History UsefulNotes / ArabicLanguage

Outfitting different roots with the same noun form (also called وزن, or "measure") will yield similar changes in meaning. For example, "عون" means "help" and "تعاون" means "cooperation". There are many more measures and every noun form follows (more-or-less) the same pattern of conjugation for the verb form.

* '''Sudanese Arabic''' is obviously the dialect of Sudan, both North and South. Apart from its marked Nubian influence, Sudanese Arabic is also notable for its conservative phonology; many sounds from Classical Arabic lost in all other varieties are retained only in Sudanese. That said, Sudanese Arabic has a marked similarity to Egyptian Arabic, particularly Sa`idi, in aspects other than phonology; this should come as no surprise, given that Sudan has been under some kind of Egyptian influence or other for a very long time, and when Sudan won its independence a not-insignificant chunk of the population wanted to join Egypt. Sudan is also notably home to one of the few Arabic creoles, called Nubi. This was the result of non-Arabic-speaking Africans being recruited into the Egyptian forces in Sudan, who were commanded and drilled in Arabic.

* '''Modern Standard Arabic''' is largely the same as Classical Arabic, only with accomodations made for the modern world. MSA is used mostly in politics, diplomacy, and formal writing, such as newspapers or academic publications. Popular entertainment like comics or TV shows, on the other hand, is typically done in the local spoken Arabic. However, children's media is often dubbed in MSA as well for educational purposes.

There a number of pairs of certain Arabic letters, such as س and ص and ت and ط, the only difference between them is one is an "emphatic" version of the sound (i.e. pronounced a little harder). Language purists will insist that these sounds are completely different. In practice, Arabic plays host to such a wide variety of accents that people barely notice the difference spoken at full speed if at all.

* '''Egyptian Arabic''', as its name suggests, is spoken in Egypt. Egypt is a hugely populous country, with more than 1 in 3 Arabic speakers being Egyptian (80 million out of 220 million Arabic speakers). Due to the exportation of Egyptian media to the rest of the Arabic speaking world, this is one of the most widely understood spoken varieties; until ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'', all Arabic dubs of Disney movies were dubbed into Egyptian Arabic (''Frozen'' was dubbed into MSA, and future films will be as well). For this reason, besides MSA, Egyptian Arabic is the most widely studied variety by foreign learners.[[note]]Fun fact: Arabic has the largest number of speakers of any Semitic language. If all varieties were taken as their own language, Egyptian would still have more than any other Semitic language.[[/note]]

* '''Saudi Arabic''' is the variety spoken in Saudi Arabia, which takes up most of the Arabian Peninsula. While Saudi Arabia is the original home of the language, Saudi Arabic is not the most conservative variety by a long shot. The vast expanses of desert and thence-coming isolation of various inhabited parts of the country has caused considerable dialectal differences within Saudi Arabic itself, such that "Saudi Arabic" is of questionable linguistic value; the most widely spoken dialects of Saudi Arabic are Hejazi (in the Red Sea coastal region of Hejaz west of and including the Hejaz Mountains) and Najdi (in the central Najd plateau). Settlement on the Saudi Gulf coast is relatively recent (being oil-driven) and that region has no clear dialect (the few people who lived there before the oil industry spoke Gulf Arabic and still do, but they have been overwhelmed by relative newcomers from Hejaz and Najd as well as other places, including not a few Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians, and Iraqis).

* '''Saudi Arabic''' is the variety spoken in Saudi Arabia, which takes up most of the Arabian Peninsula. While Saudi Arabia is the original home of the language, Saudi Arabic is not the most conservative variety by a long shot. The vast expanses of desert and thence-coming isolation of various inhabited parts of the country has caused considerable dialectal differences within Saudi Arabic itself, such that "Saudi Arabic" is of questionable linguistic value; the most widely spoken dialects of Saudi Arabic are Hejazi (in the Red Sea coastal region of Hejaz west of and including the Hejaz Mountains) and Najdi (in the central Najd plateau). Settlement on the Saudi Gulf coast is relatively recent (being oil-driven) and that region has no clear dialect (the few people who lived there before the oil industry spoke Gulf Arabic).

* '''Levantine Arabic''' is spoken in the Levant: Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. As the Levant was and is home to many other Semitic languages besides Arabic, many loanwords from those languages have entered it. Unusual in the fact that, while the variety varies considerably among rural populations, most cities throughout the entire region from Damascus to Beirut to Amman speak virtually the same. This urban Levantine dialect, but especially that of Beirut, is famously sing-songy and is often considered a bit {{camp}} by other Arabs.
* '''Maghrebi Arabic''' is the variety spoken in western North Africa, i.e. the Maghreb, which is generally considered to include Morocco (and Western Sahara), Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. The French domination of the region for several decades has led to French influence on this dialect being particularly strong. The French (and Italian, in Libya's case) influence is one of the several features of this variety that makes it famously incomprehensible to other Arabic speakers. As most of the region was inhabited by Berber speakers, Berber influence on the dialect is also quite marked. In the modern-day Maghreb, there is a strong movement for Berber revival nowadays.
* '''Saudi Arabic''' is the variety spoken in Saudi Arabia, which takes up most of the Arabian Peninsula. While Saudi Arabia is the original home of the language, Saudi Arabic is not the most conservative variety by a long shot. The vast expanses of desert and thence-coming isolation of various inhabited parts of the country has caused considerable dialectal differences within Saudi Arabic itself, such that "Saudi Arabic" is of questionable linguistic value; the most widely spoken dialects of Saudi Arabic are Hejazi and Najdi.

* '''Levantine Arabic''' is spoken in the Levant: Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. As the Levant was and is home to many other Semitic languages besides Arabic, many loanwords from those languages have entered it. Unusual in the fact that, while the variety varies considerably among rural populations, most cities throughout the entire region from Damascus to Beirut to Amman speak virtually the same.

Although usually considered a single language for political and cultural reasons, under typical linguistic analysis, "Arabic" is in fact not exactly a single language; depending on how you see it, it could also be seen as a language family consisting of many different languages, in a situation mirroring Latin and its Romance language derivatives. The annoying part, however, is that although the Arabic dialects are quite different from each other and from the standard, they are not nearly as heavily derived as the Romance languages, and many remain mutually intelligible (e.g.: Egyptians and Lebanese can usually understand each other quite well as long as they don't go into street slang--and of course, you could say the same about a New Yorker and a Glaswegian). The Arabic typically learned by foreigners is specifically Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), generally very similar to the Arabic of the Koran but with modifications to accommodate things like loanwords and technical terminology. However, while MSA is used in formal writing, politics, and diplomacy, no one speaks it as a native language, even if "Arabic" is the general native language of their country. After 1500 years of language change, spoken varieties of Arabic are now different languages entirely from the language of the Koran or MSA.

One defining feature of the Semitic family of languages, and therefore also Arabic, is the consonant root system. Each root of usually 3 consonants has a specific meaning; vowels and non-root consonants are added to produce inflectional or extrapolated forms of the root. For example, the root ''k-t-b'' means "write"; '''''k'''a'''t'''a'''b'''a'' means "he wrote"; ''na'''kt'''u'''b'''u'' means "we write" or "we will write." This root system is why vowels can usually be safely eliminated in Arabic and other Semitic languages; virtually all known abjads (writing systems that transcribe consonants but not vowels) were developed to write Semitic languages.

With 220 million speakers, Arabic is one of the most spoken languages in the world. It is the official or a co-official language in 22 countries. It further holds prestige among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, who revere it as the language of the holy text of Islam, the Koran. Linguistically speaking, it belongs to the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages; Hebrew and Aramaic are also Semitic languages, while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia[[/note]], Berber[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans, also called Tamazight[[/note]], and Ancient Egyptian[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic survives as the liturgical language of the Egyptian Coptic Church[[/note]]. Historically, Arabic was even more widespread than it is now, reaching into parts of Europe; Maltese, the language of Malta in the Mediterranean, is descended from the Arabic that was spoken there.

Although usually considered a single language for political and cultural reasons, under typical linguistic analysis, "Arabic" is in fact not exactly a single language; depending on how you see it, it could also be seen as a language family consisting of many different languages, in a situation mirroring Latin and its Romance language derivatives. The annoying part, however, is that although the Arabic dialects are quite different from each other and from the standard, they are not nearly as heavily derived as the Romance languages, and many remain mutually intelligible (e.g.: Egyptians and Lebanese can usually understand each other quite well as long as they don't go into street slang). The Arabic typically learned by foreigners is specifically Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), generally very similar to the Arabic of the Koran but with modifications to accommodate things like loanwords and technical terminology. However, while MSA is used in formal writing, politics, and diplomacy, no one speaks it as a native language, even if "Arabic" is the general native language of their country. After 1500 years of language change, spoken varieties of Arabic are now different languages entirely from the language of the Koran or MSA.

Although usually considered a single language for political and cultural reasons, under typical linguistic analysis, "Arabic" is in fact not a single language, but a language family consisting of many different languages, in a situation mirroring Latin and its Romance language derivatives. The Arabic typically learned by foreigners is specifically Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), generally very similar to the Arabic of the Koran but with modifications to accomodate things like loanwords and technical terminology. However, while MSA is used in formal writing, politics, and diplomacy, no one speaks it as a native language, even if "Arabic" is the general native language of their country. After 1500 years of language change, spoken varieties of Arabic are now different languages entirely from the language of the Koran or MSA.

* '''Sudanese Arabic''' is obviously the dialect of Sudan, both North and South. Apart from its marked Nubian influence, Sudanese Arabic is also notable for its conservative phonology; many sounds from Classical Arabic lost in all other varieties are retained only in Sudanese. Sudan is also notably home to one of the few Arabic creoles, called Nubi. This was the result of non-Arabic-speaking Africans being recruited into the Egyptian forces in Sudan, who were commanded and drilled in Arabic.

!Dialects

Dialects vary so wildly, most Arabs might be considered to be SeparatedByACommonLanguage. Yemeni Arabic and Egyptian Arabic are about as mutually intelligible as [[ChineseDialectsAndAccents Cantonese and Mandarin]], for example. Egyptian Arabic is the most popular due to the prevalence of Egyptian media in the Arab World. In fact, every {{Disney}} movie that has been dubbed in Arabic has been dubbed into Egyptian Arabic. This happens even though most media directed towards children in Arab countries(and movies made by Disney would be considered children's movies there despite being marketed as movies for the whole family in the United States) is in Formal Arabic the same way children are taught proper English in the United States at school. This can generate the odd side effect of [[SophisticatedAsHell one sounding like a cartoon character when having a casual conversation]] despite one not using "advanced" vocabulary at all and instead just using small things like indefinite markers or proper case endings--none of which are used colloquial speech.

This page urgently needs more love, and quite possibly a significant rewrite.

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[[/index]]

Whether you're wondering what it takes to become an Arab or not, welcome to the page. Every language has developed and flourished through the culture of its speakers. It's not true that the camel is the main mode of transportation for Arabs living in or near the desert today but it ''is'' true that there are many words for camel. All these words stem from the very profitable trade of camel as livestock among the bedouins and the bedouins wanted to know exactly what they were getting, hence each word reflects different attributes of the camel such as age and gender. Cultural context aside, let's get into the basics:

* The Arabic language is one of the most spoken languages in the world. The language holds high prestige among [[{{Islam}} Muslims]] because it is the language of Qur'an (the ''literal'' WordOfGod) and it is highly encouraged that converts to Islam learn Arabic to be able to interpret and read the Qur'an on their own. Alright, religion aside...
* The Arabic language is commonly listed as one of the hardest languages to learn for native English speakers, be it because of the very unfamiliar phones or complex grammar[[note]] especially the ''[[UpToEleven plurals]]''[[/note]]. It's actually pretty straightforward in many respects. For instance: most words are derived from the "root" system.
** The root system involves breaking down roots into two (biliteral roots), three (triliteral roots--the most common type), or more (hardly ever more than four, and even four somewhat rarely) "radicals", or base letters. These letters are outfitted with different vowels and affixes to reflect different shades of meaning as nouns or conjugation in the case of verbs.

Whether you're wondering what it takes to become an Arab or not, welcome to the page. Every language has developed and flourished through the culture of its speakers. It's not true that the camel is the main mode of transportation for Arabs living in or near the desert today but it ''is'' true that there are many words for camel. All these words stem from the very profitable trade of camel as livestock among the bedouins and the bedouins wanted to know exactly what they were getting, hence each word reflects different attributes of the camel such as age and gender. Cultural context aside, let's get into the basics:\\

The ability to comprehend the Arabic language and converse in it is considered by some to be one of many defining traits of the Arab people. Yes, this means--even if you've never lived in any Arab country, have no Arab heritage, and don't have a taste for the sound of an oud--but you hold fluency in the Arabic language, you may be considered an Arab. Double points if you are a Troper. [[OneOfUs Welcome]]!\\

* It can '''not''' connect to the letter after it:

Upon learning which letters can connect and which can all you need to learn is how each letter is written depending on its position in a word and then plug them in as is appropriate. For the sake of brevity in this section that will not be shown on this page.

* The Arabic language is one of the most spoken languages in the world. The language holds high prestige among [[{{Islam}} Muslims]] because it is the language of Qur'an (the ''literal'' WordOfGod) and it is highly encouraged that converts to Islam learn Arabic to be able to interpret and read the Qur'an on their own. Alright, religion aside...\\
* The Arabic language is commonly listed as one of the hardest languages to learn for native English speakers, be it because of the very unfamiliar phones or complex grammar[[note]] especially the ''[[UpToEleven plurals]]''[[/note]]. It's actually pretty straightforward in many respects. For instance: most words are derived from the "root" system.\\
** The root system involves breaking down roots into two (biliteral roots), three (triliteral roots--the most common type), or more (hardly ever more than four, and even four somewhat rarely) "radicals", or base letters. These letters are outfitted with different vowels and affixes to reflect different shades of meaning as nouns or conjugation in the case of verbs.\\

** The root system involves breaking down roots into two (biliteral roots), three (triliteral roots--and the most common type), or more (hardly ever more than three) "radicals", or base letters. These letters are outfitted with different vowels and affixes to reflect different shades of meaning as nouns or conjugation in the case of verbs.\\

''Calligraphy''

''Calligraphy''

It is common to adorn covers of the Qur'an, household pictures, curtains, and anything else you would most definitely find when visiting the home of an Arab family with complex renderings of stock phrases such as "The Noble Qur'an", "In the name of God, Most Glorious, Most Merciful". Sometimes they are so complex they just look like [[AwesomeYetImpractical a bunch of illegible squiggly lines and dots]]. [[RuleOfCool It looks awesome, though]].