Arabic


Arabic is a Semitic language that first emerged in the 1st to 4th centuries CE. It is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. It is named after the Arabs, a term initially used to describe peoples living in the area bounded by Mesopotamia in the east and the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, in Northwestern Arabia and in the Sinai Peninsula. The ISO assigns language codes to thirty varieties of Arabic, including its standard form, Modern Standard Arabic, also referred to as Literary Arabic, which is modernized Classical Arabic. This 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 al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā or simply al-fuṣḥā.
Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government and the media. Arabic, in its standard form, is the official language of 26 states, as well as the liturgical language of the religion of Islam, since the Quran and Hadith were written in Arabic.
During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages—mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese and Catalan—owing to both the proximity of Christian European and Muslim Arab civilizations and the long-lasting Arabic culture and language presence mainly in Southern Iberia during the Al-Andalus era. Sicilian has about 500 Arabic words, many of which relate to agriculture and related activities, as a legacy of the Emirate of Sicily from the mid-9th to mid-10th centuries, while Maltese language is a Semitic language developed from a dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet. The Balkan languages, including Greek and Bulgarian, have also acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish.
Arabic has influenced many other languages around the globe throughout its history. Some of the most influenced languages are Persian, Turkish, Hindustani, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Malay, Maldivian, Pashto, Punjabi, Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog, Assamese, Sindhi, Odia and Hausa and some languages in parts of Africa. Conversely, Arabic has borrowed words from other languages, including Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Persian in medieval times and languages such as English and French in modern times.
Arabic is the liturgical language of 1.8 billion Muslims, and Arabic is one of six official languages of the United Nations. All varieties of Arabic combined are spoken by perhaps as many as 422 million speakers in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad script and is written from right to left, although the spoken varieties are sometimes written in ASCII Latin from left to right with no standardized orthography.

Classification

Arabic is usually, but not universally, classified as a Central Semitic language. It is related to languages in other subgroups of the Semitic language group, such as Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Canaanite, Amorite, Ammonite, Eblaite, epigraphic Ancient North Arabian, epigraphic Ancient South Arabian, Ethiopic, Modern South Arabian, and numerous other dead and modern languages. Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups.
The Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the emergence of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include:
  1. The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense.
  2. The conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense.
  3. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms.
  4. The development of an internal passive.
There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of the northern Hejaz. These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor, Proto-Arabic. The following features can be reconstructed with confidence for Proto-Arabic:
  1. negative particles m *mā; lʾn *lā-ʾan > CAr lan
  2. mafʿūl G-passive participle
  3. prepositions and adverbs f, ʿn, ʿnd, ḥt, ʿkdy
  4. a subjunctive in -a
  5. t-demonstratives
  6. leveling of the -at allomorph of the feminine ending
  7. ʾn complementizer and subordinator
  8. the use of f- to introduce modal clauses
  9. independent object pronoun in y
  10. vestiges of nunation

    History

Old Arabic

Arabia boasted a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken. It is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in a script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic. Finally, on the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B, Thamudic D, Safaitic, and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are in fact early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic.
Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic" first emerged around the 1st century CE. Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat Al-Faw, in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as the conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum.
It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced--epigraphic Ancient North Arabian, which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after the towns where the inscriptions were discovered. However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It 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. Safaitic 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.
The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garmallāhe found in En Avdat, Israel, and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the epitaph of the Lakhmid king Mar 'al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From the 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolves into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria. The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of the Qur'an are referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into "Classical Arabic".

Old Hejazi and Classical Arabic

In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra, most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from the "learned" tradition. This 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 register. It is clear that the orthography of the Qur'an 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.
In the late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd, probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra. During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. The standardization of Classical Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al-Kitāb, is based first of all upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya. By the 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world.

Neo-Arabic

Charles Ferguson's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on the eve of the conquests: Northern and Central. The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories.
According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA.
In around the 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus, the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb.

Nahda

In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism, pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali, dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications.
The Nahda cultural renaissance saw the creation of a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française, starting with the Arab Academy of Damascus, which aimed to develop the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations. This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. .

Classical, Modern Standard and spoken Arabic

Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of a variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects, which are not necessarily mutually intelligible.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran, used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries.
Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era, especially in modern times. Due 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. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while the latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars in medieval and early modern Europe. This view though does not take into account the widespread use of Modern Standard Arabic as a medium of audiovisual communication in today's mass media—a function Latin has never performed.
MSA 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. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic.
Some of the differences between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic are as follows:
MSA uses much Classical vocabulary that is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation.
However, the current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations, or to coin new words using forms within existing roots. An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse.
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language and evolved from Classical Arabic. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible, and some linguists consider them distinct languages. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising.
The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, which is spoken in Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic, but is not mutually intelligible with any other variety of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
Even during Muhammad's lifetime, there were dialects of spoken Arabic. Muhammad spoke in the dialect of Mecca, in the western Arabian peninsula, and it was in this dialect that the Quran was written down. However, the dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula were considered the most prestigious at the time, so the language of the Quran was ultimately converted to follow the eastern phonology. It is this phonology that underlies the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. The phonological differences between these two dialects account for some of the complexities of Arabic writing, most notably the writing of the glottal stop or hamzah and the use of alif maqṣūrah.

Language and dialect

The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically, means the one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native, mutually unintelligible "dialects"; these dialects linguistically constitute separate languages which may have dialects of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation, many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a significant complicating factor: A single written form, significantly different from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites a number of sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language, despite significant issues of mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions.
From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages. This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages.

Influence of Arabic on other languages

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries, because it is the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Quran. Arabic is also an important source of vocabulary for languages such as Amharic, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Bengali, Berber, Bosnian, Chaldean, Chechen, Chittagonian, Croatian, Dagestani, English, German, Gujarati, Hausa, Hindi, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kutchi, Kyrgyz, Malay, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Rohingya, Romance languages Saraiki, Sindhi, Somali, Sylheti, Swahili, Tagalog, Tigrinya, Turkish, Turkmen, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Visayan and Wolof, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. The Education Minister of France has recently been emphasizing the learning and usage of Arabic in their schools.
In addition, English has many Arabic loanwords, some directly, but most via other Mediterranean languages. Examples of such words include admiral, adobe, alchemy, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, alkaline, almanac, amber, arsenal, assassin, candy, carat, cipher, coffee, cotton, ghoul, hazard, jar, kismet, lemon, loofah, magazine, mattress, sherbet, sofa, sumac, tariff, and zenith. Other languages such as Maltese and Kinubi derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammatical rules.
Terms borrowed range from religious terminology, academic terms, and economic items to placeholders, everyday terms, and expressions. Most Berber varieties, along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as , "prayer", and , "prayer leader."
In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic. For example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani and Turkish entered though Persian is an Indo-Iranian language. Older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri.
Arabic words also made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara. Variants of Arabic words such as kitāb have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.
Since throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of Latin in Europe, many of the Arabic concepts in the fields of science, philosophy, commerce, etc. were coined from Arabic roots by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators, and then found their way into other languages. This process of using Arabic roots, especially in Kurdish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued through to the 18th and 19th centuries, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.

Influence of other languages on Arabic

The most important sources of borrowings into Arabic are from the related languages Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew. In addition, many cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from Iranian languages, notably Middle Persian, Parthian, and Persian, and Hellenistic Greek, alembic from ambix, almanac from almenichiakon. Some Arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare's above-cited book:
There have been many instances of national movements to convert Arabic script into Latin script or to Romanize the language. Currently, the only language derived from Classical Arabic to use Latin script is Maltese.

Lebanon

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

Egypt

After the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for a way to reclaim and re-emphasize Egyptian culture. As a result, some Egyptians pushed for an Egyptianization of the Arabic language in which the formal Arabic and the colloquial Arabic would be combined into one language and the Latin alphabet would be used. There was also the idea of finding a way to use Hieroglyphics instead of the Latin alphabet, but this was seen as too complicated to use. A scholar, Salama Musa agreed with the idea of applying a Latin alphabet to Arabic, as he believed that would allow Egypt to have a closer relationship with the West. He also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances in science and technology. This change in 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. Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid and Muhammad Azmi, two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for Romanization. The idea that Romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al-Aziz Fahmi in 1944. He was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo. However, this effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cultural tie to the Arabic alphabet. In 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 in Muslim societies.

The language of the Quran and its influence on poetry

The Quran introduced a new way of writing to the world. People began studying and applying the unique styles they learned from the Quran to not only their own writing, but also their culture. Writers studied the unique structure and format of the Quran in order to identify and apply the figurative devices and their impact on the reader.

Quran's figurative devices

The Quran inspired musicality in poetry through the internal rhythm of the verses. The arrangement of words, how certain sounds create harmony, and the agreement of rhymes create the sense of rhythm within each verse. At times, the chapters of the Quran only have the rhythm in common.
The repetition in the Quran introduced the true power and impact repetition can have in poetry. The repetition of certain words and phrases made them appear more firm and explicit in the Quran. The Quran uses constant metaphors of blindness and deafness to imply unbelief. Metaphors were not a new concept to poetry, however the strength of extended metaphors was. The explicit imagery in the Quran inspired many poets to include and focus on the feature in their own work. The poet ibn al-Mu'tazz wrote a book regarding the figures of speech inspired by his study of the Quran. Poets such as badr Shakir al sayyab expresses his political opinion in his work through imagery inspired by the forms of more harsher imagery used in the Quran.
The Quran uses figurative devices in order to express the meaning in the most beautiful form possible. The study of the pauses in the Quran as well as other rhetoric allow it to be approached in a multiple ways.

Structure

Although the Quran is known for its fluency and harmony, the structure can be best described as not always being inherently chronological, but can also flow thematically instead. The suras, also known as chapters of the Quran, are not placed in chronological order. The only constant in their structure is that the longest are placed first and shorter ones follow. The topics discussed in the chapters can also have no direct relation to each other and can share in their sense of rhyme. The Quran introduces to poetry the idea of abandoning order and scattering narratives throughout the text. Harmony is also present in the sound of the Quran. The elongations and accents present in the Quran create a harmonious flow within the writing. Unique sound of the Quran recited, due to the accents, create a deeper level of understanding through a deeper emotional connection.
The Quran is written in a language that is simple and understandable by people. The simplicity of the writing inspired later poets to write in a more clear and clear-cut style. The words of the Quran, although unchanged, are to this day understandable and frequently used in both formal and informal Arabic. The simplicity of the language makes memorizing and reciting the Quran a slightly easier task.

Culture and the Quran

The writer al-Khattabi explains how culture is a required element to create a sense of art in work as well as understand it. He believes that the fluency and harmony which the Quran possess are not the only elements that make it beautiful and create a bond between the reader and the text.
While a lot of poetry was deemed comparable to the Quran in that it is equal to or better than the composition of the Quran, a debate rose that such statements are not possible because humans are incapable of composing work comparable to the Quran.
Because the structure of the Quran made it difficult for a clear timeline to be seen, Hadith were the main source of chronological order. The Hadith were passed down from generation to generation and this tradition became a large resource for understanding the context. Poetry after the Quran began possessing this element of tradition by including ambiguity and background information to be required to understand the meaning.
After the Quran came down to the people, the tradition of memorizing the verses became present. It is believed that the greater the amount of the Quran memorized, the greater the faith. As technology improved over time, hearing recitations of the Quran became more available as well as more tools to help memorize the verses.
The tradition of Love Poetry served as a symbolic representation of a Muslim's desire for a closer contact with their Lord.
While the influence of the Quran on Arabic poetry is explained and defended by numerous writers, some writers such as Al-Baqillani believe that poetry and the Quran are in no conceivable way related due to the uniqueness of the Quran. Poetry's imperfections prove his points that they cannot be compared with the fluency the Quran holds.

Arabic and Islam

Classical Arabic is the language of poetry and literature ; it is also mainly the language of the Quran. Classical Arabic is closely associated with the religion of Islam because the Quran was written in it. Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Classical Arabic as their native language, but many can read the Quranic script and recite the Quran. Among non-Arab Muslims, translations of the Quran are most often accompanied by the original text. At present, Modern Standard Arabic is also used in modernized versions of literary forms of the Quran.
Some Muslims present a monogenesis of languages and claim that the Arabic language was the language revealed by God for the benefit of mankind and the original language as a prototype system of symbolic communication, based upon its system of triconsonantal roots, spoken by man from which all other languages were derived, having first been corrupted. Judaism has a similar account with the Tower of Babel.

Dialects and descendants

Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken dialects of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the varieties within and outside of the Arabian peninsula, followed by that between sedentary varieties and the much more conservative Bedouin varieties. All the varieties outside of the Arabian peninsula have many features in common with each other that are not found in Classical Arabic. This has led researchers to postulate the existence of a prestige koine dialect in the one or two centuries immediately following the Arab conquest, whose features eventually spread to all newly conquered areas.
Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian North African dialects and the others. Moroccan Arabic in particular is hardly comprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Libya.
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fīh and North African kayən all mean 'there is', and all come from Classical Arabic forms, but now sound very different.

Examples

Transcription is a broad IPA transcription, so minor differences were ignored for easier comparison. Also, the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic differs significantly from region to region.
VarietyI love reading a lotWhen I went to the libraryI didn't find this old bookI wanted to read a book about the history of women in France
Literary Arabic in Arabic script
Literary Arabic in Arabic script
Classical Arabic
ʔuħibːu‿lqirˤaːʔata kaθiːrˤaːʕĩndamaː ðahabᵊtu ʔila‿lmaktabahlam ʔaɟidᵊ haːða‿lkitaːba‿lqadiːmkũntu ʔuriːdu ʔan ʔaqᵊrˤaʔa kitaːban ʕan taːriːχi‿lmarˤʔati fiː farˤãnsaː
Modern Standard Arabicʔuħibːu‿lqiraːʔa kaθiːranʕindamaː ðahabt ʔila‿lmaktabalam ʔad͡ʒid haːða‿lkitaːba‿lqadiːmkunt ʔuriːd ʔan ʔaqraʔ kitaːban ʕan taːriːχi‿lmarʔa fiː faransaː
Yemeni Arabic ana bajn aħibː ilgiraːji gawilaw ma sirt saˈla‿lmaktabihma lige:tʃ ðajji‿lkitaːb ilgadiːm kunt aʃti ʔagra kitaːb ʕan taːriːx ilmari wastˤ faraːnsa
Jordanian Arabic ana baħib ligraːje kθiːr lamːa ruħt ʕalmaktabema lageːtʃ haliktaːb ilgadiːmkaːn bidːi ʔaqra ktaːb ʕan taːriːx ilmara fi faransa
Gulf Arabic aːna waːjid aħibː aɡralamːan riħt ilmaktabamaː liɡeːt halkitaːb ilgadiːmkint abi‿aɡra kitaːb ʕan taːriːx ilħariːm‿bfaransa
Gələt Mesopotamian aːni‿aħub luqraːja kulːiʃlamːan riħit lilmaktabˤɛːmaː liɡeːt haːða liktaːb ilgadiːmridit aqra ktaːb ʕan taːriːx inːiswaːn‿bfransɛː
Hejazi Arabic ana marːa ʔaħubː alɡiraːjalamːa ruħt almaktabama liɡiːt haːda lkitaːb alɡadiːmkunt abɣa ʔaɡra kitaːb ʕan taːriːx alħariːm fi faransa
Western Syrian Arabic ana ktiːr bħəb ləʔraːjelamːa rəħt ʕalmaktabema laʔeːt haləktaːb əlʔadiːm kaːn badːi ʔra ktaːb ʕan taːriːx əlmara bfraːnsa
Lebanese Arabic ana ktiːr bħib liʔreːjilamːa riħit ʕalmaktabima lʔeːt halikteːb liʔdiːm keːn badːi ʔra kteːb ʕan teːriːx ilmara bfraːnsa
Urban Palestinian ana baħib liʔraːje ktiːr lamːa ruħt ʕalmaktabema laʔeːtʃ haliktaːb ilʔadiːm kaːn bidːi ʔaʔra ktaːb ʕan taːriːx ilmara fi faransa
Rural Palestinian ana baħib likraːje kθiːr lamːa ruħt ʕalmatʃtabema lakeːtʃ halitʃtaːb ilkadiːm kaːn bidːi ʔakra tʃtaːb ʕan taːriːx ilmara fi faransa
Egyptian ana baħebː elʔeraːja ʔawilamːa roħt elmakˈtabamalʔetʃ elketaːb elʔadim daana kont‿ʕawz‿aʔra ktab ʕan tariːx esːetˈtat fe faransa
Libyan Arabic ana nħəb il-ɡraːja halbalamma mʃeːt lil-maktbamalɡeːtiʃ ha-li-ktaːb lə-ɡdiːmkunt nibi naɡra ktaːb ʔleː tariːx ə-nsawiːn fi fraːnsa
Tunisian nħib liqraːja barʃawaqtilli mʃiːt lilmaktbamal-qiːtʃ ha-likteːb liqdiːmkʊnt nħib naqra kteːb ʕla terix limra fi fraːnsa
Algerian āna nħəbb nəqṛa bezzafki ruħt l-əl-măktabama-lqīt-ʃ hād lə-ktāb lə-qdīmkŭnt ħābb nəqṛa ktāb ʕla tārīx lə-mṛa fi fṛānsa
Moroccan ana ʕziz ʕlija bzzaf nqramelli mʃit l-lmaktabama-lqiːt-ʃ had l-ktab l-qdimkent baɣi nqra ktab ʕla tarix l-mra f-fransa
Maltese
Inħobb naqra ħafna.Meta mort il-librerijaMa sibtx dan il-ktieb qadim.Ridt naqra ktieb dwar l-istorja tal-mara fi Franza.

Koiné

According to Charles A. Ferguson, the following are some of the characteristic features of the koiné that underlies all the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula. Although many other features are common to most or all of these varieties, Ferguson believes that these features in particular are unlikely to have evolved independently more than once or twice and together suggest the existence of the koine:

History

Of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost:, which merged with, while became . Various other consonants have changed their sound too, but have remained distinct. An original lenited to, and – consistently attested in pre-Islamic Greek transcription of Arabic languages – became palatalized to or by the time of the Quran and,, or after early Muslim conquests and in MSA. An original voiceless alveolar lateral fricative became. Its emphatic counterpart was considered by Arabs to be the most unusual sound in Arabic ; for most modern dialects, it has become an emphatic stop with loss of the laterality or with complete loss of any pharyngealization or velarization,.
Other changes may also have happened. Classical Arabic pronunciation is not thoroughly recorded and different reconstructions of the sound system of Proto-Semitic propose different phonetic values. One example is the emphatic consonants, which are pharyngealized in modern pronunciations but may have been velarized in the eighth century and glottalized in Proto-Semitic.
Reduction of and between vowels occurs in a number of circumstances and is responsible for much of the complexity of third-weak verbs. Early Akkadian transcriptions of Arabic names shows that this reduction had not yet occurred as of the early part of the 1st millennium BC.
The Classical Arabic language as recorded was a poetic koine that reflected a consciously archaizing dialect, chosen based on the tribes of the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, who spoke the most conservative variants of Arabic. Even at the time of Muhammed and before, other dialects existed with many more changes, including the loss of most glottal stops, the loss of case endings, the reduction of the diphthongs and into monophthongs, etc. Most of these changes are present in most or all modern varieties of Arabic.
An interesting feature of the writing system of the Quran is that it contains certain features of Muhammad's native dialect of Mecca, corrected through diacritics into the forms of standard Classical Arabic. Among these features visible under the corrections are the loss of the glottal stop and a differing development of the reduction of certain final sequences containing : Evidently, final became as in the Classical language, but final became a different sound, possibly . This is the apparent source of the alif maqṣūrah 'restricted alif' where a final is reconstructed: a letter that would normally indicate or some similar high-vowel sound, but is taken in this context to be a logical variant of alif and represent the sound.
Although Classical Arabic was a unitary language and is now used in Quran, its pronunciation varies somewhat from country to country and from region to region within a country. It is influenced by colloquial dialects.

Literary Arabic

The "colloquial" spoken dialects of Arabic are learned at home and constitute the native languages of Arabic speakers. "Formal" Literary Arabic is learned at school; although many speakers have a native-like command of the language, it is technically not the native language of any speakers. Both varieties can be both written and spoken, although the colloquial varieties are rarely written down and the formal variety is spoken mostly in formal circumstances, e.g., in radio and TV broadcasts, formal lectures, parliamentary discussions and to some extent between speakers of different colloquial dialects. Even when the literary language is spoken, however, it is normally only spoken in its pure form when reading a prepared text out loud and communication between speakers of different colloquial dialects. When speaking extemporaneously, speakers tend to deviate somewhat from the strict literary language in the direction of the colloquial varieties. In fact, there is a continuous range of "in-between" spoken varieties: from nearly pure Modern Standard Arabic, to a form that still uses MSA grammar and vocabulary but with significant colloquial influence, to a form of the colloquial language that imports a number of words and grammatical constructions in MSA, to a form that is close to pure colloquial but with the "rough edges" smoothed out, to pure colloquial. The particular variant used depends on the social class and education level of the speakers involved and the level of formality of the speech situation. Often it will vary within a single encounter, e.g., moving from nearly pure MSA to a more mixed language in the process of a radio interview, as the interviewee becomes more comfortable with the interviewer. This type of variation is characteristic of the diglossia that exists throughout the Arabic-speaking world.
Although Modern Standard Arabic is a unitary language, its pronunciation varies somewhat from country to country and from region to region within a country. The variation in individual "accents" of MSA speakers tends to mirror corresponding variations in the colloquial speech of the speakers in question, but with the distinguishing characteristics moderated somewhat. It is important in descriptions of "Arabic" phonology to distinguish between pronunciation of a given colloquial dialect and the pronunciation of MSA by these same speakers. Although they are related, they are not the same. For example, the phoneme that derives from Classical Arabic has many different pronunciations in the modern spoken varieties, e.g., including the proposed original. Speakers whose native variety has either or will use the same pronunciation when speaking MSA. Even speakers from Cairo, whose native Egyptian Arabic has, normally use when speaking MSA. The of Persian Gulf speakers is the only variant pronunciation which isn't found in MSA; is used instead, but may use in MSA for comfortable pronunciation. Another reason of different pronunciations is influence of colloquial dialects. The differentiation of pronunciation of colloquial dialects is the influence from other languages previously spoken and some still presently spoken in the regions, such as Coptic in Egypt, Berber, Punic, or Phoenician in North Africa, Himyaritic, Modern South Arabian, and Old South Arabian in Yemen and Oman, and Aramaic and Canaanite languages in the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Another example: Many colloquial varieties are known for a type of vowel harmony in which the presence of an "emphatic consonant" triggers backed allophones of nearby vowels. In many spoken varieties, the backed or "emphatic" vowel allophones spread a fair distance in both directions from the triggering consonant; in some varieties, the "emphatic" allophones spread throughout the entire word, usually including prefixes and suffixes, even at a distance of several syllables from the triggering consonant. Speakers of colloquial varieties with this vowel harmony tend to introduce it into their MSA pronunciation as well, but usually with a lesser degree of spreading than in the colloquial varieties.

Vowels

Modern Standard Arabic has six pure vowels, with short and corresponding long vowels. There are also two diphthongs: and.
The pronunciation of the vowels differs from speaker to speaker, in a way that tends to reflect the pronunciation of the corresponding colloquial variety. Nonetheless, there are some common trends. Most noticeable is the differing pronunciation of and, which tend towards fronted, or in most situations, but a back in the neighborhood of emphatic consonants. Some accents and dialects, such as those of the Hejaz region, have an open or a central in all situations. The vowel varies towards too. Listen to the final vowel in the recording of al-ʻarabiyyah at the beginning of this article, for example. The point is, Arabic has only three short vowel phonemes, so those phonemes can have a very wide range of allophones. The vowels and are often affected somewhat in emphatic neighborhoods as well, with generally more back or centralized allophones, but the differences are less great than for the low vowels. The pronunciation of short and tends towards and, respectively, in many dialects.
The definition of both "emphatic" and "neighborhood" vary in ways that reflect corresponding variations in the spoken dialects. Generally, the consonants triggering "emphatic" allophones are the pharyngealized consonants ; ; and, if not followed immediately by. Frequently, the fricatives also trigger emphatic allophones; occasionally also the pharyngeal consonants . Many dialects have multiple emphatic allophones of each vowel, depending on the particular nearby consonants. In most MSA accents, emphatic coloring of vowels is limited to vowels immediately adjacent to a triggering consonant, although in some it spreads a bit farther: e.g., waqt 'time'; waṭan 'homeland'; wasṭ al-madīnah 'downtown'.
In a non-emphatic environment, the vowel in the diphthong tends to be fronted even more than elsewhere, often pronounced or : hence sayf 'sword' but ṣayf 'summer'. However, in accents with no emphatic allophones of , the pronunciation or occurs in all situations.

Consonants

The phoneme is represented by the Arabic letter jīm and has many standard pronunciations. is characteristic of north Algeria, Iraq, and most of the Arabian peninsula but with an allophonic in some positions; occurs in most of the Levant and most of North Africa; and is used in most of Egypt and some regions in Yemen and Oman. Generally this corresponds with the pronunciation in the colloquial dialects. In some regions in Sudan and Yemen, as well as in some Sudanese and Yemeni dialects, it may be either or, representing the original pronunciation of Classical Arabic. Foreign words containing may be transcribed with,,,,, or, mainly depending on the regional spoken variety of Arabic or the commonly diacriticized Arabic letter. In northern Egypt, where the Arabic letter jīm is normally pronounced, a separate phoneme, which may be transcribed with, occurs in a small number of mostly non-Arabic loanwords, e.g., 'jacket'.
can be pronounced as. In some places of Maghreb it can be also pronounced as.
and are velar, post-velar, or uvular.
In many varieties, are epiglottal in Western Asia.
is pronounced as velarized in الله, the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, ā, u or ū. Some speakers velarize other occurrences of in MSA, in imitation of their spoken dialects.
The emphatic consonant was actually pronounced, or possibly —either way, a highly unusual sound. The medieval Arabs actually termed their language lughat al-ḍād 'the language of the Ḍād', since they thought the sound was unique to their language.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" , which exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization , so they may be written with the "Velarized or pharyngealized" diacritic as:. This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written ; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example,.
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription, reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabila 'he accepted' vs. qabbala 'he kissed'.

Syllable structure

Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables and —and closed syllables, and. The syllable types with two morae, i.e. CVC and CVV, are termed heavy syllables, while those with three morae, i.e. CVVC and CVCC, are superheavy syllables. Superheavy syllables in Classical Arabic occur in only two places: at the end of the sentence and in words such as ḥārr 'hot', māddah 'stuff, substance', taḥājjū 'they disputed with each other', where a long ā occurs before two identical consonants.
In surface pronunciation, every vowel must be preceded by a consonant. There are no cases of hiatus within a word. Some words do have an underlying vowel at the beginning, such as the definite article al- or words such as ishtarā 'he bought', ijtimāʻ 'meeting'. When actually pronounced, one of three things happens:
Word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic. It bears a strong relationship to vowel length. The basic rules for Modern Standard Arabic are:
Examples:kitāb 'book', kā-ti-b 'writer', mak-ta-b 'desk', ma-kā-ti-b 'desks', mak-ta-ba-tun 'library', ka-ta-bū 'they wrote' = ka-ta-bu, ka-ta-bū-h 'they wrote it' = ka-ta-bū, ka-ta-ba-tā 'they wrote', ka-tab-tu 'I wrote' = ka-tabt. Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-jal-la- 'magazine', ma-ḥall "place".
These rules may result in differently stressed syllables when final case endings are pronounced, vs. the normal situation where they are not pronounced, as in the above example of mak-ta-ba-tun 'library' in full pronunciation, but mak-ta-ba 'library' in short pronunciation.
The restriction on final long vowels does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen from loss of original final -hu/hi.
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo dialect a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-ra-sah 'school', qā-hi-rah 'Cairo'. This also affects the way that Modern Standard Arabic is pronounced in Egypt. In the Arabic of Sanaa, stress is often retracted: bay-tayn 'two houses', mā-sat-hum 'their table', ma-kā-tīb 'desks', zā-rat-ḥīn 'sometimes', mad-ra-sat-hum 'their school'.

Levels of pronunciation

The final short vowels are often not pronounced in this language, despite forming part of the formal paradigm of nouns and verbs. The following levels of pronunciation exist:
Full pronunciation with pausa
This is the most formal level actually used in speech. All endings are pronounced as written, except at the end of an utterance, where the following changes occur:
This is a formal level of pronunciation sometimes seen. It is somewhat like pronouncing all words as if they were in pausal position. The following changes occur:
This is the pronunciation used by speakers of Modern Standard Arabic in extemporaneous speech, i.e. when producing new sentences rather than simply reading a prepared text. It is similar to formal short pronunciation except that the rules for dropping final vowels apply even when a clitic suffix is added. Basically, short-vowel case and mood endings are never pronounced and certain other changes occur that echo the corresponding colloquial pronunciations. Specifically:

Vowels

As mentioned above, many spoken dialects have a process of emphasis spreading, where the "emphasis" of emphatic consonants spreads forward and back through adjacent syllables, pharyngealizing all nearby consonants and triggering the back allophone in all nearby low vowels. The extent of emphasis spreading varies. For example, in Moroccan Arabic, it spreads as far as the first full vowel on either side; in many Levantine dialects, it spreads indefinitely, but is blocked by any or ; while in Egyptian Arabic, it usually spreads throughout the entire word, including prefixes and suffixes. In Moroccan Arabic, also have emphatic allophones and, respectively.
Unstressed short vowels, especially, are deleted in many contexts. Many sporadic examples of short vowel change have occurred. Most Levantine dialects merge short /i u/ into in most contexts. In Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, short triggers labialization of nearby consonants, and then short /a i u/ all merge into, which is deleted in many contexts. This essentially causes the wholesale loss of the short-long vowel distinction, with the original long vowels remaining as half-long, phonemically, which are used to represent both short and long vowels in borrowings from Literary Arabic.
Most spoken dialects have monophthongized original to in most circumstances, including adjacent to emphatic consonants, while keeping them as the original diphthongs in others e.g. . In most of the Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian Arabic dialects, they have subsequently merged into original.

Consonants

In most dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, is considered a native phoneme in most Arabic dialects except in Levantine dialects like Syrian or Lebanese where is pronounced and is pronounced. or is considered a native phoneme in most dialects except in Egyptian and a number of Yemeni and Omani dialects where is pronounced. or and are distinguished in the dialects of Egypt, Sudan, the Levant and the Hejaz, but they have merged as in most dialects of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Tunisia and have merged as in Morocco and Algeria. The usage of non-native and depends on the usage of each speaker but they might be more prevalent in some dialects than others. The Iraqi and Gulf Arabic also has the sound and writes it and with the Persian letters چ and گ, as in گوجة gawjah "plum"; چمة chimah "truffle".
Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coalesced into a single phoneme. Many dialects subsequently lost fricatives, converting into. Most dialects borrow "learned" words from the Standard language using the same pronunciation as for inherited words, but some dialects without interdental fricatives render original in borrowed words as.
Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular plosives, , and :
Pharyngealization of the emphatic consonants tends to weaken in many of the spoken varieties, and to spread from emphatic consonants to nearby sounds. In addition, the "emphatic" allophone automatically triggers pharyngealization of adjacent sounds in many dialects. As a result, it may difficult or impossible to determine whether a given coronal consonant is phonemically emphatic or not, especially in dialects with long-distance emphasis spreading.

Grammar

Literary Arabic

As in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual morphology. Arabic has a nonconcatenative "root-and-pattern" morphology: A root consists of a set of bare consonants, which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern to form words. For example, the word for 'I wrote' is constructed by combining the root k-t-b 'write' with the pattern -a-a-tu 'I Xed' to form katabtu 'I wrote'. Other verbs meaning 'I Xed' will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. qaraʼtu 'I read', akaltu 'I ate', dhahabtu 'I went', although other patterns are possible.
From a single root k-t-b, numerous words can be formed by applying different patterns:
Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases ; three numbers ; two genders ; and three "states". The cases of singular nouns are indicated by suffixed short vowels.
The feminine singular is often marked by ـَة /-at/, which is pronounced as /-ah/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings or internal modification. Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article اَلْـ /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/.
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the ـَة /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs and for nouns or prepositions.
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.

Verbs

Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person, gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms ; two voices ; and six moods, the fifth and sixth moods, the energetics, exist only in Classical Arabic but not in MSA. There are also two participles and a verbal noun, but no infinitive.
The past and non-past paradigms are sometimes also termed perfective and imperfective, indicating the fact that they actually represent a combination of tense and aspect. The moods other than the indicative occur only in the non-past, and the future tense is signaled by prefixing سَـ sa- or سَوْفَ sawfa onto the non-past. The past and non-past differ in the form of the stem, and also use completely different sets of affixes for indicating person, number and gender: In the past, the person, number and gender are fused into a single suffixal morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of prefixes and suffixes are used. The passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.
The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, كَتَبَ kataba 'to write'. In Modern Standard, the energetic mood is almost never used.

Derivation

Like other Semitic languages, and unlike most other languages, Arabic makes much more use of nonconcatenative morphology to derive words than adding prefixes or suffixes to words.
For verbs, a given root can occur in many different derived verb stems, each with one or more characteristic meanings and each with its own templates for the past and non-past stems, active and passive participles, and verbal noun. These are referred to by Western scholars as "Form I", "Form II", and so on through "Form XV". These stems encode grammatical functions such as the causative, intensive and reflexive. Stems sharing the same root consonants represent separate verbs, albeit often semantically related, and each is the basis for its own conjugational paradigm. As a result, these derived stems are part of the system of derivational morphology, not part of the inflectional system.
Examples of the different verbs formed from the root كتب k-t-b 'write' :
FormPastMeaningNon-pastMeaning
Ikataba'he wrote'yaktubu'he writes'
IIkattaba'he made write'yukattibu"he makes write"
IIIkātaba'he corresponded with, wrote to 'yukātibu'he corresponds with, writes to '
IVʾaktaba'he dictated'yuktibu'he dictates'
Vtakattaba'nonexistent'yatakattabu'nonexistent'
VItakātaba'he corresponded 'yatakātabu'he corresponds '
VIIinkataba'he subscribed'yankatibu'he subscribes'
VIIIiktataba'he copied'yaktatibu'he copies'
IXiḥmarra'he turned red'yaḥmarru'he turns red'
Xistaktaba'he asked to write'yastaktibu'he asks to write'

Form II is sometimes used to create transitive denominative verbs ; Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.
The associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic. This is similar to the process by which, for example, the English gerund "meeting" 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 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-.
The only three genuine suffixes are as follows:
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual. They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes. They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive.
The following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.

Writing system

The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic scripts to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western 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.
However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages, is written from right to left. There are several styles of scripts such as thuluth, muhaqqaq, tawqi, rayhan and notably naskh, which is used in print and by computers, and ruqʻah, which is commonly used for correspondence.
Originally Arabic was made up of only rasm without diacritical marks Later diacritical points were added. Finally signs known as Tashkil were used for short vowels known as harakat and other uses such as final postnasalized or long vowels.

Calligraphy

After Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi finally fixed the Arabic script around 786, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Quran and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin script, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Quran, a hadith, or simply a proverb. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy.
In modern times the intrinsically calligraphic nature of the written Arabic form is haunted by the thought that a typographic approach to the language, necessary for digitized unification, will not always accurately maintain meanings conveyed through calligraphy.

Romanization

There are a number of different standards for the romanization of Arabic, i.e. methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin script. There are various conflicting motivations involved, which leads to multiple systems. Some are interested in transliteration, i.e. representing the spelling of Arabic, while others focus on transcription, i.e. representing the pronunciation of Arabic. Some systems, e.g. for scholarly use, are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic script. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. Other systems are intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists with intuitive pronunciation of Arabic names and phrases. These less "scientific" systems tend to avoid diacritics and use digraphs. These are usually simpler to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems, and may lead to ambiguities, e.g. whether to interpret sh as a single sound, as in gash, or a combination of two sounds, as in gashouse. The ALA-LC romanization solves this problem by separating the two sounds with a prime symbol ; e.g., as′hal 'easier'.
During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin script only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic script as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart,, may be written as D.

Numerals

In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals are used. However, in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty" just like in the German language and 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"

Language-standards regulators

is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in the Arab League. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.

As a foreign language

Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around the world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies, and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims study the language. Software and books with tapes are also important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries.

Arabic speakers and other languages

With the sole example of Medieval linguist 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.
In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of the Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises."

Citations