Arabic Language

Arabic language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arabic (العربية al-ʿarabīyah, (alarabiya.ogg Arabic pronunciation (help·info)) or عربي ʿarabi) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million[1] people as a first language and by 250 million[2] more as a second language. Most native speakers live in the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic has many different, geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are mutually unintelligible.[4] In principle, this would define Arabic as in fact a family of closely related languages, although in popular perception it continues to be considered a single language (or macrolanguage), thanks to the existence of a reference variety, Modern Standard Arabic, which is taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media. Only the Arabic variant introduced to the islands of Malta, Maltese, has become regarded as an independent and official language in its own right.

Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century.[5] Classical Arabic has also been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since its inception in the 7th century.

Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, due to both the proximity of European and Arab civilization and 700 years of Arab rule in the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).

Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, and contemporary European languages in modern times.

Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.
Distribution of Arabic as sole official language (green) and one of several official or national languages (blue)

Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and use the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-Arab).

Based on Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (fus-ha) is the literary language used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic and/or Classical Arabic.

Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages.[6] The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows,[7] as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic, through its descent from Siculo-Arabic, to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin alphabet.

The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia, which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the two varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film. Quite often, in countries such as Egypt, we are even dealing with "triglossia", in which a speaker could switch back and forth between the dialect of his or her hometown, the standardized (in practice "metropolitan") national dialect and finally, supranational Modern Standard Arabic.

Like other languages, Modern Standard Arabic continues to evolve.[8] Many modern terms have entered into common usage; in some cases taken from other languages (for example, فيلم film) or coined from existing lexical resources (for example, هاتف hātif "telephone" < "caller"). Structural influence from foreign languages or from the colloquial varieties has also affected Modern Standard Arabic. For example, MSA texts sometimes use the format "A, B, C, and D" when listing things, whereas Classical Arabic prefers "A and B and C and D",[citation needed] and subject-initial sentences are more common in MSA than in Classical Arabic.[8] For these reasons, Modern Standard Arabic is generally treated separately in non-Arab sources.

Influence of Arabic on other languages

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages such as Spanish, Sindhi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Portuguese, Berber, Kurdish, Pashto, Persian, Swahili, Urdu, Hindustani (especially the spoken variety), Turkish, Cypriot Greek, Malay, Rohingya, Bengali, Tagalog, and Indonesian, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (/kitāb/) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of Spanish and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "libro" and "livro", respectively, and Tagalog which uses "aklat". In addition, English has quite a few Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Other languages such as Maltese[9] and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.

The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit "prayer" < salat), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq "logic"), economic items (like English sugar) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano "so-and-so") and everyday conjunctions (like Hindustani lekin "but", or Spanish hasta "until"). Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as salat 'prayer' and imam 'prayer leader.' In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic. For example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri. Some words in English and other European languages are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them are commonly-used words like "sugar" (sukkar), "cotton" (quṭn) and "magazine" (maḫāzin). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali", "zenith" and "nadir". Some words in common use, such as "intention" and "information", were originally calques of Arabic philosophical terms.

Arabic words also made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara. Variants of Arabic words such as kitaab (book) have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.[10]

Arabic was also influenced by other languages including Persian. However, the most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts).
See also: list of Arabic loanwords in English

As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots in notably Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman (or Iranian) rule.
[edit] Arabic and Islam

Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is often associated with Islam, but it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans.

Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but can read the script and recite the words of religious texts. Some Muslim speakers of Arabic consider their language to be "the language chosen by God to speak to mankind."[11]
[edit] History

The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic. By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet.

Dialects and descendants
Main article: Varieties of Arabic

Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic. In particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Middle Eastern—especially Egyptian—films and other media).

One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fīh, and North African kayən all mean "there is", and all come from classical Arabic forms (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now sound very different.
Different Dialects of Arabic in the Arab World

The major dialect groups are:

* Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 76 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.
* Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 34 million people in Arab states of the Persian Gulf and eastern Saudi Arabia.
* Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq. With significant differences between the Arabian-like dialects of the south and the more conservative dialects of the north. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
* North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
* Levantine Arabic, includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic, and is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey. It's also called Mediterranean Arabic.
* Maghrebi Arabic, heavily influenced by Berber in pronunciation, and includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Algerian Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 45 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is mostly difficult for speakers of Near Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree.[13]

Other varieties include:

* Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.
* Bahrani Arabic, spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
* Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
* Hassaniya Arabic, spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
* Hejazi Arabic, spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
* Judeo-Arabic dialects
* Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.
* Najdi Arabic, spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia
* Shuwa Arabic, spoken in Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan
* Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese[14]
* Sudanese Arabic, spoken in Sudan
* Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia