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Arabic Language |
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Arabic Language? Search on ARAB! |
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Arabic Language, the language of written communication and of most formal, oral communication for speakers of Arabic dialects from Morocco to Iraq.
Before the spread of Islam and, with it, the Arabic language, "Arab" referred to any of the largely
nomadic Semitic inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.
In modern usage, it embraces any of the Arabic-speaking peoples living in the vast region from Mauritania, on the Atlantic coast of Africa, to southwestern Iran, including
the entire Maghrib of North Africa, Egypt and The Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, and Syria and Iraq. |
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Among Muslims, Arabic is considered sacred since it is the language through
which the Koran 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.
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.
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 Koran 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.
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