Arabic
This article needs attention from an expert in linguistics. The specific problem is: There seems to be some confusion surrounding the chronology of Arabic's origination, including notably in the paragraph on Qaryat Al-Faw (also discussed on talk). There are major sourcing gaps from "Literary Arabic" onwards.(August 2022) |
Arabic | |
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اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ al-ʿarabiyyah | |
L2 users of Modern Standard Arabic (2023)[2] | |
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Standard forms | |
Dialects | |
Arabic alphabet
Others
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Signed Arabic (different national forms) | |
Official status | |
Official language in |
International Organizations |
Recognised minority language in | |
Regulated by | List
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Language codes | |
Uzbeki Arabic | |
Glottolog | arab1395 |
Linguasphere | 12-AAC |
Sole official language, Arabic-speaking majority
Sole official language, Arabic-speaking minority
Co-official language, Arabic-speaking majority
Co-official language, Arabic-speaking minority | |
Arabic (اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ, al-ʿarabiyyah [al ʕaraˈbijːa] ⓘ or عَرَبِيّ, ʿarabīy [ˈʕarabiː] ⓘ or [ʕaraˈbij]) is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic 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 the
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
. 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,
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 between Proto-Semitic and the emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include:
- The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation (jalas-) into a past tense.
- The conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation (yajlis-) into a present tense.
- 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).
- The development of an internal passive.
There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the
- negative particles m * /mā/; lʾn */lā-ʾan/ to Classical Arabic lan
- mafʿūl G-passive participle
- prepositionsand adverbs f, ʿn, ʿnd, ḥt, ʿkdy
- a subjunctive in -a
- t-demonstratives
- leveling of the -at allomorph of the feminine ending
- ʾn complementizer and subordinator
- the use of f- to introduce modal clauses
- independent object pronoun in (ʾ)y
- 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—
The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an
Classical Arabic
In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the
In the late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the
Standardization
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 .[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
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
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
In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the
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
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]
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 many new words and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order. However, a more weighty 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 lī 'to me', laka 'to you', etc. into indirect-object clitic suffixes.
- Certain changes in the cardinal numbersystem, 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
- Egyptian Arabic is spoken by 67 million people in Egypt.[109] It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic, due in large part to the widespread distribution of Egyptian films and television shows throughout the Arabic-speaking world
- Levantine Arabic is spoken by about 44 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and Turkey.[110]
- Lebanese Arabic is a variety of Levantine Arabic spoken primarily in Lebanon.
- Kingdom of Jordan.
- Palestinian Arabic is a name of several dialects of the subgroup of Levantine Arabic spoken by the Palestinians in Palestine, by Arab citizens of Israel and in most Palestinian populations around the world.
- Samaritan Arabic, spoken by only several hundred in the Nablusregion
- Maghrebi Arabic, also called "Darija" spoken by about 70 million people in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. It also forms the basis of Maltese via the extinct Sicilian Arabic dialect.[112] Maghrebi Arabic is very hard to understand for Arabic speakers from the Mashriq or Mesopotamia, the most comprehensible being Libyan Arabic and the most difficult Moroccan Arabic. The others such as Algerian Arabic can be considered in between the two in terms of difficulty.
- Libyan Arabic spoken in Libya and neighboring countries.
- Tunisian Arabic spoken in Tunisia and North-eastern Algeria
- Algerian Arabic spoken in Algeria
- until 1962
- Moroccan Arabic spoken in Morocco
- Hassaniya Arabic (3 million speakers), spoken in Mauritania, Western Sahara, some parts of the Azawad in northern Mali, southern Morocco and south-western Algeria.
- Andalusian Arabic, spoken in Spainuntil the 16th century.
- Sicilian Arabic), was spoken in Sicily and Malta between the end of the 9th century and the end of the 12th century and eventually evolved into the Maltese language.
- Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic.[115] Maltese is different from Arabic and other Semitic languages since its morphology has been deeply influenced by Romance languages, Italian and Sicilian.[116] It is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script. In terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are reported to be able to understand less than a third of what is said to them in Tunisian Arabic,[117] which is related to Siculo-Arabic,[112] whereas speakers of Tunisian are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese.[118] This asymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility found between Maghrebi Arabic dialects.[119] Maltese has its own dialects, with urban varieties of Maltese being closer to Standard Maltese than rural varieties.[120]
- Khuzestan) and in the southeastern of Turkey (in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeastern Anatolia Region)
- North Mesopotamian Arabic is a spoken north of the Hamrin Mountains in Iraq, in western Iran, northern Syria, and in southeastern Turkey (in the eastern Mediterranean Region, Southeastern Anatolia Region, and southern Eastern Anatolia Region).[121]
- Judeo-Mesopotamian Arabic, also known as Iraqi Judeo Arabic and Yahudic, is a variety of Arabic spoken by Iraqi Jews of Mosul.
- Baghdad Arabic is the Arabic dialect spoken in Baghdad, and the surrounding cities and it is a subvariety of Mesopotamian Arabic.
- Baghdad Jewish Arabic is the dialect spoken by the Iraqi Jews of Baghdad.
- South Mesopotamian Arabic (Basrawi dialect) is the dialect spoken in southern Iraq, such as Basra, Dhi Qar and Najaf.[122]
- Khuzestan. This dialect is a mix of Southern Mesopotamian Arabic and Gulf Arabic.
- Khorasan.
- Kuwaiti Arabic is a Gulf Arabic dialect spoken in Kuwait.
- Sudanese Arabic is spoken by 17 million people in Sudan and some parts of southern Egypt. Sudanese Arabic is quite distinct from the dialect of its neighbor to the north; rather, the Sudanese have a dialect similar to the Hejazi dialect.
- Juba Arabic spoken in South Sudan and southern Sudan
- Hormozgan provinces. Although Gulf Arabic is spoken in Qatar, most Qatari citizens speak Najdi Arabic(Bedawi).
- Omani Arabic, distinct from the Gulf Arabic of Eastern Arabia and Bahrain, spoken in Central Oman. With recent oil wealth and mobility has spread over other parts of the Sultanate.
- Hadhramidescendants.
- Yemeni Arabic spoken in Yemen, and 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 Saudi Arabia. Most Qatari citizens speak Najdi Arabic (Bedawi).
- Hejazi Arabic (6 million speakers), spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
- Bahrani Shiʻah in Bahrain and Qatif, the dialect exhibits many big differences from Gulf Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
- Judeo-Arabic dialects – these are the dialects spoken by the Jews that had lived or continue to live in the Arab World. As Jewish migration to Israel took hold, the language did not thrive and is now considered endangered. So-called QəltuArabic.
- Chadian Arabic, spoken in Chad, Sudan, some parts of South Sudan, Central African Republic, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon
- Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan by around 8,000 people.[123][124] Tajiki Arabic is highly endangered.[125]
- Shirvani Arabic, spoken in Azerbaijan and Dagestan until the 1930s, now extinct.
Phonology
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History
Of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost: */ʃ/, which merged with /s/, while /ɬ/ became /ʃ/ (see
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
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
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
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]
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
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
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Modern Standard Arabic has six pure
]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 [] 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
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
]Consonants
Labial | Dental | Denti-alveolar | Post-alv./ Palatal |
Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | emphatic | |||||||||
Nasal
|
m | n
|
||||||||
Stop
|
voiceless
|
t
|
tˤ | k | q | ʔ | ||||
voiced
|
b | d
|
dˤ | d͡ʒ | (ɡ) | |||||
Fricative | voiceless
|
f | θ | s
|
sˤ | 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 (
/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
/l/ is pronounced as velarized [
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, ⟨ḍ⟩.
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
In surface pronunciation, every vowel must be preceded by a consonant (which may include the
- If the word occurs after another word ending in a consonant, there is a smooth transition from final consonant to initial vowel, e.g., الاجتماع al-ijtimāʻ 'meeting' /alid͡ʒtimaːʕ/.
- If the word occurs after another word ending in a vowel, the initial vowel of the word is elided, e.g., بيت المدير baytu (a)l-mudīr 'house of the director' /bajtulmudiːr/.
- If the word occurs at the beginning of an utterance, a glottal stop [ʔ] is added onto the beginning, e.g., البيت هو al-baytu huwa ... 'The house is ...' /ʔalbajtuhuwa ... /.
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 ishtarā 'he bought', yashtarī '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
Colloquial varieties
Vowels
|
|
As mentioned above, many spoken dialects have a process of emphasis spreading, where the "emphasis" (
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 iː uː/ remaining as half-long [aˑ iˑ 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
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 [
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 [θ 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 [θ ð ðˤ dˤ] in borrowed words as [s z zˤ 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 [] but the latter is not.
Grammar
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
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:
- كَتَبْتُ katabtu 'I wrote'
- كَتَّبْتُ kattabtu 'I had (something) written'
- كَاتَبْتُ kātabtu 'I corresponded (with someone)'
- أَكْتَبْتُ 'aktabtu 'I dictated'
- اِكْتَتَبْتُ iktatabtu 'I subscribed'
- تَكَاتَبْنَا takātabnā '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'
- نَتَكَتِبُ natakātabu 'we correspond each other'
- كُتِبَ kutiba 'it was written'
- أُكْتِبَ 'uktiba 'it was dictated'
- مَكْتُوبٌ maktūbun 'written'
- مُكْتَبٌ muktabun 'dictated'
- كِتَابٌ kitābun 'book'
- كُتُبٌ kutubun 'books'
- كَاتِبٌ kātibun 'writer'
- كُتَّابٌ kuttābun 'writers'
- مَكْتَبٌ maktabun 'desk, office'
- مَكْتَبَةٌ maktabatun 'library, bookshop'
- etc.
Nouns and adjectives
Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical
The feminine singular is often marked by ـَة /-at/, which is pronounced as /-ah/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the
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.
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
The past and non-past paradigms are sometimes termed
The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, كَتَبَ kataba 'to write'. In Modern Standard, the energetic mood, in either long or short form, which has 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 to 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
Examples of the different verbs formed from the root كتب k-t-b 'write' (using حمر ḥ-m-r 'red' for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):
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
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
The only three genuine suffixes are as follows:
- The feminine suffix -ah; variously derives terms for women from related terms for men, or more generally terms along the same lines as the corresponding masculine, e.g. maktabah 'library' (also a writing-related place, but different from maktab, as above).
- The nisbah suffix -iyy-. This suffix is extremely productive, and forms adjectives meaning "related to X". It corresponds to English adjectives in -ic, -al, -an, -y, -ist, etc.
- The feminine Gaddafi-specific variation jamāhīriyyah 'people's republic' (lit. "masses-ness", < jamāhīr 'the masses', pl. of jumhūr, as above).
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.
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
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through
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 (
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
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by
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
Letter | IPA | UNGEGN
|
ALA-LC
|
Wehr | DIN | ISO | SAS | - 2
|
BATR | ArabTeX | chat |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ء
|
ʔ | ʼ | ʾ | ˈ, ˌ | ʾ | ' | e | ' | 2 | ||
ا | aː | ā | ʾ | ā | aa | aa / A | a | a/e/é | |||
ي
|
j, iː | y | y; ī | y; e | y; ii | y | y; i/ee; ei/ai | ||||
ث | θ | th | ṯ | ç | ṯ | c | _t | s/th | |||
ج | d͡ʒ~ɡ~ʒ | j | ǧ | ŷ | j | j | ^g | j/g/dj | |||
ح | ħ | ḩ | ḥ | H | .h | 7 | |||||
خ | x | kh | ḵ | ḫ | ẖ | j | x | K | _h | kh/7'/5 | |
ذ | ð | dh | ḏ | đ | z' | _d | z/dh/th | ||||
ش | ʃ | sh | š | x | ^s | sh/ch | |||||
ص | sˤ | ş | ṣ | S | .s | s/9 | |||||
ض | dˤ | ḑ | ḍ | D | .d | d/9' | |||||
ط | tˤ | ţ | ṭ | T | .tu | t/6 | |||||
ظ | ðˤ~zˤ | z̧ | ẓ | đ̣ | Z | .z | z/dh/6' | ||||
ع | ʕ | ʻ | ʿ | ř | E | ' | 3 | ||||
غ | ɣ | gh | ḡ | ġ | g | j | g | .g | gh/3'/8 |
There are a number of different standards for the
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
These less "scientific" systems tend to avoid
During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as
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
Numerals
In most of present-day North Africa, the
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.
A scholar,
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.
Sample 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-LCArabic 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
- Arabic Ontology
- Arabic diglossia
- Arabic language influence on the Spanish language
- Arabic Language International Council
- Arabic literature
- Arabic–English Lexicon
- Arabist
- A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
- Glossary of Islam
- International Association of Arabic Dialectology
- List of Arab newspapers
- List of Arabic-language television channels
- List of Arabic given names
- List of arabophones
- List of countries where Arabic is an official language
- List of French words of Arabic origin
- Replacement of loanwords in Turkish
Notes
- ^ 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]
- ^ 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.
References
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In fact, Maltese displays some areal traits typical of Maghrebine Arabic, although over the past 800 years of independent evolution it has drifted apart from Tunisian Arabic
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Originally Maltese was an Arabic dialect but it was immediately exposed to Latinisation because the Normans conquered the islands in 1090, while Christianisation, which was complete by 1250, cut off the dialect from contact with Classical Arabic. Consequently Maltese developed on its own, slowly but steadily absorbing new words from Sicilian and Italian according to the needs of the developing community.
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Maltese is the chief exception: Classical or Standard Arabic is irrelevant in the Maltese linguistic community and there is no diglossia.
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yet it is in its morphology that Maltese also shows the most elaborate and deeply embedded influence from the Romance languages, Sicilian and Italian, with which it has long been in intimate contact….As a result Maltese is unique and different from Arabic and other Semitic languages.
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To summarise our findings, we might observe that when it comes to the most basic everyday language, as reflected in our data sets, speakers of Maltese are able to understand less than a third of what is being said to them in either Tunisian or Benghazi Libyan Arabic.
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Speakers of Tunisian and Libyan Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese.
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In comparison, speakers of Libyan Arabic and speakers of Tunisian Arabic understand about two-thirds of what is being said to them.
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