Arabic Language

Arabic is the national language of 25 countries extending along the southern and eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the rims of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. (See map below.) There are also speakers of Arabic in such countries as France, Iran, Israel, Tajikistan, and the United States. A variety of Arabic is spoken as a native language by over 240 million speakers. Many millions of others read the Classical Arabic of the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an, as part of their religious devotions.

There are several varieties of spoken Arabic, referred to as Colloquial Arabic, dialects or vernaculars. These dialects are about as different from one another as the Romance languages of Western Europe are from each other. The Colloquial Arabic dialects are typically grouped into into five major dialect areas, including the Maghreb area of northwestern Africa and Libya, Egyptian Arabic (including Sudan), Levantine Arabic (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinian Arabic of Israel and the West Bank), Iraqi Arabic, and Gulf Arabic (the Arabian Peninsula). Somali Arabic is sometimes included in Gulf Arabic or may be treated as a distinct dialect area. Spoken varieties of Arabic differ more and more significantly from each other the further away one goes from one's place of origin. Thus, Iraqi and Moroccan Arabic are not always mutually intelligible.

Arabic has been spoken for at least two thousand years. The language called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is based on Classical Arabic, the language of the Qur'an, when Arabic was first written. MSA is primarily a written language, used in documents and as the language of education and the mass media; however, spoken MSA can also serve as a medium of spoken interaction among speakers of different varieties of Arabic. An excellent summary of information about MSA and major dialect areas can be found at the "About World Languages" Web site at http://www.aboutworldlanguages.com/ArabicOverview/

Although some of the grammatical forms, vocabulary, and the sounds of the vowels and consonants vary quite a bit from one Arabic dialect to another, all of the dialects have several important features in common. They all make use of the same writing system, which has been in use in Arab lands for almost 1,500 years. Thus, it is possible for two speakers of different Arabic dialects who cannot understand each other's speech to, nonetheless, understand each other's written messages.