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Arabic Language Profile العربية |
Arabic is spoken by almost 200 million people in more than twenty countries,
from Morocco to Iraq and as far south as Somalia and the Sudan. A Semitic
language like Hebrew and Amharic, Arabic originated in what is now Saudi
Arabia; with the rise and spread of Islam in the seventh century, it
advanced rapidly across the Middle East. Among Muslims, Arabic has special
religious significance as the language through which the Qur'an is believed
to have been revealed. Between the ninth and twelfth centuries, when
Arabs were the leaders of the Muslim world with an empire stretching
to North Africa, Spain and Sicily and as far east as India, Arabic achieved
wide currency and served as the vehicle of a vast body of literature.
Writers in Arabic included Persians, Iranians, Spanish Muslims, Sicilians
and Indians. Today, Arabic serves as the official language of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco; it is the liturgical language of Muslims in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. 
Arabic has a distinctive alphabet and, like other Semitic languages,
is written from right to left. Two distinctions within Arabic are of
special importance: the difference between Formal-Standard Arabic and
the spoken dialects, and the differences among the various dialects
themselves. Classical Arabic has changed little over the centuries;
the Arabic used in official documents and for some kinds of formal speech
(it is this that is now known as Formal-Standard Arabic) is essentially
the same as the language of the Qur'an and Classical Arabic literature.
Spoken or colloquial Arabic, on the other hand, varies significantly
in vocabulary and pronunciation from one region to the next. This dichotomy
represents one of the biggest challenges to the Arabic student. To read
a newspaper or any official communication in the Arabic world, one must
learn Formal-Standard Arabic. To engage in ordinary conversation with
native Arabic speakers, one must be familiar with the relevant dialect.
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