Arabic
The expressions Arabic and Classical Arabic usually refer to ?al luGat ul?\arabi:yat ulfus'X\a: ( Literally: the pure Arabic language - اللغة العربية؛الفصحى ) which is, according to Arabic speakers, both the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East (from Morocco to Iraq) and the language of the Qur'an. The expression media includes not only television, radio, newspapers and magazines, but also all written matter, including all books, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.
The term Modern Standard Arabic is sometimes used in the West to refer to the language of the media as opposed to the language of "classical" Arabic literature; Arabs make no such distinction, and regard the two as identical. The word "Arabic" also refers to the many national or regional dialects/languages derived from Classical Arabic, spoken daily across North Africa and the Middle East, which sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are not frequently written, although a certain amount of literature (particularly plays and poetry) exists in many of them, notably Lebanon and Egypt.
It is sometimes difficult to translate Islamic concepts, and concepts specific to Arab culture, without using the original Arabic terminology. The Qur'an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deem it impossible to translate in a way that would adequately reflect its exact meaning - indeed, until recently, some schools of thought maintained that it should not be translated at all. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are too specific to translate in one phrase. While Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of salat), it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Oriental Jews, and indeed Iraqi Mandaeans; and, of course, the vast majority of the world's Muslims do not actually speak it; they only know some fixed phrases of Arabic, as used in Islamic prayer.
The English word algorithm is derived from the name of the inventor of algebra - an Arabic word like alchemy, alcohol, azimuth, nadir, and zenith. See a List of English words of Arabic origin. Arabic numerals are what we use in English - but, except in some North African countries, modern Arabs generally use what they call "Hindi numerals". Spanish is the European language with the most borrowings from Arabic.
Arabic is a Semitic language, fairly closely related to, for instance, the Hebrew language and the Aramaic language. Many dialects are spoken in modern Arabic states such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco, but all of these countries use Modern Standard Arabic for printed media. Its function however is different from that of Western standard languages: it is used for practically all writing, but is spoken only on formal or academic occasions. Consequently, prestigious vernacular varieties (especially Egyptian Arabic) fulfill some of the functions that standard languages have in Western countries (see Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory).
Dialects
See Varieties of Arabic for a fuller overview.
"Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the Maghreb dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Maltese, though descended from Arabic, is considered a separate language. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern films and other media.)
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fiih, and North African kayen all mean "there is", and all come from Arabic (yakuun, fiihi, kaa'in respectively), but now sound very different.
The main groups are:
- Maghreb Arabic
- Andalusi Arabic (extinct)
- Egyptian Arabic
- Sudanese Arabic
- Levantine Arabic
- Iraqi Arabic
- Gulf Arabic
- Najdi Arabic
- Yemeni Arabic
Alphabet
Main article: Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (which variety, Nabataean or Syriac, is a matter of scholarly dispute), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (Maghrebi) and Eastern version of the alphabet - in particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals.) However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like Hebrew, is written from right to left. (note the "â" is inbetween "a" (car) and "e" (bed).)
Phonology
Standard Arabic has only three vowels, in long and short variants, namely /i, a, u/. Naturally, considerable allophony occurs.
| Bilabial | Inter- dental |
Dental | Emphatic dental |
(Alveo-) Palatal |
Velar | Uvular | Pharyn- geal |
Glottal | ||
| Stops | Voiceless | t | t' | k | q | ? | ||||
| Voiced | b | d | d' | dZ¹ | ||||||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | f | T | s | s' | S | x | X\ | h | |
| Voiced | D | z | D' | G | ?\ | |||||
| Nasals | m | n | ||||||||
| Laterals | l² | |||||||||
| Rhotic (trill) | r | |||||||||
| Semi-vowels | w | j | ||||||||
- /dZ/ is /g/ for some speakers, i.e. a plosive. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian dialect. In many parts of North Africa and in Lebanon, it is /Z/ (ie not affricated.)
- /l/ becomes [l'] only in /?alla:h/, the name of God, i.e. Allah.
/'/ is used to indicate velarization and pharyngalization (=emphatic consonants; usually transcribed as dotted consonants). The other symbols are SAMPA.
In the dialects there are more phonemes, one occurs in the Maghreb as well in the written language mostly for names: /v/.
Vowels and consonants can be (phonologically) short or long.
Grammar
Like many Semitic languages the grammar is based on a (usually) triconsonantal root, which is not a word in itself. The consonants k t b together indicating 'write', q r ? indicate 'read', ? k l indicate 'eat'. The pattern of vowels and affixes gives the exact meaning. The simplest form of the verb is the perfect, third person masculine singular: kataba 'he wrote', qara?a 'he read'. From this the other persons and numbers form:
- katabtu I wrote
- katabta you (masc.) wrote
- katabti you (fem.) wrote
- katabat she wrote
- katabna we wrote
- katabu: they (masc.) wrote
- etc., there also being dual forms
The imperfect has a different shape and different affixes:
- jaktubu he is writing
- taktubu she is writing; you (masc.) are writing
- taktubi:na you (fem.) are writing
- ?aktubu I am writing, etc.
Derived verbs are variations on the shape of the primary kataba stem, such as kattaba, ka:taba, inkataba, takattaba, etc., with senses such as intensive, reflexive, and causative, though the exact meaning varies from verb to verb and needs to be recorded in a lexicon.
In Arabic, a word is classified as one of three: a noun, a verb, and a preposition. There are simply no separate categories for adjectives, adverbs, etc.; all are fulfilled by either a noun or a verb, or in some cases, a preposition. For example, to say in Arabic the sentence "the man ran slowly", one would say in Arabic a sentence whose word-for-word translation is "the man ran with slowness", or "the man ran (with) a slowness". Similarly, the Arabic word for "quick" would be treated as a noun, thus it is more properly translated not as the English word "quick", but as the English phrase "quick one".
This concept of using nouns and verbs to fulfill other linguistic functions is different from other languages, such as English, where usually there are words dedicated to fulfilling these functions. Note, though, that in English, this method is sometimes used with respect to adjectives, as in "the city hall", "the town meeting", etc.
Besides these rules, there are a number of other grammar and literary rules that dictate such things as what position in the sentence is the most proper for a certain word, advanced grammatical rules, word morphology, etc. These rules are known collectively in Arabic as an-naX\u (Arabic النحو), which means "the orientation", as it is viewed as the science that defines the proper orientation (rules) of the Arabic language.
Like many Semitic languages, Arabic has a dual grammatical number.
Calligraphy
See Arabic calligraphy for a fuller overview.
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition that is often indecipherable. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy.
See also
External links
Web references and examples: