Arabic (Arabic: ??????????????, al-?arabiyyah [?al?ara'bij?

ah] (About this sound

listen) or Arabic: ?????????? ?arabi ['?arabi?] (About this sound listen) or [?
ara'bij?]) is a Central Semitic language complex that first emerged in Iron Age
northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world.[5] It is named
after the Arabs, a term initially used to describe peoples living from Mesopotamia
in the east to the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, in northwestern Arabia, and
in the Sinai peninsula.

The modern written language (Modern Standard Arabic) is derived from Classical
Arabic. It is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying
degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are
grouped together as Literary Arabic (fu??a), which is the official language of 26
states and the liturgical language of Islam. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows
the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary.
However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no
longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties, and has adopted certain new
constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-classical era, especially
in modern times.

During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe,
especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European
languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in
vocabulary, is seen in European languages, mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent
Portuguese, Valencian and Catalan, owing to both the proximity of Christian
European and Muslim Arab civilizations and 800 years of Arabic culture and language
in the Iberian Peninsula, referred to in Arabic as al-Andalus. Sicilian has about
500 Arabic words as result of Sicily being progressively conquered by Saracens from
North Africa, from the mid 9th to mid 10th centuries. Many of these words relate to
agriculture and related activities (Hull and Ruffino). Balkan languages, including
Greek and Bulgarian, have also acquired a significant number of Arabic words
through contact with Ottoman Turkish.

Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. Some
of the most influenced languages are Persian, Turkish, Spanish, Maltese, Urdu,
Kashmiri, Kurdish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Hindi, Malay, Maldivian, Indonesian,
Pashto, Punjabi, Tagalog, Sindhi and Hausa and some languages in parts of Africa.
Conversely, Arabic has borrowed words from other languages including Greek and
Persian in medieval times, and contemporary European languages such as English and
French in modern times.

Classical Arabic is the liturgical language of 1.7 billion Muslims and Modern
Standard Arabic is one of six official languages of the United Nations.[6][7][8][9]
It is spoken by perhaps as many as 422 million speakers (native and non-native) in
the Arab world,[10] making it the fifth most spoken language in the world. Arabic
is written with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad script and is written from
right to left, although the spoken varieties are sometimes written in ASCII Latin
from left to right with no standardized orthography.

Contents [hide]
1 Classification
2 History
2.1 Old Arabic
2.2 Old Hijazi and Classical Arabic
2.3 Neo-Arabic
3 Classical, Modern Standard and spoken Arabic
4 Language and dialect
5 Influence of Arabic on other languages
6 Influence of other languages on Arabic
7 Arabic alphabet and nationalism
7.1 Lebanon
7.2 Egypt
8 The language of the Quran and its influence on Poetry
8.1 Quran's figurative devices
8.2 Structure
8.3 Culture and the Quran
8.4 Arabic and Islam
9 Dialects and descendants
9.1 Examples
9.2 Koine
9.3 Dialect groups
10 Phonology
10.1 History
10.2 Literary Arabic
10.2.1 Vowels
10.2.2 Consonants
10.2.3 Syllable structure
10.2.4 Stress
10.2.5 Levels of pronunciation
10.2.5.1 Full pronunciation with pausa
10.2.5.2 Formal short pronunciation
10.2.5.3 Informal short pronunciation
10.3 Colloquial varieties
10.3.1 Vowels
10.3.2 Consonants
11 Grammar
11.1 Literary Arabic
11.1.1 Nouns and adjectives
11.1.2 Verbs
11.1.3 Derivation
11.2 Colloquial varieties
12 Writing system
12.1 Calligraphy
12.2 Romanization
12.3 Numerals
13 Language-standards regulators
14 As a foreign language
15 Arabic speakers and other languages
16 See also
17 References
18 External links
Classification[edit]
Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic
languages (Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Phoenician), the Ancient South Arabian
languages, and various other Semitic languages of Arabia such as Dadanitic. The
Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment
of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the
Central Semitic languagesall maintained in Arabicinclude:

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 Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any
other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic
languages of the northern Hijaz. These features are evidence of common descent from
a hypothetical ancestor, Proto-Arabic. The following features can be reconstructed
with confidence for Proto-Arabic:[11]

negative particles m *ma; l?n *la-?an > CAr lan

maf?ul G-passive participle
prepositions and adverbs f, ?n, ?nd, ?t, ?kdy
a subjunctive in -a
t-demonstratives
leveling of the -at allomorph of the feminine ending
?n complementizer and subordinator
the use of f- to introduce modal clauses
independent object pronoun in (?)y
vestiges of nunation
History[edit]
Old Arabic[edit]
Main article: Old Arabic

Arabian Languages
Arabia boasted a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. In the southwest,
various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient
South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It is also believed that
the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages)
were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of
northern Hijaz, 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. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in a script derived from
ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic. Finally, 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 in fact early
forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic.[12]

Beginning in the 1st century CE, fragments of Northern Old Arabic are attested in
the Nabataean script across northern Arabia. By the 4th century CE, the Nabataean
Aramaic writing system had come to express varieties of Arabic other than that of
the Nabataeans.