Arabic Language,
the language of written communication and of most formal, oral communication
for speakers of Arabic dialects from Morocco to Iraq. Among Muslims, Arabic
is considered sacred since it is the language through which the Quran
is believed to have been revealed. With the rise of Islam as a dominant
religion after AD 622, Arabic became the most widespread of the living
Semitic languages. Classified as South Central Semitic, Arabic is related
to Hebrew, spoken in Israel, and Amharic, spoken in Ethiopia, as well
as to the ancient Semitic languages. The earliest written inscriptions
in Arabic are found in the Arabian Peninsula and date from the early 4th
century AD. Today, Arabic is a unifying bond among Arabs, and it is the
liturgical language of Muslims in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Indonesia, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Spoken
Arabic
The
term Arabic refers to the standard form of the language used in all writing
and heard on television and radio as well as in mosques. The diverse colloquial
dialects of Arabic are interrelated but vary considerably among speakers
from different parts of the Middle East. These dialects differ from standard
Arabic and from one another in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar
and are usually labeled according to major geographic areas, such as North
African, Egyptian, and Gulf. Within these broad classifications, the daily
speech of urban, rural, and nomadic speakers is distinctively different.
Illiterate speakers from widely separated parts of the Arab world may
not understand one another, although each is speaking a version of Arabic.The
sound system of Arabic has 28 consonants, including all the Semitic guttural
sounds produced far back in the mouth and throat. Each of the three vowels
in standard Arabic occurs in a long and short form, creating the long
and short syllables so important to the meter of Arabic poetry. Although
the dialects retain the long vowels, they have lost many of the short-vowel
contrasts.
Arabic
Grammar
All Arabic word formation
is based on an abstraction, namely, the root, usually consisting of three
consonants. These root sounds join with various vowel patterns to form
simple nouns and verbs to which affixes can be attached for more complicated
derivations. For example, the borrowed term bank is considered to have
the consonantal root b-n-k; film is formed from f-l-m (See also SEMITIC
LANGUAGES). Arabic has a very regular system of conjugating verbs and
altering their stems to indicate variations on the basic meaning. This
system is so regular that dictionaries of Arabic can refer to verbs by
a number system (I-X). From the root k-s-r, the form I verb is kasar,
"he broke"; form II is kassar, "he smashed to bits";
and form VII is inkasar, "it was broken up." Nouns and adjectives
are less regular in formation, and have many different plural patterns.
The so-called broken plurals are formed by altering the internal syllable
shape of the singular noun. For example, for the borrowed words bank and
film, the plurals are, respectively, bunuk for banks and aflam for films.
Normal sentence word
order in standard Arabic is verb-subject-object. In poetry and in some
prose styles, this word order can be altered; when that happens, subject
and object can be distinguished by their case endings, that is, by suffixes
that indicate the grammatical function of nouns. These suffixes are only
spelled out fully in school textbooks and in the Quran to ensure an absolutely
correct reading. In all other Arabic texts, these case endings (usually
short vowels) are omitted, as are all internal short-vowel markings. The
Arabic script does not include letters for these vowels; instead, they
are small marks set above and below the consonantal script.
Arabic
Script
The Arabic script,
which is derived from that of Aramaic, is written from right to left. It
is based on 18 distinct shapes that vary according to their connection to
preceding or following letters. Using a combination of dots above and below
8 of these shapes, the full complement of 28 consonants and the 3 long vowels
can be fully spelled out. The Arabic alphabet has been adopted by non-Semitic
languages such as Modern Persian, or Farsi, Urdu, Malay, and some West African
languages such as Hausa, for example. The use of verses from the Quran in
Arabic script for decoration has led to the development over 1400 years
of many different calligraphic styles. Calligraphy is a high art form in
the Arab world.
The long history of Arabic includes periods of high development
in literature. The Arabic of medieval writing is termed Classical Arabic.
Modern standard Arabic is a descendant of Classical Arabic; frequently,
however, the stylistic influence of French and English is evident. In
the 20th century, in particular, much scientific, medical, and technical
vocabulary has been borrowed from French and English.
Arabic
language
Arabic belongs
to the Semitic branch of AFROASIATIC LANGUAGES and is the national language
of about 250 million inhabitants of North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula,
Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. Outside these areas, it is spoken by Arabs
living in Israel, and in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, North and South
America, and Soviet Central Asia. Since it is the language of the QURAN
some limited knowledge of it exists throughout the Muslim world.
All Arabs have as their mother tongue some local variety of
Arabic. These vernaculars differ markedly so that, for example, Moroccan
Arabic is virtually unintelligible in Iraq. The local vernacular is used
in everyday commerce, but rarely written. Contrasting to the local vernaculars
is standard, or formal, Arabic, which is used for writing and formal speech.
Because it must be learned at school, large sectors of the Arab public
do not command it sufficiently to use it themselves, although radio and
other media are gradually spreading its comprehension. Standard Arabic
has remained remarkably stable. In grammar and basic vocabulary the Arabic
literature produced from the 8th century to the present is strikingly
homogeneous; the works of the medieval writers differ from modern standard
Arabic hardly more than Shakespeare's language differs from modern English.
Standard literary Arabic is capable of expressing the finest
shades of meaning. The vernaculars in their present form cannot perform
the same task. If they were adapted, such a development would fatally
split the unity of the Arab world. Today tensions exist between the
standard
language and the vernaculars, particularly in imaginative literature.
In drama the demand for realism favors the vernacular, and many poets
are tending toward their mother tongue. In the novel and short story,
the trend is toward having the characters speak in the vernacular while
the author uses formal language. Some of the most celebrated living novelists
and poets, however, write exclusively in the standard language.
