Arabic

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Arabic
اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ
al-ʿarabiyyah
L2 users of Modern Standard Arabic (2023)[2]
Standard forms
Dialects
Arabic alphabet
Signed Arabic (different national forms)
Official status
Official language in
Special status in Constitution
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated by
List
Language codes
Uzbeki Arabic
Glottologarab1395
Linguasphere12-AAC
  Sole official language, Arabic-speaking minority
  Co-official language, Arabic-speaking majority
  Co-official language, Arabic-speaking minority
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Arabic (اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ, al-ʿarabiyyah [al ʕaraˈbijːa] or عَرَبِيّ, ʿarabīy [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij]) is a Central Semitic language of the Semitic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world.[14] The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic,[15] which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā (اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ[16] "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ).

Arabic is an official language of

the third most after English and French,[17] one of six official languages of the United Nations,[18] and is the liturgical language of Islam.[19] Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media.[20] During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages—mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese, Catalan, and Sicilian—owing to both the proximity of European and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. The Maltese language is a Semitic language developed from a dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet.[21] The Balkan languages including Greek and Bulgarian have also acquired, through contact with Ottoman Turkish
, a significant number of vocabulary of Arabic origin.

Arabic has influenced many other languages around the globe throughout its history, especially languages of Muslim cultures and countries that were conquered by Muslims. Some of the most influenced languages are

Odia[23] Hebrew and Hausa and some languages in parts of Africa, such as Somali and Swahili
. Conversely, Arabic has borrowed words from other languages, including Aramaic as well as Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Persian and to a lesser extent Turkish, English, French, and other Semitic languages.

Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world,

left to right
with no standardized orthography.

Classification

Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language. Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups.[29] The Semitic languages changed significantly between Proto-Semitic and the emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include:

  1. The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation (jalas-) into a past tense.
  2. The conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation (yajlis-) into a present tense.
  3. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms (e.g., a present tense formed by doubling the middle root, a perfect formed by infixing a /t/ after the first root consonant, probably a jussive formed by a stress shift) in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms (e.g., -u for indicative, -a for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, -an or -anna for energetic).
  4. The development of an internal passive.

There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the

Proto-Arabic.[30][31] The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence:[32]

  1. negative particles m * /mā/; lʾn */lā-ʾan/ to Classical Arabic lan
  2. mafʿūl G-passive participle
  3. prepositions and adverbs f, ʿn, ʿnd, ḥt, ʿkdy
  4. a subjunctive in -a
  5. t-demonstratives
  6. leveling of the -at allomorph of the feminine ending
  7. ʾn complementizer and subordinator
  8. the use of f- to introduce modal clauses
  9. independent object pronoun in (ʾ)y
  10. vestiges of nunation

On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic.[33][34] Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic:[35] Classical Arabic is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor.[30]

History

Old Arabic

Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula, as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece.[36][37] In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested.[38]

In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in a script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic. On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B, Thamudic D, Safaitic, and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic.[38]

Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic", a collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age.[29] Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw, in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as the conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum.[39]

It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced—

epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after the towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic).[29] However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable.[40] Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to the fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic.[38]

The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an

Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From the 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era.[42] There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria (Zabad, Jebel Usays, Harran, Umm el-Jimal). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of the Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into "Classical Arabic".[29]

Classical Arabic

In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the

Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi.[citation needed
]

In the late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the

al-Ḥīra. During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax.[citation needed
]

Standardization

Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali (c. 603–689) is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar, or an-naḥw (النَّحو "the way"[44]), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants (نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i‘jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization (التشكيل at-tashkīl).[45] Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn (كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع"), and is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody.[46] Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries.[47] The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al-Kitāb, is based first of all upon a corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya.[48]

Spread

Arabic spread with the spread of Islam. Following the early Muslim conquests, Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish.[49] In the early Abbasid period, many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom.[49]

By the 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides, the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic—Arabic written in Hebrew script.[50]

Development

Ibn Jinni of Mosul, a pioneer in phonology, wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif, Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab, and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ar].[51]

Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized the overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior.[47]

The Maghrebi lexicographer

Lisān al-ʿArab (لسان العرب, "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290.[52]

Neo-Arabic

Charles Ferguson's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on the eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories.[48] According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA.[53][54]

In around the 11th and 12th centuries in

dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb.[55]

Nahda

The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression."[56] According to James L. Gelvin, "Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to a wider audience."[56]

In the wake of the

Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted the need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship').[58][59]

In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the

Tunis (1993).[61] They review language development, monitor new words and approve the inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.[citation needed
]

In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League.[61] These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward the standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language.[61] This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco,[62] and Sudan.[63]

Classical, Modern Standard and spoken Arabic

Influence of Arabic on other languages

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries, because it is the language of the Islamic sacred book, the Quran. Arabic is also an important source of vocabulary for languages such as

Visayan and Wolof, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken.[102] Modern Hebrew has been also influenced by Arabic especially during the process of revival, as MSA was used as a source for modern Hebrew vocabulary and roots.[103]

Kinubi
derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammatical rules.

Terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like

salat (صلاة ṣalāh)), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq, "logic"), and economic items (like English coffee) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano, "so-and-so"), everyday terms (like Hindustani lekin, "but", or Spanish taza and French tasse, meaning "cup"), and expressions (like Catalan a betzef, "galore, in quantity"). 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 صلاة (ṣalāh), "prayer", and إمام (imām), "prayer leader".[citation needed
]

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 and Turkish entered through Persian. Older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri. Most Arabic loanwords in Yoruba entered through Hausa.[citation needed]

Arabic words made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara. Variants of Arabic words such as كتاب kitāb ("book") have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.[106]

Since, throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of

Kurdish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued through to the 18th and 19th centuries, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.[citation needed
]

Spoken varieties

Nubi
  •   Sparsely populated area or no indigenous Arabic speakers
  • Solid area fill: variety natively spoken by at least 25% of the population of that area or variety indigenous to that area only
  • Hatched area fill: minority scattered over the area
  • Dotted area fill: speakers of this variety are mixed with speakers of other Arabic varieties in the area
  • Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken dialects of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the varieties within and outside of the Arabian peninsula, followed by that between sedentary varieties and the much more conservative Bedouin varieties. All the varieties outside of the Arabian peninsula, which include the large majority of speakers, have many features in common with each other that are not found in Classical Arabic. This has led researchers to postulate the existence of a prestige koine dialect in the one or two centuries immediately following the Arab conquest, whose features eventually spread to all newly conquered areas. These features are present to varying degrees inside the Arabian peninsula. Generally, the Arabian peninsula varieties have much more diversity than the non-peninsula varieties, but these have been understudied.[citation needed]

    Maimonides' autograph draft of The Guide for the Perplexed (דלאלת אלחאירין, دلالة الحائرين Dalālatu‿l-ḥāʾirīn), in Arabic written with Hebrew letters.[107]

    Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian North African dialects, especially Moroccan Arabic, and the others. Moroccan Arabic in particular is hardly comprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Libya (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Egyptian films and other media).[citation needed]

    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.[citation needed]

    Koiné

    According to Charles A. Ferguson,[108] the following are some of the characteristic features of the koiné that underlies all the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula. Although many other features are common to most or all of these varieties, Ferguson believes that these features in particular are unlikely to have evolved independently more than once or twice and together suggest the existence of the koine:

    • Loss of the dual number except on nouns, with consistent plural agreement (cf. feminine singular agreement in plural inanimates).
    • Change of a to i in many affixes (e.g., non-past-tense prefixes ti- yi- ni-; wi- 'and'; il- 'the'; feminine -it in the construct state).
    • Loss of third-weak verbs ending in w (which merge with verbs ending in y).
    • Reformation of geminate verbs, e.g., ḥalaltu 'I untied' → ḥalēt(u).
    • Conversion of separate words 'to me', laka 'to you', 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 prefixed 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) < ayyu shayʼ 'which thing'; illi (relative pronoun).
    • Merger of /ɮˤ/ and /ðˤ/.

    Dialect groups

    Phonology

    History

    Of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost: */ʃ/, which merged with /s/, while /ɬ/ became /ʃ/ (see

    voiceless alveolar lateral fricative */ɬ/ became /ʃ/.[129]

    Its

    .

    Reduction of /j/ and /w/ between vowels occurs in a number of circumstances and is responsible for much of the complexity of third-weak ("defective") verbs. Early Akkadian transcriptions of Arabic names show that this reduction had not yet occurred as of the early part of the 1st millennium BC.[citation needed]

    The Classical Arabic language as recorded was a poetic

    koine that reflected a consciously archaizing dialect, chosen based on the tribes of the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, who spoke the most conservative variants of Arabic. Even at the time of Muhammed and before, other dialects existed with many more changes, including the loss of most glottal stops, the loss of case endings, the reduction of the diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ into monophthongs /eː, oː/, etc. Most of these changes are present in most or all modern varieties of Arabic.[citation needed
    ]

    An interesting feature of the writing system of the Quran (and hence of Classical Arabic) is that it contains certain features of Muhammad's native dialect of Mecca, corrected through diacritics into the forms of standard Classical Arabic. Among these features visible under the corrections are the loss of the glottal stop and a differing development of the reduction of certain final sequences containing /j/: Evidently, the final /-awa/ became /aː/ as in the Classical language, but final /-aja/ became a different sound, possibly /eː/ (rather than again /aː/ in the Classical language). This is the apparent source of the alif maqṣūrah 'restricted alif' where a final /-aja/ is reconstructed: a letter that would normally indicate /j/ or some similar high-vowel sound, but is taken in this context to be a logical variant of alif and represent the sound /aː/.[citation needed]

    Literary Arabic

    Recording of a poem by
    Al-Ma'arri titled "I no longer steal from nature"

    The "colloquial" spoken dialects of Arabic are learned at home and constitute the native languages of Arabic speakers. "Formal" Modern Standard Arabic is learned at school; although many speakers have a native-like command of the language, it is technically not the native language of any speakers. Both varieties can be both written and spoken, although the colloquial varieties are rarely written down and the formal variety is spoken mostly in formal circumstances, e.g., in radio and TV broadcasts, formal lectures, parliamentary discussions and to some extent between speakers of different colloquial dialects.

    Even when the literary language is spoken, it is normally only spoken in its pure form when reading a prepared text out loud and communicating between speakers of different colloquial dialects. When speaking

    extemporaneously
    (i.e. making up the language on the spot, as in a normal discussion among people), speakers tend to deviate somewhat from the strict literary language in the direction of the colloquial varieties. There is a continuous range of "in-between" spoken varieties: from nearly pure Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), to a form that still uses MSA grammar and vocabulary but with significant colloquial influence, to a form of the colloquial language that imports a number of words and grammatical constructions in MSA, to a form that is close to pure colloquial but with the "rough edges" (the most noticeably "vulgar" or non-Classical aspects) smoothed out, to pure colloquial.

    The particular variant (or register) used depends on the social class and education level of the speakers involved and the level of formality of the speech situation. Often it will vary within a single encounter, e.g., moving from nearly pure MSA to a more mixed language in the process of a radio interview, as the interviewee becomes more comfortable with the interviewer. This type of variation is characteristic of the diglossia that exists throughout the Arabic-speaking world.[citation needed]

    Coverage in Al-Ahram in 1934 of the inauguration of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo, an organization of major importance to the modernization of Arabic.

    Although Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a unitary language, its pronunciation varies somewhat from country to country and from region to region within a country. The variation in individual "accents" of MSA speakers tends to mirror corresponding variations in the colloquial speech of the speakers in question, but with the distinguishing characteristics moderated somewhat. It is important in descriptions of "Arabic" phonology to distinguish between pronunciation of a given colloquial (spoken) dialect and the pronunciation of MSA by these same speakers.

    Although they are related, they are not the same. For example, the phoneme that derives from Classical Arabic /ɟ/ has many different pronunciations in the modern spoken varieties, e.g., [d͡ʒ ~ ʒ ~ j ~ ɡʲ ~ ɡ] including the proposed original [ɟ]. Speakers whose native variety has either [d͡ʒ] or [ʒ] will use the same pronunciation when speaking MSA. Even speakers from Cairo, whose native Egyptian Arabic has [ɡ], normally use [ɡ] when speaking MSA. The [j] of Persian Gulf speakers is the only variant pronunciation which is not found in MSA; [d͡ʒ~ʒ] is used instead, but may use [j] in MSA for comfortable pronunciation.

    Another reason of different pronunciations is influence of

    Aramaic and Canaanite languages (including Phoenician) in the Levant and Mesopotamia.[citation needed
    ]

    Another example: Many colloquial varieties are known for a type of vowel harmony in which the presence of an "emphatic consonant" triggers backed allophones of nearby vowels (especially of the low vowels /aː/, which are backed to [ɑ(ː)] in these circumstances and very often fronted to [æ(ː)] in all other circumstances). In many spoken varieties, the backed or "emphatic" vowel allophones spread a fair distance in both directions from the triggering consonant. In some varieties, most notably Egyptian Arabic, the "emphatic" allophones spread throughout the entire word, usually including prefixes and suffixes, even at a distance of several syllables from the triggering consonant.

    Speakers of colloquial varieties with this vowel harmony tend to introduce it into their MSA pronunciation as well, but usually with a lesser degree of spreading than in the colloquial varieties. For example, speakers of colloquial varieties with extremely long-distance harmony may allow a moderate, but not extreme, amount of spreading of the harmonic allophones in their MSA speech, while speakers of colloquial varieties with moderate-distance harmony may only harmonize immediately adjacent vowels in MSA.[citation needed]

    Vowels

    Taha Hussein and Gamal Abdel Nasser were both staunch defenders of Standard Arabic.[131][132]

    Modern Standard Arabic has six pure

    diphthongs: /aj/ and /aw/.[citation needed
    ]

    The pronunciation of the vowels differs from speaker to speaker, in a way that tends to reflect the pronunciation of the corresponding colloquial variety. Nonetheless, there are some common trends. Most noticeable is the differing pronunciation of /a/ and /aː/, which tend towards fronted [

    Hejaz region, have an open [a(ː)] or a central [ä(ː)] in all situations. The vowel /a/ varies towards [ə(ː)
    ] too. Listen to the final vowel in the recording of al-ʻarabiyyah at the beginning of this article, for example.

    The point is, Arabic has only three short vowel phonemes, so those phonemes can have a very wide range of allophones. The vowels /u/ and /ɪ/ are often affected somewhat in emphatic neighborhoods as well, with generally more back 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 [i~e~ɨ], respectively, in many dialects.[citation needed]

    The definitions of both "emphatic" and "neighborhood" vary in ways that reflect (to some extent) corresponding variations in the spoken dialects. Generally, the consonants triggering "emphatic" allophones are the

    r/, if not followed immediately by /i(ː)/. Frequently, the velar fricatives /x ɣ/ trigger emphatic allophones, occasionally also the pharyngeal consonants
    ħ/, the former more than the latter.

    Many dialects have multiple emphatic allophones of each vowel, depending on the particular nearby consonants. In most MSA accents, emphatic coloring of vowels is limited to vowels immediately adjacent to a triggering consonant, although in some it spreads a bit farther: e.g., وقت waqt [wɑqt] 'time'; وطن waṭan [wɑtˤɑn] 'homeland'; وسط المدينة wasṭu‿l-madīnah [wæstˤ æl mæˈdiːnæ] 'downtown' (also [wɑstˤ æl mæˈdiːnæ] or similar).[citation needed]

    In a non-emphatic environment, the vowel /a/ in the diphthong /aj/ is pronounced [æj] or [ɛj]: hence سيف sayf [sajf ~ sæjf ~ sɛjf] 'sword' but صيف ṣayf [sˤɑjf] 'summer'. However, in accents with no emphatic allophones of /a/ (e.g., in the

    Hejaz), the pronunciation [aj] or [äj] occurs in all situations.[citation needed
    ]

    Consonants

    Consonant phonemes of Modern Standard Arabic
    Labial Dental Denti-alveolar Post-alv./
    Palatal
    Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
    plain emphatic
    Nasal
    m
    n
    Stop
    voiceless
    t
    k q ʔ
    voiced
    b
    d
    d͡ʒ (ɡ)
    Fricative
    voiceless
    f θ
    s
    ʃ x ~ χ ħ h
    voiced
    ð z ðˤ ɣ ~ ʁ ʕ
    Trill
    r
    Approximant
    l
    (
    ɫ
    )
    j w

    The phoneme /d͡ʒ/ is represented by the Arabic letter jīm (

    ج) is normally pronounced [ɡ], a separate phoneme /ʒ/, which may be transcribed with چ, occurs in a small number of mostly non-Arabic loanwords, e.g., /ʒakitta/ 'jacket'.[citation needed
    ]

    /θ/ (ث) can be pronounced as [s]. In some places of Maghreb it can be also pronounced as [t͡s].[citation needed]

    /x/ and /ɣ/ (خ,‎ غ) are velar, post-velar, or uvular.[134]

    In many varieties, /ħ, ʕ/ (ح,‎ ع) are

    epiglottal [ʜ, ʢ] in West Asia.[citation needed
    ]

    /l/ is pronounced as velarized [

    ɫ] in الله /ʔallaːh/, the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows a, ā, u or ū (after i or ī it is unvelarized: بسم الله bismi‿l-lāh /bismillaːh/).[133]

    The emphatic consonant /dˤ/ was actually pronounced [ɮˤ], or possibly [d͡ɮˤ][135]—either way, a highly unusual sound. The medieval Arabs actually termed their language lughat al-ḍād 'the language of the Ḍād' (the name of the letter used for this sound), since they thought the sound was unique to their language. (In fact, it also exists in a few other minority Semitic languages, e.g., Mehri.)

    Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" /tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, ðˤ/ (ط,‎ ض,‎ ص,‎ ظ), which exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization [tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, ðˤ] as well as varying degrees of velarization [tˠ, dˠ, sˠ, ðˠ] (depending on the region), so they may be written with the "Velarized or pharyngealized" diacritic (̴) as: /t̴, d̴, s̴, ð̴/. This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists.[136] In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, /dˤ/ is written ⟨D⟩; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, .

    Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: قبل qabila 'he accepted' vs. قبّل qabbala 'he kissed'.[citation needed]

    Syllable structure

    Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)—and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC) and (CVCC). The syllable types with two

    superheavy syllables. Superheavy syllables in Classical Arabic occur in only two places: at the end of the sentence (due to pausal pronunciation) and in words such as حارّ ḥārr 'hot', مادّة māddah 'stuff, substance', تحاجوا taḥājjū 'they disputed with each other', where a long ā occurs before two identical consonants. A former short vowel between the consonants has been lost. In less formal pronunciations of Modern Standard Arabic, superheavy syllables are common at the end of words or before clitic suffixes such as -nā 'us, our', due to the deletion of final short vowels.[citation needed
    ]

    In surface pronunciation, every vowel must be preceded by a consonant (which may include the

    hiatus
    within a word, where two vowels occur next to each other, without an intervening consonant. Some words do have an underlying vowel at the beginning, such as the definite article al- or words such as اشترا ishtarā 'he bought', اجتماع ijtimāʻ 'meeting'. When actually pronounced, one of three things happens:

    Stress

    Word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic. It bears a strong relationship to vowel length. The basic 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
      , containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant, is stressed, if it is not the final syllable.
    • If the final syllable is super heavy and closed (of the form CVVC or CVCC) it receives stress.
    • If no syllable is heavy or super heavy, the first possible syllable (i.e. third from end) is stressed.
    • As a special exception, in Form VII and VIII verb forms stress may not be on the first syllable, despite the above rules: Hence inkatab(a) 'he subscribed' (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), yankatib(u) 'he subscribes' (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), yankatib 'he should subscribe (juss.)'. Likewise Form VIII ishta 'he bought', yashta 'he buys'.

    These rules may result in differently stressed syllables when final case endings are pronounced, vs. the normal situation where they are not pronounced, as in the above example of mak-ta-ba-tun 'library' in full pronunciation, but mak-ta-ba(-tun) 'library' in short pronunciation.[citation needed]

    The restriction on final long vowels does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen from loss of original final -hu/hi.[citation needed]

    Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Egyptian Arabic dialect a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-ra-sah 'school', qā-hi-rah 'Cairo'. This also affects the way that Modern Standard Arabic is pronounced in Egypt. In the Arabic of

    Sanaa, stress is often retracted: bay-tayn 'two houses', -sat-hum 'their table', ma--tīb 'desks', -rat-ḥīn 'sometimes', mad-ra-sat-hum 'their school'. In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.[citation needed
    ]

    Colloquial varieties

    Vowels

    As mentioned above, many spoken dialects have a process of emphasis spreading, where the "emphasis" (

    low vowels. The extent of emphasis spreading varies. For example, in Moroccan Arabic, it spreads as far as the first full vowel (i.e. sound derived from a long vowel or diphthong) on either side; in many Levantine dialects, it spreads indefinitely, but is blocked by any /j/ or /ʃ/; while in Egyptian Arabic, it usually spreads throughout the entire word, including prefixes and suffixes. In Moroccan Arabic, /i u/ also have emphatic allophones [e~ɛ] and [o~ɔ], respectively.[citation needed
    ]

    Unstressed short vowels, especially /i u/, are deleted in many contexts. Many sporadic examples of short vowel change have occurred (especially /a//i/ and interchange /i//u/). Most Levantine dialects merge short /i u/ into /ə/ in most contexts (all except directly before a single final consonant). In Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, short /u/ triggers labialization of nearby consonants (especially velar consonants and uvular consonants), and then short /a i u/ all merge into /ə/, which is deleted in many contexts. (The labialization plus /ə/ is sometimes interpreted as an underlying phoneme /ŭ/.) This essentially causes the wholesale loss of the short-long vowel distinction, with the original long vowels /aː uː/ remaining as half-long [aˑ uˑ], phonemically /a i u/, which are used to represent both short and long vowels in borrowings from Literary Arabic.[citation needed]

    Most spoken dialects have

    monophthongized original /aj aw/ to /eː oː/ in most circumstances, including adjacent to emphatic consonants, while keeping them as the original diphthongs in others e.g. مَوْعِد /mawʕid/. In most of the Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian (except Sahel and Southeastern) Arabic dialects, they have subsequently merged into original /iː uː/.[citation needed
    ]

    Consonants

    In most dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, [g] is considered a native phoneme in most Arabic dialects except in Levantine dialects like Syrian or Lebanese where ج is pronounced [ʒ] and ق is pronounced [ʔ]. [d͡ʒ] or [ʒ] (ج) is considered a native phoneme in most dialects except in Egyptian and a number of Yemeni and Omani dialects where ج is pronounced [g].

    [zˤ] or [ðˤ] and [dˤ] are distinguished in the dialects of Egypt, Sudan, the Levant and the Hejaz. They have merged as [ðˤ] in most dialects of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Tunisia and have merged as [dˤ] in Morocco and Algeria. The usage of non-native [

    گ
    , as in گوجة gawjah "plum;" چمة chimah "truffle".

    Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes [ɮˤ] and [ðˤ] coalesced into a single phoneme [ðˤ]. Many dialects, such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb, subsequently lost interdental fricatives, converting ð ðˤ] into [t d dˤ]. Most dialects borrow "learned" words from the Standard language using the same pronunciation as for inherited words. Some dialects without interdental fricatives, particularly in Egypt and the Levant, render original ð ðˤ dˤ] in borrowed words as [s z dˤ].

    Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular plosives /q/, /d͡ʒ/ (Proto-Semitic /ɡ/), and /k/:

    • ق /q/ retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ] in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. It is rendered as a voiced velar plosive [ɡ] in the Persian Gulf, Upper Egypt, parts of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). In Iraqi Arabic it sometimes retains its original pronunciation and is sometimes rendered as a voiced velar plosive, depending on the word. Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as [k], as do Shiʻi Bahrainis. In some 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 modified pronunciation for /q/ maintain the [q] pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language.
    • ج /d͡ʒ/ is pronounced as an affricate in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. It is pronounced [ɡ] in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen and Oman, [ʒ] in Morocco, Tunisia, and the Levant, and [j], [i̠] in most words in much of the Persian Gulf.
    • ك /k/ usually retains its original pronunciation but is palatalized to /t͡ʃ/ in many words in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, and countries in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes /-ak/ ('you', masc.) and /-ik/ ('you', fem.), which become /-ak/ and /-it͡ʃ/, respectively. In Sana'a, Omani, and Bahrani /-ik/ is pronounced /-iʃ/.

    Pharyngealization of the emphatic consonants tends to weaken in many of the spoken varieties, and to spread from emphatic consonants to nearby sounds. The "emphatic" allophone [

    t/ vs. // in Moroccan Arabic, because the former is pronounced as an affricate [t͡s
    ] but the latter is not.

    Grammar

    Examples of how the Arabic root and form system works

    The grammar of Arabic has similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages. Some of the typical differences between Standard Arabic (فُصْحَى) and vernacular varieties are a loss of morphological markings of grammatical case, changes in word order, a shift toward more analytic morphosyntax, loss of grammatical mood, and loss of the inflected passive voice.

    Literary Arabic

    As in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual

    three
    ), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern to form words. For example, the word for '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 typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. qaraʼtu 'I read', akaltu 'I ate', dhahabtu 'I went', although other patterns are possible, e.g. sharibtu 'I drank', qultu 'I said', takallamtu 'I spoke', where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix -tu is always used.

    From a single root k-t-b, numerous words can be formed by applying different patterns:

    • كَتَبْتُkatabtu 'I wrote'
    • كَتَّبْتُkattabtu 'I had (something) written'
    • كَاتَبْتُkātabtu 'I corresponded (with someone)'
    • أَكْتَبْتُ'aktabtu 'I dictated'
    • اِكْتَتَبْتُiktatabtu 'I subscribed'
    • تَكَاتَبْنَاtakātabnā 'we corresponded with each other'
    • أَكْتُبُ'aktubu 'I write'
    • أُكَتِّبُ'ukattibu 'I have (something) written'
    • أُكَاتِبُ'ukātibu 'I correspond (with someone)'
    • أُكْتِبُ'uktibu 'I dictate'
    • أَكْتَتِبُ'aktatibu 'I subscribe'
    • نَتَكَتِبُnatakātabu 'we correspond each other'
    • كُتِبَkutiba 'it was written'
    • أُكْتِبَ'uktiba 'it was dictated'
    • مَكْتُوبٌmaktūbun 'written'
    • مُكْتَبٌmuktabun 'dictated'
    • كِتَابٌkitābun 'book'
    • كُتُبٌkutubun 'books'
    • كَاتِبٌkātibun 'writer'
    • كُتَّابٌkuttābun 'writers'
    • مَكْتَبٌmaktabun 'desk, office'
    • مَكْتَبَةٌmaktabatun 'library, bookshop'
    • etc.

    Nouns and adjectives

    Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical

    construct). The cases of singular nouns, other than those that 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 ـَة‎ /-at/, which is pronounced as /-ah/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the

    tanwīn
    .

    Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. The plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the ـَة‎ /-at/ suffix.

    enclitics
    . Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (ـنِي‎ /-nī/) and for nouns or prepositions (ـِي‎ /-ī/ after consonants, ـيَ‎ /-ya/ after vowels).

    Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. Non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. A verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.

    Verbs

    Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are

    energetic and longer energetic), the fifth and sixth moods, the energetics, exist only in Classical Arabic but not in MSA.[137] There are two participles, active and passive, and a verbal noun, but no infinitive
    .

    The past and non-past paradigms are sometimes termed

    indicative occur only in the non-past, and the future tense is signaled by prefixing سَـsa- or سَوْفَsawfa onto the non-past. The past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g., past كَتَبـkatab- vs. non-past ـكْتُبـ-ktub-), and use completely different sets of affixes for indicating person, number and gender: In the past, the person, number and gender are fused into a single suffixal morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of prefixes
    (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number) are used. The passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.

    The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, كَتَبَkataba 'to write'. In Modern Standard, the energetic mood, in either long or short form, which have the same meaning, is almost never used.

    Derivation

    Like other Semitic languages, and unlike most other languages, Arabic makes much more use of nonconcatenative morphology, applying many templates applied roots, to derive words than adding prefixes or suffixes to words.

    For verbs, a given root can occur in many different derived verb stems, of which there are about fifteen, each with one or more characteristic meanings and each with its own templates for the past and non-past stems, active and passive participles, and verbal noun. These are referred to by Western scholars as "Form I", "Form II", and so on through "Form XV", although Forms XI to XV are rare.

    These stems encode grammatical functions such as the

    derivational morphology, not part of the inflectional
    system.

    Examples of the different verbs formed from the root كتبk-t-b 'write' (using حمرḥ-m-r 'red' for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):

    Most of these forms are exclusively Classical Arabic
    Form Past Meaning Non-past Meaning
    I kataba 'he wrote' yaktubu 'he writes'
    II kattaba 'he made (someone) write' yukattibu "he makes (someone) write"
    III kātaba 'he corresponded with, wrote to (someone)' yukātibu 'he corresponds with, writes to (someone)'
    IV ʾaktaba 'he dictated' yuktibu 'he dictates'
    V takattaba nonexistent yatakattabu nonexistent
    VI takātaba 'he corresponded (with someone, esp. mutually)' yatakātabu 'he corresponds (with someone, esp. mutually)'
    VII inkataba 'he subscribed' yankatibu 'he subscribes'
    VIII iktataba 'he copied' yaktatibu 'he copies'
    IX iḥmarra 'he turned red' yaḥmarru 'he turns red'
    X istaktaba 'he asked (someone) to write' yastaktibu 'he asks (someone) to write'

    Form II is sometimes used to create transitive

    denominative verbs
    (verbs built from nouns); Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.

    The associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic. 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 of social, often work-related event where people gather together to have a "discussion" (another lexicalized verbal noun). Another fairly common means of forming nouns is through one of a limited number of patterns that can be applied 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:

    Colloquial varieties

    The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive.

    The following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.

    Example of a regular Form I verb in Egyptian Arabic, kátab/yíktib "write"
    Tense/Mood Past Present Subjunctive Present Indicative Future Imperative
    Singular
    1st katáb-t á-ktib bá-ktib ḥá-ktib "
    2nd masculine katáb-t tí-ktib bi-tí-ktib ḥa-tí-ktib í-ktib
    feminine katáb-ti ti-ktíb-i bi-ti-ktíb-i ḥa-ti-ktíb-i i-ktíb-i
    3rd masculine kátab yí-ktib bi-yí-ktib ḥa-yí-ktib "
    feminine kátab-it tí-ktib bi-tí-ktib ḥa-tí-ktib
    Plural
    1st katáb-na ní-ktib bi-ní-ktib ḥá-ní-ktib "
    2nd katáb-tu ti-ktíb-u bi-ti-ktíb-u ḥa-ti-ktíb-u i-ktíb-u
    3rd kátab-u yi-ktíb-u bi-yi-ktíb-u ḥa-yi-ktíb-u "

    Writing system

    Arabic calligraphy written by a Malay Muslim in Malaysia. The calligrapher is making a rough draft.

    The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through

    . Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern versions of the alphabet—in particular, the faʼ had a dot underneath and qaf a single dot above in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals).

    However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (

    ruqʻah, which is commonly used for correspondence.[138][139]

    Originally Arabic was made up of only rasm without diacritical marks[140] Later diacritical points (which in Arabic are referred to as nuqaṯ) were added (which allowed readers to distinguish between letters such as b, t, th, n and y). Finally signs known as Tashkil were used for short vowels known as harakat and other uses such as final postnasalized or long vowels.

    Calligraphy

    After

    Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi
    finally fixed the Arabic script around 786, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Quran and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.

    Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by

    verse of the Quran, a hadith, or a proverb. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy.[citation needed
    ]

    In modern times the intrinsically calligraphic nature of the written Arabic form is haunted by the thought that a typographic approach to the language, necessary for digitized unification, will not always accurately maintain meanings conveyed through calligraphy.[141]

    Romanization

    Examples of different transliteration/transcription schemes
    Letter IPA
    UNGEGN
    ALA-LC
    Wehr DIN ISO SAS
    - 2
    BATR ArabTeX chat
    ء
    ʔ ʼ ʾ ˈ, ˌ ʾ ' e ' 2
    ا ā ʾ ā aa aa / A a a/e/é
    ي
    j, y y; ī y; e y; ii y y; i/ee; ei/ai
    ث θ th ç c _t s/th
    ج d͡ʒ~ɡ~ʒ j ǧ ŷ j j ^g j/g/dj
    ح ħ H .h 7
    خ x kh j x K _h kh/7'/5
    ذ ð dh đ z' _d z/dh/th
    ش ʃ sh š x ^s sh/ch
    ص ş S .s s/9
    ض D .d d/9'
    ط ţ T .tu t/6
    ظ ðˤ~ đ̣ Z .z z/dh/6'
    ع ʕ ʻ ʿ ř E ' 3
    غ ɣ gh ġ g j g .g gh/3'/8

    There are a number of different standards for the

    ي
    is used to represent both a consonant, as in "you" or "yet", and a vowel, as in "me" or "eat".)

    Some systems, e.g. for scholarly use, are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic script. These systems are heavily reliant on

    Bahá'í orthography) are intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists with intuitive pronunciation of Arabic names and phrases.[citation needed
    ]

    These less "scientific" systems tend to avoid

    ALA-LC romanization solves this problem by separating the two sounds with a prime
    symbol ( ′ ); e.g., as′hal 'easier'.

    During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as

    mobile phone text messaging
    . Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin script only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic script as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script.

    To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter ع. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it

    Arabic Chat Alphabet
    or IM Arabic. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter د, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, ض, may be written as D.

    Numerals

    In most of present-day North Africa, the

    Classical Hebrew
    , and 1975 is said "a thousand and nine-hundred and five and seventy" or, more eloquently, "a thousand and nine-hundred five seventy".

    Arabic alphabet and nationalism

    There have been many instances of national movements to convert Arabic script into Latin script or to Romanize the language. Currently, the only Arabic variety to use Latin script is Maltese.

    Lebanon

    The Beirut newspaper La Syrie pushed for the change from Arabic script to Latin letters in 1922. The major head of this movement was Louis Massignon, a French Orientalist, who brought his concern before the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus in 1928. Massignon's attempt at Romanization failed as the academy and population viewed the proposal as an attempt from the Western world to take over their country. Sa'id Afghani, a member of the academy, mentioned that the movement to Romanize the script was a Zionist plan to dominate Lebanon.[142][143] Said Akl created a Latin-based alphabet for Lebanese and used it in a newspaper he founded, Lebnaan, as well as in some books he wrote.

    Egypt

    After the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for a way to reclaim and re-emphasize Egyptian culture. As a result, some Egyptians pushed for an Egyptianization of the Arabic language in which the formal Arabic and the colloquial Arabic would be combined into one language and the Latin alphabet would be used.

    Hieroglyphics instead of the Latin alphabet, but this was seen as too complicated to use.[142][143]

    A scholar,

    Salama Musa agreed with the idea of applying a Latin alphabet to Arabic, as he believed that would allow Egypt to have a closer relationship with the West. He also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances in science and technology. This change in alphabet, he believed, would solve the problems inherent with Arabic, such as a lack of written vowels and difficulties writing foreign words that made it difficult for non-native speakers to learn.[142][143] Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid and Muhammad Azmi, two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for Romanization.[142][144]

    The idea that Romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al-Aziz Fahmi in 1944. He was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo.[142][144] This effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cultural tie to the Arabic alphabet.[142][144] In particular, the older Egyptian generations believed that the Arabic alphabet had strong connections to Arab values and history, due to the long history of the Arabic alphabet (Shrivtiel, 189) in Muslim societies.

    Example Text

    From Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Literary Arabic, written in the Arabic script:[145]

    Arabic text
    يولد جميع الناس أحراراً متساوين في الكرامة والحقوق، وقد وهبوا عقلاً وضميراً وعليهم أن يعامل بعضهم بعضاً بروح الإخاء.
    ALA-LC
    Arabic transliteration

    Yūlad jamīʻ al-nās aḥrār-an mutasāwīn fil-karāma-ti wal-huqūq-i, wa-qad wuhibū ʻaql-an wa-ḍamīr-an wa-ʻalayhim an yuʻāmil-u baʻduhum baʻd-an bi-rūh al-ikhāʼ-i.

    Translation

    Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:[146]

    All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

    See also

    Notes

    1. ^ The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran recognizes the Arabic language as the language of Islam, giving it a formal status as the language of religion, and regulates its spreading within the Iranian national curriculum. The constitution declares in Chapter II: (The Official Language, Script, Calendar, and Flag of the Country) in Article 16 "Since the language of the Qur`an and Islamic texts and teachings is Arabic, ..., it must be taught after elementary level, in all classes of secondary school and in all areas of study."[5]
    2. ^ The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan states in Article 31 No. 2 that "The State shall endeavour, as respects the Muslims of Pakistan (a) to make the teaching of the Holy Quran and Islamiat compulsory, to encourage and facilitate the learning of Arabic language ..."[6]

    Further reading

    • Al Malwi, Ibrahim; Herrero De Haro, Alfredo; Baker, Amanda (2023). "Abha Arabic". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association: 1–19. , with supplementary sound recordings.

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