History UsefulNotes / ArabicLanguage

Generally speaking, English speakers will have a hard time learning Arabic. Arabic contains a lot of unfamiliar phonemes [[note]]Especially the infamous '''ayn''[[/note]] and grammaticizes features English and other Indo-European speakers aren't usually used to paying attention to.

However learning a dialect presents its own challenges. One is because MSA is still the written form, you won't be able to read anything if you study only dialect. However another issue is that, due to their low prestige as "street languages," resources to learn dialects are scarce. Even dialect study materials written in Arabic are rare, nevermind written in English.

This comparative dearth of resources available to Arabic language learners makes the language more difficult to learn, even compared to other "hard" languages like Chinese or Japanese. There are more resources available for learning Irish (spoken by less than a million people in Ireland) than there are for Arabic. Most resources available are for teaching MSA, followed by Egyptian dialect, and then for anything else it quickly drops to near zero.

Learning and becoming fluent in Arabic is not impossible, but it definitely presents unique challenges that even learners of other "hard" languages may not face. One really needs to socialize frequently with native speakers to have a good shot at success.

Many language learning courses advertise MSA as the "lingua franca" of the Arab world spoken by "300 million people," or as the fifth most spoken language in the world and so on. This is not true. If two Arabs meet who speak different dialects, almost always they will try to simply muddle through with their own dialects. Their success will depend greatly on the distance between dialects, but it ''is'' possible - especially when speakers deliberately moderate their speech. Many Arabs have at least some experience hearing other dialects and accents, which eases communication somewhat. However, sometimes the dialects are simply too far apart for mutual comprehension. Yet even then Arabs will often switch, not to MSA, but to a ''western'' language like French or English to communicate with each other. Using MSA directly to talk about daily life would be considered weird and even comical. Even if you speak to a regular Arab in MSA, he will not respond in it - meaning you probably won't understand him.

If you want to learn Arabic, you have to decide whether to go for MSA or one of the dialects (of course if you ''really'' want to become fluent, eventually you'll have to learn both). Learning Modern Standard Arabic is a good start, as all Arabs can understand it, and it lays a good foundation for picking up multiple dialects. However, you will ''not'' be able to hold a conversation with an Arab on the street. Also important: while Arab news is in MSA, Arab ''movies'' are not. Therefore if you plan to learn a lot from watching Arabic TV shows or films, MSA is not the way to go. [[note]] The one exception to this is children's media, including translations of Disney, Pixar, or Dreamworks movies. Children's media remains largely in MSA in the Arab world, because they see it as one of the few opportunities in which parents can expose their children to MSA. [[/note]]

Generally speaking, English speakers will have a hard time learning Arabic. Arabic contains a lot of unfamiliar phonemes[[note]]Especially the infamous '''ayn''[[/note]] and grammaticizes features English and other Indo-European speakers aren't usually used to paying attention to.

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and West Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still holds prestige among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, who revere it as the language of the holy text of [[UsefulNotes/Islam Islam]], [[Literature/TheQuran the Qur'an]]. Linguistically speaking, it belongs to the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages; Hebrew, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Tamazight,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), [[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and West Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still holds prestige among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, who revere it as the language of the holy text of [[UsefulNotes/Islam]], [[Literature/TheQuran the Qur'an]]. Linguistically speaking, it belongs to the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages; Hebrew, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Tamazight,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), [[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and West Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still holds prestige among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, who revere it as the language of the holy text of UsefulNotes/Islam, [[Literature/TheQuran the Qur'an]]. Linguistically speaking, it belongs to the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages; Hebrew, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Tamazight,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), [[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and West Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still holds prestige among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, who revere it as the language of the holy text of Islam, the Qur'an. Linguistically speaking, it belongs to the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages; Hebrew, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Tamazight,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), [[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and West Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still holds prestige among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, who revere it as the language of the holy text of Islam, the Q'uran. Linguistically speaking, it belongs to the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages; Hebrew, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Tamazight,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), [[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

The ability to comprehend the Arabic language and converse in it is considered by some to be one of the most defining traits of the Arab people. Even if you've never lived in any Arab country and have no Arab heritage, fluency in the Arabic language is considered one of the defining traits of the Arab people. Double points if you are a Troper. [[BilingualBonus Salaam]]!

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and Western Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still holds prestige among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, who revere it as the language of the holy text of Islam, the Q'uran. Linguistically speaking, it belongs to the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages; Hebrew, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Tamazight,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), [[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

However, this is not the Arabic that Arabs speak most of the time. They understand it, but they don't speak it. In fact, there are no native speakers of MSA. Instead, much like [[UsefulNotes/ChineseDialectsAndAccents Chinese]], all Arabs speak a wide variety of "dialects," many of which are only partially mutually intelligible with each other, and some not at all.[[note]]However at least in the case of China, Standard Chinese (Mandarin) is actually a native spoken language of many, and is acceptable (if not expected) to be used in all spheres of life, at least alongside dialect. Meanwhile as will be explained in this article, MSA in the Arab world has almost no penetration into daily life at all.[[/note]] Though they are grouped together for political and cultural reasons, the so-called "dialects" of Arabic are only slightly more similar to each other than Dutch-German, or Italian-Spanish.

* '''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, especially the form spoken in Beirut, is famously sing-songy and is often considered a bit {{camp}} by other Arabs; it is also largely mutually intelligible with Nile Valley (Egyptian and Sudanese) varieties if the speakers try to avoid slang and speak clearly.

Most Arabs will tell foreigners that MSA is the kind of Arabic they should learn, despite the fact that this might not be the most useful. As already stated, most Arabs speak only in dialect. They will tell you, in short, to learn something they don't even speak themselves. This strange situation is due to the widespread view among Arabs that only Classical Arabic (and by extension MSA) is "Real Arabic," and that dialects are all just slang. This is because the issue is also bound up with Arab political and cultural unity, and therefore many Arabs will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. When Arabs of different dialects converse, they consciously avoid vocabulary they know is unlikely to be understood outside their own dialect. The result is this masks the actual depth of differences between them, and leads Arabs to express puzzlement when someone wants to study a specific dialect.

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and Western Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still 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, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Tamazight,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), [[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

Most Arabs will tell foreigners that MSA is the kind of Arabic they should learn, despite the fact that this might not be the most useful. As already stated, most Arabs speak only in dialect. They will tell you, in short, to learn something they don't even speak themselves. This strange situation is due to the widespread view among Arabs that only Classical Arabic (and by extension MSA) is "Real Arabic," and that dialects are all just slang. This is because the issue is also bound up with Arab political and cultural unity, and therefore many Arabs will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. This misapprehension of (or unwillingness to admit to) the depth of differences between them leads Arabs to express puzzlement when someone wants to study a specific dialect.

Plural forms in Arabic are highly irregular. Some Arab words follow English in simply adding a suffix to the singular form, but a majority of Arabic nouns become plural by changing their form entirely (mostly by rearranging, adding, or removing vowels inside it). Attempts to quantify the Arabic "broken plurals" (as they are called) into a teachable system produces dozens of distinct patterns. In other words, practically speaking, it's almost random. While not too much of a problem for native speakers, even Arabs will sometimes be at a loss what the plural form is of a more-rarely-used word. For those learning Arabic, the best advice is simply to memorize the plurals of every word.

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and Western Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still 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, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Tamazight,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), also called Tamazight[[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

With 300 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, and is the dominant language in North Africa and Western Asia. Despite the fact that not AllMuslimsAreArab, Arabic still 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, Aramaic, Maltese, and Amharic[[note]]The official language of Ethiopia.[[/note]] are also Semitic languages (though those four and Arabic each use a different alphabet), while other non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages include Somali, Berber,[[note]]Spoken by pre-Arab North Africans (other than Egyptians), also called Tamazight[[/note]] and Ancient Egyptian.[[note]]whose daughter language Coptic (which in modern times uses a Greek-derived alphabet) 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 variety of Arabic (Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken there and in Sicily at the time.

Many language learning courses advertise MSA as the "lingua franca" of the Arab world spoken by "300 million people," or as the fifth most spoken language in the world and so on. This is not true. If two Arabs meet who speak different dialects, almost always they will try to simply muddle through with their own dialects. Their success will depend greatly on the distance between dialects, but it ''is'' possible - especially when speakers deliberately moderate their speech. Many Arabs have at least some experience hearing other dialects and accents, which eases communication somewhat. However, sometimes the dialects are simply too far apart for mutual comprehension. Yet even in such cases Arabs will often switch, not to MSA, but to a ''western'' language like French or English to communicate with each other. Using MSA directly to talk about daily life would be considered weird and even comical. Even if you speak to a regular Arab in MSA, he will not respond in it - meaning you probably won't understand him.

Many language learning courses advertise MSA as the "lingua franca" of the Arab world spoken by "300 million people," or as the fifth most spoken language in the world and so on. This is not true. If two Arabs meet who speak different dialects, almost always they will try to simply muddle through with their own dialects. Their success will depend a lot on the distance between dialects but it ''is'' possible, especially when speakers deliberately moderate their speech. Many Arabs have at least some experience hearing other dialects and accents, which eases communication somewhat. However, sometimes the dialects are simply too far apart for mutual comprehension. Yet even in such cases Arabs will often switch, not to MSA, but to a ''western'' language like French or English to communicate with each other. Using MSA directly to talk about daily life would be considered weird and even comical. Even if you speak to a regular Arab in MSA, he will not respond in it - meaning you probably won't understand him.

* '''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 (100 million out of 300 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 [[Franchise/DisneyFairies Secret of the Wings]], almost all Arabic dubs of Disney movies (save for few direct-to-video movies) were dubbed into Egyptian Arabic (Secret of the Wings was dubbed into MSA, and all the following films (inclunding ''WesternAnimation/{{Brave}}'', ''Disney/WreckItRalph'' and even ''Disney/{{Frozen}}'') were and 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]]

Many language learning courses advertise MSA as the "lingua franca" of the Arab world spoken by "300 million people," or as the fifth most spoken language in the world and so on. This is not true. If two Arabs meet who speak different dialects, almost always they will try to simply muddle through with their own dialects. Their success will depend a lot on the distance between dialects but it ''is'' possible, especially when speakers deliberately moderate their speech. Many Arabs have at least some experience hearing other dialects and accents, which eases communication somewhat. However, sometimes the dialects are simply too far apart for mutual comprehension. Yet even in such cases, Arabs will often switch, not to MSA, but to a ''western'' language like French or English to communicate with each other. Using MSA directly to talk about daily life would be considered weird and even comical. Even if you speak to a regular Arab in MSA, he will not respond in it - meaning you probably won't understand him.

Many language learning courses advertise MSA as the "lingua franca" of the Arab world spoken by "300 million people," or as the fifth most spoken language in the world and so on. This is not true. If two Arabs meet who speak different dialects, almost always they will try to simply muddle through with their own dialects. Their success will depend a lot on the distance between dialects, but it ''is'' possible, especially when speakers deliberately moderate their speech. Many Arabs have at least some experience hearing other dialects and accents, which eases communication somewhat. However, sometimes the dialects are simply too far apart for mutual comprehension. Yet even in such cases, Arabs will often switch, not to MSA, but to a ''western'' language like French or English to communicate with each other. Using MSA directly to talk about daily life would be considered weird and even comical. Even if you speak to a regular Arab in MSA, he will not respond in it - meaning you probably won't understand him.