"Arabic" redirects here. For other uses, see Arabic (disambiguation).

This article is about the language. For the literary standard, see Modern Standa
rd Arabic. For vernaculars, see varieties of Arabic. For others, see Arabic lang
uages.
Arabic
???????/???? al-?arabiyyah/?arabi
Arabic albayancalligraphy.svg
al-?Arabiyyah in written Arabic (Naskh script)
Pronunciation /al ?arabijja/, /?arabi/
Native to Countries of the Arab League, minorities in neighboring countrie
s: Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Iran, Turkey etc.
Native speakers
290 million (2010)[1]
Language family
Afro-Asiatic
Semitic
Central Semitic
Arabic
Arabic
Standard forms
Modern Standard Arabic
Dialects
Western (Maghrebi)
Central (incl. Egyptian, Sudanese)
Northern (incl. Levantine, Mesopotamian)
Peninsular (Gulf, Hejazi, Najdi, Yemeni)
Writing system
Arabic alphabet
Arabic Braille
Syriac alphabet (Garshuni)
Hebrew alphabet (Judeo-Arabic languages)
Greek alphabet (Cypriot Maronite Arabic)
Latin script (Maltese)
Signed form(s)
Signed Arabic (national forms)
Official status
Official language in
Modern Standard Arabic is an official language of 27 states, the third most afte
r English and French[2]
List[show]
Regulated by
List[show]
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ar
ISO 639-2 ara
ISO 639-3 ara
{{{mapalt}}}
Use of Arabic as the sole official language (green) and an official language (bl
ue)
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Arabic Listeni/'r?b?k/ (??????? al-?arabiyyah [al?ara'bijja] ( listen) or ???? ,?
??? ?arabi ['?arabi?] ( listen)) is a name for what are traditionally considered
the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century. This inclu
des both the literary language and varieties of Arabic spoken in a wide arc of t
erritory, stretching across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Horn of Afric
a. Arabic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family.
The literary language is called Modern Standard Arabic or Literary Arabic, which
is a pluricentric, fusional language.[3] It is currently the only official form
of Arabic, used in most written documents as well as in formal spoken occasions
, such as lectures and news broadcasts. However, this varies from one country to
the other. Moroccan Arabic was official in Morocco for some time, before the la
tter nation joined the Arab League.
Arabic languages are Central Semitic languages, most closely related to Aramaic,
Hebrew, Ugaritic and Phoenician. The standardized written Arabic is distinct fr
om and more conservative than all of the spoken varieties, and the two exist in
a state known as diglossia, used side-by-side for different societal functions.
Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible,[4] both written and or
ally, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. This m
eans that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to consti
tute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single langu
age for political and/or religious reasons (see below). If considered multiple l
anguages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieti
es form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a sing
le language, it perhaps is spoken by as many as 420 million speakers (native and
non-native) in the Arab world,[5] making it one of the half dozen most populous
languages in the world. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken varie
ty would most likely be Egyptian Arabic, with 54 million native speakers[6]still
greater than any other Afro-Asiatic language. Arabic also is a liturgical langua
ge of 1.6 billion Muslim speakers.[7][8] It is one of six official languages of
the United Nations.[9]
The modern written language (Modern Standard Arabic) is derived from the languag
e of the Quran (known as Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic)[citation needed]. I
t is widely taught in schools, universities and used to varying degrees in workp
laces, government and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together a
s Literary Arabic, which is the official language of 26 states and the liturgica
l language of Islam. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the grammatical stan
dards of Quranic Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has di
scarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any co
unterpart in the spoken varieties and adopted certain new constructions and voca
bulary from the spoken varieties[citation needed]. Much of the new vocabulary is
used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, especially in
modern times.
Arabic is the only surviving member of the Ancient North Arabian dialect group a
ttested in pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century.[10][c
ontradictory] Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad scri
pt and is written from right-to-left although the spoken varieties are sometimes
written in ASCII Latin from left-to-right with no standardized forms.