Arabic language

This article is about the language. For the literarystandard, see Modern Standard Arabic. For vernaculars,see varieties of Arabic. For others, see Arabic languages.

Arabic i/ˈærəbɪk/ ِيةُ) بَ العرَ al-ʻarabiyyah [alʕaraˈbijja] () or ,عربى عربي ʻarabī [ˈʕarabiː] ( )) is the Classical Ara-bic language of the 6th century and its modern descen-dants excluding Maltese. Arabic is spoken in a wide arcstretching across the Middle East, North Africa, and theHorn of Africa. Arabic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic fam-ily.The literary language, called Modern Standard Arabic orLiterary Arabic, is the only official form of Arabic. Itis used in most written documents as well as in formalspoken occasions, such as lectures and news broadcasts.Moroccan Arabic was official in Morocco for some time,before the country joined the Arab League.Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related toAramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Phoenician. The stan-dardized written Arabic is distinct from and more conser-vative than all of the spoken varieties, and the two exist ina state known as diglossia, used side-by-side for differentsocietal functions.Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligi-ble,[4] both written and orally, and the varieties as a wholeconstitute a sociolinguistic language. This means that onpurely linguistic grounds they would likely be consideredto constitute more than one language, but are commonlygrouped together as a single language for political and/orreligious reasons (see below). If considered multiple lan-guages, it is unclear how many languages there would be,as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clearboundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, itperhaps is spoken by as many as 420 million speakers (na-tive and non-native) in the Arab world,[5] making it oneof the half dozen most populous languages in the world.If considered separate languages, the most-spoken varietywould most likely be Egyptian Arabic, with 54 million na-tive speakers[6]—still greater than any other Afro-Asiaticlanguage. Arabic also is a liturgical language of 1.6 bil-lion Muslims.[7][8] It is one of six official languages of theUnited Nations.[9]

The modern written language (Modern Standard Arabic)is derived from the language of the Quran (known asClassical Arabic or Quranic Arabic). It is widely taught inschools, universities and used to varying degrees in work-places, government and the media. The two formal vari-eties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is

the official language of 26 states and the liturgical lan-guage of Islam. Modern Standard Arabic largely followsthe grammatical standards of Quranic Arabic and usesmuch of the same vocabulary. However, it has discardedsome grammatical constructions and vocabulary that nolonger have any counterpart in the spoken varieties andadopted certain new constructions and vocabulary fromthe spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary is usedto denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranicera, especially in modern times.Arabic is the only surviving member of the Ancient NorthArabian dialect group attested in pre-Islamic Arabic in-scriptions dating back to the 4th century.[10] Arabic iswritten with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad scriptand is written from right-to-left although the spoken vari-eties are sometimes written in ASCII Latin from left-to-right with no standardized forms.Arabic has influenced many languages around the globethroughout its history; some of the most influenced lan-guages are Urdu, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Somali,Swahili, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Hindi, Malay,Indonesian, Tigrinya, Pashto, Punjabi, Tagalog, Sindhiand Hausa. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic wasa major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in sci-ence, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many Eu-ropean languages have also borrowed many words fromit. Many words of Arabic origin are also found in an-cient languages like Latin and Greek. Arabic influence,mainly in vocabulary, is seen in Romance languages, par-ticularly Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, and Sicilian, ow-ing to both the proximity of Christian European and Mus-lim Arab civilizations and 800 years of Arabic culture andlanguage in the Iberian Peninsula referred to in Arabic asal-Andalus.Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages,including Hebrew, Greek, Persian and Syriac in early cen-turies, Turkish in medieval times and contemporary Eu-ropean languages in modern times, mostly from Englishand French.

1 History

1.1 Pre-Islamic Arabic and Arabic Lan-guage

The earliest Arabic inscriptions date back to AD 512-568.[11] The Aramaic alphabet was introduced to the

1

2 2 CLASSICAL, MODERN STANDARD AND SPOKEN ARABIC

Arab people through traders from the Mediterranean Em-pire, and the Arab people began using the script duringthe Christian period in the Middle East.[11] From the Ara-maic, the script continued to develop through two sep-arate kingdoms in the region: The Nabataean and thePalmyran. The Arabic script that is widely used today de-veloped from the Nabataean Kingdom’s writing script.[12]

While the Nabataean alphabet and writing system meta great deal of the needs, it did not provide letters orsymbols for /t/, /d/, /h/, /g/, /z/ and /d/, which were notrepresented by Aramaic script.[12] The Aramaic writingsystem also only provided fifteen letter shapes for 28consonants.[12] In order to differentiate between conso-nants that had the same shape, a system of placing dotsaround the letters developed. It took over 100 years inorder to codify these dots around letters (Bateson, 55).Evidence of the development of codified dots is recordedon numerous different codes and tombstones.[12] In the8th century, the dots were finally codified enough that alltexts used dots with the exception of purely decorativewritings that were not meant to be read.[12] In additionto the issue of codifying the dots above letters, there wasalso the issue of how to represent vowel sounds in Arabicscript, a language made up of an all-consonants script.During the 7th century a dotting system also developedto mark voweling.[13] Red dots were used to mark vowelswhile black lines were used to mark consonants. Eventu-ally smaller versions of the letters representing short vow-els were placed above consonants in order to indicate thata vowel was present.[13]

1.2 Pre-Islamic Poetry and Early IslamicLiterature

The oral poetic tradition had been alive and well for cen-turies in the Arabian Peninsula before it was eventuallyrecorded. Arab poets blossomed in the 6th century ADbut their work was not recorded or written down until the8th or 9th century AD.[14] There were linguistic oddi-ties in regards to spelling found throughout the poems.The poems had been recorded, but there were differentspelling and pronunciation techniques used by differentauthors when trying to record a poem that had previ-ously only been recited.[15] These differences reflectedhow different dialects had a large impact on written Ara-bic and how texts were recorded. To solve this problem,grammarians and scholars asked Bedouins to recite po-ems in order to hear how they pronounced the poem astheir voices were believed to be pure. Consensus was thenused to determine the correct pronunciation of a word sothat the word could also be spelt correctly.[16] Eventually,scholars and grammarians developed a system for stan-dardizing Classical Arabic so that texts and words wouldbe written in a way that the majority of the populationcould understand.[16] Muslims believe that the Quran wasrevealed to Muhammad in 632 CE.[17][18] Both a formaland informal version of Arabic existed during the Pre-

Islamic Period. The informal dialect was used on coinand tomb inscriptions while the formal variety of Ara-bic was used on letters and contracts. However, contractswere sometimes written in a mixture of Formal and In-formal Arabic, reflecting the large influence dialects hadon the written language in Pre-Islamic Arabia.[19]

1.3 The Islamic Conquests and ArabicLanguage

The Islamic Conquests introduced Arabic to new non-Arab regions, such as Spain and Persia. As a result, Os-manli, Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Malay, Berber, Swahiliand Hausa all adopted some Arabic alphabet into theirwriting systems and Arabic adopted 12 letters from others(for example, Persian P CH Zh and Ga). These soundsentered Arabic through loanwords (Bateson, 58).[20] Inthe 8th century Islamic scholars in Lower Iraq feared theinfluence that the recently conquered non-Arabs wouldhave on the language and scholars became more conser-vative and a more standardized Classical Arabic writingsystem developed (Clive Holes, 4) [17] However, non-Arabs had a huge influence on the religious writings atthe time since many of the intellectual elite were in factnon-Arab (Clive Holes, 4).[17]

1.4 Modern era

During the colonial era, the European powers occupyingArab nations actively encouraged the public spread anduse of colloquial Arabic dialects and suppressed the useand teaching of classical Arabic.[21] After wiping out athird of the Algerian population between 1830 and 1872,for example, the French then closed all Qur'anic schoolsand banned public usage of Arabic; Arabic was actu-ally declared a foreign language in 1938 and while abouthalf the population was literate in Arabic at the begin-ning of French colonization, 90% of the native popula-tion was illiterate in both Arabic and French by its end inthe 1960s.[22]

2 Classical, Modern Standard andspoken Arabic

Arabic usually designates one of three main variants:Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic and colloquialor dialectal Arabic.Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran,used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that ofthe Abbasid Caliphate. Theoretically, Classical Arabicis considered normative, according to the syntactic andgrammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians(such as Sibawayh) and the vocabulary defined in classi-cal dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-ʻArab). In practice,

3

however, modern authors almost never write in pure Clas-sical Arabic, instead using a literary language with its owngrammatical norms and vocabulary, commonly known asModern Standard Arabic (MSA).MSA is the variety used in most current, printed Arabicpublications, spoken by some of the Arabic media acrossNorth Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East,and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. “Lit-erary Arabic” and “Standard Arabic” فصُْحَى) fuṣḥá) areless strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Stan-dard Arabic or Classical Arabic.Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA)and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows:

• Certain grammatical constructions of CA that haveno counterpart in any modern dialect (e.g., theenergetic mood) are almost never used in ModernStandard Arabic.

• No modern spoken variety of Arabic has case dis-tinctions. As a result, MSA is generally composedwithout case distinctions in mind, and the propercases are added after the fact, when necessary. Be-cause most case endings are noted using final shortvowels, which are normally left unwritten in the Ara-bic script, it is unnecessary to determine the propercase of most words. The practical result of this isthat MSA, like English and Standard Chinese, iswritten in a strongly determined word order and al-ternative orders that were used in CA for emphasisare rare. In addition, because of the lack of casemarking in the spoken varieties, most speakers can-not consistently use the correct endings in extempo-raneous speech. As a result, spoken MSA tends todrop or regularize the endings except when readingfrom a prepared text.

• The numeral system in CA is complex and heavilytied in with the case system. This system is neverused in MSA, even in the most formal of circum-stances; instead, a significantly simplified system isused, approximating the system of the conservativespoken varieties.

MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'togo') that is not present in the spoken varieties. In addition,MSA has borrowed or coined a large number of terms forconcepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSAcontinues to evolve.[23] Some words have been borrowedfrom other languages—notice that transliteration mainlyindicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فيلم fīlm'film' or dimūqrāṭiyyah 'democracy').However, the current preference is to avoid direct bor-rowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g.,farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company ororganization; jināḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of anairplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words

using forms within existing roots (istimātah 'apoptosis',using the root m/w/t 'death' put into the Xth form, orjāmiʻah 'university', based on jamaʻa 'to gather, unite';jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on jumhūr 'multitude'). Anearlier tendency was to repurpose older words; that hasfallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisi-ble caller (in Sufism)'; jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leafstalk').Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many na-tional or regional varieties which constitute the everydayspoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regionalvariants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutuallyunintelligible, and some linguists consider them distinctlanguages.[24] The varieties are typically unwritten. Theyare often used in informal spoken media, such as soapoperas and talk shows,[25] as well as occasionally in cer-tain forms of written media such as poetry and printedadvertising.The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquiredofficial language status is Maltese, which is spoken in(predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written withthe Latin script. It is descended from Classical Ara-bic through Siculo-Arabic, but is not mutually intelligiblewith other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as aseparate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic. His-torically, Algerian Arabic was taught in French Algeriaunder the name darija.

Flag of the Arab league, used in some cases for the Arabic Lan-guage.

Note that even during Muhammad’s lifetime, there weredialects of spoken Arabic. Muhammad spoke in the di-alect of Mecca, in the western Arabian peninsula, and itwas in this dialect that the Quran was written down. How-ever, the dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula wereconsidered the most prestigious at the time, so the lan-guage of the Quran was ultimately converted to follow theeastern phonology. It is this phonology that underlies themodern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. The phono-logical differences between these two dialects account forsome of the complexities of Arabic writing, most notablythe writing of the glottal stop or hamzah (which was pre-served in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech)and the use of alif maqṣūrah (representing a sound pre-

4 4 INFLUENCE OF ARABIC ON OTHER LANGUAGES

Flag used in some cases for the Arabic Language

served in the western dialects but merged with ā in easternspeech).

3 Language and dialect

The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern timesprovides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenonof diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate vari-eties of the same language, usually in different social sit-uations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any na-tionality can be assumed to speak both their school-taughtStandard Arabic as well as their native, mutually unintel-ligible “dialects";[26][27][28][29][30] these dialects linguisti-cally constitute separate languages which may have di-alects of their own.[31] When educated Arabs of differentdialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccanspeaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switchback and forth between the dialectal and standard vari-eties of the language, sometimes even within the samesentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiar-ity with other dialects via music or film.The issue of whether Arabic is one language or manylanguages is politically charged, similar to the issue withChinese, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, Scotsand English, etc. Similar to how speakers of Hindi andUrdu will claim they cannot understand each other evenwhen they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic willclaim they can all understand each other even when theycan't.[32] The issue of diglossia between spoken and writ-ten language is a significant complicating factor: A sin-gle written form, significantly different from any of thespoken varieties learned natively, unites a number ofsometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons,Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language,despite significant issues of mutual incomprehensibilityamong differing spoken versions.[33]

From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the var-ious spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each othercollectively about as much as the Romance languages.[34]

This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The pe-riod of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—

perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Ro-mance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible topeople from the Maghreb, a linguistically innovative vari-ety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehen-sible to Arabs from the Mashriq, much as French is in-comprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers. This sug-gests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be con-sidered separate languages.

4 Influence of Arabic on other lan-guages

Main article: Influence of Arabic on other languagesSee also: List of Arabic loanwords in English

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Is-lamic countries, because it is the language of the Islamicsacred book, Quran. Arabic is also an important sourceof vocabulary for languages such as Baluchi, Bengali,Berber, Bosnian, Catalan, English, French, German,Gujarati, Hausa, Hindustani, Italian, Indonesian, Kazakh,Kurdish, Kutchi, Malay, Malayalam, Pashto, Persian,Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sicilian, Sindhi,Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbekand Wolof, as well as other languages in countries wherethese languages are spoken.In addition, English has many Arabic loanwords, somedirectly but most through the medium of other Mediter-ranean languages. Examples of such words include admi-ral, 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 manyother words. Other languages such as Maltese[35] andKinubi derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merelyborrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.Terms borrowed range from religious terminology (likeBerber taẓallit 'prayer' < salat) صلاة) ṣalāh), academicterms (like Uyghur mentiq 'logic'), economic items (likeEnglish coffee) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano 'so-and-so') and everyday conjunctions (like Hindustani lekin'but', or Spanish taza meaning 'cup'and hasta meaning'until'), and expressions (like Catalan a betzef 'galore, inquantity'). Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), alongwith Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. MostIslamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Ara-bic, such as salat 'prayer' and imam 'prayer leader.'In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world,Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly viaother languages rather than being transferred directlyfrom Arabic. For example, most Arabic loanwords inHindustani entered through Persian though Persian is anIndo-Iranian language. Older Arabic loanwords in Hausawere borrowed from Kanuri.

5

Some words in English and other European languagesare derived from Arabic, often through other Euro-pean languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Amongthem are commonly used words like "coffee" (qah-wah), "cotton" (quṭn) and “magazine” (makhāzin). En-glish words more recognizably of Arabic origin include"algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali", "zenith,” and"nadir".Arabic words also made their way into several WestAfrican languages as Islam spread across the Sahara.Variants of Arabic words such as kitāb (book) have spreadto the languages of African groups who had no direct con-tact with Arab traders.[36]

As, throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a po-sition similar to that of Latin in Europe, many of theArabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, com-merce etc. were coined from Arabic roots by non-nativeArabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian trans-lators, and then found their way into other languages.This process of using Arabic roots, especially in Turkishand Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued rightuntil the 18th and 19th century, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.

5 Influence of other languages onArabic

Arabic was influenced by other languages as well.The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languagesAramaic,[37] which used to be the principal, internationallanguage of communication throughout the ancient Nearand Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree He-brew (mainly religious concepts). In addition, many cul-tural, religious and political terms have entered Arabicfrom Iranian, notably Middle Persian or Parthian and(Classical) Persian,[38] and Hellenistic Greek (kīmiyāʼ hasas origin the Greek chymia, meaning in that languagethe melting of metals; see Roger Dachez, Histoire de laMédecine de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle, Tallandier, 2008,p. 251), alembic (distiller) from ambix (cup), qalam (pen,pencil, feather) from kalamos (reed, pen), almanac (cli-mate) from almenichiakon (calendar). (For the origin ofthe last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Pré-mare, Foundations of Islam, Seuil, L'Univers Historique,2002.) Some Arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persianlanguages are, as presented in De Prémare’s above-citedbook:

• raḥmān ,رحمن) merciful), from Hebrew and Ara-maic, where it had a similar meaning

• nabī ,نبي) prophet), old non-Arabic term thatcame into Arabic from Aramaic and Hebrew beforethe emergence of Islam.

• madīnah/medina ,مدينة) city or city square), aword of Aramaic or Hebrew origin; Alfred-Louis dePrémare explains in The Foundations Of Islam (p.101) that the Jews were long before Arabs a seden-tary population of “Arabian desert.”

• jizyah ,(جزية) the tax imposed by the caliphate onindividuals of religion other than Islam (dhimmis),a tax in addition to the levy on agricultural land(kharāj). The term comes from the Syriac gzita,which is in turn borrowed from Persian gazit.

• kharāj ,(خراج) land tax originally imposed only onnon-Muslims, which comes from the Persian termkharazh, a term which designates the act by whichthe wealthy citizens were taxed, sometimes im-posed upon states; satrapies were supposed to col-lect them. This term probably originates from theGreek language.[39]

• jazīrah ,(جزيرة) as in the well-known form “AlJazeera,” means 'island' and has its origin in Syriacgazīra/gzīrta.

• fārūq ,فاروق) savior) is the naturalized form ofthe Aramaic word poruk, which in the Syriac Bible(Peshitta) means the Savior or Liberator. Once nat-uralized, the term produced mnemonic derivativesor shortcuts, so the root f-r-q (meaning cutting) be-came a folk etymological explanation for faruq: theSavior was one who cuts (separates) the truth fromfalsehood.

• munāfiq ,منافق) hypocrite), a term borrowed fromEthiopian, where it had the sense of heretical sect.

• lāzaward (لازورد) is taken from Persian lājvard, thename of a blue stone, lapis lazuli. This word wasborrowed in several European languages to mean(light) blue - azure in English, azur in French andazul in Spanish.

6 Arabic alphabet and nationalism

There have been many instances of national movementsto convert Arabic script into Latin script or to Romanizethe language.

6.1 Lebanon

The Beirut newspaper La Syrie pushed for the changefrom Arabic script to Latin script in 1922. The majorhead of this movement was Louis Massignon, a FrenchOrientalist, who brought his concern before the ArabicLanguage Academy in Damacus in 1928. Massignon’s

6 8 EXTERNAL HISTORY

attempt at Romanization failed as the Academy and pop-ulation viewed the proposal as an attempt from the West-ern world to take over their country. Sa'id Afghani, amember of the Academy, mentioned that the movementto Romanize the script was a Zionist plan to dominateLebanon.[40][41]

6.2 Egypt

After the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians werelooking for a way to reclaim and reemphasize Egyp-tian culture. As a result, some Egyptians pushed foran Egyptianization of the Arabic language in which theformal Arabic and the colloquial Arabic would be com-bined into one language and the Latin alphabet wouldbe used.[40][41] There was also the idea of finding a wayto use Hieroglyphics instead of the Latin alphabet, butthis was seen as too complicated to use.[40][41] A scholar,Salama Musa agreed with the idea of applying a Latin al-phabet to Arabic, as he believed that would allow Egyptto have a closer relationship with the West. He also be-lieved that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt asit would allow for more advances in science and technol-ogy. This change in script, he believed, would solve theproblems inherent with Arabic, such as a lack of writtenvowels and difficulties writing foreign words that madeit difficult for non native speakers to learn.[40][41] Ah-mad Lutfi As Sayid and Muhammad Azmi, two Egyptianintellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the pushfor Romanization.[40][42] The idea that Romanization wasnecessary for modernization and growth in Egypt con-tinued with Abd Al Aziz Fahmi in 1944. He was thechairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee forthe Arabic Language Academy of Cairo.[40][42] However,this effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cul-tural tie to the Arabic alphabet.[40][42] In particular, theolder Egpytian generations believed that the Arabic al-phabet had strong connections to Arab values and his-tory, which is easy to believe due to the long history ofthe Arabic alphabet (Shrivtiel, 189).

7 Arabic and Islam

Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabicis closely associated with the religion of Islam becausethe Qur'an is written in the language, but it is neverthe-less also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews andIraqi Mandaeans. Most of the world’s Muslims do notspeak Arabic as their native language, but many can readthe Quranic script and recite the Quran. Among non-Arab Muslims, translations of the Quran are most oftenaccompanied by the original text.Some Muslims present a monogenesis of languages andclaim that the Arabic language was the language revealedby God for the benefit of mankind and the original lan-

guage as a prototype symbolic system of communication,based upon its system of triconsonantal roots, spoken byman from which all other languages were derived, havingfirst been corrupted.[43][44] Judaism has a similar accountwith the Tower of Babel.

8 External history

See also: Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptionsDAN: Islamic & Jewish Origins.

Soqotri

MehriShehri

Tigre

Tigrinya

Ge'ez

Dahlak

AmharicGafat

Argobba

Silt'e

Harari

Soddo

Chaha

Sabaean

Minaean

Qahtanian Hadhramautic

Arabic

Ancient North Arabic

Akkadian

EbaliteAramaic

AmoriteUgaritic

Nabatean

Ammonite

MoabiteEdomite

Hebrew

PhoenicianMaltese

Punic

Eastern

Southern

Living language

Extinct

Philistine

ZayInor

Hobyót

Bathari

Harsusi

Northwest

Eteocypriot

Arabic

Aramaic

Eastern South

Western SouthOld South

EthiopianNorthSouth

?

Canaanite

? ? Origin uncertain

Central

?

>150m

20m-100m5m-20m

1m-5m 0.5m-1m0.1m-0.5m <100,000

Native Speakers

Arabic languages (brown) within Semitic languages.

Among the earliest surviving texts in Ancient North Ara-bian, a group of languages closely related to but not a di-rect predecessor of Arabic, are the Hasaean inscriptionsof in eastern Saudi Arabia, from about the 4th centuryBC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor inits Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphicSouth Arabian musnad. More numerous are the 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Ara-bia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia andthe Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Latercome the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st cen-tury AD and the many Arabic personal names attestedin Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written inAramaic).Classical Arabic co-existed with the Old North Arabianlanguages. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus (HistoriesI,131; III,8) quotes the epithet of a goddess in its pre-classical Arabic form as Alilat (Ἀλιλάτ, i. e.,ʼal-ʼilat),which means “the goddess”.[45] Apart from this iso-lated theonym, Arabic is first attested in an inscrip-

9.1 Phonological history 7

tion in Qaryat al-Fāw (formerly Qaryat Dhat Kahil, nearSulayyil, Saudi Arabia) in the 1st century BC.[46][47] Theoldest inscription in Classical Arabic known in 1985 goesback to 328 AD and is known as the Namārah inscrip-tion, written in the Nabataean alphabet and named afterthe place where it was found in southern Syria in April1901.[48] By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdomsof the Lakhmids in southern Iraq and the Ghassanids insouthern Syria appeared. The Kindite Kingdom emergedin Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for somenotable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and forsome of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptionsin the Arabic script.[49]

9 Internal history

Bilingual traffic sign in Qatar.

The Semitic languages changed a great deal betweenProto-Semitic and the establishment of the CentralSemitic languages, particularly in terms of grammar. In-novations of the Central Semitic languages—all main-tained in Classical Arabic—include

• The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative for-mation into a past tense.

• The conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense.

• The elimination of other prefix-conjugatedmood/aspect forms (e.g., a present tense formedby doubling the middle root, a perfect formedby infixing a /t/ after the first root consonant,probably a jussive formed by a stress shift) in favorof new moods formed by endings attached to theprefix-conjugation forms (e.g., -u for indicative, -afor subjunctive, no ending for jussive, -an or -annafor energetic).

• The development of an internal passive.

9.1 Phonological history

Of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has beenlost: */ʒ/, which merged with /ʃ/.[50] But the conso-nant */ʒ/ is still found in many colloquial Arabic. Var-ious other consonants have changed their sound too, buthave remained distinct. An original */p/ lenited to /f/,and */ɡ/ became palatalized to /ɡʲ/ or /ɟ/ by the time ofthe Quran and /d͡ʒ/, /ɡ/, /ʒ/ or /ɟ/ in MSA (see Arabicphonology#Local variations for more detail).[51] An orig-inal voiceless alveolar lateral fricative */ɬ/ became /ʃ/.[52]

Its emphatic counterpart /ɬˠ~ɮˤ/ was considered by Arabsto be the most unusual sound in Arabic (Hence the Classi-cal Arabic’s appellation lughat al-ḍād or “language of theḍād”); for most modern dialects, it has become an em-phatic stop /dˤ/ with loss of the laterality[52] or with com-plete loss of any pharyngealization or velarization, /d/.(The classical ḍād pronunciation of pharyngealization/ɮˤ/ still occurs in the Mehri language and the similarsound without velarization exists in other Modern SouthArabian languages.)Other changes may also have happened. Classical Ara-bic pronunciation is not thoroughly recorded and differ-ent reconstructions of the sound system of Proto-Semiticpropose different phonetic values. One example is theemphatic consonants, which are pharyngealized in mod-ern pronunciations may have been velarized in the eighthcentury and glottalized in Proto-Semitic.[52]

Reduction of /j/ and /w/ between vowels occurs in anumber of circumstances and is responsible for much ofthe complexity of third-weak (“defective”) verbs. EarlyAkkadian transcriptions of Arabic names shows that thisreduction had not yet occurred as of the early part of the1st millennium BC.The Classical Arabic language as recorded was a poetickoine that reflected a consciously archaizing dialect, cho-sen based on the Bedouin tribes in the eastern part of theArabian Peninsula, who spoke the most conservative vari-ants of Arabic. Even at the time of Mohammed and be-fore, other dialects existed with many more changes, in-cluding the loss of most glottal stops, the loss of case end-ings, the reduction of the diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ intomonophthongs /eː, oː/, etc. Most of these changes arepresent in most or all modern varieties of Arabic.An interesting feature of the writing system of the Quran(and hence of Classical Arabic) is that it contains certainfeatures of Muhammad’s native dialect of Mecca, cor-rected through diacritics into the forms of standard Clas-sical Arabic. Among these features visible under the cor-rections are the loss of the glottal stop and a differingdevelopment of the reduction of certain final sequencescontaining /j/: Evidently, final /-awa/ became /aː/ as inthe Classical language, but final /-aja/ became a differentsound, possibly /eː/ (rather than again /aː/ in the Clas-sical language). This is the apparent source of the alifmaqṣūrah 'restricted alif' where a final /-aja/ is recon-

8 10 DIALECTS AND DESCENDANTS

structed: a letter that would normally indicate /j/ or somesimilar high-vowel sound, but is taken in this context tobe a logical variant of alif and represent the sound /aː/.

10 Dialects and descendants

Gulf Arabic

Bahrani

Najdi

Omani

Shihhi

Dhofari

Yemeni and Somali

Chadic and Shuwa

Sudanese

Sa'idi

Egyptian

Judeo Arabic

Nubi

Cypriot Arabic

Juba

Iraqi

Levantine

North Mesopotamian

Badawi

Moroccan

Tunisian

Algerian

Libyan

Hassaniya

Saharans

Hijazi and Rashaida

Different dialects of Arabic.

Main article: Varieties of Arabic

Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken vari-eties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, whichdiffer radically from the literary language. The maindialectal division is between the varieties within andoutside of the Arabian peninsula, followed by that be-tween sedentary varieties and the much more conserva-tive Bedouin varieties. All of the varieties outside of theArabian peninsula (which include the large majority ofspeakers) have a large number of features in commonwith each other that are not found in Classical Arabic.This has led researchers to postulate the existence of aprestige koine dialect in the one or two centuries imme-diately following the Arab conquest, whose features even-tually spread to all of the newly conquered areas. (Thesefeatures are present to varying degrees inside the Ara-bian peninsula. Generally, the Arabian peninsula vari-eties have much more diversity than the non-peninsulavarieties, but have been understudied.)Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest differenceis between the non-Egyptian North African dialects (es-pecially Moroccan Arabic) and the others. MoroccanArabic in particular is hardly comprehensible to Arabicspeakers east of Libya (although the converse is not true,in part due to the popularity of Egyptian films and othermedia).One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influ-ence from the languages previously spoken in the areas,which have typically provided a significant number ofnew words and have sometimes also influenced pronun-ciation or word order; however, a much more significantfactor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages,retention (or change of meaning) of different classicalforms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fīh and North Africankayən all mean 'there is’, and all come from Classical Ara-

bic forms (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now soundvery different.

10.1 Examples

Transcription is a broad IPA transcription, so minor dif-ferences were ignored for easier comparison.

10.2 Koine

According to Charles A. Ferguson,[53] the following aresome of the characteristic features of the koine that un-derlies all of the modern dialects outside the Arabianpeninsula. Although many other features are common tomost or all of these varieties, Ferguson believes that thesefeatures in particular are unlikely to have evolved inde-pendently more than once or twice and together suggestthe existence of the koine:

• Loss of the dual (grammatical number) except onnouns, with consistent plural agreement (cf. femi-nine singular agreement in plural inanimates).

• Change of a to i in many affixes (e.g., non-past-tenseprefixes ti- yi- ni-; wi- 'and'; il- 'the'; feminine -it inthe construct state).

• Loss of third-weak verbs ending in w (which mergewith verbs ending in y).

• Reformation of geminate verbs, e.g., ḥalaltu 'I un-tied' → ḥalēt(u).

• Conversion of separate words lī 'to me', laka 'toyou', etc. into indirect-object clitic suffixes.

• Certain changes in the cardinal number system,e.g., khamsat ayyām 'five days’ → kham(a)s tiyyām,where certain words have a special plural with pre-fixed t.

• Loss of the feminine elative (comparative).

• Adjective plurals of the form kibār 'big' → kubār.

• Change of nisba suffix -iyy > i.

• Certain lexical items, e.g., jāb 'bring' < jāʼa bi-'come with'; shāf 'see'; ēsh 'what' (or similar) < ayyushayʼ 'which thing'; illi (relative pronoun).

• Merger of /ɮˤ/ and /ðˤ/.

10.3 Dialect groups

• Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 55 million inEgypt. It is one of the most understood varieties ofArabic, due in large part to the widespread distribu-tion of Egyptian films and television shows through-out the Arabic-speaking world.

9

• Levantine Arabic includes North Levantine Arabic,South Levantine Arabic and Cypriot Arabic. Itis spoken by about 21 million people in Lebanon,Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus and Turkey.

• Maghrebi Arabic, spoken by about 70 million peo-ple in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Malta.It is very hard to understand for Arabic speakersfrom the Mashriq or Mesopotamia, the easiest be-ing Libyan Arabic and the hardest Moroccan Arabicand Maltese language.

• Maltese, spoken on the island of Malta, is the onlydialect to have established itself as a fully separatelanguage, with independent literary norms. SicilianArabic, spoken on the island of Sicily until the 14thcentury, developed into Maltese in Malta. In thecourse of its history the language has adopted nu-merous loanwords, phonetic and phonological fea-tures, and even some grammatical patterns, fromItalian, Sicilian and English. It is also the onlySemitic language written in the Latin script.

• Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by about 15 millionpeople in Iraq, eastern Syria and southwestern Iran(Khuzestan).

• Sudanese Arabic is spoken by 17 million people inSudan and some parts of southern Egypt. SudaneseArabic is quite distinct from the dialect of its neigh-bor to the north; rather, the Sudanese have a dialectsimilar to the Hijazi dialect.

• Gulf Arabic, spoken by around four million peo-ple, predominantly in Kuwait, Bahrain, some partsof Oman, eastern Saudi Arabia coastal areas andsome parts of UAE and Qatar. Also spoken inIran's Bushehr and Hormozgan provinces. AlthoughGulf Arabic is spoken in Qatar, most Qatari citizensspeak Najdi Arabic (Bedawi).

• Yemeni Arabic spoken in Yemen, Somalia, Djiboutiand southern Saudi Arabia by 15 million people.Similar to Gulf Arabic.

• Najdi Arabic, spoken by around 10 million people,mainly spoken in Najd, central and northern SaudiArabia. Most Qatari citizens speak Najdi Arabic(Bedawi).

• Hejazi Arabic (6 million speakers), spoken in Hijaz,western Saudi Arabia

• Hassaniya Arabic (3 million speakers), spoken inMauritania, Western Sahara, some parts of northernMali, southern Morocco and south-western Algeria.

• Bahrani Arabic (600,000 speakers), spoken byBahrani Shiʻah in Bahrain and Qatif, the dialect ex-hibits many big differences from Gulf Arabic. It isalso spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.

• Judeo-Arabic dialects - these are the dialects spo-ken by the Jews that had lived or continue to live inthe Arab World. As Jewish migration to Israel tookhold, the language did not thrive and is now consid-ered endangered.

• Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan,Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered

• Samaritan Arabic, spoken by only several hundredin the Nablus region

• Shirvani Arabic, spoken in Azerbaijan and Dagestanuntil the 1930s, now extinct.

• Andalusian Arabic, spoken in Spain and Portugaluntil the 16th century.

11 Phonology

Main article: Arabic phonology

The “colloquial” spoken varieties of Arabic are learnedat home and constitute the native languages of Arabicspeakers. “Formal” Literary Arabic (usually specificallyModern Standard Arabic) is learned at school; althoughmany speakers have a native-like command of the lan-guage, it is technically not the native language of anyspeakers. Both varieties can be both written and spoken,although the colloquial varieties are rarely written downand the formal variety is spoken mostly in formal circum-stances, e.g., in radio broadcasts, formal lectures, parlia-mentary discussions and to some extent between speak-ers of different colloquial varieties. Even when the lit-erary language is spoken, however, it is normally onlyspoken in its pure form when reading a prepared textout loud. When speaking extemporaneously (i.e. mak-ing up the language on the spot, as in a normal discus-sion among people), speakers tend to deviate somewhatfrom the strict literary language in the direction of thecolloquial varieties. In fact, there is a continuous range of“in-between” spoken varieties: from nearly pure ModernStandard Arabic (MSA), to a form that still uses MSAgrammar and vocabulary but with significant colloquialinfluence, to a form of the colloquial language that im-ports a number of words and grammatical constructionsin MSA, to a form that is close to pure colloquial but withthe “rough edges” (the most noticeably “vulgar” or non-Classical aspects) smoothed out, to pure colloquial. Theparticular variant (or register) used depends on the socialclass and education level of the speakers involved and thelevel of formality of the speech situation. Often it willvary within a single encounter, e.g., moving from nearlypure MSA to a more mixed language in the process of aradio interview, as the interviewee becomes more com-fortable with the interviewer. This type of variation ischaracteristic of the diglossia that exists throughout theArabic-speaking world.

10 11 PHONOLOGY

11.1 Literary Arabic

Although Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a unitarylanguage, its pronunciation varies somewhat from coun-try to country and from region to region within a country.The variation in individual “accents” of MSA speakerstends to mirror corresponding variations in the colloquialspeech of the speakers in question, but with the distin-guishing characteristics moderated somewhat. Note thatit is important in descriptions of “Arabic” phonology todistinguish between pronunciation of a given colloquial(spoken) dialect and the pronunciation of MSA by thesesame speakers. Although they are related, they are notthe same. For example, the phoneme that derives fromProto-Semitic /g/ has many different pronunciations inthe modern spoken varieties, e.g., [d͡ʒ ~ ʒ ~ j ~ ɡʲ ~ ɡ].Speakers whose native variety has either [d͡ʒ] or [ʒ] willuse the same pronunciation when speaking MSA, evenspeakers from Cairo, whose native Egyptian Arabic has[ɡ], normally use [ɡ] when speaking MSA. [j] of PersianGulf is the only pronunciation which isn't pronounced inMSA, but instead [d͡ʒ~ʒ].Another example: Many colloquial varieties are knownfor a type of vowel harmony in which the presence ofan "emphatic consonant" triggers backed allophones ofnearby vowels (especially of the low vowels /aː/, whichare backed to [ɑ(ː)] in these circumstances and very oftenfronted to [æ(ː)] in all other circumstances). In many spo-ken varieties, the backed or “emphatic” vowel allophonesspread a fair distance in both directions from the trigger-ing consonant; in some varieties (most notably EgyptianArabic), the “emphatic” allophones spread throughoutthe entire word, usually including prefixes and suffixes,even at a distance of several syllables from the trigger-ing consonant. Speakers of colloquial varieties with thisvowel harmony tend to introduce it into their MSA pro-nunciation as well, but usually with a lesser degree ofspreading than in the colloquial varieties. (For exam-ple, speakers of colloquial varieties with extremely long-distance harmony may allow a moderate, but not extreme,amount of spreading of the harmonic allophones in theirMSA speech, while speakers of colloquial varieties withmoderate-distance harmony may only harmonize imme-diately adjacent vowels in MSA.)

11.1.1 Vowels

Modern Standard Arabic has six pure vowels, with short/a i u/ and corresponding long vowels /aː iː uː/. There arealso two diphthongs: /aj/ and /aw/.The pronunciation of the vowels differs from speaker tospeaker, in a way that tends to echo the pronunciation ofthe corresponding colloquial variety. Nonetheless, thereare some common trends. Most noticeable is the differingpronunciation of /a/ and /aː/, which tend towards fronted[æ(ː)], [a(ː)] or [ɛ(ː)] in most situations, but a back [ɑ(ː)]in the neighborhood of emphatic consonants. Some ac-

cents and dialects, such as those of the Hijaz, have central[ä(ː)] in all situations. The vowels /u/ and /i/ are oftenaffected somewhat in emphatic neighborhoods as well,with generally more back and/or centralized allophones,but the differences are less great than for the low vowels.The pronunciation of short /u/ and /i/ tends towards [ʊ~o]and [ɪ~e] in many dialects.The definition of both “emphatic” and “neighborhood”vary in ways that echo (to some extent) correspond-ing variations in the spoken dialects. Generally, theconsonants triggering “emphatic” allophones are thepharyngealized consonants /tˤ dˤ sˤ ðˤ/; /q/; and /r/, ifnot followed immediately by /i(ː)/. Frequently, the uvularfricatives /x ɣ/ also trigger emphatic allophones; occa-sionally also the pharyngeal consonants /ʕ ħ/ (the formermore than the latter). Many dialects have multiple em-phatic allophones of each vowel, depending on the partic-ular nearby consonants. In most MSA accents, emphaticcoloring of vowels is limited to vowels immediately adja-cent to a triggering consonant, although in some it spreadsa bit farther: e.g., waqt [wɑqt] 'time'; waṭan [wɑtˤɑn]'homeland'; wasṭ al-madīnah [wæstˤɑl-mædiːnɐ] 'down-town' (sometimes [wɑstˤɑl-mædiːnæ] or similar).In a non-emphatic environment, the vowel /a/ in the diph-thong /aj/ tends to be fronted even more than elsewhere,often pronounced [æj] or [ɛj]: hence sayf [sajf ~ sæjf~ sɛjf] 'sword' but ṣayf [sˤɑjf] 'summer'. However, inaccents with no emphatic allophones of /a/ (e.g., in theHijaz), the pronunciation [äj] occurs in all situations.

11.1.2 Consonants

^1 This phoneme is represented by the Arabicletter jīm (ج) and has many standard pronunci-ations. [d͡ʒ] is characteristic of north Algeria,Iraq, also in most of the Arabian peninsula butwith an allophonic [ʒ] in some positions; [ʒ]occurs in most of the Levant and most NorthAfrica; and [ɡ] is used in most of Egypt andsome regions in Yemen and Oman. Generallythis corresponds with the pronunciation in thecolloquial dialects.[54] In some regions in Su-dan and Yemen, as well as in some Sudaneseand Yemeni dialects, it may be either [ɡʲ] or[ɟ], representing the original pronunciation ofClassical Arabic. Foreign words containing /ɡ/may be transcribed with , ج , غ , ك , ق , گ ݣor , ڨ mainly depending on the regional spo-ken variety of Arabic or the commonly diacrit-icized Arabic letter. Note also that in northernEgypt, where the Arabic letter jīm (ج) is nor-mally pronounced [ɡ], a separate phoneme /ʒ/,which may be transcribed with ,چ occurs in asmall number of mostly non-Arabic loanwords,e.g., /ʒakitta/ 'jacket'.^2 /l/ is pronounced [ɫ] in /ʔallaːh/, the name

11.1 Literary Arabic 11

of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a,ā, u or ū (after i or ī it is unvelarized: bismi l–lāh /bismillaːh/). Some speakers velarize otheroccurrences of /l/ in MSA, in imitation of theirspoken dialects.^3 The emphatic consonant /dˤ/ was actuallypronounced [ɮˤ], or possibly [d͡ɮˤ][55]—eitherway, a highly unusual sound. The medievalArabs actually termed their language lughatal-ḍād 'the language of the Ḍād' (the nameof the letter used for this sound), since theythought the sound was unique to their language.(In fact, it also exists in a few other minoritySemitic languages, e.g., Mehri.)^4 In many varieties, /ħ, ʕ/ ع ح,) ) are actu-ally epiglottal [ʜ, ʢ] (despite what is reportedin many earlier works).^5 /x/ and /ɣ/ غ خ,) ) are often post-velar,though velar and uvular pronunciations are alsopossible.[56]

^6 /θ/ (ث) can be pronounced as [t] or even[s]. In some places of Maghreb it can be alsopronounced as [ts͡].

Arabic has consonants traditionally termed “emphatic”/tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, ðˤ/ ض, ط,) ص, ظ ), which exhibit simultaneouspharyngealization [tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, ðˤ] as well as varying degreesof velarization [tˠ, dˠ, sˠ, ðˠ], so they may be written withthe “Velarized or pharyngealized” diacritic ( ̴ ) as: /t,̴ d̴,s̴, ð̴/. This simultaneous articulation is described as “Re-tracted Tongue Root” by phonologists.[57] In some tran-scription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing theletter, for example, /dˤ/ is written ⟨D⟩; in others the letteris underlined or has a dot below it, for example, ⟨ḍ⟩.Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short orlong. Long (geminate) consonants are normally writtendoubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflect-ing the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah,which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunci-ation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as shortconsonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemicallycontrastive: qabala 'he accepted' vs. qabbala 'he kissed'.

11.1.3 Syllable structure

Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV)and (CVV)—and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC) and(CVCC). The syllable types with three morae (units oftime), i.e. CVC and CVV, are termed heavy syllables,while those with four morae, i.e. CVVC and CVCC,are superheavy syllables. Superheavy syllables in Clas-sical Arabic occur in only two places: at the end of thesentence (due to pausal pronunciation) and in words suchas ḥārr 'hot', māddah 'stuff, substance', taḥājjū 'they dis-puted with each other', where a long ā occurs before twoidentical consonants (a former short vowel between the

consonants has been lost). (In less formal pronuncia-tions of Modern Standard Arabic, superheavy syllablesare common at the end of words or before clitic suffixessuch as -nā 'us, our', due to the deletion of final short vow-els.)In surface pronunciation, every vowel must be precededby a consonant (which may include the glottal stop [ʔ]).There are no cases of hiatus within a word (where twovowels occur next to each other, without an interveningconsonant). Some words do have an underlying vowel atthe beginning, such as the definite article al- or words suchas ishtarā 'he bought', ijtimāʻ 'meeting'. When actuallypronounced, one of three things happens:

• If the word occurs after another word ending in aconsonant, there is a smooth transition from finalconsonant to initial vowel, e.g., al-ijtimāʻ 'meeting'/alid͡ʒtimaːʕ/.

• If the word occurs after another word ending ina vowel, the initial vowel of the word is elided,e.g., baytu (a)l-mudīr 'house of the director' /baj-tulmudiːr/.

• If the word occurs at the beginning of an utterance,a glottal stop [ʔ] is added onto the beginning, e.g.,al-baytu huwa ... 'The house is ...' /ʔalbajtuhuwa.../.

11.1.4 Stress

Word stress is not phonemically contrastive in StandardArabic. It bears a strong relationship to vowel length. Thebasic rules for Modern Standard Arabic are:

• A final vowel, long or short, may not be stressed.

• Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.

• Given this restriction, the last heavy syllable (con-taining a long vowel or ending in a consonant) isstressed, if it is not the final syllable.

• If the final syllable is super heavy and closed (of theform CVVC or CVCC) it receives stress.

• If no syllable is heavy or super heavy, the first pos-sible syllable (i.e. third from end) is stressed.

• As a special exception, in Form VII and VIII verbforms stress may not be on the first syllable, despitethe above rules: Hence inkatab(a) 'he subscribed'(whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced),yankatib(u) 'he subscribes’ (whether or not the fi-nal short vowel is pronounced), yankatib 'he shouldsubscribe (juss.)'. Likewise Form VIII ishtarā 'hebought', yashtarī 'he buys’.

12 11 PHONOLOGY

Examples:kitāb(un) 'book', kā-ti-b(un) 'writer', mak-ta-b(un) 'desk',ma-kā-ti-b(u) 'desks’,mak-ta-ba-tun 'library'(but mak-ta-ba(-tun) 'library' in short pronunciation), ka-ta-bū (Modern Standard Arabic) 'they wrote' = ka-ta-bu(dialect), ka-ta-bū-h(u) (Modern Standard Arabic) 'theywrote it' = ka-ta-bū (dialect), ka-ta-ba-tā (Modern Stan-dard Arabic) 'they (dual, fem) wrote', ka-tab-tu (Mod-ern Standard Arabic) 'I wrote' = ka-tabt (short form ordialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants:ma-jal-la-(tan) 'magazine', ma-ḥall(-un) “place”.These rules may result in differently stressed syllableswhen final case endings are pronounced, vs. the normalsituation where they are not pronounced, as in the aboveexample of mak-ta-ba-tun 'library' in full pronunciation,but mak-ta-ba(-tun) 'library' in short pronunciation.The restriction on final long vowels does not apply tothe spoken dialects, where original final long vowels havebeen shortened and secondary final long vowels havearisen from loss of original final -hu/hi.Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo(Egyptian Arabic) dialect a heavy syllable may not carrystress more than two syllables from the end of a word,hence mad-ra-sah 'school', qā-hi-rah 'Cairo'. This alsoaffects the way that Modern Standard Arabic is pro-nounced in Egypt. In the Arabic of Sanaa, stress is of-ten retracted: bay-tayn 'two houses’, mā-sat-hum 'theirtable', ma-kā-tīb 'desks’, zā-rat-ḥīn 'sometimes’, mad-ra-sat-hum 'their school'. (In this dialect, only syllables withlong vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if thepreceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the finalsyllable cannot be stressed.)

11.1.5 Levels of pronunciation

The final short vowels (e.g., the case endings -a -i -u andmood endings -u -a) are often not pronounced in this lan-guage, despite forming part of the formal paradigm ofnouns and verbs. The following levels of pronunciationexist:

Full pronunciation

Full pronunciation with pausa This is the most for-mal level actually used in speech. All endings are pro-nounced as written, except at the end of an utterance,where the following changes occur:

• Final short vowels are not pronounced. (But possi-bly an exception is made for feminine plural -na andshortened vowels in the jussive/imperative of defec-tive verbs, e.g., irmi! 'throw!'".)

• The entire indefinite noun endings -in and -un (withnunation) are left off. The ending -an is left off of

nouns preceded by a tāʾ marbūṭah ة (i.e. the -t in theending -at- that typically marks feminine nouns), butpronounced as -ā in other nouns (hence its writingin this fashion in the Arabic script).

• The tāʼ marbūṭah itself (typically of feminine nouns)is pronounced as h. (At least, this is the case in ex-tremely formal pronunciation, e.g., some Quranicrecitations. In practice, this h is usually omitted.)

Formal short pronunciation This is a formal level ofpronunciation sometimes seen. It is somewhat like pro-nouncing all words as if they were in pausal position (withinfluence from the colloquial varieties). The followingchanges occur:

• Most final short vowels are not pronounced. How-ever, the following short vowels are pronounced:

• feminine plural -na• shortened vowels in the jussive/imperative of

defective verbs, e.g., irmi! 'throw!'• second-person singular feminine past-tense -ti

and likewise anti 'you (fem. sg.)'• sometimes, first-person singular past-tense -tu• sometimes, second-person masculine past-

tense -ta and likewise anta 'you (masc. sg.)'• final -a in certain short words, e.g., laysa 'is

not', sawfa (future-tense marker)

• The nunation endings -an -in -un are not pro-nounced. However, they are pronounced in adver-bial accusative formations, e.g., taqrīban َتْقِريًبا'almost, approximately', ʻādatan َعاَدًة 'usually'.

• The tāʾ marbūṭah ending ة is unpronounced, exceptin construct state nouns, where it sounds as t (and inadverbial accusative constructions, e.g., ʻādatan َعاَدًة'usually', where the entire -tan is pronounced).

• The masculine singular nisbah ending -iyy is actuallypronounced -ī and is unstressed (but plural and fem-inine singular forms, i.e. when followed by a suffix,still sound as -iyy-).

• Full endings (including case endings) occur when aclitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g., -nā'us/our').

Informal short pronunciation This is the pronunci-ation used by speakers of Modern Standard Arabic inextemporaneous speech, i.e. when producing new sen-tences rather than simply reading a prepared text. Itis similar to formal short pronunciation except that therules for dropping final vowels apply even when a cliticsuffix is added. Basically, short-vowel case and moodendings are never pronounced and certain other changesoccur that echo the corresponding colloquial pronuncia-tions. Specifically:

11.2 Colloquial varieties 13

• All the rules for formal short pronunciation apply,except as follows.

• The past tense singular endings written formally as -tu -ta -ti are pronounced -t -t -ti. But masculine ʾantais pronounced in full.

• Unlike in formal short pronunciation, the rules fordropping or modifying final endings are also appliedwhen a clitic object or possessive suffix is added(e.g., -nā 'us/our'). If this produces a sequence ofthree consonants, then one of the following happens,depending on the speaker’s native colloquial variety:

• A short vowel (e.g., -i- or -ǝ-) is consistentlyadded, either between the second and third orthe first and second consonants.

• Or, a short vowel is added only if an other-wise unpronounceable sequence occurs, typ-ically due to a violation of the sonority hi-erarchy (e.g., -rtn- is pronounced as a three-consonant cluster, but -trn- needs to be brokenup).

• Or, a short vowel is never added, but conso-nants like r l m n occurring between two otherconsonants will be pronounced as a syllabicconsonant (as in the English words “butter bot-tle bottom button”).

• When a doubled consonant occurs before an-other consonant (or finally), it is often short-ened to a single consonant rather than a voweladded. (But note that Moroccan Arabic nevershortens doubled consonants or inserts shortvowels to break up clusters, instead tolerat-ing arbitrary-length series of arbitrary conso-nants and hence Moroccan Arabic speakersare likely to follow the same rules in their pro-nunciation of Modern Standard Arabic.)

• The clitic suffixes themselves tend also to bechanged, in a way that avoids many possible occur-rences of three-consonant clusters. In particular, -ka-ki -hu generally sound as -ak -ik -uh.

• Final long vowels are often shortened, merging withany short vowels that remain.

• Depending on the level of formality, the speaker’seducation level, etc., various grammatical changesmay occur in ways that echo the colloquial variants:

• Any remaining case endings (e.g. masculineplural nominative -ūn vs. oblique -īn) willbe leveled, with the oblique form used every-where. (However, in words like ab 'father' andakh 'brother' with special long-vowel case end-ings in the construct state, the nominative isused everywhere, hence abū 'father of', akhū'brother of'.)

• Feminine plural endings in verbs and clitic suf-fixes will often drop out, with the masculineplural endings used instead. If the speaker’snative variety has feminine plural endings,they may be preserved, but will often be mod-ified in the direction of the forms used in thespeaker’s native variety, e.g. -an instead of -na.

• Dual endings will often drop out except onnouns and then used only for emphasis (simi-lar to their use in the colloquial varieties); else-where, the plural endings are used (or femininesingular, if appropriate).

11.2 Colloquial varieties

Further information: Varieties of Arabic

11.2.1 Vowels

As mentioned above, many spoken dialects have aprocess of emphasis spreading, where the “emphasis”(pharyngealization) of emphatic consonants spreads for-ward and back through adjacent syllables, pharyngealiz-ing all nearby consonants and triggering the back allo-phone [ɑ(ː)] in all nearby low vowels. The extent of em-phasis spreading varies. For example, in Moroccan Ara-bic, it spreads as far as the first full vowel (i.e. soundderived from a long vowel or diphthong) on either side;in many Levantine dialects, it spreads indefinitely, butis blocked by any /j/ or /ʃ/; while in Egyptian Arabic,it usually spreads throughout the entire word, includingprefixes and suffixes. In Moroccan Arabic, /i u/ also haveemphatic allophones [o~ɔ e~ɛ].Unstressed short vowels, especially /i u/, are deleted inmany contexts. Many sporadic examples of short vowelchange have occurred (especially /a/→/i/ and interchange/i/↔/u/). Most Levantine dialects merge short /i u/ into/ǝ/ in most contexts (all except directly before a single fi-nal consonant). In Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand,short /u/ triggers labialization of nearby consonants (espe-cially velar consonants and uvular consonants), and thenshort /a i u/ all merge into /ǝ/, which is deleted in manycontexts. (The labialization plus /ǝ/ is sometimes inter-preted as an underlying phoneme /ŭ/.) This essentiallycauses the wholesale loss of the short-long vowel distinc-tion, with the original long vowels /aː iː uː/ remaining ashalf-long [aˑ iˑ uˑ], phonemically /a i u/, which are used torepresent both short and long vowels in borrowings fromLiterary Arabic.Most spoken dialects have monophthongized original /ajaw/ to /eː oː/ (in all circumstances, including adjacent toemphatic consonants). In Moroccan Arabic, these havesubsequently merged into original /iː uː/.

14 12 GRAMMAR

11.2.2 Consonants

In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemesthan those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic [v] is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in thewritten language mostly for foreign names. Semitic [p]became [f] extremely early on in Arabic before it waswritten down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi(influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between[p] and [b]. The Iraqi Arabic uses also sounds [ɡ], [tʃ͡] anduses Persian adding letters, e.g.: گوجة gawjah – a plum;چمة chimah – a truffle and so on.Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate em-phatic phonemes [ɮˤ] and [ðˤ] coalesced into a singlephoneme [ðˤ]. Many dialects (such as Egyptian, Lev-antine, and much of the Maghreb) subsequently lostinterdental fricatives, converting [θ ð ðˤ] into [t d dˤ].Most dialects borrow “learned” words from the Standardlanguage using the same pronunciation as for inheritedwords, but some dialects without interdental fricatives(particularly in Egypt and the Levant) render original [θð ðˤ ɮˤ] in borrowed words as [s z zˤ dˤ].Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects ishow they render the original velar and uvular plosives /q/,/d͡ʒ/ (Proto-Semitic /ɡ/), and /k/:

• ق /q/ retains its original pronunciation in widelyscattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and ur-ban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as aglottal stop [ʔ] in several prestige dialects, such asthose spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Butit is rendered as a voiced velar plosive [ɡ] in Per-sian Gulf, Upper Egypt, parts of the Maghreb, andless urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). In IraqiArabic it sometimes retains its original pronuncia-tion and is sometimes rendered as a voiced velarplosive, depending on the word. Some tradition-ally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levantrender the sound as [k], as do Shiʻi Bahrainis. Insome Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to [d͡ʒ] or [ʒ].It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive [ʁ]in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modifiedpronunciation for /q/ maintain the [q] pronunciationin certain words (often with religious or educationalovertones) borrowed from the Classical language.

• ج /d͡ʒ/ is pronounced as an affricate in Iraq and muchof the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced [ɡ] inmost of North Egypt and parts of Yemen and Oman,[ʒ] in Morocco, Tunisia and the Levant, and [j], [i]̠in most words in much of the Persian Gulf.

• ك /k/ usually retains its original pronunciation, butis palatalized to /tʃ͡/ in many words in Israel and thePalestinian Territories, Iraq, and much of the Ara-bian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made betweenthe suffixes /-ak/ ('you', masc.) and /-ik/ ('you',fem.), which become /-ak/ and /-itʃ͡/, respectively.

In Sana'a, Omani, and Bahrani /-ik/ is pronounced/-iʃ/.

Pharyngealization of the emphatic consonants tends toweaken in many of the spoken varieties, and to spreadfrom emphatic consonants to nearby sounds. In addition,the “emphatic” allophone [ɑ] automatically triggers pha-ryngealization of adjacent sounds in many dialects. As aresult, it may difficult or impossible to determine whethera given coronal consonant is phonemically emphatic ornot, especially in dialects with long-distance emphasisspreading. (A notable exception is the sounds /t/ vs. /tˤ/in Moroccan Arabic, because the former is pronouncedas an affricate [ts͡] but the latter is not.)

12 Grammar

root meaning ➔ a a a a h فَعّالة machine

th l j snow ➔ th a l l a a j a h ثلّجةة fridge

n Z r see ➔ n a Z Z a a r a h نظاّرة glasses

gh s l wash ➔ gh a s s a a l a h غسّالة

s y r travel ➔ s a y y a a r a h سياّرة car

d r j ➔ d a r r a a j a h دراّجةة bicycle

فعل ➔ t a i i تَفعيل process

سوق ➔ t a s w i i q تسويق marketing

سكر ➔ t a s k i i r تسكير saccharification

شكل ➔ t a sh k i i l تسكير

نظم ➔ t a n Z i i m تنظيم

a a a a do together ➔ m u a a i coactor

r a a s a l a ➔ m u r a a s i l correspondant

f a a ع a l a react ➔ m u f a a ع i l reactor

s a a b a q a race ➔ m u s a a b i q competitor

w a a T a n a ➔ m u w a a T i n fellow citizen

a i i a h ➔ a a a ' i plural فَعائل

q a dh i i f a h ➔ q a dh a a ' i f قذائف

w a Z i i f a h ➔ w a Z a a ' i f jobs, posts وظائف

washing machine

stepping by degrees

formation, shaping

organisation (the act of)

correspond

share same nationality

missiles, projectiles

Examples of how the Arabic root and form system works.

Main article: Arabic grammar

12.1 Literary Arabic

Main article: Modern Standard Arabic

As in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex andunusual morphology (i.e. method of constructing wordsfrom a basic root). Arabic has a nonconcatenative “root-and-pattern” morphology: A root consists of a set of bare

12.1 Literary Arabic 15

consonants (usually three), which are fitted into a discon-tinuous pattern to form words. For example, the wordfor '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 typicallyhave the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g.qaraʼtu 'I read', akaltu 'I ate', dhahabtu 'I went', althoughother patterns are possible (e.g. sharibtu 'I drank', qultu'I said', takallamtu 'I spoke', where the subpattern usedto signal the past tense may change but the suffix -tu isalways used).From a single root k-t-b, numerous words can be formedby applying different patterns:

• katabtu 'I wrote'

• kattabtu 'I had (something) written'

• kātabtu 'I corresponded (with someone)'"

• aktabtu 'I dictated'

• iktatabtu 'I subscribed'

• takātabnā 'we corresponded with each other'

• aktubu 'I write'

• ukattibu 'I have (something) written'

• ukātibu 'I correspond (with someone)'

• uktibu 'I dictate'

• aktatibu 'I subscribe'

• natakātabu 'we correspond each other'

• kutiba 'it was written'

• uktiba 'it was dictated'"

• maktūb 'written'

• muktab 'dictated'

• kitāb 'book'

• kutub 'books’

• kātib 'writer'

• kuttāb 'writers’

• maktab 'desk, office'

• maktabah 'library, bookshop'

• etc.

12.1.1 Nouns and adjectives

Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases(nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used whenthe noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers(singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine andfeminine); and three “states” (indefinite, definite, andconstruct). The cases of singular nouns (other than thosethat end in long ā) are indicated by suffixed short vowels(/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive).The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which isreduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicatedeither through endings (the sound plural) or internal mod-ification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include allproper nouns, all nouns in “construct state” and all nounswhich are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinitesingular nouns (other than those that end in long ā) add afinal /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwīn).Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, num-ber, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural ofall non-human nouns is always combined with a singularfeminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, num-ber and gender. There are two varieties, independent pro-nouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to theend of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal andprepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form usedfor verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-ī/ afterconsonants, /-ya/ after vowels).Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with eachother in all respects. However, non-human plural nounsare grammatically considered to be feminine singular.Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is markedas singular regardless of its semantic number when thesubject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun.Numerals between three and ten show “chiasmic” agree-ment, in that grammatically masculine numerals havefeminine marking and vice versa.

12.1.2 Verbs

Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first,second, or third), gender, and number. They areconjugated in two major paradigms (past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and six moods(indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive, shorterenergetic and longer energetic), the fifth and sixth moods,the energetics, exist only in Classical Arabic but not inMSA.[58] There are also two participles (active and pas-sive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive.The past and non-past paradigms are sometimes alsotermed perfective and imperfective, indicating the factthat they actually represent a combination of tense and

16 13 WRITING SYSTEM

aspect. The moods other than the indicative occur only inthe non-past, and the future tense is signaled by prefixingsa- or sawfa onto the non-past. The past and non-past dif-fer in the form of the stem (e.g., past katab- vs. non-past-ktub-), and also use completely different sets of affixesfor indicating person, number and gender: In the past,the person, number and gender are fused into a singlesuffixal morpheme, while in the non-past, a combinationof prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (pri-marily encoding gender and number) are used. The pas-sive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixesbut changes the vowels of the stem.The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb,kataba 'to write'. Note that in Modern Standard Arabic,many final short vowels are dropped (indicated in paren-theses below), and the energetic mood (in either long orshort form, which have the same meaning) is almost neverused.

12.1.3 Derivation

Unlike most languages, Arabic has virtually no means ofderiving words by adding prefixes or suffixes to words.Instead, they are formed according to a finite (but fairlylarge) number of templates applied to roots.For verbs, a given root can construct up to fifteen dif-ferent verbs, each with one or more characteristic mean-ings and each with its own templates for the past andnon-past stems, active and passive participles, and verbalnoun. These are referred to by Western scholars as “FormI”, “Form II”, and so on through “Form XV” (althoughForms XI to XV are rare). These forms encode conceptssuch as the causative, intensive and reflexive. These formscan be viewed as analogous to verb conjugations in lan-guages such as Spanish in terms of the additional com-plexity of verb formation that they induce. (Note, how-ever, that their usage in constructing vocabulary is some-what different, since the same root can be conjugated inmultiple forms, with different shades of meaning.)Examples of the different verbs formed from the root k-t-b 'write' (using ḥ-m-r 'red' for Form IX, which is limitedto colors and physical defects):Form II is sometimes used to create transitivedenominative verbs (verbs built from nouns); FormV is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.The associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb arethe primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Ara-bic. This is similar to the process by which, for example,the English gerund “meeting” (similar to a verbal noun)has turned into a noun referring to a particular type ofsocial, often work-related event where people gather to-gether to have a “discussion” (another lexicalized verbalnoun). Another fairly common means of forming nounsis through one of a limited number of patterns that can beapplied directly to roots, such as the “nouns of location”

in ma- (e.g. maktab 'desk, office' < k-t-b 'write', maṭbakh'kitchen' < ṭ-b-kh 'cook').The only three genuine suffixes are as follows:

• The feminine suffix -ah; variously derives termsfrom women from related terms for men, or moregenerally terms along the same lines as the corre-sponding masculine, e.g. maktabah 'library' (also awriting-related place, but different than maktab, asabove).

• The nisbah suffix -iyy-. This suffix is extremely pro-ductive, and forms adjectives meaning “related toX”. It corresponds to English adjectives in -ic, -al,-an, -y, -ist, etc.

• The feminine nisbah suffix -iyyah. This is formedby adding the feminine suffix -ah onto nisba adjec-tives to form abstract nouns. For example, from thebasic root sh-r-k 'share' can be derived the FormVIII verb ishtaraka 'to cooperate, participate', andin turn its verbal noun ishtirāk 'cooperation, partici-pation' can be formed. This in turn can be made intoa nisbah adjective ishtirākī 'socialist', from whichan abstract noun ishtirākiyyah 'socialism' can be de-rived. Other recent formations are jumhūriyyah'republic' (lit. “public-ness”, < jumhūr 'multitude,general public'), and the Gaddafi-specific variationjamāhīriyyah 'people’s republic' (lit. “masses-ness”,< jamāhīr 'the masses’, pl. of jumhūr, as above).

12.2 Colloquial varieties

Main article: Varieties of Arabic

The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions andmake only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nounsand its use is no longer required in all circumstances).They have lost the mood distinctions other than impera-tive, but many have since gained new moods through theuse of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. un-marked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the in-definite “nunation” and the internal passive.The following is an example of a regular verb paradigmin Egyptian Arabic.

13 Writing system

Main articles: Arabic alphabet and Arabic BrailleThe Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through

Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like thatof Coptic or Cyrillic scripts to Greek script. Tradition-ally, there were several differences between the West-ern (North African) and Middle Eastern versions of thealphabet—in particular, the faʼ had a dot underneath and

13.3 Numerals 17

Islamic calligraphy written by a Malay Muslim in Malaysia. Thecalligrapher is making a rough draft.

qaf a single dot above in the Maghreb, and the order ofthe letters was slightly different (at least when they wereused as numerals).However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandonedexcept for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb it-self, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools(zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semiticlanguages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and thelanguages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right toleft. There are several styles of script, notably naskh,which is used in print and by computers, and ruqʻah,which is commonly used in handwriting.[59]

13.1 Calligraphy

Main article: Islamic calligraphy

After Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi finally fixed the Ara-bic script around 786, many styles were developed, bothfor the writing down of the Quran and other books, andfor inscriptions on monuments as decoration.Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphyhas in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabsas a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem.Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin script, Arabicscript 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 formsuch as that of an animal. One of the current masters ofthe genre is Hassan Massoudy.

13.2 Romanization

Main article: Romanization of Arabic

There are a number of different standards for theromanization of Arabic, i.e. methods of accurately

and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin script.There are various conflicting motivations involved, whichleads to multiple systems. Some are interested intransliteration, i.e. representing the spelling of Arabic,while others focus on transcription, i.e. representing thepronunciation of Arabic. (They differ in that, for exam-ple, the same letter ي is used to represent both a con-sonant, as in "you” or "yet”, and a vowel, as in “me" or"eat”.) Some systems, e.g. for scholarly use, are intendedto accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemesof Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicitthan the original word in the Arabic script. These systemsare heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for thesound equivalently written sh in English. Other systems(e.g. the Bahá'í orthography) are intended to help read-ers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to in-tuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases.[60] Theseless “scientific” tend to avoid diacritics and use digraphs(like sh and kh). These are usually more simple to read,but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems, andmay lead to ambiguities, e.g. whether to interpret sh as asingle sound, as in gash, or a combination of two sounds,as in gashouse. The ALA-LC romanization solves thisproblem by separating the two sounds with a prime sym-bol ( ′ ); e.g., as′hal 'easier'.During the last few decades and especially since the1990s, Western-invented text communication technolo-gies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such aspersonal computers, the World Wide Web, email, bulletinboard systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phonetext messaging. Most of these technologies originally hadthe ability to communicate using the Latin script only,and some of them still do not have the Arabic script asan optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking userscommunicated in these technologies by transliterating theArabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known asIM Arabic.To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accuratelyrepresented using the Latin script, numerals and othercharacters were appropriated. For example, the numeral“3” may be used to represent the Arabic letter .⟨ع⟩ Thereis no universal name for this type of transliteration, butsome have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other sys-tems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capital-ization to represent the “emphatic” counterparts of cer-tain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, theletter ,⟨د⟩ may be represented by d. Its emphatic coun-terpart, ,⟨ض⟩ may be written as D.

13.3 Numerals

In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabicnumerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. How-ever, in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the eastof it, the Eastern Arabic numerals (٠ – ١ – ٢ – ٣ – ٤ – ٥ – ٦ – ٧ – ٨ – ٩ ) are in use. When representing a num-ber in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the

18 18 REFERENCES

right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone num-bers are read from left to right, but numbers are spokenin the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens re-versed from the modern English usage. For example, 24is said “four and twenty” just like in the German language(vierundzwanzig) and Classical Hebrew, and 1975 is said“a thousand and nine-hundred and five and seventy” or,more eloquently, “five and seventy and nine-hundred anda thousand.”

14 Language-standards regulators

Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a num-ber of language-regulation bodies formed in the ArabLeague. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo.They review language development, monitor new wordsand approve inclusion of new words into their publishedstandard dictionaries. They also publish old and historicalArabic manuscripts.See also: Arabic Language International Council

15 Studying Arabic

Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementaryand secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Uni-versities around the world have classes that teach Arabicas part of their foreign languages, Middle Eastern studies,and religious studies courses. Arabic language schoolsexist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the aca-demic world. There are many Arabic language schoolsin the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Becausethe Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are inArabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab)study the language. Software and books with tapes arealso important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabiclearners may live in places where there are no academicor Arabic language school classes available. Radio seriesof Arabic language classes are also provided from someradio stations. A number of websites on the Internet pro-vide online classes for all levels as a means of distance ed-ucation; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but someteach regional varieties from numerous countries.[61]

16 Arabic speakers and other lan-guages

Historically, Arab linguists considered the Arabic lan-guage to be superior to all other languages, and took al-most no interest in learning any language other than Ara-bic. With the sole example of Medieval linguist Abu

Hayyan al-Gharnati - who, while a scholar of the Ara-bic language, was not ethnically Arab - scholars of theArabic language made no efforts at studying comparativelinguistics, considering all other languages inferior.[62]

In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arabworld have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleimanwrote in 2011 that “studying and knowing English orFrench in most of the Middle East and North Africahave become a badge of sophistication and modernityand when feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of fa-cility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status,class, and perversely, even education through a mélangeof code-switching practises.”[63] Arab-American profes-sor Franck Salamah went as far as to declare Arabic adead language conveying dead ideas, blaming its stagna-tion for Arab intellectual stagnation and lamenting thatgreat writers in Arabic are judged by their command ofthe language and not the merit of the ideas they expresswith it.[64]

17 See also

18 References

Notes

[1] “Världens 100 största språk 2010” [The world’s 100largest languages in 2010]. Nationalencyklopedin (inSwedish). 2010. Retrieved 12 February 2014.

[2] Wright (2001:492)

[3] Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel,Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). “Arabic”.Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolu-tionary Anthropology.

[4] “Arabic language.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. En-cyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 29 July 2009.

[5] “World Arabic Language Day”. UNESCO. 18 December2012. Retrieved 12 February 2014.

[6] Egyptian Arabic reference at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)

[7] “Executive Summary”. The Future of the Global MuslimPopulation. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 22 Decem-ber 2011.

[8] “Table: Muslim Population by Country | Pew Re-search Center’s Religion & Public Life Project”. Fea-tures.pewforum.org. 2011-01-27. Retrieved 2014-05-18.

[9] “UN official languages”. Un.org. Retrieved 20 April2013.

[10] Versteegh (1997:33)

[11] Bateson, Mary Catherine (2003). Arabic Language Hand-book. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. p.54.

19

[12] Bateson, Mary Catherine (2003). Arabic Language Hand-book. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. p.55.

[13] Bateson, Mary Catherine (2003). Arabic Language Hand-book. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. p.57.

[14] Holes, Clive (2004). Modern Arabic: Structures, Func-tions and Varieties. Washington DC: Georgetown Univer-sity Press. p. 3.

[15] Holes, Clive (2004). Modern Arabic: Structures, Func-tions and Varieties. Washington DC: Georgetown Univer-sity Press. p. 11.

[16] Holes, Clive (2004). Modern Arabic: Structures, Func-tions and Varieties. Washington DC: Georgetown Univer-sity Press. p. 12.

[17] Beeston, A. F. L.. The Arabic language today. Washing-ton, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006. Print.

[18] A.F.L, Beeston (1970). The Arabic Language Today.Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. p. 3.

[19] A.F.L, Beeston (1970). The Arabic Language Today.Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. p. 4.

[20] Bateson, Mary Catherine. Arabic language handbook.Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003.Print

[21] John Andrew Morrow, Islamic Images and Ideas: Essayson Sacred Symbolism, pg. 257. Jefferson: McFarland &Company, 2013. ISBN 9781476612881

[22] John andrew Morrow, Islamic Images and Ideas, pg. 258.

[23] Kaye (1991:?)

[24] “Arabic Language.” Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclo-pedia 2009. Retrieved on 29 July 2009.

[25] Orville Boyd Jenkins (18 March 2000), Population Anal-ysis of the Arabic Languages

[26] Janet C. E. Watson, The Phonology and Morphology ofArabic, Introduction, pg. xix. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2007. ISBN 9780191607752

[27] Proceedings and Debates of the 107th United StatesCongress Congressional Record, pg. 10,462. Washing-ton, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office,2002.

[28] Shalom Staub, Yemenis in New York City: The Folkloreof Ethnicity, pg. 124. Philadelphia: Balch Institute forEthnic Studies, 1989. ISBN 9780944190050

[29] Daniel Newman, Arabic-English Thematic Lexicon, pg.1. London: Routledge, 2007. ISBN 9781134103928

[30] Rebecca L. Torstrick and Elizabeth Faier, Culture andCustoms of the Arab Gulf States, pg. 41. Santa Barbara:ABC-CLIO, 2009. ISBN 9780313336591

[31] Walter J. Ong, Interfaces of the Word: Studies in theEvolution of Consciousness and Culture, pg. 32. Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780801466304

[32] Clive Holes, Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, andVarieties, pg. 3. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univer-sity Press, 2004. ISBN 9781589010222

[33] Nizar Y. Habash,Introduction to Arabic Natural LanguageProcessing, pgs. 1-2. San Rafael: Morgan & ClaypoolPublishers, 2010. ISBN 9781598297959

[34] Bernard Bate, Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aes-thetic: Democratic Practice in South India, pgs. 14-15. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. ISBN9780231519403

[35] Encyclopædia Britannica. “Maltese language – BritannicaOnline Encyclopedia”. Britannica.com. Retrieved 4 May2010.

[36] Gregersen (1977:237)

[37] See the seminal study by Siegmund Fraenkel, Diearamäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen, Leiden 1886(repr. 1962)

[38] See for instance Wilhelm Eilers, “Iranisches Lehngut imArabischen”, Actas IV. Congresso des Estudos Árabes etIslâmicos, Coimbra, Lisboa, Leiden 1971, with earlier ref-erences.

[39] Bertold Spuler, TheMuslimWorld aHistorical Survey Part1: The Age of the Caliphs, transl. F.R.C. Bagley, (E.J.Brill, 1960), 24 n1.

[40] Shrivtiel, Shraybom (1998). The Question of Romanisa-tion of the Script and The Emergence of Nationalism in theMiddle East. Mediterranean Language Review. pp. 179–196.

[41] Shrivtiel, p. 188

[42] Shrivtiel, p. 189

[43] “Arabic – the mother of all languages – Al Islam Online”.Alislam.org. Archived from the original on 30 April 2010.Retrieved 4 May 2010.

[44] James Coffman (December 1995). “Does the Arabic Lan-guage Encourage Radical Islam?". Middle East Quarterly.Retrieved 5 December 2008.

[45] Woodard, Roger D. Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestineand Arabia. p 208

[46] Woodard, Roger D. (2008), Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia. p. 180

[47] M. C. A. Macdonald, “Reflections on the Linguistic Mapof Pre-Islamic Arabia”, Arabian Archaeology and Epig-raphy, 2000, Volume 11, p. 50 and 61

[48] James A. Bellamy (1985). “A New Reading of theNamārah Inscription”. Journal of the American Orien-tal Society (American Oriental Society) 105 (1): 31–51.doi:10.2307/601538. JSTOR 601538.

[49] “A History of the Arabic Language”. Linguistics.byu.edu.Archived from the original on 5 May 2010. Retrieved 4May 2010.

[50] Lipinski (1997:124)

20 18 REFERENCES

[51] Watson (2002:5, 15–16)

[52] Watson (2002:2)

[53] Ferguson, Charles (1959), “The Arabic Koine”, Language35 (4): 616–630, doi:10.2307/410601

[54] Watson (2002:16)

[55] Ferguson, Charles (1959), “The Arabic Koine”, Language35 (4): 630, doi:10.2307/410601

[56] Watson (2002:18)

[57] e.g., Thelwall (2003:52)

[58] Rydin, Karin C. (2005). A reference grammar of Mod-ern Standard Arabic. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.

[59] Hanna & Greis (1972:2)

[60] Kharusi, N. S. & Salman, A. (2011) The English Translit-eration of Place Names in Oman. Journal of Academicand Applied Studies Vol. 1(3) September 2011, pp. 1–27Available online at www.academians.org

[61] “Reviews of Language Courses”. Lang1234. Retrieved12 September 2012.

[62] Kees Versteegh, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition, pg. 106.Part of Landmarks in Linguistic Thought series, vol. 3.New York: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 9780415157575

[63] Suleiman, p. 93

[64] Franck Salamah, Language, Memory, and Identity inthe Middle East: The Case for Lebanon, Introduction,pg. xvi. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010. ISBN9780739137406

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21

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19 External links• Arabic: a Category III language Languages which

are difficult for native English speakers.

• Dr. Nizar Habash’s, Columbia University, Introduc-tion to Arabic Natural Language Processing

• Google Ta3reeb – Google Transliteration

• Transliteration Arabic language pronunciation ap-plet

• USA Foreign Service Institute Arabic basic course

• How to speak Arabic

• Morris Jastrow (1905). "Arabic Language and Lit-erature". New International Encyclopedia.

22 20 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

20 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

20.1 Text• Arabic language Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic%20language?oldid=642193740 Contributors: Brion VIBBER, As-

troNomer, Andre Engels, Eclecticology, Youssefsan, Hajhouse, Pgdudda, Rmhermen, Christian List, Gritchka, SimonP, Hannes Hirzel,Heron, KF, Elian, Stevertigo, Edward, Tillwe, Michael Hardy, DopefishJustin, Isomorphic, Norm, Gabbe, Menchi, Wapcaplet, Ixfd64,IZAK, Sannse, TakuyaMurata, Delirium, SebastianHelm, Mr100percent, Looxix, Ihcoyc, Ellywa, Ahoerstemeier, J'raxis, Theresa knott,ILVI, CatherineMunro, Andrewa, Julesd, Salsa Shark, Amcaja, Junesun, Caffelice, Tobias Conradi, Mxn, Smack, Schneelocke, Dwo, Feed-mecereal, Uriber, Dcoetzee, Daniel Quinlan, Jwrosenzweig, WhisperToMe, Selket, DJ Clayworth, Asser hassanain, Maya, Tpbradbury,E23, Morwen, Taxman, Christopher Sundita, Traroth, Joy, Bjarki S, AnonMoos, MD87, Anjouli, Cncs wikipedia, Phil Boswell, Rob-bot, Baher, Benwing, RedWolf, Jmabel, Naddy, Chris Roy, YBeayf, Vlad patryshev, Rursus, Auric, Sunray, Saforrest, Wikibot, Ruakh,Scythian99, Kairos, Jeru, Alan Liefting, Pstevenson, Giftlite, DocWatson42, Amorim Parga, Isam, Wonder al, Jpta, Netoholic, Jabra, Meur-sault2004, HangingCurve, Ayman, Dimi juve, Curps, Henry Flower, Varlaam, DO'Neil, Gilgamesh, Guanaco, Node ue, Khalid hassani,Adam McMaster, Ragib, Johnzello, Gyrofrog, Chowbok, Manuel Anastácio, LordSimonofShropshire, Alexf, Toytoy, Knutux, Sonjaaa,Quadell, Antandrus, Mustafaa, Evertype, Kusunose, Lesgles, Rdsmith4, Mahmood, Al-Andalus, Gscshoyru, ZZyXx, Agari, Chem1, Hadj,D6, Dbach, Zarxos, Fpga, Pasquale, RossPatterson, Discospinster, Zaheen, Rich Farmbrough, Guanabot, Jad Baaklini, Wise mike, NrDg,Vsmith, Freestylefrappe, Parishan, Florian Blaschke, Wikiacc, HeikoEvermann, Ericamick, MeltBanana, Quiensabe, Dbachmann, Mani1,Paul August, SpookyMulder, Bender235, ESkog, Sc147, Kjoonlee, Helldjinn, Evice, Brian0918, Livajo, Kwamikagami, Aude, MarkR Johnson, Mairi, Femto, Jpgordon, Erauch, Bobo192, Circeus, AllyUnion, ParticleMan, Shlomital, Bawolff, Haham hanuka, Seaj11,Fox1, Nsaa, Jakew, Ogress, Jumbuck, Shirimasen, Stephen G. 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20.1 Text 23

ARUNKUMAR P.R, Irina Vainovski, Suriel1981, Billinghurst, Zach27, Gomor04, Enigmaman, YODAFON, Ecopetition, Synthebot,PancakeLogic, HopsonRoad, Daufer, Annette B., Falcon8765, Enviroboy, Oneeyedboxer, Samdefrezz, Serenity101, Cnilep, Jitaroo1, Fog-townduke, Admin207, Somaliwarrior, This.machinery, Doc James, AlleborgoBot, Stooppy, Munci, Balu2000, Atubeileh, Demmy, AlAmeer son, Kbouchafaa, Copana2002, SieBot, Jewbs, Steorra, Mjkubba, Adi.Dr., Arpose, Gerakibot, Fantastic fred, Dawn Bard, Cal-tas, Look41, Nathan, Mohammadp, JCIV, Rabbeinu, Numbersinstitute, Purbo T, Keilana, Mohamed Abdel Maksoud, Viscious, AndroidMouse, Perspicacite, Oda Mari, Lemonshank, JSpung, ,05ترجمان Bguest, Mimiq, Zuraiqw, Oxymoron83, BBKurt, Nuttycoconut, Ghouse-barq, Lightmouse, Helikophis, Bozzowaam, Tombomp, Techman224, Hak-kâ-ngìn, Alex.muller, Fratrep, AlanUS, Retireduser1111, Stel-landt, Vituzzu, Vice regent, StaticGull, KiKiIsFiFi, Maralia, KyanFiFi, Danieltiger45, Pinkadelica, Bleni5501, Opensourceit, 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24 20 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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