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Arabic
Last update: Saturday 11th of February 2012
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| Arabic العربية al-‘arabiyyah | ||
|---|---|---|
| al-‘Arabiyyah in written Arabic (Kufic script): |  | |
| Pronunciation: | IPA: /alˌʕa.raˈbij.ja/ | |
| Spoken in: | Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Palestinian territories, Western Sahara (SADR), Yemen by a majority; it is also the liturgical language of Islam. | |
| Region: | Arab world | |
| Total speakers: | Approximately 270 million (206 million according to Ethnologue, native speakers of all dialects 1998 est.); 323 million (population of Arab countries, CIA World Factbook 2006 est.), excluding Arab minorities in other countries and bilingual speakers | |
| Ranking: | 4 | |
| Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic | |
| Writing system: | Arabic alphabet | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language of: | Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Western Sahara (SADR), Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen;
| |
| Regulated by: | Egypt: Academy of the Arabic Language Syria: Academy of the Arabic Language (the oldest) | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | ar | |
| ISO 639-2: | ara | |
| ISO 639-3: | ara — Arabic (generic) see varieties of Arabic for the individual codes | |
 Distribution of Arabic as sole official language (green) and one of several official languages (blue). | ||
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Arabic (اللغة العربية al-luġatu l-ʿarabiyyah or just عربي ʿarabī) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. Classified as Central Semitic, it is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. Modern Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage with 27 sub-languages in ISO 639-3. These varieties are spoken throughout the Arab world, and Standard Arabic is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested epigraphically since the 6th century, which has been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since the 7th century.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world, akin to the role Latin has in Western European languages. During the Middle Ages Arabic was also a major vehicle of culture, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy, with the result that many European languages have also borrowed numerous words from it.
DOHA, Qatar -- A UNESCO conference on Wednesday proposed the setting up of a fund to combat illiteracy which affects almost 60 million inhabitants of the Arab world.
Arabic Website Focused on Bee Venom Therapy
By Nicola Nasser: Fulfilling a 60-year old Israeli dream and an American unwavering strategy, the 22-member League of Arab states are now in consensus on a potentially groundbreaking Arab Peace Initiative (API), which pledges their collective and full recognition of the Jewish state.
You may recall our post about the $400 million Airbus A380 commissioned by an Arab oil magnate, where $100 million of that was spent just on the giant jet's interior.
"I was trained to fight and kill Jews, and to hate Christians and Americans." ..."I did not forget the first song I learned in school just before the six day war titled ‘Arabs our beloved and Jews our dogs.’" ...“I remember students used to ask the teacher during our Islamic studies...if it was permitted for Muslims to rape the Jewish women."