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146-571: The Arab world ( Arabic : اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ al-ʿālam al-ʿarabī ), formally the Arab homeland ( اَلْوَطَنُ الْعَرَبِيُّ al-waṭan al-ʿarabī ), also known as the Arab nation ( اَلْأُمَّةُ الْعَرَبِيَّةُ al-ummah al-ʿarabiyyah ), the Arabsphere , or the Arab states , comprises a large group of countries, mainly located in West Asia and North Africa . While the majority of people in

292-606: A Central Semitic group in southern Levant and northern Arabian peninsula . Arab tribes and federations such as Nabataeans , Tanukhids , Salihids , Ghassanids , and numerous other groups were prevalent in southern Levant ( Syrian Desert ) and northern Arabia. Their expansion beyond Arabia and the Syrian desert is due to the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. Iraq was conquered in 633, Levant (modern Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon ) between 636 and 640 CE. Egypt

438-579: A lingua franca (e.g., Turkey , Iran , Cyprus , Chad , Nigeria and Eritrea )– are particularly divergent in some respects, especially in their vocabularies, since they are less influenced by classical Arabic. However, historically they fall within the same dialect classifications as the varieties that are spoken in countries where Arabic is the dominant language. Because most of these peripheral dialects are located in Muslim majority countries, they are now influenced by Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic,

584-512: A Latin-based alphabet. It is the only Semitic language among the official languages of the European Union . Arabic-based pidgins (which have a limited vocabulary consisting mostly of Arabic words, but lack most Arabic morphological features) are in widespread use along the southern edge of the Sahara, and have been for a long time. In the eleventh century, the medieval geographer al-Bakri records

730-488: A certain dialect may be associated with backwardness and does not carry mainstream prestige—yet it will continue to be used as it carries a kind of covert prestige and serves to differentiate one group from another when necessary. A basic distinction that cuts across the entire geography of the Arabic-speaking world is between sedentary and nomadic varieties (often misleadingly called Bedouin ). The distinction stems from

876-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . 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

1022-507: A colloquial variety to add a spontaneous comment or respond to a question. The ratio of MSA to colloquial varieties depends on the speaker, the topic, and the situation—amongst other factors. Today even the least educated citizens are exposed to MSA through public education and exposure to mass media, and so tend to use elements of it in speaking to others. This is an example of what linguistics researchers call diglossia . See Linguistic register . Egyptian linguist Al-Said Badawi proposed

1168-414: A common ancestry, and incipient immigrant pidgins. Arabic is characterized by a wide number of varieties; however, Arabic speakers are often able to manipulate the way they speak based on the circumstances. There can be a number of motives for changing one's speech: the formality of a situation, the need to communicate with people with different dialects, to get social approval, to differentiate oneself from

1314-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

1460-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

1606-461: A dialect relatively different from formal Arabic may carry more prestige than a dialect closer to the formal language—this is the case in Bahrain, for example. Language mixes and changes in different ways. Arabic speakers often use more than one variety of Arabic within a conversation or even a sentence. This process is referred to as code-switching . For example, a woman on a TV program could appeal to

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1752-406: A high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. Egyptian Arabic is one of the most widely understood Arabic dialects due to a thriving Egyptian television and movie industry, and Egypt's highly influential role in the region for much of

1898-404: A highly divergent Siculo-Arabic language descended from Maghrebi Arabic is also provided. True pronunciations differ; transliterations used approach an approximate demonstration. Also, the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic differs significantly from region to region. "Peripheral" varieties of Arabic – that is, varieties spoken in countries where Arabic is not a dominant language and

2044-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

2190-429: A major distinction exists between the formal standardized language, found mostly in writing or in prepared speech, and the widely diverging vernaculars , used for everyday speaking situations. The latter vary from country to country, from speaker to speaker (according to personal preferences, education and culture), and depending on the topic and situation. In other words, Arabic in its natural environment usually occurs in

2336-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

2482-732: A mixture of Arab and Nubian elements. The Arab Abbasid Caliphate fell to the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Egypt, the Levant and Hejaz also came under the Turkish Mamluk Sultanate . By 1570, the Turkish Ottoman Empire controlled most of the Arab world. However, Morocco remained under the rule of the Zenata Wattasid dynasty , which was succeeded by the Saadi dynasty in

2628-422: A more detailed classification for modern variants of the language, which is divided into five major groups: Peninsular , Mesopotamian , Levantine , Egypto-Sudanic or Nile Valley (including Egyptian and Sudanese ), and Maghrebi . These large regional groups do not correspond to borders of modern states. In the western parts of the Arab world , varieties are referred to as الدارجة ad-dārija , and in

2774-464: A national cinema. While Egyptian and Lebanese cinema have a long history of production, most other Arab countries did not witness film production until after independence, and even today, the majority of film production in countries like Bahrain, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates is limited to television or short films. There is increased interest in films originating in

2920-553: A number of common innovations from CA. This has led to the suggestion, first articulated by Charles Ferguson , that a simplified koiné language developed in the army staging camps in Iraq, whence the remaining parts of the modern Arab world were conquered. In general, the rural varieties are more conservative than the sedentary varieties and the rural varieties within the Arabian peninsula are even more conservative than those elsewhere. Within

3066-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed 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 the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

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3212-462: 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 . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

3358-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

3504-556: A situation of diglossia , which means that its native speakers often learn and use two linguistic forms substantially different from each other, the Modern Standard Arabic (often called MSA in English) as the official language and a local colloquial variety (called العامية , al-ʿāmmiyya in many Arab countries, meaning " slang " or "colloquial"; or called الدارجة , ad-dārija , meaning "common or everyday language" in

3650-635: A southwestern region in the Khuzestan Province ; others inhabit the Bushehr and Hormozgan provinces and the city of Qom . Mali and Senegal recognize Hassaniya , the Arabic dialect of the Moorish ethnic minority, as a national language . Greece and Cyprus also recognize Cypriot Maronite Arabic under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . Additionally, Malta, though not part of

3796-497: A text in an Arabic-based pidgin, probably one that was spoken in the region corresponding to modern Mauritania . In some regions, particularly around South Sudan , the pidgins have creolized (see the list below). Immigrant speakers of Arabic often incorporate a significant amount of vocabulary from the host-country language in their speech, in a situation analogous to Spanglish in the United States. Even within countries where

3942-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

4088-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

4234-468: A very weak grasp of the formal language. In another example, groups of educated speakers from different regions will often use dialectical forms that represent a middle ground between their dialects rather than trying to use the formal language, to make communication easier and more comprehensible. For example, to express the existential "there is" (as in, "there is a place where..."), Arabic speakers have access to many different words: In this case, /fiː/

4380-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

4526-572: Is a regional organisation that aims, among other things, to consider in a general way the affairs and interests of the Arab countries and sets out the following definition of an Arab: An Arab is a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arab country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arab people. This standard territorial definition is sometimes seen to be inappropriate or problematic, and may be supplemented with certain additional elements (see ancillary linguistic definition below). As an alternative to, or in combination with,

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4672-584: Is a member-state of the Arab League, although both Chad and Eritrea are observer states of the League (with possible future membership) and have large populations of Arabic speakers. Israel is not a part of the Arab world. By some definitions, Arab citizens of Israel may concurrently be considered a constituent part of the Arab world. Iran has about 1.5 million Arabic speakers. Iranian Arabs are mainly found in Ahvaz ,

4818-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

4964-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. 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 . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

5110-487: Is also an Afro-Asiatic language. The majority of the population speaks Somali and Afar, although Arabic is also widely used for trade and other activities. The Comoros has three official languages: Arabic, Comorian and French. Comorian is the most widely spoken language, with Arabic having a religious significance, and French being associated with the educational system. Chad , Eritrea and Israel all recognize Arabic as an official or working language, but none of them

5256-469: 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. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

5402-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . 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. 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

5548-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), 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 ). 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

5694-678: Is known as the Mashriq , and the western part as the Maghreb . According to the World Bank , the Arab world has a total population of 456 million inhabitants and a gross domestic product of $ 2.85 trillion, as of 2021. The region is nevertheless diverse in many ways, and economically includes some of the wealthiest as well as poorest populations. The region mostly corresponds with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) definition. In post-classical history ,

5840-487: Is learned as the speaker's first language whilst the formal language is subsequently learned in school. While vernacular varieties differ substantially, Fus'ha ( فصحى ), the formal register , is standardized and universally understood by those literate in Arabic. Western scholars make a distinction between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic while speakers of Arabic generally do not consider CA and MSA to be different varieties. The largest differences between

5986-516: Is most likely to be used as it is not associated with a particular region and is the closest to a dialectical middle ground for this group of speakers. Moreover, given the prevalence of movies and TV shows in Egyptian Arabic, the speakers are all likely to be familiar with it. Iraqi/Kuwaiti aku , Levantine fīh and North African kayn all evolve from Classical Arabic forms ( yakūn , fīhi , kā'in respectively), but now sound different. Sometimes

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6132-435: Is moulded by this religious framework, reflecting the collective identity and adjusting to the intricate balance of belief systems. Religion in this context functions as a sociopolitical construct, inextricably linked to the authority of the state and its historical evolution. It speaks for the individual, often before they can express themselves, and thus, the interplay between faith and politics must be fully understood to grasp

6278-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

6424-676: Is not really possible to keep this classification, partly because the modern dialects, especially urban variants, typically amalgamate features from both norms. Geographically, modern Arabic varieties are classified into five groups: Maghrebi , Egyptian (including Egyptian and Sudanese ), Mesopotamian , Levantine and Peninsular Arabic . Speakers from distant areas, across national borders, within countries and even between cities and villages, can struggle to understand each other's dialects. The greatest variations between kinds of Arabic are those between regional language groups. Arabic dialectologists formerly distinguished between just two groups:

6570-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

6716-615: Is pronounced as a voiced /ɡ/ in the urban varieties of the Arabian Peninsula (e.g. the Hejazi dialect in the ancient cities of Mecca and Medina ) as well as in the Bedouin dialects across all Arabic-speaking countries, but is voiceless mainly in post- Arabized urban centers as either /q/ (with [ɡ] being an allophone in a few words mostly in North African cities) or /ʔ/ (merging ⟨ ق ⟩ with ⟨ ء ⟩ ) in

6862-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

7008-411: Is the study of how language usage is affected by societal factors, e.g., cultural norms and contexts (see also pragmatics ). The following sections examine some of the ways that modern Arab societies influence how Arabic is spoken. In the Arab world, religion transcends the boundaries of personal belief, functioning as a pervasive and influential force in every facet of life. It is deeply embedded within

7154-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

7300-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

7446-555: Is used by Arabic speakers over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the Arabic alphabet is unavailable or difficult to use for technical reasons; this is also used in Modern Standard Arabic when Arabic speakers of different dialects communicate each other. Three scientific papers concluded, using various natural language processing techniques, that Levantine dialects (and especially Palestinian) were

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7592-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

7738-436: Is widely spoken; whether Arabic is an official or national language; or whether an Arabic cognate language is widely spoken. While Arabic dialects are spoken in a number of Arab League states, Literary Arabic is official in all of them. Several states have declared Arabic to be an official or national language , although Arabic is not as widely spoken there. As members of the Arab League, however, they are considered part of

7884-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) 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

8030-646: The Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , 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 "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

8176-780: The Arab League , an international organization, which on top of the 19 plurality Arab states also includes the Bantu -speaking Comoros , and the Cushitic -speaking Djibouti and Somalia . The region stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The eastern part of the Arab world

8322-680: The Arabic alphabet . Vernacular Arabic was first recognized as a written language distinct from Classical Arabic in 17th century Ottoman Egypt , when the Cairo elite began to trend towards colloquial writing. A record of the Cairo vernacular of the time is found in the dictionary compiled by Yusuf al-Maghribi . More recently, many plays and poems, as well as a few other works exist in Lebanese Arabic and Egyptian Arabic ; books of poetry, at least, exist for most varieties. In Algeria , colloquial Maghrebi Arabic

8468-872: The Druzes (mainly in Syria and also in Lebanon, Jordan) and Mandaeans (in Iraq). Formerly, there were significant minorities of Jews throughout the Arab World. However, the Arab–Israeli conflict prompted their mass exodus between 1948 and 1972. Today small Jewish communities remain, ranging anywhere from just 10 in Bahrain , to more than 1,000 in Tunisia and some 3,000 in Morocco . Historically, slavery in

8614-534: The Hebrew and Aramaic languages. Though they have features similar to each other, they are not a homogeneous unit and still belong philologically to the same family groupings as their non-Judeo counterpart varieties. There have been a number of Arabic-based pidgins and creoles throughout history, including a number of new ones emerging today. These may be broadly divided into the Sudanic pidgins and creoles, which share

8760-537: The Maghreb ), in different aspects of their lives. This situation is often compared in Western literature to the Latin language, which maintained a cultured variant and several vernacular versions for centuries, until it disappeared as a spoken language, while derived Romance languages became new languages, such as Italian , Catalan , Aragonese , Occitan , French , Arpitan , Spanish , Portuguese , Asturleonese , Romanian and more. The regionally prevalent variety

8906-474: The Maghrebi Arabic group, first-person singular verbs begin with a n- ( ن ). Further substantial differences exist between Bedouin and sedentary speech, the countryside and major cities, ethnic groups, religious groups, social classes, men and women, and the young and the old. These differences are to some degree bridgeable. Often, Arabic speakers can adjust their speech in a variety of ways according to

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9052-473: The Mashreq . The majority of the vocabulary in these vernaculars is shared with Standard Arabic, but they also significantly borrow from other languages, such as Berber , French , Spanish and Italian in the Maghreb. Although no globally accepted definition of the Arab world exists, all countries that are members of the Arab League are generally acknowledged as being part of the Arab world. The Arab League

9198-430: The Mashriq at 73.6%. The United Nations published an Arab human development report in 2002, 2003 and 2004. These reports, written by researchers from the Arab world, address some sensitive issues in the development of Arab countries: women empowerment, availability of education and information among others. There is no single description of Arab cinema since it includes films from various countries and cultures of

9344-608: The Mashriqi (eastern) dialects, east of Libya which includes the dialects of Arabian Peninsula , Mesopotamia , Levant , Egypt , Sudan , and the Maghrebi (western) dialects which includes the dialects of North Africa ( Maghreb ) west of Egypt . The mutual intelligibility is high within each of those two groups, while the intelligibility between the two groups is asymmetric : Maghrebi speakers are more likely to understand Mashriqi than vice versa. Arab dialectologists have now adopted

9490-503: The Middle East , film production was scarce until the late 1960s and early 1970s when filmmakers began to receive funding and financial assistance from state organizations. This was during the post-independence and is when most Arab cinema took root. Most films produced at that time were funded by the state and contained a nationalistic dimension. These films helped to advance certain social causes such as independence, and other social, economic and political agendas. A sustained film industry

9636-767: The Nubian languages . Egyptian varieties are influenced by the Coptic language . Mesopotamian varieties are influenced by the Mesopotamian languages ( Sumerian , Akkadian , Mandaic , Eastern Aramaic ), Turkish language , and Iranian languages . Levantine varieties (ISO 639–3: apc ) are influenced Western Aramaic languages , and to a lesser extent, the Turkish language and Greek and Persian and Ancient Egyptian language : Some peninsular varieties are influenced by South Arabian Languages . Jewish varieties are influenced by

9782-467: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

9928-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: 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. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

10074-428: The standard territorial definition , various parameters may be applied to determine whether a state or territory should be included in this alternative definition of the Arab world. These parameters may be applied to the states and territories of the Arab League (which constitute the Arab world under the standard definition) and to other states and territories. Typical parameters that may be applied include: whether Arabic

10220-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an 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. In

10366-743: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Varieties of Arabic In terms of sociolinguistics ,

10512-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. 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." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

10658-742: The 16th to 17th centuries. The Ajuran Sultanate also held sway in the southern part of the Horn region. The sentiment of Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalisms within the declining Ottoman Empire . When the Ottoman Empire collapsed as a result of World War I , much of the Arab world came to be controlled by the European colonial empires: Mandatory Palestine , Mandatory Iraq , British protectorate of Egypt , French protectorate of Morocco , Italian Libya , French Tunisia , French Algeria , Mandate for Syria and

10804-450: The 20th century. Another way that varieties of Arabic differ is that some are formal and others are colloquial (that is, vernacular). There are two formal varieties, or اللغة الفصحى al-lugha(t) al-fuṣḥá , One of these, known in English as Modern Standard Arabic ( MSA ), is used in contexts such as writing, broadcasting, interviewing, and speechmaking. The other, Classical Arabic, is

10950-514: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. 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

11096-764: 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 . 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 ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

11242-485: The Arab world adhere to Islam , and the religion has official status in most countries. Shariah law exists partially in the legal system in some countries (especially in the Arabian Peninsula ), while others are legislatively secular . The majority of the Arab countries adhere to Sunni Islam . Iraq and Bahrain , however, are Shia majority countries, while Lebanon , Yemen , and Kuwait have large Shia minorities. In Saudi Arabia , Ismailite pockets are also found in

11388-552: The Arab world and therefore does not have one form, structure, or style. In its inception, Arab cinema was mostly an imitation of Western cinema. However, it has and continues to constantly change and evolve. It mostly includes films made in Egypt , Lebanon , Syria , Iraq , Kuwait , Algeria , Morocco , and Tunisia . Egypt is a pioneer in the field, but each country in the region has its own unique cinema. Elsewhere in North Africa and

11534-413: The Arab world are ethnically Arab , there are also significant populations of other ethnic groups such as Berbers , Kurds , Somalis and Nubians , among other groups . Arabic is used as the lingua franca throughout the Arab world. The Arab world is at its minimum defined as the 19 states where Arabs form at least a plurality of the population. At its maximum it consists of the 22 members of

11680-606: The Arab world under the standard territorial definition. Somalia has two official languages, Arabic and Somali , while Somaliland has three, Arabic, Somali and English . Both Arabic and Somali belong to the larger Afro-Asiatic language family. Although Arabic is widely spoken by many people in the north and urban areas in the south, Somali is the most widely used language, and contains many Arabic loan words . Similarly, Djibouti has two official languages, Arabic and French . It also has several formally recognized national languages; besides Somali, many people speak Afar , which

11826-499: The Arab world was synonymous with the historic Arab empires and caliphates. Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire . The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of Arab people and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab countries; a project known as Pan-Arabism . In page 9 of Best Divisions for Knowledge of

11972-494: The Arab world, both communities in Baghdad share Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as the prestigious form of the language. However, the Muslim colloquial dialect is more closely associated with power and economic dominance, reflecting the greater influence of the Muslim community in the city. Consequently, Christians often adopt the Muslim dialect in formal or public contexts—such as a Christian school teacher addressing students—demonstrating

12118-407: The Arab world, has as its official language Maltese . The language is grammatically akin to Maghrebi Arabic. In the Arab world, Modern Standard Arabic , derived from Classical Arabic (symptomatic of Arabic diglossia ), serves as an official language in the Arab League states, and Arabic dialects are used as lingua franca. Various indigenous languages are also spoken, which predate the spread of

12264-542: The Arab world. For example, films from Algeria , Lebanon , Morocco , Palestine , Syria and Tunisia are making wider and more frequent rounds than ever before in local film festivals and repertoire theaters. Arab cinema has explored many topics from politics, colonialism, tradition, modernity and social taboos. It has also attempted to escape from its earlier tendency to mimic and rely on Western film devices. In fact, colonization did not only influence Arab films, but it also had an impact on Arab movies theaters. Apart from

12410-468: The Arabic language. This contrasts with the situation in the wider Islamic world , where, in contiguous Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Perso-Arabic script is used and Arabic is the primary liturgical language, but the tongue is not official at the state level or spoken as a vernacular . Arabs constitute around one quarter of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the Islamic world. The majority of people in

12556-557: The Arabic varieties of the Qur'an and their Arabic-speaking neighbours, respectively. Probably the most divergent non-creole Arabic variety is Cypriot Maronite Arabic , a nearly extinct variety that has been heavily influenced by Greek , and written in Greek and Latin alphabets. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic . Its vocabulary has acquired a large number of loanwords from Sicilian , Italian and more recently English , and it uses only

12702-565: The GPI of Yemen is only 0.46 in a 53% adult literacy rate. Literacy rate is higher among the youth than adults. Youth literacy rate (ages 15–24) in the Arab region increased from 63.9 to 76.3% from 1990 to 2002. The average rate of GCC States * Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) was 94%, followed by the Maghreb at 83.2% and

12848-519: The Iraq War and the mass emigration of Iraqi Christians in the early 21st century. In Baghdad , notable differences exist between the Arabic spoken by Christian and Muslim residents. The Christian community in Baghdad is longstanding, and their dialect traces its roots to the sedentary vernacular of urban medieval Iraq. By contrast, the typical Muslim dialect of the city is a more recent development, originating from Bedouin speech patterns. As in other parts of

12994-429: The Lebanon and the so-called Trucial States , a British protectorate formed by the sheikhdoms on the former "Pirate Coast". Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) is a Central Semitic language of

13140-484: The Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) to be part of the Arab regions. Malta , an island country in Southern Europe whose national language derives from Arabic (through Sicilian Arabic ), is not included in the region. Similarly, Chad , Eritrea and Israel recognize Arabic as one of their official or working languages but are not included in

13286-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

13432-434: The Muslim world developed out of pre-Islamic practices of slavery in the Arab world . According to UNESCO , the average rate of adult literacy (ages 15 and older) in this region is 78% . In Mauritania the rate is lower than the average, at less than 50%. Bahrain , Palestine , Kuwait , Qatar , and Jordan record a high adult literacy rate of over 95%. The average rate of adult literacy shows steady improvement, and

13578-566: The Nile Valley, Levant and northern Iraq respectively. There are also Assyrian , Armenian , Syriac - Aramean and Arab Christians throughout Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. There are also native Arab Christian communities in Algeria, Bahrain, Morocco, Kuwait and Tunisia. Smaller ethno-religious minorities across the Arab League include the Yezidis , Yarsan and Shabaks (mainly in Iraq),

13724-626: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

13870-468: The Regions , 10th century Arab geographer Al Maqdisi used the term Arab regions ( Arabic : أَقَالِيمُ ٱلْعَرَبِ ) to refer to the lands of the Arabian Peninsula (Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen). He also considered Iraq, alongside Upper Mesopotamia (Iraq, Syria and Turkey), Ash-Sham (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey), Egypt and

14016-463: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

14162-512: The Sunni Arabs. This socio-political dynamic exerts a profound influence on the evolution of language in Bahrain, steering its development in line with the interests and cultural practices of the Sunni minority. The case of Iraq further exemplifies how religious affiliation can significantly influence linguistic variation within the Arab world. This observation is drawn from a study conducted prior to

14308-446: The Sunni population, which began migrating to the island in the 18th century. Despite being a minority, the Sunni population holds a dominant position, with the ruling family of Bahrain being Sunni. This dominance is reflected in the public sphere, where the colloquial language presented on television and in media is almost exclusively that of the Sunni community. As a result, power, prestige, and economic control are closely associated with

14454-495: The absolute number of adult illiterates fell from 64 million to around 58 million between 1990 and 2000–2004. Overall, the gender disparity in adult literacy is high in this region, and of the illiteracy rate, women account for two-thirds, with only 69 literate women for every 100 literate men. The average GPI (Gender Parity Index) for adult literacy is 0.72, and gender disparity can be observed in Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen. Above all,

14600-441: The age of 18. Rapists are often treated leniently or acquitted in the Arab region if they marry their victims. 37% of Arab women experienced violence in their lifetime, but the numbers may be higher according to indicators. In some countries, the share of women experiencing violence and abuse by intimate partner reaches 70%. Table of largest cities in the Arab world by official city propers : The Arabs historically originate as

14746-514: The authority of the formal language by using elements of it in her speech in order to prevent other speakers from cutting her off. Another process at work is "leveling", the "elimination of very localised dialectical features in favour of more regionally general ones." This can affect all linguistic levels—semantic, syntactic, phonological, etc. The change can be temporary, as when a group of speakers with substantially different Arabics communicate, or it can be permanent, as often happens when people from

14892-601: The classical/standard and the colloquial Arabic are the loss of grammatical case ; a different and strict word order; the loss of the previous system of grammatical mood , along with the evolution of a new system; the loss of the inflected passive voice , except in a few relic varieties; restriction in the use of the dual number and (for most varieties) the loss of the distinctive conjugation and agreement for feminine plurals . Many Arabic dialects, Maghrebi Arabic in particular, also have significant vowel shifts and unusual consonant clusters . Unlike other dialect groups, in

15038-418: The closest colloquial varieties, in terms of lexical similarity , to Modern Standard Arabic: Harrat et al. (2015, comparing MSA to two Algerian dialects, Tunisian, Palestinian, and Syrian), El-Haj et al. (2018, comparing MSA to Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, and North African Arabic), and Abu Kwaik et al. (2018, comparing MSA to Algerian, Tunisian, Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Egyptian). Sociolinguistics

15184-457: The complexities of the language and culture of the Arab world. Religion and politics here are intertwined to such a degree that they cannot be separated. Bahrain offers a clear example of the intricate relationship between religion, identity, and societal structures in the Arab world. A significant distinction exists between the Shiite population, Bahrain's oldest and most established community, and

15330-451: The context and to their intentions—for example, to speak with people from different regions, to demonstrate their level of education or to draw on the authority of the spoken language. In terms of typological classification, Arabic dialectologists distinguish between two basic norms: Bedouin and Sedentary. This is based on a set of phonological, morphological, and syntactic characteristics that distinguish between these two norms. However, it

15476-400: The context. This is not the only source of prestige, though. Many studies have shown that for most speakers, there is a prestige variety of vernacular Arabic. In Egypt, for non-Cairenes, the prestige dialect is Cairo Arabic. For Jordanian women from Bedouin or rural background, it may be the urban dialects of the big cities, especially including the capital Amman. Moreover, in certain contexts,

15622-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. 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

15768-415: The countryside move to the city and adopt the more prestigious urban dialect, possibly over a couple of generations. This process of accommodation sometimes appeals to the formal language, but often does not. For example, villagers in central Palestine may try to use the dialect of Jerusalem rather than their own when speaking with people with substantially different dialects, particularly since they may have

15914-401: The current state of Arab cinema. Women in the Arab world are still denied equality of opportunity , although their disenfranchisement is a critical factor crippling the Arab nations' quest to return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce, learning and culture, according to a United Nations -sponsored report in 2008. According to the United Nations, 14% of Arab girls are married by

16060-500: The eastern Al-Hasa region and the southern city of Najran. Ibadi Islam is practiced in Oman , where Ibadis constitute around 75% of Muslims. There are also Christian adherents in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt , Syria , Lebanon , Iraq , Jordan , and Palestine . Small native Christian communities can be found also throughout the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa . Coptic , Maronite and Assyrian Christian enclaves exist in

16206-399: The eastern parts, as العامية al-ʿāmmiyya . Nearby varieties of Arabic are mostly mutually intelligible , but faraway varieties tend not to be. Varieties west of Egypt are particularly disparate, with Egyptian Arabic speakers claiming difficulty in understanding North African Arabic speakers, while North African Arabic speakers' ability to understand other Arabic speakers is mostly due to

16352-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: 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

16498-728: 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. 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. In around

16644-481: The extent to which language in Baghdad, and the wider Arab world, is shaped by the prevailing sociopolitical landscape. When it comes to phonetics the Arabic dialects differ in the pronunciation of the short vowels ( / a / , / u / and / i / ) and a number of selected consonants, mainly ⟨ق⟩ /q/ , ⟨ج⟩ /d͡ʒ/ and the interdental consonants ⟨ث⟩ /θ/ , ⟨ذ⟩ /ð/ and ⟨ظ⟩ /ðˤ/ , in addition to

16790-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

16936-464: The following distinctions between the different "levels of speech" involved when speakers of Egyptian Arabic switch between vernacular and formal Arabic varieties: Almost everyone in Egypt is able to use more than one of these levels of speech, and people often switch between them, sometimes within the same sentence. This is generally true in other Arabic-speaking countries as well. The spoken dialects of Arabic have occasionally been written, usually in

17082-453: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

17228-418: The history of Arab cinema, recently the portrayal of women became an important aspect in the production of Arab cinema. Arab women shaped a great portion of the film industry in the Arab world by employing their cinematic talents in improving the production of Arab films. The production of Arab cinema has declined in the last decades and many filmmakers in the Middle East gathered to hold a meeting and discuss

17374-526: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

17520-587: The language of the Qur'an . It is rarely used except in reciting the Qur'an or quoting older classical texts. (Arabic speakers typically do not make an explicit distinction between MSA and Classical Arabic.) Modern Standard Arabic was deliberately developed in the early part of the 19th century as a modernized version of Classical Arabic. People often use a mixture of both colloquial and formal Arabic. For example, interviewers or speechmakers generally use MSA in asking prepared questions or making prepared remarks, then switch to

17666-558: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

17812-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of 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. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

17958-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

18104-465: The listener, when citing a written text to differentiate between personal and professional or general matters, to clarify a point, and to shift to a new topic. An important factor in the mixing or changing of Arabic is the concept of a prestige dialect . This refers to the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect within a speech community. The formal Arabic language carries a considerable prestige in most Arabic-speaking communities, depending on

18250-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

18396-768: 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'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

18542-683: The official language is Arabic, different varieties of Arabic are spoken. For example, within Syria, the Arabic spoken in Homs is recognized as different from the Arabic spoken in Damascus, but both are considered to be varieties of "Levantine" Arabic. And within Morocco, the Arabic of the city of Fes is considered different from the Arabic spoken elsewhere in the country. Geographically distant colloquial varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research by Trentman & Shiri indicates

18688-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

18834-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. 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

18980-427: The region because they are not members of the Arab League. The linguistic and political denotation inherent in the term Arab is generally dominant over genealogical considerations. In Arab states, Standard Arabic is used by the government. Local vernacular languages are referred to as Darija ( الدَّارِجَة "everyday/colloquial language") in the Maghreb or Aammiyya ( ٱلْعَامِيَّة "common language") in

19126-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

19272-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

19418-399: The sedentary varieties, the western varieties (particularly, Moroccan Arabic ) are less conservative than the eastern varieties. A number of cities in the Arabic world speak a "Bedouin" variety, which acquires prestige in that context. The following example illustrates similarities and differences between the literary, standardized varieties, and major urban dialects of Arabic. Maltese ,

19564-430: The settlement patterns in the wake of the Arab conquests. As regions were conquered, army camps were set up that eventually grew into cities, and settlement of the rural areas by nomadic Arabs gradually followed thereafter. In some areas, sedentary dialects are divided further into urban and rural variants. The most obvious phonetic difference between the two groups is the pronunciation of the letter ق qaf , which

19710-440: The social fabric, permeating language, politics, and cultural identity. From birth, individuals are not only given a name but are also ascribed a place within a specific religious order: whether as Muslims, divided into Sunni or Shia , or as Christians , Druze , or Jews . These religious identities are not fluid or optional; rather, they are firmly entrenched, shaping and defining the individual’s experience. Even language itself

19856-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

20002-405: The standard territorial definition, the Arab world may be defined as consisting of peoples and states united to at least some degree by Arabic language, culture or geographic contiguity, or those states or territories in which the majority of the population speaks Arabic, and thus may also include populations of the Arab diaspora . When an ancillary linguistic definition is used in combination with

20148-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . 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, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

20294-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). 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. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

20440-695: The urban centers of Egypt and the Levant . The latter were mostly Arabized after the Islamic Conquests . The other major phonetic difference is that the rural varieties preserve the Classical Arabic (CA) interdentals /θ/ ث and /ð/ ذ, and merge the CA emphatic sounds /ɮˤ/ ض and /ðˤ/ ظ into /ðˤ/ rather than sedentary /dˤ/ . The most significant differences between rural Arabic and non-rural Arabic are in syntax. The sedentary varieties in particular share

20586-514: The widespread popularity of Egyptian and Levantine popular media (for example Syrian or Lebanese TV shows). This phenomenon is called asymmetric intelligibility . One factor in the differentiation of the varieties is the influence from other languages previously spoken or still presently spoken in the regions, such as Western varieties are influenced by the Berber languages , Punic and by Romance languages . Sudanese varieties are influenced by

20732-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

20878-424: Was able to emerge in Egypt when other parts of the Arab world had only been able to sporadically produce feature-length films due to limited financing. Arabic cinema is dominated by films from Egypt . Three quarters of all Arab movies are produced in Egypt. According to film critic and historian Roy Armes, the cinema of Lebanon is the only other in the Arabic-speaking region, beside Egypt's, that could amount to

21024-548: Was advocated for Lebanese Arabic by Said Aql , whose supporters published several books in his transcription. In 1944, Abdelaziz Pasha Fahmi, a member of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Egypt proposed the replacement of the Arabic alphabet with the Latin alphabet. His proposal was discussed in two sessions in the communion but was rejected, and faced strong opposition in cultural circles. The Latin alphabet (as " Arabizi ")

21170-484: Was conquered in 639, and gradually Arabized during the medieval period. A distinctively Egyptian Arabic language emerged by the 16th century. The Maghreb was also conquered in the 7th century, and gradually Arabized under the Fatimids . Islam was brought to Sudan from Egypt during the 8th to 11th centuries. The culture of Sudan today depends on the tribe, some have a pure Nubian, Beja , or Arabic culture and some have

21316-453: Was taught as a separate subject under French colonization, and some textbooks exist. Mizrahi Jews throughout the Arab world who spoke Judeo-Arabic dialects rendered newspapers, letters, accounts, stories, and translations of some parts of their liturgy in the Hebrew alphabet , adding diacritics and other conventions for letters that exist in Judeo-Arabic but not Hebrew. The Latin alphabet

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