bliptext.com/articles/tagalog-language), [Sindhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sindhi-language), [Odia](https://bliptext.com/articles/odia-language), [Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/hebrew-language) and African languages such as [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language), [Amharic](https://bliptext.com/articles/amharic), [Tigrinya](https://bliptext.com/articles/tigrinya-language), [Somali](https://bliptext.com/articles/somali-language), [Tamazight](https://bliptext.com/articles/tamazight), and [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language).\nConversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its [sister-language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sister-language) Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to a lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian.\nArabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the [fifth most spoken language](https://bliptext.com/articles/list-of-languages-by-total-number-of-speakers) in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users.\nIt also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion [Muslims](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslims).\nIn 2011, [Bloomberg Businessweek](https://bliptext.com/articles/bloomberg-businessweek) ranked Arabic the fourth most useful language for business, after English, [Mandarin Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-mandarin-chinese), and French.\nArabic is written with the [Arabic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-alphabet), an [abjad](https://bliptext.com/articles/abjad) script that is written from [right to left](https://bliptext.com/articles/right-to-left).\n\n# Classification\nArabic is usually classified as a [Central Semitic language](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages).\nLinguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups.\nThe Semitic languages changed between [Proto-Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-semitic-language) and the emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar.\nInnovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include:\nThere are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the [Safaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/safaitic) and [Hismaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hismaic-old-arabic) inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the [Dadanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dadanitic) and [Taymanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/taymanitic) languages of the [northern Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hijaz).\nThese features are evidence of common descent from a [hypothetical ancestor](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-language), [Proto-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-arabic).\nThe following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence:\nOn the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic.\nThus, Arabic [vernaculars](https://bliptext.com/articles/vernacular) do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor.\n\n# History\n\n## Old Arabic\nArabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity.\nThe term \"Arab\" was initially used to describe those living in the [Arabian Peninsula](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabian-peninsula), as perceived by geographers from [ancient Greece](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greece).\nIn the southwest, various [Central Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) both belonging to and outside the [Ancient South Arabian](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-south-arabian) family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken.\nIt is believed that the ancestors of the [Modern South Arabian languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-south-arabian-languages) (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time.\nTo the north, in the oases of northern [Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejaz), [Dadanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dadanitic) and [Taymanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/taymanitic) held some prestige as inscriptional languages.\nIn Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested.\nIn eastern Arabia, inscriptions in a script derived from ASA attest to a language known as [Hasaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hasaitic).\nOn the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as [Thamudic B](https://bliptext.com/articles/thamudic-b), Thamudic D, [Safaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/safaitic), and [Hismaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hismaic) are attested.\nThe last two share important [isoglosses](https://bliptext.com/articles/isogloss) with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered [Old Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-arabic).\nLinguists generally believe that \"Old Arabic\", a collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the [Iron Age](https://bliptext.com/articles/iron-age).\nPreviously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in [Sabaic script](https://bliptext.com/articles/sabaic) at Qaryat al-Faw, in southern present-day Saudi Arabia.\nHowever, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as the conversion of Semitic [mimation](https://bliptext.com/articles/mimation) to [nunation](https://bliptext.com/articles/nunation) in the singular.\nIt is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum.\nIt was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced—[epigraphic](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphic) [Ancient North Arabian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-north-arabian) (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries.\nANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from \"Arabic\".\nScholars named its variant dialects after the towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic).\nHowever, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-.\nIt has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable.\nSafaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to the fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic.\nThe earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an [ancestor of the modern Arabic script](https://bliptext.com/articles/nabataean-alphabet) are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in [En Avdat, Israel](https://bliptext.com/articles/avdat), and dated to around 125 CE.\nThis is followed by the [Namara inscription](https://bliptext.com/articles/namara-inscription), an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria.\nFrom the 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era.\nThere are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ([Zabad](https://bliptext.com/articles/zabad-inscription), [Jebel Usays](https://bliptext.com/articles/jebel-usays-inscription), [Harran](https://bliptext.com/articles/harran-inscription), Umm el-Jimal).\nThe oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet.\nThe language of that papyrus and of the Qur'an is referred to by linguists as \"Quranic Arabic\", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into \"[Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic)\".\n\n## Classical Arabic\nIn late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the [Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejaz), which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the [Hijra](https://bliptext.com/articles/islamic-calendar), most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from the \"learned\" tradition (Classical Arabic).\nThis variety and both its classicizing and \"lay\" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an [Old Higazi](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-higazi) register.\nIt is clear that the orthography of the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran) was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi.\nIn the late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal \"poetic koine\" distinct from the [spoken vernaculars](https://bliptext.com/articles/vernacular) developed based on the [Bedouin](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedouin) dialects of [Najd](https://bliptext.com/articles/najd), probably in connection with the court of [al-Ḥīra](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-hirah).\nDuring the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue.\nTheir texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic) elements in morphology and syntax.\n\n## Standardization\n[Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-al-aswad-al-du-ali) (c. 603–689) is credited with standardizing [Arabic grammar](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-grammar), or an-naḥw (النَّحو \"the way\" ), and pioneering a system of [diacritics](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) to differentiate consonants (نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām \"pointing for non-Arabs\") and indicate [vocalization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) (التشكيل at-tashkīl).\n[Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi) (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn (كتاب ال[ع](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayin)ين \"The Book of the Letter [ع](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayin)\"), and is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic [prosody](https://bliptext.com/articles/prosody-linguistics).\n[Al-Jahiz](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-jahiz) (776–868) proposed to [Al-Akhfash al-Akbar](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-akhfash-al-akbar) an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries.\nThe standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century.\nThe first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya \"Arabic\", [Sībawayhi's](https://bliptext.com/articles/sibawayh) al-Kitāb, is based first of all upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya.\n\n## Spread\nArabic spread with the spread of [Islam](https://bliptext.com/articles/islam).\nFollowing the [early Muslim conquests](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-muslim-conquests), Arabic gained vocabulary from [Middle Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-persian) and [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language).\nIn the early [Abbasid period](https://bliptext.com/articles/abbasid-caliphate), many [Classical Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greek) terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at [Baghdad's](https://bliptext.com/articles/baghdad) [House of Wisdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/house-of-wisdom).\nBy the 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims.\nFor example, [Maimonides](https://bliptext.com/articles/maimonides), the [Andalusi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus) Jewish philosopher, authored works in [Judeo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/judeo-arabic-dialects)—Arabic written in [Hebrew script](https://bliptext.com/articles/hebrew-alphabet).\n\n## Development\n[Ibn Jinni](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-jinni) of [Mosul](https://bliptext.com/articles/mosul), a pioneer in [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology), wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology) in works such as [Kitāb Al-Munṣif](https://bliptext.com/articles/kit-b-al-mun-if), [Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab](https://bliptext.com/articles/kit-b-al-mu-tasab), and.\n[Ibn Mada'](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-mada) of [Cordoba](https://bliptext.com/articles/c-rdoba-spain) (1116–1196) realized the overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by [Al-Jahiz](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-jahiz) 200 years prior.\nThe Maghrebi lexicographer [Ibn Manzur](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-manzur) compiled [Lisān al-ʿArab](https://bliptext.com/articles/lis-n-al-arab) (لسان العرب, \"Tongue of Arabs\"), a major reference [dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/dictionary) of Arabic, in 1290.\n\n## Neo-Arabic\n[Charles Ferguson](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-a-ferguson)'s [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times.\nAhmad 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).\nThe modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests.\nInstead 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.\nAccording to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from [pidginized](https://bliptext.com/articles/pidgin) Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples.\nPidginization and subsequent [creolization](https://bliptext.com/articles/creolization) among Arabs and [arabized](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA.\nIn around the 11th and 12th centuries in [al-Andalus](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus), the [zajal](https://bliptext.com/articles/zajal) and muwashah poetry forms developed in the [dialectical Arabic of Cordoba](https://bliptext.com/articles/andalusian-arabic) and the Maghreb.\n\n## Nahda\nThe [Nahda](https://bliptext.com/articles/nahda) was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought \"to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression.\"\nAccording to [James L. Gelvin](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-l-gelvin), \"Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to a wider audience.\"\nIn the wake of the [industrial revolution](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) and European [hegemony](https://bliptext.com/articles/hegemony) and [colonialism](https://bliptext.com/articles/colonialism), pioneering Arabic presses, such as the [Amiri Press](https://bliptext.com/articles/amiri-press) established by [Muhammad Ali](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhammad-ali-of-egypt) (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic [literature](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-literature) and publications.\n[Rifa'a al-Tahtawi](https://bliptext.com/articles/rifa-a-al-tahtawi) proposed the establishment of [Madrasat al-Alsun](https://bliptext.com/articles/madrasat-al-alsun) in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted the need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship').\nIn response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in [Damascus](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-academy-of-damascus) (1919), then in [Cairo](https://bliptext.com/articles/academy-of-the-arabic-language-in-cairo) (1932), [Baghdad](https://bliptext.com/articles/iraqi-academy-of-sciences) (1948), [Rabat](https://bliptext.com/articles/institute-for-studies-and-research-on-arabization) (1960), [Amman](https://bliptext.com/articles/jordan-academy-of-arabic) (1977), (1993), and [Tunis](https://bliptext.com/articles/tunisian-academy-of-sciences-letters-and-arts) (1993).\nThey review language development, monitor new words and approve the inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries.\nThey also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.\nIn 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the [Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-league-educational-cultural-and-scientific-organization) of the [Arab League](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-league).\nThese academies and organizations have worked toward the [Arabization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) of the sciences, [creating terms](https://bliptext.com/articles/neologism) in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward the standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a [world language](https://bliptext.com/articles/world-language).\nThis gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic.\nFrom the 1950s, [Arabization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan.\n\n# Classical, Modern Standard and spoken Arabic\nArabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic) and Modern Standard Arabic.\nIt could also refer to any of a variety of regional vernacular [Arabic dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic), which are not necessarily mutually intelligible.Classical Arabic is the language found in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran), used from the period of [Pre-Islamic Arabia](https://bliptext.com/articles/pre-islamic-arabia) to that of the [Abbasid Caliphate](https://bliptext.com/articles/abbasid-caliphate).\nClassical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the [syntactic](https://bliptext.com/articles/syntactic) and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as [Sibawayh](https://bliptext.com/articles/sibawayh)) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-ʻArab).\nModern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary.\nHowever, 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.\nMuch of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the [industrial](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) and post-[industrial](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) era, especially in modern times.\nDue to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language.\nThese dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible.\nThe former are usually acquired in families, while the latter is taught in formal education settings.\nHowever, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children.\nThe relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-latin) and [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) vernaculars (which became [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages)) in medieval and early modern Europe.\nMSA is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers.\n\"Literary Arabic\" and \"Standard Arabic\" (فُصْحَى ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic.\nSome of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows:\nMSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., 'to go') that is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA.\nIn addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve.\nSome words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم **' 'film' or ديمقراطية '** 'democracy').\nThe current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use [loan translations](https://bliptext.com/articles/loan-translation) (e.g., فرع **' 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح '** 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing [roots](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-root) (استماتة ' '[apoptosis](https://bliptext.com/articles/apoptosis)', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into the [Xth form](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-verbs), or جامعة ' 'university', based on جمع **' 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية '** 'republic', based on جمهور 'multitude').\nAn earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف **' 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة '** 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk').\nColloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language.\nColloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be [mutually unintelligible](https://bliptext.com/articles/mutual-intelligibility), and some linguists consider them distinct languages.\nHowever, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations.\nThe varieties are typically unwritten.\nThey are often used in informal spoken media, such as [soap operas](https://bliptext.com/articles/soap-opera) and [talk shows](https://bliptext.com/articles/talk-show), as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising.\n[Hassaniya Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassaniya-arabic), [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language), and [Cypriot Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cypriot-arabic) are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition.\nHassaniya is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it.\nMaltese is official in (predominantly [Catholic](https://bliptext.com/articles/catholic-church)) [Malta](https://bliptext.com/articles/malta) and written with the [Latin script](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-alphabet).\nLinguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from [Siculo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/siculo-arabic), though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English.\nDue to \"a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors\", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not a type of Arabic.\nCypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus.\n# [Safaitic inscription | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Safaitic///script///with///a///figure///of///a///camel///on///a///red///sandstone///fragment%2C///from///es-Safa%2C///currently///housed///in///the///British///Museum.jpg]\n# [The Namara inscription, a sample of Nabataean script, considered a direct precursor of Arabic script | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Epitaph///Imru-l-Qays///Louvre///AO4083.jpg]\n\n# Status and usage\n\n## Diglossia\nThe sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of [diglossia](https://bliptext.com/articles/diglossia), which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations.\nTawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word.\nFor example, al-hatif lexicographically means the one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen.\nNow the term al-hatif is used for a telephone.\nTherefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic.\nIn 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 dialects, which depending on the region may be mutually unintelligible.\nSome of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have \"sub-dialects\" of their own.\nWhen educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers [code-switch](https://bliptext.com/articles/code-switching) back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence.\nThe issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the [varieties of Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-chinese), [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi-language) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu-language), [Serbian](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbian-language) and [Croatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/croatian-language), [Scots](https://bliptext.com/articles/scots-language) and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi-language) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu-language) 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.\nWhile there is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb.\nThe issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms.\nFor political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions.\nFrom 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages).\nThis is an apt comparison in a number of ways.\nThe period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages.\nAlso, while it is comprehensible to people from the [Maghreb](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghreb), a linguistically innovative variety such as [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic) is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the [Mashriq](https://bliptext.com/articles/mashriq), much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them.\nThis suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages.\n# [Flag of the Arab League, used in some cases for the Arabic language | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Flag///of///the///Arab///League.svg]\n# [Flag used in some cases for the Arabic language (Flag of the Kingdom of Hejaz 1916–1925). The flag contains the four Pan-Arab colors: black, white, green and red. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Flag///of///Hejaz///1917.svg]\n\n## Status in the Arab world vis-à-vis other languages\nWith the sole example of Medieval linguist [Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-hayyan-al-gharnati) – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior.\nIn modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view.\n[Yasir Suleiman](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\"\n\n## As a foreign language\nArabic has been taught worldwide in many [elementary](https://bliptext.com/articles/elementary-school) and [secondary](https://bliptext.com/articles/secondary-school) schools, especially Muslim schools.\nUniversities around the world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their [foreign languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/foreign-languages), [Middle Eastern studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-eastern-studies), and [religious studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/religious-studies) courses.\n[Arabic language schools](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-language-school) exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world.\nThere are many Arabic [language schools](https://bliptext.com/articles/language-school) in the Arab world and other [Muslim](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-world) countries.\nBecause the Quran is written in Arabic and all [Islamic terms](https://bliptext.com/articles/glossary-of-islam) are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language.\nSoftware and books with tapes are an 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.\nRadio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations.\nA number of websites on the [Internet](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\n\n# Vocabulary\n\n## Lexicography\n\n### Pre-modern Arabic lexicography\nThe tradition of Arabic [lexicography](https://bliptext.com/articles/lexicography) extended for about a millennium before the [modern period](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-era).\nEarly lexicographers (لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn) sought to explain words in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran) that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran).\nThey gathered shawāhid (شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from [poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-poetry) and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb (Bedouins) (أَعْراب) who were perceived to speak the \"purest,\" most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah (جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries.\nKitāb al-'Ayn (c. 8th century), attributed to [Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi), is considered the first [lexicon](https://bliptext.com/articles/dictionary) to include all [Arabic roots](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-root); it sought to exhaust all possible root [permutations](https://bliptext.com/articles/permutation)—later called taqālīb (تقاليب)—calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal (مستعمَل) and those that are not used muhmal (مُهمَل).\nLisān al-ʿArab (1290) by [Ibn Manzur](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-manzur) gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by [Murtada az-Zabidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/murtada-al-zabidi) gives 11,978 roots.\nThis lexicographic tradition was traditionalist and corrective in nature—holding that linguistic correctness and eloquence derive from Qurʾānic usage, Jahili poetry, and Bedouin speech—positioning itself against laḥnu‿l-ʿāmmah (لَحْن العامة), the [solecism](https://bliptext.com/articles/solecism) it viewed as defective.\n# [Arabic from the Quran in the old Hijazi dialect (Hijazi script, 7th century AD) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Birmingham///Quran///manuscript.jpg]\n\n### Western lexicography of Arabic\nIn the second half of the 19th century, the British Arabist [Edward William Lane](https://bliptext.com/articles/edward-william-lane), working with the Egyptian scholar Ibrāhīm Abd al-Ghaffār ad-Dasūqī, compiled the [Arabic–English Lexicon](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-english-lexicon) by translating material from earlier Arabic lexica into English.\nThe German Arabist [Hans Wehr](https://bliptext.com/articles/hans-wehr), with contributions from [Hedwig Klein](https://bliptext.com/articles/hedwig-klein), compiled the [Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabisches-w-rterbuch-f-r-die-schriftsprache-der-gegenwart) (1952), later translated into English as [A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/a-dictionary-of-modern-written-arabic) (1961), based on established usage, especially in literature.\n\n### Modern Arabic lexicography\nThe [Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo](https://bliptext.com/articles/academy-of-the-arabic-language-in-cairo) sought to publish a [historical dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/historical-dictionary) of Arabic in the vein of the [Oxford English Dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/oxford-english-dictionary), tracing the changes of meanings and uses of Arabic words over time.\nA first volume of Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr was published in 1956 under the leadership of [Taha Hussein](https://bliptext.com/articles/taha-hussein).\nThe project is not yet complete; its 15th volume, covering the letter [ṣād](https://bliptext.com/articles/tsade), was published in 2022.\n\n## Loanwords\nThe most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages [Aramaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/aramaic-language), which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, and [Ethiopic](https://bliptext.com/articles/ge-ez-language).\nMany cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from [Iranian languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/iranian-languages), notably [Middle Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-persian), [Parthian](https://bliptext.com/articles/parthian-language), and (Classical) Persian, and Hellenistic Greek (kīmiyāʼ has as origin the Greek khymia, meaning in that language the melting of metals; see [Roger Dachez](https://bliptext.com/articles/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).\nFor the origin of the last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Foundations of Islam, Seuil, L'Univers Historique, 2002.\nSome Arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare's above-cited book:\nArabic_script_evolution.svg (9th–11th century), with the [Basmala](https://bliptext.com/articles/basmala) as an example, from [kufic](https://bliptext.com/articles/kufic) [Qur'an](https://bliptext.com/articles/qur-an) manuscripts:\n(1) Early 9th century, script with no dots or diacritic marks;(2) and (3) 9th–10th century under the Abbasid dynasty, [Abu al-Aswad's](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-al-aswad-al-du-ali) system established red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel; later, a second black-dot system was used to differentiate between letters like **' and '**;\n(4) 11th century, in [al-Farāhidi's](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi) system (system used today) dots were changed into shapes resembling the letters to transcribe the corresponding long vowels.]]A comprehensive overview of the influence of other languages on Arabic is found in Lucas & Manfredi (2020).\n# [The Qur'an has served and continues to serve as a fundamental reference for Arabic. (Maghrebi Kufic script, Blue Qur'an, 9th–10th century.) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Folio///Blue///Quran///Met///2004.88.jpg]\n\n## Influence on other languages\nThe influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries, because it is the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Quran.\nArabic is also an important source of vocabulary for languages such as [Amharic](https://bliptext.com/articles/amharic-language), [Azerbaijani](https://bliptext.com/articles/azerbaijani-language), [Baluchi](https://bliptext.com/articles/baluchi-language), [Bengali](https://bliptext.com/articles/bengali-language), [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages), [Bosnian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bosnian-language), [Chaldean](https://bliptext.com/articles/chaldean-neo-aramaic), [Chechen](https://bliptext.com/articles/chechen-language), [Chittagonian](https://bliptext.com/articles/chittagonian-language), [Croatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/croatian-language), [Dagestani](https://bliptext.com/articles/dagestani-language), [Dhivehi](https://bliptext.com/articles/maldivian-language), [English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language), [German](https://bliptext.com/articles/german-language), [Gujarati](https://bliptext.com/articles/gujarati-language), [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language), [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi), [Kazakh](https://bliptext.com/articles/kazakh-language), [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-language), [Kutchi](https://bliptext.com/articles/kutchi-language), [Kyrgyz](https://bliptext.com/articles/kyrgyz-language), [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language) ([Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language)sian and [Indonesian](https://bliptext.com/articles/indonesian-language)), [Pashto](https://bliptext.com/articles/pashto-language), [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language), [Punjabi](https://bliptext.com/articles/punjabi-language), [Rohingya](https://bliptext.com/articles/rohingya-language), [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) ([French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language), [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/catalan-language), [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language), [Portuguese](https://bliptext.com/articles/portuguese-language), [Sicilian](https://bliptext.com/articles/sicilian-language), [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language), etc.) [Saraiki](https://bliptext.com/articles/saraiki-language), [Sindhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sindhi-language), [Somali](https://bliptext.com/articles/somali-language), [Sylheti](https://bliptext.com/articles/sylheti-language), [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language), [Tagalog](https://bliptext.com/articles/tagalog-language), [Tigrinya](https://bliptext.com/articles/tigrinya-language), [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language), [Turkmen](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkmen-language), [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu), [Uyghur](https://bliptext.com/articles/uyghur-language), [Uzbek](https://bliptext.com/articles/uzbek-language), [Visayan](https://bliptext.com/articles/visayan-languages) and [Wolof](https://bliptext.com/articles/wolof-language), as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken.\n[Modern Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-hebrew) has been also influenced by Arabic especially during the process of [revival](https://bliptext.com/articles/revival-of-the-hebrew-language), as [MSA](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) was used as a source for modern Hebrew vocabulary and roots.\n[English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language) has many Arabic loanwords, some directly, but most via other Mediterranean languages.\nExamples 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 zenith.\nOther languages such as [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) and [Kinubi](https://bliptext.com/articles/kinubi) derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammatical rules.\nTerms borrowed range from religious terminology (like [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) taẓallit, \"prayer\", from [salat](https://bliptext.com/articles/salat) (صلاة )), academic terms (like [Uyghur](https://bliptext.com/articles/uyghur-language) mentiq, \"logic\"), and economic items (like English coffee) to [placeholders](https://bliptext.com/articles/placeholder-name) (like [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) fulano, \"so-and-so\"), everyday terms (like [Hindustani](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindustani-language) lekin, \"but\", or [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) taza and [French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language) tasse, meaning \"cup\"), and expressions (like [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/catalan-language) a betzef, \"galore, in quantity\").\nMost Berber varieties (such as [Kabyle](https://bliptext.com/articles/kabyle-language)), along with [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language), borrow some numbers from Arabic.\nMost Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as صلاة (ṣalāh), \"prayer\", and إمام (imām), \"prayer leader\".\nIn languages not directly in contact with the [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world), Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic.\nFor example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani and [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language) entered through [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language).\nOlder Arabic loanwords in [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language) were borrowed from [Kanuri](https://bliptext.com/articles/kanuri-language).\nMost Arabic loanwords in [Yoruba](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoruba-language) entered through [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language).\nArabic words made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara.\nVariants of Arabic words such as كتاب kitāb (\"book\") have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.\nSince, throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/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](https://bliptext.com/articles/aramaic) and Persian translators, and then found their way into other languages.\nThis process of using Arabic roots, especially in [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-languages) and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued through to the 18th and 19th centuries, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under [Ottoman rule](https://bliptext.com/articles/ottoman-empire).\n\n# Spoken varieties\nColloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken dialects of Arabic used throughout the [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world), which differ radically from the [literary language](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-language).\nThe main dialectal division is between the varieties within and outside of the [Arabian peninsula](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabian-peninsula), followed by that between [sedentary](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic) varieties and the much more conservative [Bedouin](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedouin) varieties.\nAll the varieties outside of the Arabian peninsula, which include the large majority of speakers, have many features in common with each other that are not found in Classical Arabic.\nThis has led researchers to postulate the existence of a prestige [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) dialect in the one or two centuries immediately following the [Arab conquest](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-muslim-conquests), whose features eventually spread to all newly conquered areas.\nThese features are present to varying degrees inside the Arabian peninsula.\nGenerally, the Arabian peninsula varieties have much more diversity than the non-peninsula varieties, but these have been understudied.Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian [North African dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic), especially [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic), and the others.\nMoroccan Arabic in particular is hardly comprehensible to Arabic speakers east of [Libya](https://bliptext.com/articles/libya) (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Egyptian films and other media).\nOne factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided many new words and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order.\nHowever, a more weighty factor for most dialects is, as among [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms.\nThus [Iraqi](https://bliptext.com/articles/mesopotamian-arabic) aku, [Levantine](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) fīh and [North African](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) kayən all mean 'there is', and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now sound very different.\n# [Geographical distribution of the varieties of Arabic per Ethnologue and other sources: | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Arabic///Varieties///Map-2023.svg]\n# [Maimonides' autograph draft of The Guide for the Perplexed (דלאלת אלחאירין, دلالة الحائرين Dalālatu‿l-ḥāʾirīn), in Arabic written with Hebrew letters | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Manuscript///page///by///Maimonides///Arabic///in///Hebrew///letters///%28cropped%29.jpg]\n\n## Koiné\nAccording to [Charles A. Ferguson](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-a-ferguson), the following are some of the characteristic features of the [koiné](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) that underlies all the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula.\nAlthough 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:\n\n## Dialect groups\n\n# Phonology\nWhile many languages have numerous dialects that differ in [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology), contemporary spoken Arabic is more properly described as a [continuum of varieties](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic).\n[Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) (MSA), is the [standard variety](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-variety) shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions.\nMSA is used in writing in formal print media and orally in newscasts, speeches and formal declarations of numerous types.\nModern Standard Arabic has 28 [consonant](https://bliptext.com/articles/consonant) [phonemes](https://bliptext.com/articles/phoneme) and 6 [vowel](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel) [phonemes](https://bliptext.com/articles/phoneme).\nAll phonemes contrast between \"[emphatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/emphatic-consonant)\" ([pharyngealized](https://bliptext.com/articles/pharyngealized)) consonants and non-[emphatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/emphatic-consonant) ones.\nSome of these phonemes have [coalesced](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonetic-merger) in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through [borrowing](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword) or [phonemic splits](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonemic-split).\nA \"phonemic quality of length\" applies to [consonants](https://bliptext.com/articles/gemination) as well as [vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel-length).\n\n# Grammar\nThe [grammar of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-grammar) has similarities with the [grammar of other Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages).\nSome of the typical differences between Standard Arabic (فُصْحَى) and vernacular varieties are a loss of [morphological markings](https://bliptext.com/articles/morpheme) of [grammatical case](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-case), changes in [word order](https://bliptext.com/articles/word-order), a shift toward more [analytic](https://bliptext.com/articles/analytic-language) morphosyntax, loss of [grammatical mood](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood), and loss of the inflected [passive voice](https://bliptext.com/articles/passive-voice).\n\n## Literary Arabic\nAs in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual [morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphology-linguistics), i.e. method of constructing words from a basic [root](https://bliptext.com/articles/root-linguistics).\nArabic has a [nonconcatenative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonconcatenative-morphology) \"root-and-pattern\" morphology: A root consists of a set of bare consonants (usually [three](https://bliptext.com/articles/triliteral)), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern to form words.\nFor example, the word for 'I wrote' is constructed by combining the root **' 'write' with the pattern **' 'I Xed' to form 'I wrote'.\nOther verbs meaning 'I Xed' will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. **' 'I read', '** 'I ate', **' 'I went', although other patterns are possible, e.g. '** 'I drank', **' 'I said', '** 'I spoke', where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix is always used.\n****F****r****o****m**** ****a**** ****s****i****n****g****l****e**** ****r****o****o****t**** ****,**** ****n****u****m****e****r****o****u****s**** ****w****o****r****d****s**** ****c****a****n**** ****b****e**** ****f****o****r****m****e****d**** ****b****y**** ****a****p****p****l****y****i****n****g**** ****d****i****f****f****e****r****e****n****t**** ****p****a****t****t****e****r****n****s****:****\n\n### Nouns and adjectives\nNouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical [cases](https://bliptext.com/articles/noun-case) ([nominative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative-case), [accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative-case), and [genitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/genitive-case) [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three [numbers](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-number) (singular, dual and plural); two [genders](https://bliptext.com/articles/gender-grammar) (masculine and feminine); and three \"states\" (indefinite, definite, and [construct](https://bliptext.com/articles/status-constructus)).\nThe cases of singular nouns, other than those that end in long ā, are indicated by [suffixed](https://bliptext.com/articles/suffix) short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive).\nThe feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is pronounced as /-ah/ before a pause.\nPlural is indicated either through endings (the [sound plural](https://bliptext.com/articles/sound-plural)) or internal modification (the [broken plural](https://bliptext.com/articles/broken-plural)).\nDefinite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in \"construct state\" and all nouns which are [prefixed](https://bliptext.com/articles/prefix) by the definite article /al-/.\nIndefinite 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/nunation) or [tanwīn](https://bliptext.com/articles/tanw-n).\n[Adjectives](https://bliptext.com/articles/adjective) in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns.\nThe plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-at/ suffix.\n[Pronouns](https://bliptext.com/articles/pronoun) in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender.\nThere are two varieties, independent pronouns and [enclitics](https://bliptext.com/articles/enclitic).\nEnclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns.\nThe first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs ( /-nī/) and for nouns or prepositions ( /-ī/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).\nNouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects.\nNon-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular.\nA 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.\nNumerals between three and ten show \"chiasmic\" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.\n\n### Verbs\nVerbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number.\nThey are [conjugated](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-conjugation) in two major paradigms ([past](https://bliptext.com/articles/past) and non-[past](https://bliptext.com/articles/past)); two [voices](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-voice) (active and passive); and six [moods](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood) ([indicative](https://bliptext.com/articles/indicative), [imperative](https://bliptext.com/articles/imperative-mood), [subjunctive](https://bliptext.com/articles/subjunctive), [jussive](https://bliptext.com/articles/irrealis-mood), shorter [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood) and longer [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood)); the fifth and sixth [moods](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood), the [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood)s, exist only in Classical Arabic but not in MSA.\nThere are two [participles](https://bliptext.com/articles/participle), active and passive, and a [verbal noun](https://bliptext.com/articles/verbal-noun), but no [infinitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/infinitive).\nThe past and non-past paradigms are sometimes termed [perfective](https://bliptext.com/articles/perfective) and im[perfective](https://bliptext.com/articles/perfective), indicating the fact that they actually represent a combination of [tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-tense) and [aspect](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-aspect).\nThe moods other than the [indicative](https://bliptext.com/articles/indicative) occur only in the non-past, and the [future tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/future-tense) is signaled by prefixing **' or '** onto the non-past.\nThe past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g., past **' vs. non-past '**), and 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/suffix) morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of [prefixes](https://bliptext.com/articles/prefix) (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number) are used.\nThe passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.\nThe following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, 'to write'.\nIn Modern Standard, the energetic mood, in either long or short form, which has the same meaning, is almost never used.\n\n### Derivation\nLike other [Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages), and unlike most other languages, Arabic makes much more use of [nonconcatenative morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonconcatenative-morphology), applying many templates applied to roots, to [derive](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphological-derivation) words than adding prefixes or suffixes to words.\nFor verbs, a given root can occur in many different [derived verb stems](https://bliptext.com/articles/derived-stem), of which there are about fifteen, 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.\nThese are referred to by Western scholars as \"Form I\", \"Form II\", and so on through \"Form XV\", although Forms XI to XV are rare.\nThese stems encode grammatical functions such as the [causative](https://bliptext.com/articles/causative), [intensive](https://bliptext.com/articles/intensive) and [reflexive](https://bliptext.com/articles/reflexive-verb).\nStems sharing the same root consonants represent separate verbs, albeit often semantically related, and each is the basis for its own [conjugational](https://bliptext.com/articles/verb-conjugation) paradigm.\nAs a result, these derived stems are part of the system of [derivational morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/derivational-morphology), not part of the [inflectional](https://bliptext.com/articles/inflection) system.\nExamples of the different verbs formed from the root **' 'write' (using '** 'red' for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):\nForm II is sometimes used to create transitive [denominative verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/denominative-verb) (verbs built from nouns); Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.\nThe associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic.\nThis is similar to the process by which, for example, the [English gerund](https://bliptext.com/articles/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).\nAnother 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. **' 'desk, office' < '** 'write', **' 'kitchen' < '** 'cook').\nThe only three genuine suffixes are as follows:\n\n## Colloquial varieties\nThe 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).\nThey 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).\nThey have also mostly lost the indefinite \"nunation\" and the internal passive.\nThe following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.\n\n# Writing system\nThe Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through [Nabatean](https://bliptext.com/articles/nabatean-alphabet), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of [Coptic](https://bliptext.com/articles/coptic-alphabet) or [Cyrillic scripts](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) to [Greek script](https://bliptext.com/articles/greek-alphabet).\nTraditionally, 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).\nHowever, 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/zaouia)) of West Africa.\nArabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the [Ge'ez script](https://bliptext.com/articles/ge-ez-script)), is written from right to left.\nThere are several styles of scripts such as [thuluth](https://bliptext.com/articles/thuluth), [muhaqqaq](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhaqqaq), [tawqi](https://bliptext.com/articles/tawqi), [rayhan](https://bliptext.com/articles/rayhan), and notably [naskh](https://bliptext.com/articles/naskh-script), which is used in print and by computers, and [ruqʻah](https://bliptext.com/articles/ruq-ah), which is commonly used for correspondence.\nOriginally Arabic was made up of only rasm without diacritical marks Later diacritical points (which in Arabic are referred to as nuqaṯ) were added (which allowed readers to distinguish between letters such as b, t, th, n and y).\nFinally signs known as [Tashkil](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) were used for short vowels known as [harakat](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) and other uses such as final postnasalized or long vowels.\nNotes:\n# [Arabic calligraphy written by a Malay Muslim in Malaysia. The calligrapher is making a rough draft. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Menulis///khat.jpg]\n\n## Calligraphy\nAfter [Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nArabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by [Arabs](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabs) as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem.\nBeing cursive by nature, unlike the Latin script, Arabic script is used to write down a [verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayah) of the Quran, a [hadith](https://bliptext.com/articles/hadith), or a [proverb](https://bliptext.com/articles/proverb).\nThe composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal.\nOne of the current masters of the genre is [Hassan Massoudy](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassan-massoudy).\nIn 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.\n\n## Romanization\nThere are a number of different standards for the [romanization of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanization-of-arabic), i.e. methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin script.\nThere are various conflicting motivations involved, which leads to multiple systems.\nSome are interested in [transliteration](https://bliptext.com/articles/transliteration), i.e. representing the spelling of Arabic, while others focus on [transcription](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonetic-transcription), i.e. representing the pronunciation of Arabic.\n(Th**e******y**** diff**e**r in that, for **e**xampl**e**, th**e** sam**e** l**e**tt**e**r ي is us**e**d to r**e**pr**e**s**e**nt both a consonant, as in \"****y****ou\" or \"****y******e**t\", and a vow**e**l, as in \"m**e**\" or \"**e**at\".)\nSome 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.\nThese systems are heavily reliant on [diacritical](https://bliptext.com/articles/diacritic) marks such as \"š\" for the sound equivalently written sh in English.\nOther systems (e.g. the [Bahá'í orthography](https://bliptext.com/articles/bah-orthography)) are intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists with intuitive pronunciation of Arabic names and phrases.\nThese less \"scientific\" systems tend to avoid [diacritics](https://bliptext.com/articles/diacritics) and use [digraphs](https://bliptext.com/articles/digraph-orthography) (like sh and kh).\nThese 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.\nThe [ALA-LC](https://bliptext.com/articles/ala-lc) romanization solves this problem by separating the two sounds with a [prime](https://bliptext.com/articles/prime-symbol) symbol ( ′ ); e.g., as′hal 'easier'.\nDuring 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/personal-computer), the [World Wide Web](https://bliptext.com/articles/world-wide-web), [email](https://bliptext.com/articles/email), [bulletin board systems](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulletin-board-system), [IRC](https://bliptext.com/articles/internet-relay-chat), [instant messaging](https://bliptext.com/articles/instant-messaging) and [mobile phone text messaging](https://bliptext.com/articles/mobile-phone-text-messaging).\nMost 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.\nAs a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script.\nTo handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated.\nFor example, the numeral \"3\" may be used to represent the Arabic letter ⟨ع⟩.\nThere is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it [Arabic Chat Alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-chat-alphabet) or IM Arabic.\nOther systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the \"emphatic\" counterparts of certain consonants.\nFor instance, using capitalization, the letter ⟨د⟩, may be represente**d** by **d**.\nIts emphatic counterpart, ⟨ض⟩, may be written as **D**.\n\n## Numerals\nIn most of present-day North Africa, the [Western Arabic numerals](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-arabic-numerals) (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used.\nHowever, in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the [Eastern Arabic numerals](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-arabic-numerals) ( – – – – – – – – – ) are in use.\nWhen representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued [position](https://bliptext.com/articles/positional-notation) is placed on the right, so the order of [position](https://bliptext.com/articles/positional-notation)s is the same as in left-to-right scripts.\nSequences 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.\nFor example, 24 is said \"four and twenty\" just like in the German language (vierundzwanzig) and [Classical Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-hebrew), and 1975 is said \"a thousand and nine-hundred and five and seventy\" or, more eloquently, \"a thousand and nine-hundred five seventy\".\n\n## Arabic alphabet and nationalism\nThere have been many instances of national movements to convert Arabic script into Latin script or to Romanize the language.\nCurrently, the only Arabic variety to use Latin script is [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language).\n\n### Lebanon\nThe Beirut newspaper La Syrie pushed for the change from Arabic script to Latin letters in 1922.\nThe major head of this movement was [Louis Massignon](https://bliptext.com/articles/louis-massignon), a French Orientalist, who brought his concern before the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus in 1928.\nMassignon'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.\n[Sa'id Afghani](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-id-al-afghani), a member of the academy, mentioned that the movement to Romanize the script was a [Zionist](https://bliptext.com/articles/zionism) plan to dominate Lebanon.\n[Said Akl](https://bliptext.com/articles/said-akl) created a Latin-based alphabet for [Lebanese](https://bliptext.com/articles/lebanese-arabic) and used it in a newspaper he founded, Lebnaan, as well as in some books he wrote.\n\n### Egypt\nAfter the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for a way to reclaim and re-emphasize Egyptian culture.\nAs 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.\nThere was also the idea of finding a way to use [Hieroglyphics](https://bliptext.com/articles/hieroglyphics) instead of the Latin alphabet, but this was seen as too complicated to use.\nA scholar, [Salama Musa](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nHe also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances in science and technology.\nThis change in alphabet, 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.\n[Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid](https://bliptext.com/articles/ahmed-lutfi-el-sayed) and [Muhammad Azmi](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhammad-mustafa-azmi), two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for Romanization.\nThe idea that Romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al-Aziz Fahmi in 1944.\nHe was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo.\nThis effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cultural tie to the Arabic alphabet.\nIn particular, the older Egyptian generations believed that the Arabic alphabet had strong connections to Arab values and history, due to the long history of the Arabic alphabet (Shrivtiel, 189) in Muslim societies.\n\n# Sample text\n\n# Citations\n\n## Sources","wordIndex":16,"createdAt":"2025-03-10T23:53:01.246Z","user":{"id":"Pncgs6mE2GOPFAhtjCgTovRMMwrkIspI","name":"Ursula Tullberg","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocJ6poqPaIBGG80j8xWWEvA6pL3S_eFCbO4-pYm4vyY7L705NA=s96-c"}}],"article":{"id":"8ebbe45a-fe70-4483-81a2-9c6e2a678fc3","title":"Arabic","slug":"arabic","content":":::summary\n![Arabic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Arabic///albayancalligraphy.svg)\n**Name:** Arabic \n**Nativename:** اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ · al-ʿarabiyyah \n**States:** [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world) and surrounding regions \n**Ethnicity:** [Arabs](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabs) \n**Speakers:** million native speakers of all [varieties](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic) \n**Date:** 2024 \n**Speakers 2:** million [L2 users](https://bliptext.com/articles/l2-speakers) of [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) (2023) \n**Speakers Label:** Speakers \n**Familycolor:** Afro-Asiatic \n**Fam 2:** [Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [West Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/west-semitic-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Central Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) \n**Dia 1:** [Central Asian](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-asian-arabic) \n**Dia 2:** [Chadian](https://bliptext.com/articles/chadian-arabic) \n**Dia 3:** [Egyptian](https://bliptext.com/articles/egyptian-arabic) \n**Dia 4:** [Levantine](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) \n**Dia 5:** [Maghrebi](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) \n**Dia 6:** [Mesopotamian](https://bliptext.com/articles/mesopotamian-arabic) \n**Dia 7:** [Peninsular](https://bliptext.com/articles/peninsular-arabic) \n**Dia 8:** [Saʽidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-idi-arabic) \n**Dia 9:** [Shirvani](https://bliptext.com/articles/shirvani-arabic) \n**Dia 1 0:** [Sudanese](https://bliptext.com/articles/sudanese-arabic) \n**Dia 1 1:** [Yemeni](https://bliptext.com/articles/yemeni-arabic) \n**Stand 1:** [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) \n**Script:** [Arabic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-alphabet) · Other official scripts · Latin script (Maltese alphabet) \n**Nation:** 27 states and territories · Algeria · Bahrain · Chad · Comoros · Djibouti · Egypt · Eritrea · Iraq · Jordan · Kuwait · Lebanon · Libya · Mauritania · Morocco · Oman · Palestine · Qatar · Saudi Arabia · Somalia · Sudan · Syria · Tunisia · United Arab Emirates · Yemen · Zanzibar (Tanzania) · Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (partially recognized state) · Somaliland (unrecognized state) · International Organizations · African Union · Arab League · Organisation of Islamic Cooperation · United Nations · Special status in Constitution · Iran · Pakistan \n**Minority:** Cyprus · Israel · Mali · Niger · Philippines · Senegal · South Africa \n**Agency:** Algeria: Supreme Council of the Arabic language in Algeria · Egypt: Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo · Israel: Academy of the Arabic Language in Israel · Iraq: Iraqi Academy of Sciences · Jordan: Jordan Academy of Arabic · Libya: Academy of the Arabic Language in Jamahiriya · Morocco: Academy of the Arabic Language in Rabat · Saudi Arabia: Academy of the Arabic Language in Riyadh · Somalia: Academy of the Arabic Language in Mogadishu · Sudan: Academy of the Arabic Language in Khartoum · Syria: Arab Academy of Damascus (the oldest) · Tunisia: Beit Al-Hikma Foundation \n**Iso 1:** ar \n**Iso 2:** ara \n**Iso 3:** ara \n**Lc 1:** arq \n**Ld 1:** [Algerian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/algerian-arabic) \n**Lc 2:** xaa \n**Ld 2:** [Andalusi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/andalusi-arabic) \n**Lc 3:** abv \n**Ld 3:** [Bahrani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/bahrani-arabic) \n**Lc 4:** avl \n**Ld 4:** [Bedawi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedawi-arabic) \n**Lc 5:** shu \n**Ld 5:** [Chadian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/chadian-arabic) \n**Lc 6:** acy \n**Ld 6:** [Cypriot Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cypriot-arabic) \n**Lc 7:** adf \n**Ld 7:** [Dhofari Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dhofari-arabic) \n**Lc 8:** arz \n**Ld 8:** [Egyptian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/egyptian-arabic) \n**Lc 9:** acm \n**Ld 9:** [Gelet Iraqi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/gelet-arabic) \n**Lc 1 0:** afb \n**Ld 1 0:** [Gulf Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/gulf-arabic) \n**Lc 1 1:** ayh \n**Ld 1 1:** [Hadhrami Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hadhrami-arabic) \n**Lc 1 2:** mey \n**Ld 1 2:** [Hassaniya Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassaniya-arabic) \n**Lc 1 3:** acw \n**Ld 1 3:** [Hejazi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejazi-arabic) \n**Lc 1 4:** apc \n**Ld 1 4:** [Levantine Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) \n**Lc 1 5:** ayl \n**Ld 1 5:** [Libyan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/libyan-arabic) \n**Lc 1 6:** ary \n**Ld 1 6:** [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic) \n**Lc 1 7:** ars \n**Ld 1 7:** [Najdi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/najdi-arabic) \n**Lc 1 8:** acx \n**Ld 1 8:** [Omani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/omani-arabic) \n**Lc 1 9:** ayp \n**Ld 1 9:** [Qeltu Iraqi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moslawi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 0:** aao \n**Ld 2 0:** [Saharan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/saharan-arabic) \n**Lc 2 1:** aec \n**Ld 2 1:** [Saʽidi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-idi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 2:** ayn \n**Ld 2 2:** [Sanʽani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/san-ani-arabic) \n**Lc 2 3:** ssh \n**Ld 2 3:** [Shihhi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/shihhi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 4:** sqr \n**Ld 2 4:** [Siculo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/siculo-arabic) \n**Lc 2 5:** arb \n**Ld 2 5:** [Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-arabic) \n**Lc 2 6:** apd \n**Ld 2 6:** [Sudanese Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/sudanese-arabic) \n**Lc 2 7:** acq \n**Ld 2 7:** [Taʽizzi-Adeni Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/ta-izzi-adeni-arabic) \n**Lc 2 8:** abh \n**Ld 2 8:** [Tajiki Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/tajiki-arabic) \n**Lc 2 9:** aeb \n**Ld 2 9:** [Tunisian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/tunisian-arabic) \n**Lc 3 0:** auz \n**Ld 3 0:** [Uzbeki Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/uzbeki-arabic) \n**Lingua:** 12-AAC \n**Imagescale:** 0.7 \n**Imagecaption:** i****n**** ****w****r****i****t****t****e****n**** ****A****r****a****b****i****c**** ****(****[****N****a****s****k****h**** ****s****c****r****i****p****t****]****(****h****t****t****p****s****:****/****/****b****l****i****p****t****e****x****t****.****c****o****m****/****a****r****t****i****c****l****e****s****/****n****a****s****k****h****-****s****c****r****i****p****t****)****) \n**Notice:** IPA \n**Ancestor:** [Proto-Afroasiatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-afroasiatic) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Proto-Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-semitic) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Proto-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-arabic) \n**Ancestor 4:** [Old Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-arabic) \n**Ancestor 5:** [Pre-classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/pre-classical-arabic) \n**Sign:** Signed Arabic [(different national forms)](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-sign-language-family) \n**Glotto:** arab1395 \n**Glottorefname:** Arabic \n**Map:** Arabic speaking world.svg \n**Mapcaption:** {{legend|#088A4B|Sole official language, Arabic-speaking majority}} · {{legend|#045FB4|Co-official language, Arabic-speaking majority}} · {{legend|#5599ff|Co-official language, Arabic-speaking minority}} · {{legend|#e6e6e6|Not an official language, Arabic-speaking minority}} \n:::\n\n# \n**Arabic** (,, or , ) is a [Central Semitic language](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) of the [Afroasiatic language family](https://bliptext.com/articles/afroasiatic-languages) spoken primarily in the Terorist-world.\nThe [ISO](https://bliptext.com/articles/international-organization-for-standardization) assigns language codes to 32 [varieties of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic), including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic), which is derived from [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic).\nThis distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as (اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ \"the eloquent Arabic\") or simply (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ).\nArabic is the [third most widespread official language](https://bliptext.com/articles/list-of-languages-by-the-number-of-countries-in-which-they-are-recognized-as-an-official-language) after English and French, one of six [official languages of the United Nations](https://bliptext.com/articles/official-languages-of-the-united-nations), and the [liturgical language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sacred-language) of [Islam](https://bliptext.com/articles/islam).\nArabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media.\nDuring the [Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-ages), Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy.\nAs a result, many European languages have [borrowed](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword) words from it.\nArabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in [European languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/languages-of-europe) (mainly [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-language-influence-on-the-spanish-language) and to a lesser extent [Portuguese](https://bliptext.com/articles/influence-of-arabic-on-other-languages), [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/influence-of-arabic-on-other-languages), and [Sicilian](https://bliptext.com/articles/sicilian-language)) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the [Al-Andalus](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus) era.\n[Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) is a Semitic language developed from a dialect of Arabic and written in the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-alphabet).\nThe [Balkan](https://bliptext.com/articles/balkans) languages, including Albanian, [Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/greek-language), Serbo-Croatian, and [Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language), have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with [Ottoman Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/ottoman-turkish).\nArabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims.\nThe most markedly influenced languages are [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language), [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language), [Hindustani](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindustani-language) ([Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu)), [Kashmiri](https://bliptext.com/articles/kashmiri-language), [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-languages), [Bosnian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bosnian-language), [Kazakh](https://bliptext.com/articles/kazakh-language), [Bengali](https://bliptext.com/articles/bengali-language), [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language) ([Indonesian](https://bliptext.com/articles/indonesian-language) and [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language)sian), [Maldivian](https://bliptext.com/articles/maldivian-language), [Pashto](https://bliptext.com/articles/pashto), [Punjabi](https://bliptext.com/articles/punjabi-language), [Albanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/albanian-language), [Armenian](https://bliptext.com/articles/armenian-language), [Azerbaijani](https://bliptext.com/articles/azerbaijani-language), Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, [Tagalog](https://bliptext.com/articles/tagalog-language), [Sindhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sindhi-language), [Odia](https://bliptext.com/articles/odia-language), [Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/hebrew-language) and African languages such as [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language), [Amharic](https://bliptext.com/articles/amharic), [Tigrinya](https://bliptext.com/articles/tigrinya-language), [Somali](https://bliptext.com/articles/somali-language), [Tamazight](https://bliptext.com/articles/tamazight), and [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language).\nConversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its [sister-language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sister-language) Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to a lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian.\nArabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the [fifth most spoken language](https://bliptext.com/articles/list-of-languages-by-total-number-of-speakers) in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users.\nIt also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion [Muslims](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslims).\nIn 2011, [Bloomberg Businessweek](https://bliptext.com/articles/bloomberg-businessweek) ranked Arabic the fourth most useful language for business, after English, [Mandarin Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-mandarin-chinese), and French.\nArabic is written with the [Arabic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-alphabet), an [abjad](https://bliptext.com/articles/abjad) script that is written from [right to left](https://bliptext.com/articles/right-to-left).\n\n# Classification\nArabic is usually classified as a [Central Semitic language](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages).\nLinguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups.\nThe Semitic languages changed between [Proto-Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-semitic-language) and the emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar.\nInnovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include:\nThere are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the [Safaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/safaitic) and [Hismaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hismaic-old-arabic) inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the [Dadanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dadanitic) and [Taymanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/taymanitic) languages of the [northern Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hijaz).\nThese features are evidence of common descent from a [hypothetical ancestor](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-language), [Proto-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-arabic).\nThe following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence:\nOn the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic.\nThus, Arabic [vernaculars](https://bliptext.com/articles/vernacular) do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor.\n\n# History\n\n## Old Arabic\nArabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity.\nThe term \"Arab\" was initially used to describe those living in the [Arabian Peninsula](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabian-peninsula), as perceived by geographers from [ancient Greece](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greece).\nIn the southwest, various [Central Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) both belonging to and outside the [Ancient South Arabian](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-south-arabian) family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken.\nIt is believed that the ancestors of the [Modern South Arabian languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-south-arabian-languages) (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time.\nTo the north, in the oases of northern [Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejaz), [Dadanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dadanitic) and [Taymanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/taymanitic) held some prestige as inscriptional languages.\nIn Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested.\nIn eastern Arabia, inscriptions in a script derived from ASA attest to a language known as [Hasaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hasaitic).\nOn the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as [Thamudic B](https://bliptext.com/articles/thamudic-b), Thamudic D, [Safaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/safaitic), and [Hismaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hismaic) are attested.\nThe last two share important [isoglosses](https://bliptext.com/articles/isogloss) with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered [Old Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-arabic).\nLinguists generally believe that \"Old Arabic\", a collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the [Iron Age](https://bliptext.com/articles/iron-age).\nPreviously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in [Sabaic script](https://bliptext.com/articles/sabaic) at Qaryat al-Faw, in southern present-day Saudi Arabia.\nHowever, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as the conversion of Semitic [mimation](https://bliptext.com/articles/mimation) to [nunation](https://bliptext.com/articles/nunation) in the singular.\nIt is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum.\nIt was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced—[epigraphic](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphic) [Ancient North Arabian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-north-arabian) (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries.\nANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from \"Arabic\".\nScholars named its variant dialects after the towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic).\nHowever, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-.\nIt has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable.\nSafaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to the fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic.\nThe earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an [ancestor of the modern Arabic script](https://bliptext.com/articles/nabataean-alphabet) are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in [En Avdat, Israel](https://bliptext.com/articles/avdat), and dated to around 125 CE.\nThis is followed by the [Namara inscription](https://bliptext.com/articles/namara-inscription), an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria.\nFrom the 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era.\nThere are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ([Zabad](https://bliptext.com/articles/zabad-inscription), [Jebel Usays](https://bliptext.com/articles/jebel-usays-inscription), [Harran](https://bliptext.com/articles/harran-inscription), Umm el-Jimal).\nThe oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet.\nThe language of that papyrus and of the Qur'an is referred to by linguists as \"Quranic Arabic\", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into \"[Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic)\".\n\n## Classical Arabic\nIn late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the [Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejaz), which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the [Hijra](https://bliptext.com/articles/islamic-calendar), most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from the \"learned\" tradition (Classical Arabic).\nThis variety and both its classicizing and \"lay\" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an [Old Higazi](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-higazi) register.\nIt is clear that the orthography of the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran) was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi.\nIn the late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal \"poetic koine\" distinct from the [spoken vernaculars](https://bliptext.com/articles/vernacular) developed based on the [Bedouin](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedouin) dialects of [Najd](https://bliptext.com/articles/najd), probably in connection with the court of [al-Ḥīra](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-hirah).\nDuring the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue.\nTheir texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic) elements in morphology and syntax.\n\n## Standardization\n[Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-al-aswad-al-du-ali) (c. 603–689) is credited with standardizing [Arabic grammar](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-grammar), or an-naḥw (النَّحو \"the way\" ), and pioneering a system of [diacritics](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) to differentiate consonants (نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām \"pointing for non-Arabs\") and indicate [vocalization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) (التشكيل at-tashkīl).\n[Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi) (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn (كتاب ال[ع](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayin)ين \"The Book of the Letter [ع](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayin)\"), and is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic [prosody](https://bliptext.com/articles/prosody-linguistics).\n[Al-Jahiz](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-jahiz) (776–868) proposed to [Al-Akhfash al-Akbar](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-akhfash-al-akbar) an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries.\nThe standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century.\nThe first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya \"Arabic\", [Sībawayhi's](https://bliptext.com/articles/sibawayh) al-Kitāb, is based first of all upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya.\n\n## Spread\nArabic spread with the spread of [Islam](https://bliptext.com/articles/islam).\nFollowing the [early Muslim conquests](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-muslim-conquests), Arabic gained vocabulary from [Middle Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-persian) and [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language).\nIn the early [Abbasid period](https://bliptext.com/articles/abbasid-caliphate), many [Classical Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greek) terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at [Baghdad's](https://bliptext.com/articles/baghdad) [House of Wisdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/house-of-wisdom).\nBy the 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims.\nFor example, [Maimonides](https://bliptext.com/articles/maimonides), the [Andalusi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus) Jewish philosopher, authored works in [Judeo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/judeo-arabic-dialects)—Arabic written in [Hebrew script](https://bliptext.com/articles/hebrew-alphabet).\n\n## Development\n[Ibn Jinni](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-jinni) of [Mosul](https://bliptext.com/articles/mosul), a pioneer in [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology), wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology) in works such as [Kitāb Al-Munṣif](https://bliptext.com/articles/kit-b-al-mun-if), [Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab](https://bliptext.com/articles/kit-b-al-mu-tasab), and.\n[Ibn Mada'](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-mada) of [Cordoba](https://bliptext.com/articles/c-rdoba-spain) (1116–1196) realized the overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by [Al-Jahiz](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-jahiz) 200 years prior.\nThe Maghrebi lexicographer [Ibn Manzur](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-manzur) compiled [Lisān al-ʿArab](https://bliptext.com/articles/lis-n-al-arab) (لسان العرب, \"Tongue of Arabs\"), a major reference [dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/dictionary) of Arabic, in 1290.\n\n## Neo-Arabic\n[Charles Ferguson](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-a-ferguson)'s [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times.\nAhmad 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).\nThe modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests.\nInstead 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.\nAccording to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from [pidginized](https://bliptext.com/articles/pidgin) Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples.\nPidginization and subsequent [creolization](https://bliptext.com/articles/creolization) among Arabs and [arabized](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA.\nIn around the 11th and 12th centuries in [al-Andalus](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus), the [zajal](https://bliptext.com/articles/zajal) and muwashah poetry forms developed in the [dialectical Arabic of Cordoba](https://bliptext.com/articles/andalusian-arabic) and the Maghreb.\n\n## Nahda\nThe [Nahda](https://bliptext.com/articles/nahda) was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought \"to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression.\"\nAccording to [James L. Gelvin](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-l-gelvin), \"Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to a wider audience.\"\nIn the wake of the [industrial revolution](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) and European [hegemony](https://bliptext.com/articles/hegemony) and [colonialism](https://bliptext.com/articles/colonialism), pioneering Arabic presses, such as the [Amiri Press](https://bliptext.com/articles/amiri-press) established by [Muhammad Ali](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhammad-ali-of-egypt) (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic [literature](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-literature) and publications.\n[Rifa'a al-Tahtawi](https://bliptext.com/articles/rifa-a-al-tahtawi) proposed the establishment of [Madrasat al-Alsun](https://bliptext.com/articles/madrasat-al-alsun) in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted the need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship').\nIn response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in [Damascus](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-academy-of-damascus) (1919), then in [Cairo](https://bliptext.com/articles/academy-of-the-arabic-language-in-cairo) (1932), [Baghdad](https://bliptext.com/articles/iraqi-academy-of-sciences) (1948), [Rabat](https://bliptext.com/articles/institute-for-studies-and-research-on-arabization) (1960), [Amman](https://bliptext.com/articles/jordan-academy-of-arabic) (1977), (1993), and [Tunis](https://bliptext.com/articles/tunisian-academy-of-sciences-letters-and-arts) (1993).\nThey review language development, monitor new words and approve the inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries.\nThey also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.\nIn 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the [Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-league-educational-cultural-and-scientific-organization) of the [Arab League](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-league).\nThese academies and organizations have worked toward the [Arabization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) of the sciences, [creating terms](https://bliptext.com/articles/neologism) in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward the standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a [world language](https://bliptext.com/articles/world-language).\nThis gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic.\nFrom the 1950s, [Arabization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan.\n\n# Classical, Modern Standard and spoken Arabic\nArabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic) and Modern Standard Arabic.\nIt could also refer to any of a variety of regional vernacular [Arabic dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic), which are not necessarily mutually intelligible.Classical Arabic is the language found in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran), used from the period of [Pre-Islamic Arabia](https://bliptext.com/articles/pre-islamic-arabia) to that of the [Abbasid Caliphate](https://bliptext.com/articles/abbasid-caliphate).\nClassical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the [syntactic](https://bliptext.com/articles/syntactic) and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as [Sibawayh](https://bliptext.com/articles/sibawayh)) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-ʻArab).\nModern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary.\nHowever, 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.\nMuch of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the [industrial](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) and post-[industrial](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) era, especially in modern times.\nDue to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language.\nThese dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible.\nThe former are usually acquired in families, while the latter is taught in formal education settings.\nHowever, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children.\nThe relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-latin) and [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) vernaculars (which became [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages)) in medieval and early modern Europe.\nMSA is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers.\n\"Literary Arabic\" and \"Standard Arabic\" (فُصْحَى ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic.\nSome of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows:\nMSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., 'to go') that is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA.\nIn addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve.\nSome words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم **' 'film' or ديمقراطية '** 'democracy').\nThe current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use [loan translations](https://bliptext.com/articles/loan-translation) (e.g., فرع **' 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح '** 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing [roots](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-root) (استماتة ' '[apoptosis](https://bliptext.com/articles/apoptosis)', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into the [Xth form](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-verbs), or جامعة ' 'university', based on جمع **' 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية '** 'republic', based on جمهور 'multitude').\nAn earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف **' 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة '** 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk').\nColloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language.\nColloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be [mutually unintelligible](https://bliptext.com/articles/mutual-intelligibility), and some linguists consider them distinct languages.\nHowever, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations.\nThe varieties are typically unwritten.\nThey are often used in informal spoken media, such as [soap operas](https://bliptext.com/articles/soap-opera) and [talk shows](https://bliptext.com/articles/talk-show), as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising.\n[Hassaniya Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassaniya-arabic), [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language), and [Cypriot Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cypriot-arabic) are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition.\nHassaniya is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it.\nMaltese is official in (predominantly [Catholic](https://bliptext.com/articles/catholic-church)) [Malta](https://bliptext.com/articles/malta) and written with the [Latin script](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-alphabet).\nLinguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from [Siculo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/siculo-arabic), though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English.\nDue to \"a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors\", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not a type of Arabic.\nCypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus.\n# [Safaitic inscription | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Safaitic///script///with///a///figure///of///a///camel///on///a///red///sandstone///fragment%2C///from///es-Safa%2C///currently///housed///in///the///British///Museum.jpg]\n# [The Namara inscription, a sample of Nabataean script, considered a direct precursor of Arabic script | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Epitaph///Imru-l-Qays///Louvre///AO4083.jpg]\n\n# Status and usage\n\n## Diglossia\nThe sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of [diglossia](https://bliptext.com/articles/diglossia), which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations.\nTawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word.\nFor example, al-hatif lexicographically means the one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen.\nNow the term al-hatif is used for a telephone.\nTherefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic.\nIn 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 dialects, which depending on the region may be mutually unintelligible.\nSome of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have \"sub-dialects\" of their own.\nWhen educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers [code-switch](https://bliptext.com/articles/code-switching) back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence.\nThe issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the [varieties of Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-chinese), [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi-language) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu-language), [Serbian](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbian-language) and [Croatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/croatian-language), [Scots](https://bliptext.com/articles/scots-language) and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi-language) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu-language) 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.\nWhile there is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb.\nThe issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms.\nFor political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions.\nFrom 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages).\nThis is an apt comparison in a number of ways.\nThe period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages.\nAlso, while it is comprehensible to people from the [Maghreb](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghreb), a linguistically innovative variety such as [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic) is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the [Mashriq](https://bliptext.com/articles/mashriq), much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them.\nThis suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages.\n# [Flag of the Arab League, used in some cases for the Arabic language | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Flag///of///the///Arab///League.svg]\n# [Flag used in some cases for the Arabic language (Flag of the Kingdom of Hejaz 1916–1925). The flag contains the four Pan-Arab colors: black, white, green and red. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Flag///of///Hejaz///1917.svg]\n\n## Status in the Arab world vis-à-vis other languages\nWith the sole example of Medieval linguist [Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-hayyan-al-gharnati) – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior.\nIn modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view.\n[Yasir Suleiman](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\"\n\n## As a foreign language\nArabic has been taught worldwide in many [elementary](https://bliptext.com/articles/elementary-school) and [secondary](https://bliptext.com/articles/secondary-school) schools, especially Muslim schools.\nUniversities around the world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their [foreign languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/foreign-languages), [Middle Eastern studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-eastern-studies), and [religious studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/religious-studies) courses.\n[Arabic language schools](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-language-school) exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world.\nThere are many Arabic [language schools](https://bliptext.com/articles/language-school) in the Arab world and other [Muslim](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-world) countries.\nBecause the Quran is written in Arabic and all [Islamic terms](https://bliptext.com/articles/glossary-of-islam) are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language.\nSoftware and books with tapes are an 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.\nRadio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations.\nA number of websites on the [Internet](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\n\n# Vocabulary\n\n## Lexicography\n\n### Pre-modern Arabic lexicography\nThe tradition of Arabic [lexicography](https://bliptext.com/articles/lexicography) extended for about a millennium before the [modern period](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-era).\nEarly lexicographers (لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn) sought to explain words in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran) that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran).\nThey gathered shawāhid (شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from [poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-poetry) and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb (Bedouins) (أَعْراب) who were perceived to speak the \"purest,\" most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah (جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries.\nKitāb al-'Ayn (c. 8th century), attributed to [Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi), is considered the first [lexicon](https://bliptext.com/articles/dictionary) to include all [Arabic roots](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-root); it sought to exhaust all possible root [permutations](https://bliptext.com/articles/permutation)—later called taqālīb (تقاليب)—calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal (مستعمَل) and those that are not used muhmal (مُهمَل).\nLisān al-ʿArab (1290) by [Ibn Manzur](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-manzur) gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by [Murtada az-Zabidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/murtada-al-zabidi) gives 11,978 roots.\nThis lexicographic tradition was traditionalist and corrective in nature—holding that linguistic correctness and eloquence derive from Qurʾānic usage, Jahili poetry, and Bedouin speech—positioning itself against laḥnu‿l-ʿāmmah (لَحْن العامة), the [solecism](https://bliptext.com/articles/solecism) it viewed as defective.\n# [Arabic from the Quran in the old Hijazi dialect (Hijazi script, 7th century AD) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Birmingham///Quran///manuscript.jpg]\n\n### Western lexicography of Arabic\nIn the second half of the 19th century, the British Arabist [Edward William Lane](https://bliptext.com/articles/edward-william-lane), working with the Egyptian scholar Ibrāhīm Abd al-Ghaffār ad-Dasūqī, compiled the [Arabic–English Lexicon](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-english-lexicon) by translating material from earlier Arabic lexica into English.\nThe German Arabist [Hans Wehr](https://bliptext.com/articles/hans-wehr), with contributions from [Hedwig Klein](https://bliptext.com/articles/hedwig-klein), compiled the [Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabisches-w-rterbuch-f-r-die-schriftsprache-der-gegenwart) (1952), later translated into English as [A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/a-dictionary-of-modern-written-arabic) (1961), based on established usage, especially in literature.\n\n### Modern Arabic lexicography\nThe [Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo](https://bliptext.com/articles/academy-of-the-arabic-language-in-cairo) sought to publish a [historical dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/historical-dictionary) of Arabic in the vein of the [Oxford English Dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/oxford-english-dictionary), tracing the changes of meanings and uses of Arabic words over time.\nA first volume of Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr was published in 1956 under the leadership of [Taha Hussein](https://bliptext.com/articles/taha-hussein).\nThe project is not yet complete; its 15th volume, covering the letter [ṣād](https://bliptext.com/articles/tsade), was published in 2022.\n\n## Loanwords\nThe most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages [Aramaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/aramaic-language), which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, and [Ethiopic](https://bliptext.com/articles/ge-ez-language).\nMany cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from [Iranian languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/iranian-languages), notably [Middle Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-persian), [Parthian](https://bliptext.com/articles/parthian-language), and (Classical) Persian, and Hellenistic Greek (kīmiyāʼ has as origin the Greek khymia, meaning in that language the melting of metals; see [Roger Dachez](https://bliptext.com/articles/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).\nFor the origin of the last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Foundations of Islam, Seuil, L'Univers Historique, 2002.\nSome Arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare's above-cited book:\nArabic_script_evolution.svg (9th–11th century), with the [Basmala](https://bliptext.com/articles/basmala) as an example, from [kufic](https://bliptext.com/articles/kufic) [Qur'an](https://bliptext.com/articles/qur-an) manuscripts:\n(1) Early 9th century, script with no dots or diacritic marks;(2) and (3) 9th–10th century under the Abbasid dynasty, [Abu al-Aswad's](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-al-aswad-al-du-ali) system established red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel; later, a second black-dot system was used to differentiate between letters like **' and '**;\n(4) 11th century, in [al-Farāhidi's](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi) system (system used today) dots were changed into shapes resembling the letters to transcribe the corresponding long vowels.]]A comprehensive overview of the influence of other languages on Arabic is found in Lucas & Manfredi (2020).\n# [The Qur'an has served and continues to serve as a fundamental reference for Arabic. (Maghrebi Kufic script, Blue Qur'an, 9th–10th century.) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Folio///Blue///Quran///Met///2004.88.jpg]\n\n## Influence on other languages\nThe influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries, because it is the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Quran.\nArabic is also an important source of vocabulary for languages such as [Amharic](https://bliptext.com/articles/amharic-language), [Azerbaijani](https://bliptext.com/articles/azerbaijani-language), [Baluchi](https://bliptext.com/articles/baluchi-language), [Bengali](https://bliptext.com/articles/bengali-language), [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages), [Bosnian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bosnian-language), [Chaldean](https://bliptext.com/articles/chaldean-neo-aramaic), [Chechen](https://bliptext.com/articles/chechen-language), [Chittagonian](https://bliptext.com/articles/chittagonian-language), [Croatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/croatian-language), [Dagestani](https://bliptext.com/articles/dagestani-language), [Dhivehi](https://bliptext.com/articles/maldivian-language), [English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language), [German](https://bliptext.com/articles/german-language), [Gujarati](https://bliptext.com/articles/gujarati-language), [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language), [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi), [Kazakh](https://bliptext.com/articles/kazakh-language), [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-language), [Kutchi](https://bliptext.com/articles/kutchi-language), [Kyrgyz](https://bliptext.com/articles/kyrgyz-language), [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language) ([Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language)sian and [Indonesian](https://bliptext.com/articles/indonesian-language)), [Pashto](https://bliptext.com/articles/pashto-language), [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language), [Punjabi](https://bliptext.com/articles/punjabi-language), [Rohingya](https://bliptext.com/articles/rohingya-language), [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) ([French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language), [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/catalan-language), [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language), [Portuguese](https://bliptext.com/articles/portuguese-language), [Sicilian](https://bliptext.com/articles/sicilian-language), [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language), etc.) [Saraiki](https://bliptext.com/articles/saraiki-language), [Sindhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sindhi-language), [Somali](https://bliptext.com/articles/somali-language), [Sylheti](https://bliptext.com/articles/sylheti-language), [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language), [Tagalog](https://bliptext.com/articles/tagalog-language), [Tigrinya](https://bliptext.com/articles/tigrinya-language), [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language), [Turkmen](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkmen-language), [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu), [Uyghur](https://bliptext.com/articles/uyghur-language), [Uzbek](https://bliptext.com/articles/uzbek-language), [Visayan](https://bliptext.com/articles/visayan-languages) and [Wolof](https://bliptext.com/articles/wolof-language), as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken.\n[Modern Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-hebrew) has been also influenced by Arabic especially during the process of [revival](https://bliptext.com/articles/revival-of-the-hebrew-language), as [MSA](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) was used as a source for modern Hebrew vocabulary and roots.\n[English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language) has many Arabic loanwords, some directly, but most via other Mediterranean languages.\nExamples 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 zenith.\nOther languages such as [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) and [Kinubi](https://bliptext.com/articles/kinubi) derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammatical rules.\nTerms borrowed range from religious terminology (like [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) taẓallit, \"prayer\", from [salat](https://bliptext.com/articles/salat) (صلاة )), academic terms (like [Uyghur](https://bliptext.com/articles/uyghur-language) mentiq, \"logic\"), and economic items (like English coffee) to [placeholders](https://bliptext.com/articles/placeholder-name) (like [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) fulano, \"so-and-so\"), everyday terms (like [Hindustani](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindustani-language) lekin, \"but\", or [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) taza and [French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language) tasse, meaning \"cup\"), and expressions (like [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/catalan-language) a betzef, \"galore, in quantity\").\nMost Berber varieties (such as [Kabyle](https://bliptext.com/articles/kabyle-language)), along with [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language), borrow some numbers from Arabic.\nMost Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as صلاة (ṣalāh), \"prayer\", and إمام (imām), \"prayer leader\".\nIn languages not directly in contact with the [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world), Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic.\nFor example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani and [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language) entered through [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language).\nOlder Arabic loanwords in [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language) were borrowed from [Kanuri](https://bliptext.com/articles/kanuri-language).\nMost Arabic loanwords in [Yoruba](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoruba-language) entered through [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language).\nArabic words made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara.\nVariants of Arabic words such as كتاب kitāb (\"book\") have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.\nSince, throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/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](https://bliptext.com/articles/aramaic) and Persian translators, and then found their way into other languages.\nThis process of using Arabic roots, especially in [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-languages) and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued through to the 18th and 19th centuries, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under [Ottoman rule](https://bliptext.com/articles/ottoman-empire).\n\n# Spoken varieties\nColloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken dialects of Arabic used throughout the [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world), which differ radically from the [literary language](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-language).\nThe main dialectal division is between the varieties within and outside of the [Arabian peninsula](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabian-peninsula), followed by that between [sedentary](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic) varieties and the much more conservative [Bedouin](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedouin) varieties.\nAll the varieties outside of the Arabian peninsula, which include the large majority of speakers, have many features in common with each other that are not found in Classical Arabic.\nThis has led researchers to postulate the existence of a prestige [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) dialect in the one or two centuries immediately following the [Arab conquest](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-muslim-conquests), whose features eventually spread to all newly conquered areas.\nThese features are present to varying degrees inside the Arabian peninsula.\nGenerally, the Arabian peninsula varieties have much more diversity than the non-peninsula varieties, but these have been understudied.Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian [North African dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic), especially [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic), and the others.\nMoroccan Arabic in particular is hardly comprehensible to Arabic speakers east of [Libya](https://bliptext.com/articles/libya) (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Egyptian films and other media).\nOne factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided many new words and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order.\nHowever, a more weighty factor for most dialects is, as among [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms.\nThus [Iraqi](https://bliptext.com/articles/mesopotamian-arabic) aku, [Levantine](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) fīh and [North African](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) kayən all mean 'there is', and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now sound very different.\n# [Geographical distribution of the varieties of Arabic per Ethnologue and other sources: | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Arabic///Varieties///Map-2023.svg]\n# [Maimonides' autograph draft of The Guide for the Perplexed (דלאלת אלחאירין, دلالة الحائرين Dalālatu‿l-ḥāʾirīn), in Arabic written with Hebrew letters | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Manuscript///page///by///Maimonides///Arabic///in///Hebrew///letters///%28cropped%29.jpg]\n\n## Koiné\nAccording to [Charles A. Ferguson](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-a-ferguson), the following are some of the characteristic features of the [koiné](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) that underlies all the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula.\nAlthough 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:\n\n## Dialect groups\n\n# Phonology\nWhile many languages have numerous dialects that differ in [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology), contemporary spoken Arabic is more properly described as a [continuum of varieties](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic).\n[Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) (MSA), is the [standard variety](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-variety) shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions.\nMSA is used in writing in formal print media and orally in newscasts, speeches and formal declarations of numerous types.\nModern Standard Arabic has 28 [consonant](https://bliptext.com/articles/consonant) [phonemes](https://bliptext.com/articles/phoneme) and 6 [vowel](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel) [phonemes](https://bliptext.com/articles/phoneme).\nAll phonemes contrast between \"[emphatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/emphatic-consonant)\" ([pharyngealized](https://bliptext.com/articles/pharyngealized)) consonants and non-[emphatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/emphatic-consonant) ones.\nSome of these phonemes have [coalesced](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonetic-merger) in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through [borrowing](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword) or [phonemic splits](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonemic-split).\nA \"phonemic quality of length\" applies to [consonants](https://bliptext.com/articles/gemination) as well as [vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel-length).\n\n# Grammar\nThe [grammar of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-grammar) has similarities with the [grammar of other Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages).\nSome of the typical differences between Standard Arabic (فُصْحَى) and vernacular varieties are a loss of [morphological markings](https://bliptext.com/articles/morpheme) of [grammatical case](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-case), changes in [word order](https://bliptext.com/articles/word-order), a shift toward more [analytic](https://bliptext.com/articles/analytic-language) morphosyntax, loss of [grammatical mood](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood), and loss of the inflected [passive voice](https://bliptext.com/articles/passive-voice).\n\n## Literary Arabic\nAs in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual [morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphology-linguistics), i.e. method of constructing words from a basic [root](https://bliptext.com/articles/root-linguistics).\nArabic has a [nonconcatenative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonconcatenative-morphology) \"root-and-pattern\" morphology: A root consists of a set of bare consonants (usually [three](https://bliptext.com/articles/triliteral)), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern to form words.\nFor example, the word for 'I wrote' is constructed by combining the root **' 'write' with the pattern **' 'I Xed' to form 'I wrote'.\nOther verbs meaning 'I Xed' will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. **' 'I read', '** 'I ate', **' 'I went', although other patterns are possible, e.g. '** 'I drank', **' 'I said', '** 'I spoke', where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix is always used.\n****F****r****o****m**** ****a**** ****s****i****n****g****l****e**** ****r****o****o****t**** ****,**** ****n****u****m****e****r****o****u****s**** ****w****o****r****d****s**** ****c****a****n**** ****b****e**** ****f****o****r****m****e****d**** ****b****y**** ****a****p****p****l****y****i****n****g**** ****d****i****f****f****e****r****e****n****t**** ****p****a****t****t****e****r****n****s****:****\n\n### Nouns and adjectives\nNouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical [cases](https://bliptext.com/articles/noun-case) ([nominative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative-case), [accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative-case), and [genitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/genitive-case) [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three [numbers](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-number) (singular, dual and plural); two [genders](https://bliptext.com/articles/gender-grammar) (masculine and feminine); and three \"states\" (indefinite, definite, and [construct](https://bliptext.com/articles/status-constructus)).\nThe cases of singular nouns, other than those that end in long ā, are indicated by [suffixed](https://bliptext.com/articles/suffix) short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive).\nThe feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is pronounced as /-ah/ before a pause.\nPlural is indicated either through endings (the [sound plural](https://bliptext.com/articles/sound-plural)) or internal modification (the [broken plural](https://bliptext.com/articles/broken-plural)).\nDefinite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in \"construct state\" and all nouns which are [prefixed](https://bliptext.com/articles/prefix) by the definite article /al-/.\nIndefinite 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/nunation) or [tanwīn](https://bliptext.com/articles/tanw-n).\n[Adjectives](https://bliptext.com/articles/adjective) in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns.\nThe plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-at/ suffix.\n[Pronouns](https://bliptext.com/articles/pronoun) in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender.\nThere are two varieties, independent pronouns and [enclitics](https://bliptext.com/articles/enclitic).\nEnclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns.\nThe first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs ( /-nī/) and for nouns or prepositions ( /-ī/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).\nNouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects.\nNon-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular.\nA 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.\nNumerals between three and ten show \"chiasmic\" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.\n\n### Verbs\nVerbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number.\nThey are [conjugated](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-conjugation) in two major paradigms ([past](https://bliptext.com/articles/past) and non-[past](https://bliptext.com/articles/past)); two [voices](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-voice) (active and passive); and six [moods](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood) ([indicative](https://bliptext.com/articles/indicative), [imperative](https://bliptext.com/articles/imperative-mood), [subjunctive](https://bliptext.com/articles/subjunctive), [jussive](https://bliptext.com/articles/irrealis-mood), shorter [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood) and longer [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood)); the fifth and sixth [moods](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood), the [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood)s, exist only in Classical Arabic but not in MSA.\nThere are two [participles](https://bliptext.com/articles/participle), active and passive, and a [verbal noun](https://bliptext.com/articles/verbal-noun), but no [infinitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/infinitive).\nThe past and non-past paradigms are sometimes termed [perfective](https://bliptext.com/articles/perfective) and im[perfective](https://bliptext.com/articles/perfective), indicating the fact that they actually represent a combination of [tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-tense) and [aspect](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-aspect).\nThe moods other than the [indicative](https://bliptext.com/articles/indicative) occur only in the non-past, and the [future tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/future-tense) is signaled by prefixing **' or '** onto the non-past.\nThe past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g., past **' vs. non-past '**), and 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/suffix) morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of [prefixes](https://bliptext.com/articles/prefix) (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number) are used.\nThe passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.\nThe following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, 'to write'.\nIn Modern Standard, the energetic mood, in either long or short form, which has the same meaning, is almost never used.\n\n### Derivation\nLike other [Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages), and unlike most other languages, Arabic makes much more use of [nonconcatenative morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonconcatenative-morphology), applying many templates applied to roots, to [derive](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphological-derivation) words than adding prefixes or suffixes to words.\nFor verbs, a given root can occur in many different [derived verb stems](https://bliptext.com/articles/derived-stem), of which there are about fifteen, 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.\nThese are referred to by Western scholars as \"Form I\", \"Form II\", and so on through \"Form XV\", although Forms XI to XV are rare.\nThese stems encode grammatical functions such as the [causative](https://bliptext.com/articles/causative), [intensive](https://bliptext.com/articles/intensive) and [reflexive](https://bliptext.com/articles/reflexive-verb).\nStems sharing the same root consonants represent separate verbs, albeit often semantically related, and each is the basis for its own [conjugational](https://bliptext.com/articles/verb-conjugation) paradigm.\nAs a result, these derived stems are part of the system of [derivational morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/derivational-morphology), not part of the [inflectional](https://bliptext.com/articles/inflection) system.\nExamples of the different verbs formed from the root **' 'write' (using '** 'red' for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):\nForm II is sometimes used to create transitive [denominative verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/denominative-verb) (verbs built from nouns); Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.\nThe associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic.\nThis is similar to the process by which, for example, the [English gerund](https://bliptext.com/articles/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).\nAnother 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. **' 'desk, office' < '** 'write', **' 'kitchen' < '** 'cook').\nThe only three genuine suffixes are as follows:\n\n## Colloquial varieties\nThe 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).\nThey 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).\nThey have also mostly lost the indefinite \"nunation\" and the internal passive.\nThe following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.\n\n# Writing system\nThe Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through [Nabatean](https://bliptext.com/articles/nabatean-alphabet), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of [Coptic](https://bliptext.com/articles/coptic-alphabet) or [Cyrillic scripts](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) to [Greek script](https://bliptext.com/articles/greek-alphabet).\nTraditionally, 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).\nHowever, 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/zaouia)) of West Africa.\nArabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the [Ge'ez script](https://bliptext.com/articles/ge-ez-script)), is written from right to left.\nThere are several styles of scripts such as [thuluth](https://bliptext.com/articles/thuluth), [muhaqqaq](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhaqqaq), [tawqi](https://bliptext.com/articles/tawqi), [rayhan](https://bliptext.com/articles/rayhan), and notably [naskh](https://bliptext.com/articles/naskh-script), which is used in print and by computers, and [ruqʻah](https://bliptext.com/articles/ruq-ah), which is commonly used for correspondence.\nOriginally Arabic was made up of only rasm without diacritical marks Later diacritical points (which in Arabic are referred to as nuqaṯ) were added (which allowed readers to distinguish between letters such as b, t, th, n and y).\nFinally signs known as [Tashkil](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) were used for short vowels known as [harakat](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) and other uses such as final postnasalized or long vowels.\nNotes:\n# [Arabic calligraphy written by a Malay Muslim in Malaysia. The calligrapher is making a rough draft. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Menulis///khat.jpg]\n\n## Calligraphy\nAfter [Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nArabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by [Arabs](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabs) as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem.\nBeing cursive by nature, unlike the Latin script, Arabic script is used to write down a [verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayah) of the Quran, a [hadith](https://bliptext.com/articles/hadith), or a [proverb](https://bliptext.com/articles/proverb).\nThe composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal.\nOne of the current masters of the genre is [Hassan Massoudy](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassan-massoudy).\nIn 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.\n\n## Romanization\nThere are a number of different standards for the [romanization of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanization-of-arabic), i.e. methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin script.\nThere are various conflicting motivations involved, which leads to multiple systems.\nSome are interested in [transliteration](https://bliptext.com/articles/transliteration), i.e. representing the spelling of Arabic, while others focus on [transcription](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonetic-transcription), i.e. representing the pronunciation of Arabic.\n(Th**e******y**** diff**e**r in that, for **e**xampl**e**, th**e** sam**e** l**e**tt**e**r ي is us**e**d to r**e**pr**e**s**e**nt both a consonant, as in \"****y****ou\" or \"****y******e**t\", and a vow**e**l, as in \"m**e**\" or \"**e**at\".)\nSome 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.\nThese systems are heavily reliant on [diacritical](https://bliptext.com/articles/diacritic) marks such as \"š\" for the sound equivalently written sh in English.\nOther systems (e.g. the [Bahá'í orthography](https://bliptext.com/articles/bah-orthography)) are intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists with intuitive pronunciation of Arabic names and phrases.\nThese less \"scientific\" systems tend to avoid [diacritics](https://bliptext.com/articles/diacritics) and use [digraphs](https://bliptext.com/articles/digraph-orthography) (like sh and kh).\nThese 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.\nThe [ALA-LC](https://bliptext.com/articles/ala-lc) romanization solves this problem by separating the two sounds with a [prime](https://bliptext.com/articles/prime-symbol) symbol ( ′ ); e.g., as′hal 'easier'.\nDuring 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/personal-computer), the [World Wide Web](https://bliptext.com/articles/world-wide-web), [email](https://bliptext.com/articles/email), [bulletin board systems](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulletin-board-system), [IRC](https://bliptext.com/articles/internet-relay-chat), [instant messaging](https://bliptext.com/articles/instant-messaging) and [mobile phone text messaging](https://bliptext.com/articles/mobile-phone-text-messaging).\nMost 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.\nAs a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script.\nTo handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated.\nFor example, the numeral \"3\" may be used to represent the Arabic letter ⟨ع⟩.\nThere is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it [Arabic Chat Alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-chat-alphabet) or IM Arabic.\nOther systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the \"emphatic\" counterparts of certain consonants.\nFor instance, using capitalization, the letter ⟨د⟩, may be represente**d** by **d**.\nIts emphatic counterpart, ⟨ض⟩, may be written as **D**.\n\n## Numerals\nIn most of present-day North Africa, the [Western Arabic numerals](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-arabic-numerals) (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used.\nHowever, in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the [Eastern Arabic numerals](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-arabic-numerals) ( – – – – – – – – – ) are in use.\nWhen representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued [position](https://bliptext.com/articles/positional-notation) is placed on the right, so the order of [position](https://bliptext.com/articles/positional-notation)s is the same as in left-to-right scripts.\nSequences 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.\nFor example, 24 is said \"four and twenty\" just like in the German language (vierundzwanzig) and [Classical Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-hebrew), and 1975 is said \"a thousand and nine-hundred and five and seventy\" or, more eloquently, \"a thousand and nine-hundred five seventy\".\n\n## Arabic alphabet and nationalism\nThere have been many instances of national movements to convert Arabic script into Latin script or to Romanize the language.\nCurrently, the only Arabic variety to use Latin script is [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language).\n\n### Lebanon\nThe Beirut newspaper La Syrie pushed for the change from Arabic script to Latin letters in 1922.\nThe major head of this movement was [Louis Massignon](https://bliptext.com/articles/louis-massignon), a French Orientalist, who brought his concern before the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus in 1928.\nMassignon'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.\n[Sa'id Afghani](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-id-al-afghani), a member of the academy, mentioned that the movement to Romanize the script was a [Zionist](https://bliptext.com/articles/zionism) plan to dominate Lebanon.\n[Said Akl](https://bliptext.com/articles/said-akl) created a Latin-based alphabet for [Lebanese](https://bliptext.com/articles/lebanese-arabic) and used it in a newspaper he founded, Lebnaan, as well as in some books he wrote.\n\n### Egypt\nAfter the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for a way to reclaim and re-emphasize Egyptian culture.\nAs 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.\nThere was also the idea of finding a way to use [Hieroglyphics](https://bliptext.com/articles/hieroglyphics) instead of the Latin alphabet, but this was seen as too complicated to use.\nA scholar, [Salama Musa](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nHe also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances in science and technology.\nThis change in alphabet, 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.\n[Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid](https://bliptext.com/articles/ahmed-lutfi-el-sayed) and [Muhammad Azmi](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhammad-mustafa-azmi), two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for Romanization.\nThe idea that Romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al-Aziz Fahmi in 1944.\nHe was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo.\nThis effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cultural tie to the Arabic alphabet.\nIn particular, the older Egyptian generations believed that the Arabic alphabet had strong connections to Arab values and history, due to the long history of the Arabic alphabet (Shrivtiel, 189) in Muslim societies.\n\n# Sample text\n\n# Citations\n\n## Sources","current_revision":"a8e06815-40e8-432b-a337-c79e29c619a6","created_by":"kACnuQmH5k9Nr5VNVEpVeg7XpvUmMctD","created_at":"2025-01-25T16:38:39.865Z","updated_at":"2025-03-10T23:53:01.259Z","search_vector":"'arab':1","search_content":" \n \n**Name:** Arabic \n**Nativename:** اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ · al-ʿarabiyyah \n**States:** [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world) and surrounding regions \n**Ethnicity:** [Arabs](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabs) \n**Speakers:** million native speakers of all [varieties](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic) \n**Date:** 2024 \n**Speakers 2:** million [L2 users](https://bliptext.com/articles/l2-speakers) of [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) (2023) \n**Speakers Label:** Speakers \n**Familycolor:** Afro-Asiatic \n**Fam 2:** [Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages) \n**Fam 3:** [West Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/west-semitic-languages) \n**Fam 4:** [Central Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) \n**Dia 1:** [Central Asian](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-asian-arabic) \n**Dia 2:** [Chadian](https://bliptext.com/articles/chadian-arabic) \n**Dia 3:** [Egyptian](https://bliptext.com/articles/egyptian-arabic) \n**Dia 4:** [Levantine](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) \n**Dia 5:** [Maghrebi](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) \n**Dia 6:** [Mesopotamian](https://bliptext.com/articles/mesopotamian-arabic) \n**Dia 7:** [Peninsular](https://bliptext.com/articles/peninsular-arabic) \n**Dia 8:** [Saʽidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-idi-arabic) \n**Dia 9:** [Shirvani](https://bliptext.com/articles/shirvani-arabic) \n**Dia 1 0:** [Sudanese](https://bliptext.com/articles/sudanese-arabic) \n**Dia 1 1:** [Yemeni](https://bliptext.com/articles/yemeni-arabic) \n**Stand 1:** [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) \n**Script:** [Arabic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-alphabet) · Other official scripts · Latin script (Maltese alphabet) \n**Nation:** 27 states and territories · Algeria · Bahrain · Chad · Comoros · Djibouti · Egypt · Eritrea · Iraq · Jordan · Kuwait · Lebanon · Libya · Mauritania · Morocco · Oman · Palestine · Qatar · Saudi Arabia · Somalia · Sudan · Syria · Tunisia · United Arab Emirates · Yemen · Zanzibar (Tanzania) · Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (partially recognized state) · Somaliland (unrecognized state) · International Organizations · African Union · Arab League · Organisation of Islamic Cooperation · United Nations · Special status in Constitution · Iran · Pakistan \n**Minority:** Cyprus · Israel · Mali · Niger · Philippines · Senegal · South Africa \n**Agency:** Algeria: Supreme Council of the Arabic language in Algeria · Egypt: Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo · Israel: Academy of the Arabic Language in Israel · Iraq: Iraqi Academy of Sciences · Jordan: Jordan Academy of Arabic · Libya: Academy of the Arabic Language in Jamahiriya · Morocco: Academy of the Arabic Language in Rabat · Saudi Arabia: Academy of the Arabic Language in Riyadh · Somalia: Academy of the Arabic Language in Mogadishu · Sudan: Academy of the Arabic Language in Khartoum · Syria: Arab Academy of Damascus (the oldest) · Tunisia: Beit Al-Hikma Foundation \n**Iso 1:** ar \n**Iso 2:** ara \n**Iso 3:** ara \n**Lc 1:** arq \n**Ld 1:** [Algerian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/algerian-arabic) \n**Lc 2:** xaa \n**Ld 2:** [Andalusi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/andalusi-arabic) \n**Lc 3:** abv \n**Ld 3:** [Bahrani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/bahrani-arabic) \n**Lc 4:** avl \n**Ld 4:** [Bedawi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedawi-arabic) \n**Lc 5:** shu \n**Ld 5:** [Chadian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/chadian-arabic) \n**Lc 6:** acy \n**Ld 6:** [Cypriot Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cypriot-arabic) \n**Lc 7:** adf \n**Ld 7:** [Dhofari Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dhofari-arabic) \n**Lc 8:** arz \n**Ld 8:** [Egyptian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/egyptian-arabic) \n**Lc 9:** acm \n**Ld 9:** [Gelet Iraqi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/gelet-arabic) \n**Lc 1 0:** afb \n**Ld 1 0:** [Gulf Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/gulf-arabic) \n**Lc 1 1:** ayh \n**Ld 1 1:** [Hadhrami Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hadhrami-arabic) \n**Lc 1 2:** mey \n**Ld 1 2:** [Hassaniya Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassaniya-arabic) \n**Lc 1 3:** acw \n**Ld 1 3:** [Hejazi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejazi-arabic) \n**Lc 1 4:** apc \n**Ld 1 4:** [Levantine Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) \n**Lc 1 5:** ayl \n**Ld 1 5:** [Libyan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/libyan-arabic) \n**Lc 1 6:** ary \n**Ld 1 6:** [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic) \n**Lc 1 7:** ars \n**Ld 1 7:** [Najdi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/najdi-arabic) \n**Lc 1 8:** acx \n**Ld 1 8:** [Omani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/omani-arabic) \n**Lc 1 9:** ayp \n**Ld 1 9:** [Qeltu Iraqi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moslawi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 0:** aao \n**Ld 2 0:** [Saharan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/saharan-arabic) \n**Lc 2 1:** aec \n**Ld 2 1:** [Saʽidi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-idi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 2:** ayn \n**Ld 2 2:** [Sanʽani Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/san-ani-arabic) \n**Lc 2 3:** ssh \n**Ld 2 3:** [Shihhi Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/shihhi-arabic) \n**Lc 2 4:** sqr \n**Ld 2 4:** [Siculo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/siculo-arabic) \n**Lc 2 5:** arb \n**Ld 2 5:** [Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-arabic) \n**Lc 2 6:** apd \n**Ld 2 6:** [Sudanese Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/sudanese-arabic) \n**Lc 2 7:** acq \n**Ld 2 7:** [Taʽizzi-Adeni Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/ta-izzi-adeni-arabic) \n**Lc 2 8:** abh \n**Ld 2 8:** [Tajiki Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/tajiki-arabic) \n**Lc 2 9:** aeb \n**Ld 2 9:** [Tunisian Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/tunisian-arabic) \n**Lc 3 0:** auz \n**Ld 3 0:** [Uzbeki Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/uzbeki-arabic) \n**Lingua:** 12-AAC \n**Imagescale:** 0.7 \n**Imagecaption:** i****n**** ****w****r****i****t****t****e****n**** ****A****r****a****b****i****c**** ****(****[****N****a****s****k****h**** ****s****c****r****i****p****t****]****(****h****t****t****p****s****:****/****/****b****l****i****p****t****e****x****t****.****c****o****m****/****a****r****t****i****c****l****e****s****/****n****a ****s****k****h****-****s****c****r****i****p****t****)****) \n**Notice:** IPA \n**Ancestor:** [Proto-Afroasiatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-afroasiatic) \n**Ancestor 2:** [Proto-Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-semitic) \n**Ancestor 3:** [Proto-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-arabic) \n**Ancestor 4:** [Old Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-arabic) \n**Ancestor 5:** [Pre-classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/pre-classical-arabic) \n**Sign:** Signed Arabic [(different national forms)](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-sign-language-family) \n**Glotto:** arab1395 \n**Glottorefname:** Arabic \n**Map:** Arabic speaking world.svg \n**Mapcaption:** {{legend|#088A4B|Sole official language, Arabic-speaking majority}} · {{legend|#045FB4|Co-official language, Arabic-speaking majority}} · {{legend|#5599ff|Co-official language, Arabic-speaking minority}} · {{legend|#e6e6e6|Not an official language, Arabic-speaking minority}} \n \n\n# \n**Arabic** (,, or , ) is a [Central Semitic language](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) of the [Afroasiatic language family](https://bliptext.com/articles/afroasiatic-languages) spoken primarily in the [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world).\nThe [ISO](https://bliptext.com/articles/international-organization-for-standardization) assigns language codes to 32 [varieties of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic), including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as [Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic), which is derived from [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic).\nThis distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as (اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ \"the eloquent Arabic\") or simply (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ).\nArabic is the [third most widespread official language](https://bliptext.com/articles/list-of-languages-by-the-number-of-countries-in-which-they-are-recognized-as-an-official-language) after English and French, one of six [official languages of the United Nations](https://bliptext.com/articles/official-languages-of-the-united-nations), and the [liturgical language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sacred-language) of [Islam](https://bliptext.com/articles/islam).\nArabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media.\nDuring the [Middle Ages](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-ages), Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy.\nAs a result, many European languages have [borrowed](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword) words from it.\nArabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in [European languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/languages-of-europe) (mainly [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-language-influence-on-the-spanish-language) and to a lesser extent [Portuguese](https://bliptext.com/articles/influence-of-arabic-on-other-languages), [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/influence-of-arabic-on-other-languages), and [Sicilian](https://bliptext.com/articles/sicilian-language)) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the [Al-Andalus](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus) era.\n[Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) is a Semitic language developed from a dialect of Arabic and written in the [Latin alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/latin-alphabet).\nThe [Balkan](https://bliptext.com/articles/balkans) languages, including Albanian, [Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/greek-language), Serbo-Croatian, and [Bulgarian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulgarian-language), have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with [Ottoman Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/ottoman-turkish).\nArabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims.\nThe most markedly influenced languages are [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language), [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language), [Hindustani](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindustani-language) ([Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu)), [Kashmiri](https://bliptext.com/articles/kashmiri-language), [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-languages), [Bosnian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bosnian-language), [Kazakh](https://bliptext.com/articles/kazakh-language), [Bengali](https://bliptext.com/articles/bengali-language), [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language) ([Indonesian](https://bliptext.com/articles/indonesian-language) and [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language)sian), [Maldivian](https://bliptext.com/articles/maldivian-language), [Pashto](https://bliptext.com/articles/pashto), [Punjabi](https://bliptext.com/articles/punjabi-language), [Albanian](https://bliptext.com/articles/albanian-language), [Armenian](https://bliptext.com/articles/armenian-language), [Azerbaijani](https://bliptext.com/articles/azerbaijani-language), Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, [Tagalog](https://bliptext.com/articles/tagalog-language), [Sindhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sindhi-language), [Odia](https://bliptext.com/articles/odia-language), [Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/hebrew-language) and African languages such as [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language), [Amharic](https://bliptext.com/articles/amharic), [Tigrinya](https://bliptext.com/articles/tigrinya-language), [Somali](https://bliptext.com/articles/somali-language), [Tamazight](https://bliptext.com/articles/tamazight), and [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language).\nConversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its [sister-language](https://bliptext.com/articles/sister-language) Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to a lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian.\nArabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the [fifth most spoken language](https://bliptext.com/articles/list-of-languages-by-total-number-of-speakers) in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users.\nIt also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion [Muslims](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslims).\nIn 2011, [Bloomberg Businessweek](https://bliptext.com/articles/bloomberg-businessweek) ranked Arabic the fourth most useful language for business, after English, [Mandarin Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-mandarin-chinese), and French.\nArabic is written with the [Arabic alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-alphabet), an [abjad](https://bliptext.com/articles/abjad) script that is written from [right to left](https://bliptext.com/articles/right-to-left).\n\n# Classification\nArabic is usually classified as a [Central Semitic language](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages).\nLinguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups.\nThe Semitic languages changed between [Proto-Semitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-semitic-language) and the emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar.\nInnovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include:\nThere are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the [Safaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/safaitic) and [Hismaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hismaic-old-arabic) inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the [Dadanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dadanitic) and [Taymanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/taymanitic) languages of the [northern Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hijaz).\nThese features are evidence of common descent from a [hypothetical ancestor](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-language), [Proto-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/proto-arabic).\nThe following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence:\nOn the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic.\nThus, Arabic [vernaculars](https://bliptext.com/articles/vernacular) do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor.\n\n# History\n\n## Old Arabic\nArabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity.\nThe term \"Arab\" was initially used to describe those living in the [Arabian Peninsula](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabian-peninsula), as perceived by geographers from [ancient Greece](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greece).\nIn the southwest, various [Central Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/central-semitic-languages) both belonging to and outside the [Ancient South Arabian](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-south-arabian) family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken.\nIt is believed that the ancestors of the [Modern South Arabian languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-south-arabian-languages) (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time.\nTo the north, in the oases of northern [Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejaz), [Dadanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/dadanitic) and [Taymanitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/taymanitic) held some prestige as inscriptional languages.\nIn Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested.\nIn eastern Arabia, inscriptions in a script derived from ASA attest to a language known as [Hasaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hasaitic).\nOn the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as [Thamudic B](https://bliptext.com/articles/thamudic-b), Thamudic D, [Safaitic](https://bliptext.com/articles/safaitic), and [Hismaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hismaic) are attested.\nThe last two share important [isoglosses](https://bliptext.com/articles/isogloss) with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered [Old Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-arabic).\nLinguists generally believe that \"Old Arabic\", a collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the [Iron Age](https://bliptext.com/articles/iron-age).\nPreviously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in [Sabaic script](https://bliptext.com/articles/sabaic) at Qaryat al-Faw, in southern present-day Saudi Arabia.\nHowever, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as the conversion of Semitic [mimation](https://bliptext.com/articles/mimation) to [nunation](https://bliptext.com/articles/nunation) in the singular.\nIt is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum.\nIt was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced—[epigraphic](https://bliptext.com/articles/epigraphic) [Ancient North Arabian](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-north-arabian) (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries.\nANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from \"Arabic\".\nScholars named its variant dialects after the towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic).\nHowever, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-.\nIt has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable.\nSafaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to the fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic.\nThe earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an [ancestor of the modern Arabic script](https://bliptext.com/articles/nabataean-alphabet) are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in [En Avdat, Israel](https://bliptext.com/articles/avdat), and dated to around 125 CE.\nThis is followed by the [Namara inscription](https://bliptext.com/articles/namara-inscription), an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria.\nFrom the 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era.\nThere are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ([Zabad](https://bliptext.com/articles/zabad-inscription), [Jebel Usays](https://bliptext.com/articles/jebel-usays-inscription), [Harran](https://bliptext.com/articles/harran-inscription), Umm el-Jimal).\nThe oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet.\nThe language of that papyrus and of the Qur'an is referred to by linguists as \"Quranic Arabic\", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into \"[Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic)\".\n\n## Classical Arabic\nIn late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the [Hejaz](https://bliptext.com/articles/hejaz), which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the [Hijra](https://bliptext.com/articles/islamic-calendar), most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from the \"learned\" tradition (Classical Arabic).\nThis variety and both its classicizing and \"lay\" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an [Old Higazi](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-higazi) register.\nIt is clear that the orthography of the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran) was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi.\nIn the late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal \"poetic koine\" distinct from the [spoken vernaculars](https://bliptext.com/articles/vernacular) developed based on the [Bedouin](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedouin) dialects of [Najd](https://bliptext.com/articles/najd), probably in connection with the court of [al-Ḥīra](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-hirah).\nDuring the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue.\nTheir texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic) elements in morphology and syntax.\n\n## Standardization\n[Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-al-aswad-al-du-ali) (c. 603–689) is credited with standardizing [Arabic grammar](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-grammar), or an-naḥw (النَّحو \"the way\" ), and pioneering a system of [diacritics](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) to differentiate consonants (نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām \"pointing for non-Arabs\") and indicate [vocalization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) (التشكيل at-tashkīl).\n[Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi) (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn (كتاب ال[ع](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayin)ين \"The Book of the Letter [ع](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayin)\"), and is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic [prosody](https://bliptext.com/articles/prosody-linguistics).\n[Al-Jahiz](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-jahiz) (776–868) proposed to [Al-Akhfash al-Akbar](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-akhfash-al-akbar) an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries.\nThe standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century.\nThe first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya \"Arabic\", [Sībawayhi's](https://bliptext.com/articles/sibawayh) al-Kitāb, is based first of all upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya.\n\n## Spread\nArabic spread with the spread of [Islam](https://bliptext.com/articles/islam).\nFollowing the [early Muslim conquests](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-muslim-conquests), Arabic gained vocabulary from [Middle Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-persian) and [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language).\nIn the early [Abbasid period](https://bliptext.com/articles/abbasid-caliphate), many [Classical Greek](https://bliptext.com/articles/ancient-greek) terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at [Baghdad's](https://bliptext.com/articles/baghdad) [House of Wisdom](https://bliptext.com/articles/house-of-wisdom).\nBy the 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims.\nFor example, [Maimonides](https://bliptext.com/articles/maimonides), the [Andalusi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus) Jewish philosopher, authored works in [Judeo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/judeo-arabic-dialects)—Arabic written in [Hebrew script](https://bliptext.com/articles/hebrew-alphabet).\n\n## Development\n[Ibn Jinni](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-jinni) of [Mosul](https://bliptext.com/articles/mosul), a pioneer in [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology), wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology) in works such as [Kitāb Al-Munṣif](https://bliptext.com/articles/kit-b-al-mun-if), [Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab](https://bliptext.com/articles/kit-b-al-mu-tasab), and.\n[Ibn Mada'](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-mada) of [Cordoba](https://bliptext.com/articles/c-rdoba-spain) (1116–1196) realized the overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by [Al-Jahiz](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-jahiz) 200 years prior.\nThe Maghrebi lexicographer [Ibn Manzur](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-manzur) compiled [Lisān al-ʿArab](https://bliptext.com/articles/lis-n-al-arab) (لسان العرب, \"Tongue of Arabs\"), a major reference [dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/dictionary) of Arabic, in 1290.\n\n## Neo-Arabic\n[Charles Ferguson](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-a-ferguson)'s [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times.\nAhmad 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).\nThe modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests.\nInstead 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.\nAccording to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from [pidginized](https://bliptext.com/articles/pidgin) Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples.\nPidginization and subsequent [creolization](https://bliptext.com/articles/creolization) among Arabs and [arabized](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA.\nIn around the 11th and 12th centuries in [al-Andalus](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-andalus), the [zajal](https://bliptext.com/articles/zajal) and muwashah poetry forms developed in the [dialectical Arabic of Cordoba](https://bliptext.com/articles/andalusian-arabic) and the Maghreb.\n\n## Nahda\nThe [Nahda](https://bliptext.com/articles/nahda) was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought \"to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression.\"\nAccording to [James L. Gelvin](https://bliptext.com/articles/james-l-gelvin), \"Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to a wider audience.\"\nIn the wake of the [industrial revolution](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) and European [hegemony](https://bliptext.com/articles/hegemony) and [colonialism](https://bliptext.com/articles/colonialism), pioneering Arabic presses, such as the [Amiri Press](https://bliptext.com/articles/amiri-press) established by [Muhammad Ali](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhammad-ali-of-egypt) (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic [literature](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-literature) and publications.\n[Rifa'a al-Tahtawi](https://bliptext.com/articles/rifa-a-al-tahtawi) proposed the establishment of [Madrasat al-Alsun](https://bliptext.com/articles/madrasat-al-alsun) in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted the need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship').\nIn response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in [Damascus](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-academy-of-damascus) (1919), then in [Cairo](https://bliptext.com/articles/academy-of-the-arabic-language-in-cairo) (1932), [Baghdad](https://bliptext.com/articles/iraqi-academy-of-sciences) (1948), [Rabat](https://bliptext.com/articles/institute-for-studies-and-research-on-arabization) (1960), [Amman](https://bliptext.com/articles/jordan-academy-of-arabic) (1977), (1993), and [Tunis](https://bliptext.com/articles/tunisian-academy-of-sciences-letters-and-arts) (1993).\nThey review language development, monitor new words and approve the inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries.\nThey also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.\nIn 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the [Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-league-educational-cultural-and-scientific-organization) of the [Arab League](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-league).\nThese academies and organizations have worked toward the [Arabization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) of the sciences, [creating terms](https://bliptext.com/articles/neologism) in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward the standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a [world language](https://bliptext.com/articles/world-language).\nThis gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic.\nFrom the 1950s, [Arabization](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabization) became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan.\n\n# Classical, Modern Standard and spoken Arabic\nArabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into [Classical Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-arabic) and Modern Standard Arabic.\nIt could also refer to any of a variety of regional vernacular [Arabic dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic), which are not necessarily mutually intelligible.Classical Arabic is the language found in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran), used from the period of [Pre-Islamic Arabia](https://bliptext.com/articles/pre-islamic-arabia) to that of the [Abbasid Caliphate](https://bliptext.com/articles/abbasid-caliphate).\nClassical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the [syntactic](https://bliptext.com/articles/syntactic) and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as [Sibawayh](https://bliptext.com/articles/sibawayh)) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-ʻArab).\nModern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary.\nHowever, 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.\nMuch of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the [industrial](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) and post-[industrial](https://bliptext.com/articles/industrial-revolution) era, especially in modern times.\nDue to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language.\nThese dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible.\nThe former are usually acquired in families, while the latter is taught in formal education settings.\nHowever, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children.\nThe relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of [Classical Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-latin) and [Vulgar Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/vulgar-latin) vernaculars (which became [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages)) in medieval and early modern Europe.\nMSA is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers.\n\"Literary Arabic\" and \"Standard Arabic\" (فُصْحَى ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic.\nSome of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows:\nMSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., 'to go') that is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA.\nIn addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve.\nSome words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم **' 'film' or ديمقراطية '** 'democracy').\nThe current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use [loan translations](https://bliptext.com/articles/loan-translation) (e.g., فرع **' 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح '** 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing [roots](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-root) (استماتة ' '[apoptosis](https://bliptext.com/articles/apoptosis)', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into the [Xth form](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-verbs), or جامعة ' 'university', based on جمع **' 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية '** 'republic', based on جمهور 'multitude').\nAn earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف **' 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة '** 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk').\nColloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language.\nColloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be [mutually unintelligible](https://bliptext.com/articles/mutual-intelligibility), and some linguists consider them distinct languages.\nHowever, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations.\nThe varieties are typically unwritten.\nThey are often used in informal spoken media, such as [soap operas](https://bliptext.com/articles/soap-opera) and [talk shows](https://bliptext.com/articles/talk-show), as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising.\n[Hassaniya Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassaniya-arabic), [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language), and [Cypriot Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/cypriot-arabic) are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition.\nHassaniya is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it.\nMaltese is official in (predominantly [Catholic](https://bliptext.com/articles/catholic-church)) [Malta](https://bliptext.com/articles/malta) and written with the [Latin script](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-alphabet).\nLinguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from [Siculo-Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/siculo-arabic), though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English.\nDue to \"a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors\", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not a type of Arabic.\nCypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus.\n# [Safaitic inscription | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Safaitic///script///with///a///figure///of///a///camel///on///a///red///sandstone///fragment%2C///from///es-Safa%2C///currently///housed///in///the///Britis h///Museum.jpg]\n# [The Namara inscription, a sample of Nabataean script, considered a direct precursor of Arabic script | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Epitaph///Imru-l-Qays///Louvre///AO4083.jpg]\n\n# Status and usage\n\n## Diglossia\nThe sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of [diglossia](https://bliptext.com/articles/diglossia), which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations.\nTawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word.\nFor example, al-hatif lexicographically means the one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen.\nNow the term al-hatif is used for a telephone.\nTherefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic.\nIn 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 dialects, which depending on the region may be mutually unintelligible.\nSome of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have \"sub-dialects\" of their own.\nWhen educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers [code-switch](https://bliptext.com/articles/code-switching) back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence.\nThe issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the [varieties of Chinese](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-chinese), [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi-language) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu-language), [Serbian](https://bliptext.com/articles/serbian-language) and [Croatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/croatian-language), [Scots](https://bliptext.com/articles/scots-language) and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi-language) and [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu-language) 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.\nWhile there is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb.\nThe issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms.\nFor political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions.\nFrom 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages).\nThis is an apt comparison in a number of ways.\nThe period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages.\nAlso, while it is comprehensible to people from the [Maghreb](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghreb), a linguistically innovative variety such as [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic) is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the [Mashriq](https://bliptext.com/articles/mashriq), much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them.\nThis suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages.\n# [Flag of the Arab League, used in some cases for the Arabic language | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Flag///of///the///Arab///League.svg]\n# [Flag used in some cases for the Arabic language (Flag of the Kingdom of Hejaz 1916–1925). The flag contains the four Pan-Arab colors: black, white, green and red. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Flag///of///Hejaz///1917.svg]\n\n## Status in the Arab world vis-à-vis other languages\nWith the sole example of Medieval linguist [Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-hayyan-al-gharnati) – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior.\nIn modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view.\n[Yasir Suleiman](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\"\n\n## As a foreign language\nArabic has been taught worldwide in many [elementary](https://bliptext.com/articles/elementary-school) and [secondary](https://bliptext.com/articles/secondary-school) schools, especially Muslim schools.\nUniversities around the world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their [foreign languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/foreign-languages), [Middle Eastern studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-eastern-studies), and [religious studies](https://bliptext.com/articles/religious-studies) courses.\n[Arabic language schools](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-language-school) exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world.\nThere are many Arabic [language schools](https://bliptext.com/articles/language-school) in the Arab world and other [Muslim](https://bliptext.com/articles/muslim-world) countries.\nBecause the Quran is written in Arabic and all [Islamic terms](https://bliptext.com/articles/glossary-of-islam) are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language.\nSoftware and books with tapes are an 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.\nRadio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations.\nA number of websites on the [Internet](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\n\n# Vocabulary\n\n## Lexicography\n\n### Pre-modern Arabic lexicography\nThe tradition of Arabic [lexicography](https://bliptext.com/articles/lexicography) extended for about a millennium before the [modern period](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-era).\nEarly lexicographers (لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn) sought to explain words in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran) that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the [Quran](https://bliptext.com/articles/quran).\nThey gathered shawāhid (شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from [poetry](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-poetry) and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb (Bedouins) (أَعْراب) who were perceived to speak the \"purest,\" most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah (جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries.\nKitāb al-'Ayn (c. 8th century), attributed to [Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi), is considered the first [lexicon](https://bliptext.com/articles/dictionary) to include all [Arabic roots](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-root); it sought to exhaust all possible root [permutations](https://bliptext.com/articles/permutation)—later called taqālīb (تقاليب)—calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal (مستعمَل) and those that are not used muhmal (مُهمَل).\nLisān al-ʿArab (1290) by [Ibn Manzur](https://bliptext.com/articles/ibn-manzur) gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by [Murtada az-Zabidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/murtada-al-zabidi) gives 11,978 roots.\nThis lexicographic tradition was traditionalist and corrective in nature—holding that linguistic correctness and eloquence derive from Qurʾānic usage, Jahili poetry, and Bedouin speech—positioning itself against laḥnu‿l-ʿāmmah (لَحْن العامة), the [solecism](https://bliptext.com/articles/solecism) it viewed as defective.\n# [Arabic from the Quran in the old Hijazi dialect (Hijazi script, 7th century AD) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Birmingham///Quran///manuscript.jpg]\n\n### Western lexicography of Arabic\nIn the second half of the 19th century, the British Arabist [Edward William Lane](https://bliptext.com/articles/edward-william-lane), working with the Egyptian scholar Ibrāhīm Abd al-Ghaffār ad-Dasūqī, compiled the [Arabic–English Lexicon](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-english-lexicon) by translating material from earlier Arabic lexica into English.\nThe German Arabist [Hans Wehr](https://bliptext.com/articles/hans-wehr), with contributions from [Hedwig Klein](https://bliptext.com/articles/hedwig-klein), compiled the [Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabisches-w-rterbuch-f-r-die-schriftsprache-der-gegenwart) (1952), later translated into English as [A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/a-dictionary-of-modern-written-arabic) (1961), based on established usage, especially in literature.\n\n### Modern Arabic lexicography\nThe [Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo](https://bliptext.com/articles/academy-of-the-arabic-language-in-cairo) sought to publish a [historical dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/historical-dictionary) of Arabic in the vein of the [Oxford English Dictionary](https://bliptext.com/articles/oxford-english-dictionary), tracing the changes of meanings and uses of Arabic words over time.\nA first volume of Al-Muʿjam al-Kabīr was published in 1956 under the leadership of [Taha Hussein](https://bliptext.com/articles/taha-hussein).\nThe project is not yet complete; its 15th volume, covering the letter [ṣād](https://bliptext.com/articles/tsade), was published in 2022.\n\n## Loanwords\nThe most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages [Aramaic](https://bliptext.com/articles/aramaic-language), which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, and [Ethiopic](https://bliptext.com/articles/ge-ez-language).\nMany cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from [Iranian languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/iranian-languages), notably [Middle Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/middle-persian), [Parthian](https://bliptext.com/articles/parthian-language), and (Classical) Persian, and Hellenistic Greek (kīmiyāʼ has as origin the Greek khymia, meaning in that language the melting of metals; see [Roger Dachez](https://bliptext.com/articles/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).\nFor the origin of the last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Foundations of Islam, Seuil, L'Univers Historique, 2002.\nSome Arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare's above-cited book:\nArabic_script_evolution.svg (9th–11th century), with the [Basmala](https://bliptext.com/articles/basmala) as an example, from [kufic](https://bliptext.com/articles/kufic) [Qur'an](https://bliptext.com/articles/qur-an) manuscripts:\n(1) Early 9th century, script with no dots or diacritic marks;(2) and (3) 9th–10th century under the Abbasid dynasty, [Abu al-Aswad's](https://bliptext.com/articles/abu-al-aswad-al-du-ali) system established red dots with each arrangement or position indicating a different short vowel; later, a second black-dot system was used to differentiate between letters like **' and '**;\n(4) 11th century, in [al-Farāhidi's](https://bliptext.com/articles/al-khalil-ibn-ahmad-al-farahidi) system (system used today) dots were changed into shapes resembling the letters to transcribe the corresponding long vowels.]]A comprehensive overview of the influence of other languages on Arabic is found in Lucas & Manfredi (2020).\n# [The Qur'an has served and continues to serve as a fundamental reference for Arabic. (Maghrebi Kufic script, Blue Qur'an, 9th–10th century.) | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Folio///Blue///Quran///Met///2004.88.jpg]\n\n## Influence on other languages\nThe influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries, because it is the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Quran.\nArabic is also an important source of vocabulary for languages such as [Amharic](https://bliptext.com/articles/amharic-language), [Azerbaijani](https://bliptext.com/articles/azerbaijani-language), [Baluchi](https://bliptext.com/articles/baluchi-language), [Bengali](https://bliptext.com/articles/bengali-language), [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages), [Bosnian](https://bliptext.com/articles/bosnian-language), [Chaldean](https://bliptext.com/articles/chaldean-neo-aramaic), [Chechen](https://bliptext.com/articles/chechen-language), [Chittagonian](https://bliptext.com/articles/chittagonian-language), [Croatian](https://bliptext.com/articles/croatian-language), [Dagestani](https://bliptext.com/articles/dagestani-language), [Dhivehi](https://bliptext.com/articles/maldivian-language), [English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language), [German](https://bliptext.com/articles/german-language), [Gujarati](https://bliptext.com/articles/gujarati-language), [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language), [Hindi](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindi), [Kazakh](https://bliptext.com/articles/kazakh-language), [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-language), [Kutchi](https://bliptext.com/articles/kutchi-language), [Kyrgyz](https://bliptext.com/articles/kyrgyz-language), [Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language) ([Malay](https://bliptext.com/articles/malay-language)sian and [Indonesian](https://bliptext.com/articles/indonesian-language)), [Pashto](https://bliptext.com/articles/pashto-language), [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language), [Punjabi](https://bliptext.com/articles/punjabi-language), [Rohingya](https://bliptext.com/articles/rohingya-language), [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages) ([French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language), [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/catalan-language), [Italian](https://bliptext.com/articles/italian-language), [Portuguese](https://bliptext.com/articles/portuguese-language), [Sicilian](https://bliptext.com/articles/sicilian-language), [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language), etc.) [Saraiki](https://bliptext.com/articles/saraiki-language), [Sindhi](https://bliptext.com/articles/sindhi-language), [Somali](https://bliptext.com/articles/somali-language), [Sylheti](https://bliptext.com/articles/sylheti-language), [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language), [Tagalog](https://bliptext.com/articles/tagalog-language), [Tigrinya](https://bliptext.com/articles/tigrinya-language), [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language), [Turkmen](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkmen-language), [Urdu](https://bliptext.com/articles/urdu), [Uyghur](https://bliptext.com/articles/uyghur-language), [Uzbek](https://bliptext.com/articles/uzbek-language), [Visayan](https://bliptext.com/articles/visayan-languages) and [Wolof](https://bliptext.com/articles/wolof-language), as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken.\n[Modern Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-hebrew) has been also influenced by Arabic especially during the process of [revival](https://bliptext.com/articles/revival-of-the-hebrew-language), as [MSA](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) was used as a source for modern Hebrew vocabulary and roots.\n[English](https://bliptext.com/articles/english-language) has many Arabic loanwords, some directly, but most via other Mediterranean languages.\nExamples 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 zenith.\nOther languages such as [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language) and [Kinubi](https://bliptext.com/articles/kinubi) derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammatical rules.\nTerms borrowed range from religious terminology (like [Berber](https://bliptext.com/articles/berber-languages) taẓallit, \"prayer\", from [salat](https://bliptext.com/articles/salat) (صلاة )), academic terms (like [Uyghur](https://bliptext.com/articles/uyghur-language) mentiq, \"logic\"), and economic items (like English coffee) to [placeholders](https://bliptext.com/articles/placeholder-name) (like [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) fulano, \"so-and-so\"), everyday terms (like [Hindustani](https://bliptext.com/articles/hindustani-language) lekin, \"but\", or [Spanish](https://bliptext.com/articles/spanish-language) taza and [French](https://bliptext.com/articles/french-language) tasse, meaning \"cup\"), and expressions (like [Catalan](https://bliptext.com/articles/catalan-language) a betzef, \"galore, in quantity\").\nMost Berber varieties (such as [Kabyle](https://bliptext.com/articles/kabyle-language)), along with [Swahili](https://bliptext.com/articles/swahili-language), borrow some numbers from Arabic.\nMost Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as صلاة (ṣalāh), \"prayer\", and إمام (imām), \"prayer leader\".\nIn languages not directly in contact with the [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world), Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic.\nFor example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani and [Turkish](https://bliptext.com/articles/turkish-language) entered through [Persian](https://bliptext.com/articles/persian-language).\nOlder Arabic loanwords in [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language) were borrowed from [Kanuri](https://bliptext.com/articles/kanuri-language).\nMost Arabic loanwords in [Yoruba](https://bliptext.com/articles/yoruba-language) entered through [Hausa](https://bliptext.com/articles/hausa-language).\nArabic words made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara.\nVariants of Arabic words such as كتاب kitāb (\"book\") have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.\nSince, throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/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](https://bliptext.com/articles/aramaic) and Persian translators, and then found their way into other languages.\nThis process of using Arabic roots, especially in [Kurdish](https://bliptext.com/articles/kurdish-languages) and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued through to the 18th and 19th centuries, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under [Ottoman rule](https://bliptext.com/articles/ottoman-empire).\n\n# Spoken varieties\nColloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken dialects of Arabic used throughout the [Arab world](https://bliptext.com/articles/arab-world), which differ radically from the [literary language](https://bliptext.com/articles/literary-language).\nThe main dialectal division is between the varieties within and outside of the [Arabian peninsula](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabian-peninsula), followed by that between [sedentary](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic) varieties and the much more conservative [Bedouin](https://bliptext.com/articles/bedouin) varieties.\nAll the varieties outside of the Arabian peninsula, which include the large majority of speakers, have many features in common with each other that are not found in Classical Arabic.\nThis has led researchers to postulate the existence of a prestige [koine](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) dialect in the one or two centuries immediately following the [Arab conquest](https://bliptext.com/articles/early-muslim-conquests), whose features eventually spread to all newly conquered areas.\nThese features are present to varying degrees inside the Arabian peninsula.\nGenerally, the Arabian peninsula varieties have much more diversity than the non-peninsula varieties, but these have been understudied.Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian [North African dialects](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic), especially [Moroccan Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/moroccan-arabic), and the others.\nMoroccan Arabic in particular is hardly comprehensible to Arabic speakers east of [Libya](https://bliptext.com/articles/libya) (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Egyptian films and other media).\nOne factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided many new words and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order.\nHowever, a more weighty factor for most dialects is, as among [Romance languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/romance-languages), retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms.\nThus [Iraqi](https://bliptext.com/articles/mesopotamian-arabic) aku, [Levantine](https://bliptext.com/articles/levantine-arabic) fīh and [North African](https://bliptext.com/articles/maghrebi-arabic) kayən all mean 'there is', and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now sound very different.\n# [Geographical distribution of the varieties of Arabic per Ethnologue and other sources: | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Arabic///Varieties///Map-2023.svg]\n# [Maimonides' autograph draft of The Guide for the Perplexed (דלאלת אלחאירין, دلالة الحائرين Dalālatu‿l-ḥāʾirīn), in Arabic written with Hebrew letters | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Manuscript///page///by///Maimonides///Arabic///in///Hebrew///letters///%28cropped%29.jpg]\n\n## Koiné\nAccording to [Charles A. Ferguson](https://bliptext.com/articles/charles-a-ferguson), the following are some of the characteristic features of the [koiné](https://bliptext.com/articles/koin-language) that underlies all the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula.\nAlthough 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:\n\n## Dialect groups\n\n# Phonology\nWhile many languages have numerous dialects that differ in [phonology](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonology), contemporary spoken Arabic is more properly described as a [continuum of varieties](https://bliptext.com/articles/varieties-of-arabic).\n[Modern Standard Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/modern-standard-arabic) (MSA), is the [standard variety](https://bliptext.com/articles/standard-variety) shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions.\nMSA is used in writing in formal print media and orally in newscasts, speeches and formal declarations of numerous types.\nModern Standard Arabic has 28 [consonant](https://bliptext.com/articles/consonant) [phonemes](https://bliptext.com/articles/phoneme) and 6 [vowel](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel) [phonemes](https://bliptext.com/articles/phoneme).\nAll phonemes contrast between \"[emphatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/emphatic-consonant)\" ([pharyngealized](https://bliptext.com/articles/pharyngealized)) consonants and non-[emphatic](https://bliptext.com/articles/emphatic-consonant) ones.\nSome of these phonemes have [coalesced](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonetic-merger) in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through [borrowing](https://bliptext.com/articles/loanword) or [phonemic splits](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonemic-split).\nA \"phonemic quality of length\" applies to [consonants](https://bliptext.com/articles/gemination) as well as [vowels](https://bliptext.com/articles/vowel-length).\n\n# Grammar\nThe [grammar of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-grammar) has similarities with the [grammar of other Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages).\nSome of the typical differences between Standard Arabic (فُصْحَى) and vernacular varieties are a loss of [morphological markings](https://bliptext.com/articles/morpheme) of [grammatical case](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-case), changes in [word order](https://bliptext.com/articles/word-order), a shift toward more [analytic](https://bliptext.com/articles/analytic-language) morphosyntax, loss of [grammatical mood](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood), and loss of the inflected [passive voice](https://bliptext.com/articles/passive-voice).\n\n## Literary Arabic\nAs in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual [morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphology-linguistics), i.e. method of constructing words from a basic [root](https://bliptext.com/articles/root-linguistics).\nArabic has a [nonconcatenative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonconcatenative-morphology) \"root-and-pattern\" morphology: A root consists of a set of bare consonants (usually [three](https://bliptext.com/articles/triliteral)), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern to form words.\nFor example, the word for 'I wrote' is constructed by combining the root **' 'write' with the pattern **' 'I Xed' to form 'I wrote'.\nOther verbs meaning 'I Xed' will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. **' 'I read', '** 'I ate', **' 'I went', although other patterns are possible, e.g. '** 'I drank', **' 'I said', '** 'I spoke', where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix is always used.\n****F****r****o****m**** ****a**** ****s****i****n****g****l****e**** ****r****o****o****t**** ****,**** ****n****u****m****e****r****o****u****s**** ****w****o****r****d****s**** ****c****a****n**** ****b****e**** ****f****o****r****m****e****d**** ****b****y**** ****a****p****p****l****y****i****n****g**** ****d****i****f****f****e****r****e****n****t**** ****p****a****t****t****e****r****n****s****:****\n\n### Nouns and adjectives\nNouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical [cases](https://bliptext.com/articles/noun-case) ([nominative](https://bliptext.com/articles/nominative-case), [accusative](https://bliptext.com/articles/accusative-case), and [genitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/genitive-case) [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three [numbers](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-number) (singular, dual and plural); two [genders](https://bliptext.com/articles/gender-grammar) (masculine and feminine); and three \"states\" (indefinite, definite, and [construct](https://bliptext.com/articles/status-constructus)).\nThe cases of singular nouns, other than those that end in long ā, are indicated by [suffixed](https://bliptext.com/articles/suffix) short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive).\nThe feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is pronounced as /-ah/ before a pause.\nPlural is indicated either through endings (the [sound plural](https://bliptext.com/articles/sound-plural)) or internal modification (the [broken plural](https://bliptext.com/articles/broken-plural)).\nDefinite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in \"construct state\" and all nouns which are [prefixed](https://bliptext.com/articles/prefix) by the definite article /al-/.\nIndefinite 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/nunation) or [tanwīn](https://bliptext.com/articles/tanw-n).\n[Adjectives](https://bliptext.com/articles/adjective) in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns.\nThe plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-at/ suffix.\n[Pronouns](https://bliptext.com/articles/pronoun) in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender.\nThere are two varieties, independent pronouns and [enclitics](https://bliptext.com/articles/enclitic).\nEnclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns.\nThe first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs ( /-nī/) and for nouns or prepositions ( /-ī/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).\nNouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects.\nNon-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular.\nA 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.\nNumerals between three and ten show \"chiasmic\" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.\n\n### Verbs\nVerbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number.\nThey are [conjugated](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-conjugation) in two major paradigms ([past](https://bliptext.com/articles/past) and non-[past](https://bliptext.com/articles/past)); two [voices](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-voice) (active and passive); and six [moods](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood) ([indicative](https://bliptext.com/articles/indicative), [imperative](https://bliptext.com/articles/imperative-mood), [subjunctive](https://bliptext.com/articles/subjunctive), [jussive](https://bliptext.com/articles/irrealis-mood), shorter [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood) and longer [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood)); the fifth and sixth [moods](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-mood), the [energetic](https://bliptext.com/articles/energetic-mood)s, exist only in Classical Arabic but not in MSA.\nThere are two [participles](https://bliptext.com/articles/participle), active and passive, and a [verbal noun](https://bliptext.com/articles/verbal-noun), but no [infinitive](https://bliptext.com/articles/infinitive).\nThe past and non-past paradigms are sometimes termed [perfective](https://bliptext.com/articles/perfective) and im[perfective](https://bliptext.com/articles/perfective), indicating the fact that they actually represent a combination of [tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-tense) and [aspect](https://bliptext.com/articles/grammatical-aspect).\nThe moods other than the [indicative](https://bliptext.com/articles/indicative) occur only in the non-past, and the [future tense](https://bliptext.com/articles/future-tense) is signaled by prefixing **' or '** onto the non-past.\nThe past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g., past **' vs. non-past '**), and 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/suffix) morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of [prefixes](https://bliptext.com/articles/prefix) (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number) are used.\nThe passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.\nThe following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, 'to write'.\nIn Modern Standard, the energetic mood, in either long or short form, which has the same meaning, is almost never used.\n\n### Derivation\nLike other [Semitic languages](https://bliptext.com/articles/semitic-languages), and unlike most other languages, Arabic makes much more use of [nonconcatenative morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/nonconcatenative-morphology), applying many templates applied to roots, to [derive](https://bliptext.com/articles/morphological-derivation) words than adding prefixes or suffixes to words.\nFor verbs, a given root can occur in many different [derived verb stems](https://bliptext.com/articles/derived-stem), of which there are about fifteen, 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.\nThese are referred to by Western scholars as \"Form I\", \"Form II\", and so on through \"Form XV\", although Forms XI to XV are rare.\nThese stems encode grammatical functions such as the [causative](https://bliptext.com/articles/causative), [intensive](https://bliptext.com/articles/intensive) and [reflexive](https://bliptext.com/articles/reflexive-verb).\nStems sharing the same root consonants represent separate verbs, albeit often semantically related, and each is the basis for its own [conjugational](https://bliptext.com/articles/verb-conjugation) paradigm.\nAs a result, these derived stems are part of the system of [derivational morphology](https://bliptext.com/articles/derivational-morphology), not part of the [inflectional](https://bliptext.com/articles/inflection) system.\nExamples of the different verbs formed from the root **' 'write' (using '** 'red' for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):\nForm II is sometimes used to create transitive [denominative verbs](https://bliptext.com/articles/denominative-verb) (verbs built from nouns); Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.\nThe associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic.\nThis is similar to the process by which, for example, the [English gerund](https://bliptext.com/articles/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).\nAnother 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. **' 'desk, office' < '** 'write', **' 'kitchen' < '** 'cook').\nThe only three genuine suffixes are as follows:\n\n## Colloquial varieties\nThe 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).\nThey 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).\nThey have also mostly lost the indefinite \"nunation\" and the internal passive.\nThe following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.\n\n# Writing system\nThe Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through [Nabatean](https://bliptext.com/articles/nabatean-alphabet), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of [Coptic](https://bliptext.com/articles/coptic-alphabet) or [Cyrillic scripts](https://bliptext.com/articles/cyrillic-script) to [Greek script](https://bliptext.com/articles/greek-alphabet).\nTraditionally, 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).\nHowever, 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/zaouia)) of West Africa.\nArabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the [Ge'ez script](https://bliptext.com/articles/ge-ez-script)), is written from right to left.\nThere are several styles of scripts such as [thuluth](https://bliptext.com/articles/thuluth), [muhaqqaq](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhaqqaq), [tawqi](https://bliptext.com/articles/tawqi), [rayhan](https://bliptext.com/articles/rayhan), and notably [naskh](https://bliptext.com/articles/naskh-script), which is used in print and by computers, and [ruqʻah](https://bliptext.com/articles/ruq-ah), which is commonly used for correspondence.\nOriginally Arabic was made up of only rasm without diacritical marks Later diacritical points (which in Arabic are referred to as nuqaṯ) were added (which allowed readers to distinguish between letters such as b, t, th, n and y).\nFinally signs known as [Tashkil](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) were used for short vowels known as [harakat](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-diacritics) and other uses such as final postnasalized or long vowels.\nNotes:\n# [Arabic calligraphy written by a Malay Muslim in Malaysia. The calligrapher is making a rough draft. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Menulis///khat.jpg]\n\n## Calligraphy\nAfter [Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nArabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by [Arabs](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabs) as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem.\nBeing cursive by nature, unlike the Latin script, Arabic script is used to write down a [verse](https://bliptext.com/articles/ayah) of the Quran, a [hadith](https://bliptext.com/articles/hadith), or a [proverb](https://bliptext.com/articles/proverb).\nThe composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal.\nOne of the current masters of the genre is [Hassan Massoudy](https://bliptext.com/articles/hassan-massoudy).\nIn 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.\n\n## Romanization\nThere are a number of different standards for the [romanization of Arabic](https://bliptext.com/articles/romanization-of-arabic), i.e. methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin script.\nThere are various conflicting motivations involved, which leads to multiple systems.\nSome are interested in [transliteration](https://bliptext.com/articles/transliteration), i.e. representing the spelling of Arabic, while others focus on [transcription](https://bliptext.com/articles/phonetic-transcription), i.e. representing the pronunciation of Arabic.\n(Th**e******y**** diff**e**r in that, for **e**xampl**e**, th**e** sam**e** l**e**tt**e**r ي is us**e**d to r**e**pr**e**s**e**nt both a consonant, as in \"****y****ou\" or \"****y******e**t\", and a vow**e**l, as in \"m**e**\" or \"**e**at\".)\nSome 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.\nThese systems are heavily reliant on [diacritical](https://bliptext.com/articles/diacritic) marks such as \"š\" for the sound equivalently written sh in English.\nOther systems (e.g. the [Bahá'í orthography](https://bliptext.com/articles/bah-orthography)) are intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists with intuitive pronunciation of Arabic names and phrases.\nThese less \"scientific\" systems tend to avoid [diacritics](https://bliptext.com/articles/diacritics) and use [digraphs](https://bliptext.com/articles/digraph-orthography) (like sh and kh).\nThese 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.\nThe [ALA-LC](https://bliptext.com/articles/ala-lc) romanization solves this problem by separating the two sounds with a [prime](https://bliptext.com/articles/prime-symbol) symbol ( ′ ); e.g., as′hal 'easier'.\nDuring 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](https://bliptext.com/articles/personal-computer), the [World Wide Web](https://bliptext.com/articles/world-wide-web), [email](https://bliptext.com/articles/email), [bulletin board systems](https://bliptext.com/articles/bulletin-board-system), [IRC](https://bliptext.com/articles/internet-relay-chat), [instant messaging](https://bliptext.com/articles/instant-messaging) and [mobile phone text messaging](https://bliptext.com/articles/mobile-phone-text-messaging).\nMost 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.\nAs a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script.\nTo handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated.\nFor example, the numeral \"3\" may be used to represent the Arabic letter ⟨ع⟩.\nThere is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it [Arabic Chat Alphabet](https://bliptext.com/articles/arabic-chat-alphabet) or IM Arabic.\nOther systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the \"emphatic\" counterparts of certain consonants.\nFor instance, using capitalization, the letter ⟨د⟩, may be represente**d** by **d**.\nIts emphatic counterpart, ⟨ض⟩, may be written as **D**.\n\n## Numerals\nIn most of present-day North Africa, the [Western Arabic numerals](https://bliptext.com/articles/western-arabic-numerals) (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used.\nHowever, in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the [Eastern Arabic numerals](https://bliptext.com/articles/eastern-arabic-numerals) ( – – – – – – – – – ) are in use.\nWhen representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued [position](https://bliptext.com/articles/positional-notation) is placed on the right, so the order of [position](https://bliptext.com/articles/positional-notation)s is the same as in left-to-right scripts.\nSequences 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.\nFor example, 24 is said \"four and twenty\" just like in the German language (vierundzwanzig) and [Classical Hebrew](https://bliptext.com/articles/classical-hebrew), and 1975 is said \"a thousand and nine-hundred and five and seventy\" or, more eloquently, \"a thousand and nine-hundred five seventy\".\n\n## Arabic alphabet and nationalism\nThere have been many instances of national movements to convert Arabic script into Latin script or to Romanize the language.\nCurrently, the only Arabic variety to use Latin script is [Maltese](https://bliptext.com/articles/maltese-language).\n\n### Lebanon\nThe Beirut newspaper La Syrie pushed for the change from Arabic script to Latin letters in 1922.\nThe major head of this movement was [Louis Massignon](https://bliptext.com/articles/louis-massignon), a French Orientalist, who brought his concern before the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus in 1928.\nMassignon'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.\n[Sa'id Afghani](https://bliptext.com/articles/sa-id-al-afghani), a member of the academy, mentioned that the movement to Romanize the script was a [Zionist](https://bliptext.com/articles/zionism) plan to dominate Lebanon.\n[Said Akl](https://bliptext.com/articles/said-akl) created a Latin-based alphabet for [Lebanese](https://bliptext.com/articles/lebanese-arabic) and used it in a newspaper he founded, Lebnaan, as well as in some books he wrote.\n\n### Egypt\nAfter the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for a way to reclaim and re-emphasize Egyptian culture.\nAs 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.\nThere was also the idea of finding a way to use [Hieroglyphics](https://bliptext.com/articles/hieroglyphics) instead of the Latin alphabet, but this was seen as too complicated to use.\nA scholar, [Salama Musa](https://bliptext.com/articles/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.\nHe also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances in science and technology.\nThis change in alphabet, 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.\n[Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid](https://bliptext.com/articles/ahmed-lutfi-el-sayed) and [Muhammad Azmi](https://bliptext.com/articles/muhammad-mustafa-azmi), two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for Romanization.\nThe idea that Romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al-Aziz Fahmi in 1944.\nHe was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo.\nThis effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cultural tie to the Arabic alphabet.\nIn particular, the older Egyptian generations believed that the Arabic alphabet had strong connections to Arab values and history, due to the long history of the Arabic alphabet (Shrivtiel, 189) in Muslim societies.\n\n# Sample text\n\n# Citations\n\n## Sources","revisionCount":1},"hasMore":false,"nextCursor":null}