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Arabic language

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العربية/عربي/عربى al-ʻarabiyyah/ʻarabī 
Arabic albayancalligraphy.svg
al-ʿArabiyyah in written Arabic ( Naskh script)
Pronunciation /al ʕarabijja/, /ʕarabiː/
Native to Majorities in the countries of the Arab League, minorities in neighboring countries: Israel, Iran, Turkey, Eritrea, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sengal, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Arabic-speaking communities in the Western World
Native speakers 295 million  (2010)
Language family
  • Semitic
    • Central Semitic
      • Arabic
Standard forms
Modern Standard Arabic
Western (Maghrebi)
Central (incl. Egyptian, Sudanese))
Northern (incl. Levantine, Iraqi)
Southern (incl. Gulf, Hejazi)
Writing system Arabic alphabet
Arabic Braille
Syriac alphabet ( Garshuni)
Hebrew alphabet ( Judaeo-Arabic)
Official status
Regulated by
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ar
ISO 639-2 ara
ISO 639-3 ara Arabic (generic)
Dispersión lengua árabe.png
Dispersion of native Arabic speakers as the majority (green) or minority (chartreuse) population
Arabic speaking world.svg

Arabic (العربية al-ʻarabīyah or عربي/عربى ʻarabī ) ([alʕaraˈbijja] or ([ˈʕarabiː]) is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD. This includes both the literary language and varieties of Arabic spoken in a wide arc of territory stretching across the Middle East and North Africa.


Arabic languages are Central Semitic languages, most closely related to Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic and Phoenician. The standardized written Arabic is distinct from 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, both written and orally, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political and/or ethnic reasons (see below). If considered multiple languages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, it may be spoken by as many as 280 million first language speakers, making it one of the half dozen most populous languages in the world. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic, with 54 million native speakers—still greater than any other Semitic language.

Arabic is the 11th most spoken language in the United States.

The modern written language ( Modern Standard Arabic) is derived from the language of the Quran (known as Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic). It is widely taught in schools, universities, and used to varying degrees in workplaces, government and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the official language of 26 states and the liturgical language of Islam. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the grammatical standards of Quranic Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpoint in the spoken varieties, and adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. 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 Old North Arabian dialect group attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad script, and is written from right-to-left. Although, the spoken varieties are sometimes written in ASCII Latin with no standardized forms.

Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world, like Persian, Turkish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Malay and Hausa. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence, both in vocabulary and grammar, is seen in Romance languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Sicilian, owing to both the proximity of European and Arab civilizations and 800 years of Muslim ( Moorish) rule in some parts of the Iberian Peninsula referred to as Al-Andalus.


Classical, Modern Standard, and spoken Arabic

Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.

Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Theoretically, Classical Arabic is considered normative, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-ʿArab). In practice, however, modern authors almost never write in pure Classical Arabic, instead using a literary language with its own grammatical norms and vocabulary, commonly known as Modern Standard Arabic. This is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" (فُصْحَى fuṣḥā) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic.


  • No modern spoken variety of Arabic has case distinctions. As a result, MSA is generally composed without case distinctions in mind, and the proper cases added after the fact, when necessary. (Because most case endings are noted using final short vowels, which are normally left unwritten in the Arabic script, it is unnecessary to determine the proper case of most words.) The practical result of this is that MSA, like English and Mandarin Chinese, is written in a strongly determined word order, and alternative orders that were used in CA for emphasis are rare. In addition, because of the lack of case marking in the spoken varieties, most speakers cannot consistently use the correct endings in extemporaneous speech. As a result, spoken MSA tends to drop or regularize the endings except when reading from a prepared text.
  • In CA, the verb normally precedes the subject (VSO order); when the subject is fronted (SVO order), it is usually accompanied by the focusing particle ʼinna. MSA, following the spoken varieties, tends towards SVO order, and rarely uses ʼinna.

MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., ḏahaba "to go") that is not present in the spoken varieties. However, when multiple Classical synonyms are available, MSA tends to prefer words with cognates in the spoken varieties over words without cognates. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined a large number of terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times (and in fact continues to evolve). Some words have been borrowed from other languages, notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling not real pronunciation (e.g., فيلم fīlm "film" or dimūqrāṭiyyah "democracy"). However, the current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., farʿ "branch", also used for the branch of a company or organization; jināḥ "wing", also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.) or to coin new words using forms within existing roots (istimātah " apoptosis", using the root m/w/t "death" put into the Xth form, or jāmiʿah "university", based on jamāʿah "to gather, unite"; jumhūriyyah "republic", based on jumhūr "multitude"). An earlier tendency was to re-purpose older words that had fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif "telephone" < "invisible caller (in Sufism)"; jarīdah "newspaper" < "palm-leaf stalk").

Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic. Historically, Algerian Arabic was taught in French Algeria under the name darija.

Flag used in some cases for the Arabic Language

Note that even during Muhammad's lifetime, there were dialects of spoken Arabic. Muhammad spoke in the dialect of Mecca, in the western Arabian peninsula, and it was in this dialect that the Quran was written down. However, the dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula were considered the most prestigious at the time, so the language of the Quran was ultimately converted to follow the eastern phonology. It is this phonology that underlies the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. The phonological differences between these two dialects account for some of the complexities of Arabic writing, most notably the writing of the glottal stop or hamza (which was preserved in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech) and the use of ʾalif maqṣūrah (representing a sound preserved in the western dialects but merged with ā in eastern speech).

Language and dialect



From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages. This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages. Also, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to all non-Moroccans other than Algerians and Tunisians, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers. However, there is some mutual comprehensibility between conservative varieties of Arabic even across significant geographical distances. This suggests that the spoken varieties, at least, should linguistically be considered separate languages.

On the other hand, a significant difference between Arabic and the Romance languages is that the latter also correspond to a number of different standard written varieties, each of which separately informs the related spoken varieties, while all spoken Arabic varieties share a single written language. Indeed, a similar situation exists with the Romance languages in the case of Italian. As spoken varieties, Milanese, Neapolitan and Sicilian (among others) are different enough to be largely mutually incomprehensible, yet since they share a single written form (Standard Italian), they are often said by Italians to be dialects of the same language. As in many similar cases, the extent to which the Italian varieties are locally considered dialects or separate languages depends to a large extent on political factors, which can change over time. Linguists are divided over whether and to what extent to incorporate such considerations when judging issues of language and dialect.

Influence of Arabic on other languages

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is also an important source of vocabulary for languages such as Baluchi, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, English, French, German, Gujarati, Hausa, Hindustani, Italian, Indonesian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kutchi, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sindhi, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbek and Wolof as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken.


Terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit "prayer" < salat) (صلاة ṣalāt), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq "logic"), economic items (like English coffee) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano "so-and-so") and everyday conjunctions (like Hindustani lekin "but", or Spanish "taza" meaning "cup" and Portuguese até meaning "until", and expressions (like Catalan a betzef "galore, in quantity"). Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as salat 'prayer' and imam 'prayer leader.'

In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic. For example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani entered through Persian though Persian was a language originating as an Indo-Iranian language. Many words of Persian origin were transferred to Arabic as it is a language which predates Arabic by numerous centuries. Older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri.

Some words in English and other European languages are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them are commonly used words like "coffee" (qahwah), "cotton" (quṭn) and "magazine" ( maḫāzin). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", " alkali", " zenith" and " nadir". Some words in common use, such as "intention" and "information", were originally calques of Arabic philosophical terms.



Influence of other languages on Arabic

Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts). In addition, many cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from Iranian, notably Middle Persian or Parthian and (Classical) Persian, and Hellenistic Greek (kimiya has as origin the Greek chymia, meaning in that language the melting of metals); see Histoire de la Médecine de l`Antiquité au XXe siècle, Roger Dachez, Tallandier 2008, p. 251), alembic (distiller) from ambix (cup), qalam (pen, pencil, feather) from kalamos (pen), almanac (climate), from almenichiakon (calendar) (for the origin of the last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Foundations of Islam, Seuil, L'Univers Historique 2002. Some Arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare's above-cited book:

- rahman (merciful), from Hebrew and Aramaic, where it had a similar meaning

- nabi (prophet), old non-Arab term that came into Arabic from Aramaic and Hebrew before the emergence of Islam.

- madina, medina (city or city square), a word of Aramaic or Hebrew origin; Alfred-Louis de Prémare explains in The Foundations Of Islam (p. 101) that the Jews were long before Arabs a sedentary population of 'Arabian desert'.

- jizya, the tax imposed by the caliphate on individuals of religion other than Islam (dhimmis), a tax in addition to the levy on agricultural land (kharadjy). The term comes from the Syriac (gzita), which is in turn borrowed from Persian (gazit).

- kharaj, kharaji, land tax originally imposed only on non-Muslims, which comes from the Persian term "kharazh", a term which designate the act by which the wealthy citizens were taxed, some times imposed upon states, Strapis were supposed to collect them.

- jazeera, as in the well-known form Al Jazeera, means island and has its origin in Syriac gazīra/gzīrta.

- faruk (Savior), is the naturalized form of the Aramaic word poruk, which in the Syriac Bible (Peshita) means the Savior or Liberator. Once naturalized, the term produced mnemonic derivatives or shortcuts, so the f-r-q (meaning cutting) became a folk etymological explanation for faruk: the Savior was one who cuts (separates) the truth from falsehood.

- munafiq (hypocrite), a term borrowed from Ethiopian, where it had the sense of heretical sect.

- lāzaward is taken from Persian lājward, the name of a blue stone, lapis lazuli. This word was borrowed in several European languages to mean (light) blue - azure in English, azur in French and azul in Spanish.

Arabic and Islam

Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is closely associated with the religion of Islam because the Qur'an is written in the language, but it is nevertheless also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans. Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the Quranic script and recite the Qur'an. Among Non-Arab Muslims, translations of the Qur'an are most often accompanied by the original text.

Some Muslims present a monogenesis of languages and claim that the Arabic language was the language revealed by God for the benefit of mankind and the original language as a prototype symbolic system of communication, based primarily upon its system of triconsonantal roots, spoken by man from which all other languages were derived. This language became corrupted and changed radically due to a number of factors, with the dispersion of 'modern humans' out of Africa, Arabia, the Middle East and subsequently throughout the world .

External history

Arabic languages (brown) within Semitic languages.


Internal history


  • The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms (e.g. a present tense formed by doubling the middle root, a perfect formed by infixing a /t/ after the first root consonant, probably a jussive formed by a stress shift) in favour of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms (e.g. -u for indicate, -a for subjunctive, no ending for jussive, -an or -anna for energetic).
  • The development of an internal passive.

Phonological history

Of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost: */ʃ/, which merged with /s/. Various other consonants have changed their sound too, but have remained distinct. An original */p/ lenited to /f/, and */ɡ/ became palatalized to /ɡʲ/ or /ɟ/ by the time of the Qur'an and / d͡ʒ/, / ɡ/ or / ʒ/ in MSA (see Arabic phonology#Local variations for more detail). An original voiceless alveolar lateral fricative */ɬ/ became /ʃ/. Its emphatic counterpart /ɬˠ~ɮˤ/ was considered by Arabs to be the most unusual sound in Arabic (Hence the Classical Arabic's appellation luġatu ḍ-ḍād or "language of the ḍād"); for most modern dialects, it has become an emphatic stop /dˤ/ with loss of the laterality or with complete loss of any pharyngealization or velarization, /d/. (The classical ḍād pronunciation of pharyngealization /ɮˤ/ still occurs in the Mehri language, and the similar sound without velarization exists in other Modern South Arabian languages.)

Other changes may also have happened. Classical Arabic pronunciation is not thoroughly recorded, and different reconstructions of the sound system of Proto-Semitic propose different phonetic values. One example is the emphatic consonants, which are pharyngealized in modern pronunciations may have been velarized in the eighth century and glottalized in Proto-Semitic.

Reduction of /j/ and /w/ between vowels occurs in a number of circumstances, and is responsible for much of the complexity of third-weak ("defective") verbs. Early Akkadian transcriptions of Arabic names shows that this reduction had not yet occurred as of the early part of the 1st millennium BC.


An interesting feature of the writing system of the Koran (and hence of Classical Arabic) is that it contains certain features of Mohammed's native dialect of Mecca, "corrected" through diacritics into the forms of standard Classical Arabic. Among these features visible under the corrections are the loss of glottal stop and a differing development of the reduction of certain final sequences containing /j/: Evidently final /-awa/ became /aː/ as in the Classical language, but final /-aja/ became a different sound, possibly /eː/ (rather than again /aː/ in the Classical language). This is the apparent source of the alif maqṣūra "broken alif" where a final /-aja/ is reconstructed: a letter that would normally indicate /j/ or some similar high-vowel sound, but is taken in this context to be a logical variant of alif and represent the sound /aː/.

Dialects and descendants

Different dialects of Arabic.


Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian North African dialects (especially Moroccan Arabic) and the others. Moroccan Arabic in particular is nearly incomprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Algeria (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Egyptian 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 fīh, and North African kayən all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now sound very different.



Literary Arabic in Arabic script
(dialects are written in other non-standardized spellings)
أنا أحب القراءة كثيرا
عندما ذهبت إلى المكتبة
لم أجدإلا هذا الكتاب القديم
أردت أن أقرأ كتابا عن تاريخ المرأة في فرنسا
Classical Arabic
(liturgical or poetic only)
ʔanaː ʔuħibbu l-qiraːʔata kaθiːran ʕindamaː ðahabtu ʔilaː l-maktabati lam ʔaɡʲid haːðaː l-kitaːba l-qadiːma kuntu ʔuriːdu ʔan ʔaqraʔa kitaːban ʕan taːriːxi l-marʔati fiː faransaː
Modern Standard Arabic ʔana(ː) ʔuħibb al-qiraːʔa kaθiːran ʕindama(ː) ðahabtu ʔilaː l-maktaba lam ʔaɡʲid haːða(ː) l-kitaːb al-qadiːm kuntu ʔuriːd ʔan ʔaqraʔ kitaːb ʕan taːriːx al-marʔa fiː fara(ː)nsa(ː)
Syrian Arabic ʔana ktiːr bħibb el-ʔraːje ˈlamma ˈreħt ʕal-ˈmaktabe ma laʔeːt ˈilla ha-l-ikˈtaːb el-ʔˈdiːm kaːn ˈbeddi ˈʔeʔra ktaːb ʕan taːˈriːx l-ˈmara b-ˈfraːnsa
Egyptian ana baħebb el-ʔeraːja ʔawi ˈlamma ˈroħt el-makˈtaba ma-lˈʔet-ʃ ˈella l-keˈtaːb el-ʔaˈdiːm da ˈana ˈkont-e ˈʕawz-ˈaʔra kˈtaːb ʕan taˈriːx el-setˈtaːt fe faˈransa
Lebanese Arabic ktiːr bħibb il-ʔiˈreːje ˈlamma ˈreħit ʕal-ˈmaktabe ma lʔeːt ˈilla ha-l-ikˈteːb le-ʔˈdiːm keːn ˈbeddi ˈʔeʔra kteːb ʕan teːˈriːx l-ˈmara b-ˈfraːnsa
Moroccan ana ʕziz ʕlija bzzaf nqra melli mʃit l-lmaktaba lqit ɣir had l-ktab l-qdim kent baɣi nqra ktab ʕla tarix l-ʕjalat f-fransa
Iraqi ˈaːni aˈħibb el-qˈraːja ˈkulliʃ ˈlamman ˈreħit lel-maktaba ma liˈɡeːt ɣeːr haːða l-ketaːb al-qadiːm redet aqra ketaːb ʕan tariːx al-niswan eb-fransa
Algerian eːne nħibb il-qreːje bezzaf waqtelli rouht l il-maktaba ma-lqiːt-ʃ keːn ha l-kteːb l-qdiːm kunt haːb naqra kteːb ʕala tariːx l-mra fi fraːnsa
Tunisian eːne nħibb il-qreːje barʃa waqtelli mʃiːt l il-maktba ma-lqiːt-ʃ keːn ha l-kteːb l-qdiːm kunt nħibb naqra kteːb ʕala tariːx l-mra fi fraːnsa
Kuwaiti ʔaːna waːyed aħibb aɡraː lamman reħt al-maktaba ma liɡeːt illa hal ketaːb al-ɡadiːm kent abiː aɡra ketaːb an tariːx el-ħariːm eb fransa
Hejazi Arabic ˈana aˈħubb al-ɡiraːja kaθiːr ˈlamma ruħt al-ˈmaktaba ma laɡeːt ɣeːr haːða l-kitaːb al-ɡadiːm kunt abɣa aɡra ktaːb ʕan tariːx al-ħariːm fi faransa
Western Libyan ʾaniː nħieb li-ɡraːja halba lamma mʃeːt lil-maktba malɡeːtiʃ ʾiːlla ha li-ktaːb le-ɡdiːm kunt nibi naɡra ktaːb ʔleː tariːx e-nsawiːn fiː fraːnsa
Urban Palestinian baˈħibb (ə)l-ʔiˈraːje ktiːr ˈlamma ˈruħ(ə)t ʕal-ˈmaktabe ma laˈʔeːt(ə)ʃ ˈilla ha-l-(ə)kˈtaːb l-(ə)ʔˈdiːm kaːn ˈbiddi ˈʔaʔra ktaːb ʕan taˈriːx (ə)l-ˈmara fi fˈraːnsa


According to Charles A. Ferguson, the following are some of the characteristic features of the koine that underlies all of the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula. Although many other features are common to most or all of these varieties, Ferguson believes that these features in particular are unlikely to have evolved independently more than once or twice, and together suggest the existence of the koine:

  • Loss of the dual (grammatical number) except on nouns, with consistent plural agreement (cf. feminine singular agreement in plural inanimates).
  • Change of a to i in many affixes (e.g., non-past-tense prefixes ti- yi- ni-; wi- "and"; il- "the"; feminine -it in the construct state).
  • Reformation of geminate verbs, e.g., ḥalaltu "I untied" → ḥalēt(u).
  • Conversion of separate words "to me", laka "to you", etc. into indirect-object clitic suffixes.
  • Certain changes in the cardinal number system, e.g., ḫamsat ʾayyāmḫam(a)s tiyyām, where certain words have a special plural with prefixed t.
  • Loss of the feminine elative (comparative).
  • Adjective plurals of the form kibār "big" → kubār.
  • Change of nisba suffix -iyyi.
  • Certain lexical items, e.g., jāb "bring" < jāʾ bi- "come with"; šāf "see"; ʾēš "what" (or similar); illi "(relative pronoun)".
  • Merger of /ɮˤ/ and /ðˤ/.

Dialect groups

  • Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 80 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic, due in large part to the widespread distribution of Egyptian films and television shows throughout the Arabic speaking world.
  • Maghrebi Arabic includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and to a more particular extent, Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 75 million North Africans in Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya ; it is often difficult for speakers of Middle Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree.
  • Levantine Arabic includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic. It is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, and Turkey.
  • Sudanese Arabic is spoken by 30 million people in Sudan and some parts of southern Egypt. Sudanese Arabic is quite distinct from the dialect of its neighbour to the north; rather, the Sudanese have a dialect similar to the Hijazi dialect.
  • Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq, eastern Syria and southwestern Iran ( Khuzestan).
  • Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 22 million people, predominantly in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, eastern Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain. Also spoken in Iran's Bushehr and Hormozgan provinces.
  • Yemeni Arabic spoken in Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia by 25 million people. Similar to Gulf Arabic.
  • Najdi Arabic, spoken by around 10 million people, mainly spoken in Najd, centre and northern part of Saudi Arabia.
  • Hejazi Arabic (7 million speakers), spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia
  • North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, northern Syria and southern Turkey.
  • Hassaniya Arabic (2.8 million speakers), spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and Western Sahara
  • Bahrani Arabic (1,000,000+ speakers), spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, Qatif, and Al Ahsa, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic and Gulf Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.
  • Judeo-Arabic dialects
  • Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered
  • Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin script. Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese language.
  • The Muslim Hui people in China had knowledge of archaic forms of Arabic. The Hui of Yunnan (Burmaese called them Panthays) were reported to be fluent in Arabic. During the Panthay Rebellion, Arabic replaced Chinese as official language of the rebel kingdom. In 1844 "The Chinese repository, Volume 13" was published, including an account of an Englishman who stayed in Ningbo in China. There he visited the local mosque, the Hui running the mosque was from Shandong, and he was a descendant of Muslims from the city of Medina. He spoke both Arabic and Chinese, and could read Arabic as well. In Tianjin, Hui could speak an old, archaic form of Arabic, when they met Arab Muslims in recent times, it was found out that Old Arabic and Modern Arabic were very different, so Modern Arabic is now being taught to Hui.
  • Samaritan Arabic - spoken by only several hundred in the Nablus region
  • Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.


The "colloquial" spoken varieties of Arabic are learned at home and constitute the native languages of Arabic speakers. "Formal" Literary Arabic (usually specifically Modern Standard Arabic) is learned at school; although many speakers have a native-like command of the language, it is technically not the native language of any speakers. Both varieties can be both written and spoken, although the colloquial varieties are rarely written down, and the formal variety is spoken mostly in formal circumstances, e.g., in radio broadcasts, formal lectures, parliamentary discussions, and to some extent between speakers of different colloquial varieties. Even when the literary language is spoken, however, it is normally only spoken in its pure form when reading a prepared text out loud. When speaking extemporaneously (i.e. making up the language on the spot, as in a normal discussion among people), speakers tend to deviate somewhat from the strict literary language in the direction of the colloquial varieties. In fact, there is a continuous range of "in-between" spoken varieties: from nearly pure Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), to a form that still uses MSA grammar and vocabulary but with significant colloquial influence, to a form of the colloquial language that imports a number of words and grammatical constructions in MSA, to a form that is close to pure colloquial but with the "rough edges" (the most noticeably "vulgar" or non-Classical aspects) smoothed out, to pure colloquial. The particular variant (or register) used depends on the social class and education level of the speakers involved, and the level of formality of the speech situation. Often it will vary within a single encounter, e.g., moving from nearly pure MSA to a more mixed language in the process of a radio interview, as the interviewee becomes more comfortable with the interviewer. This type of variation is characteristic of the diglossia that exists throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

Literary Arabic






The definition of both "emphatic" and "neighbourhood" vary in ways that echo (to some extent) corresponding variations in the spoken dialects. Generally, the consonants triggering "emphatic" allophones are the pharyngealized consonants /tˤ dˤ sˤ ðˤ/; / q/; and / r/, if not followed immediately by /i(ː)/. Frequently, the uvular fricatives /x ɣ/ also trigger emphatic allophones; occasionally also the pharyngeal consonants /ʕ ħ/ (the former more than the latter). Many dialects have multiple emphatic allophones of each vowel, depending on the particular nearby consonants. In most MSA accents, emphatic coloring of vowels is limited to vowels immediately adjacent to a triggering consonant, although in some it spreads a bit farther: e.g., waqt [wɑqt] "time"; waṭan [wɑtˤɑn] "homeland"; wasṭ al-madīnah [wæstˤɑl-mædiːnɐ] "downtown" (sometimes [wɑstˤɑl-mædiːnæ] or similar).

In a non-emphatic environment, the vowel /a/ in the diphthong /aj/ tends to be fronted even more than elsewhere, often pronounced [æj] or [ɛj]: hence sayf [sajf ~ sæjf ~ sɛjf] "sword" but ṣayf [sˤɑjf] "summer"). However, in accents with no emphatic allophones of /a/ (e.g., in the Hijaz), the pronunciation [äj] occurs in all situations.


Standardized Arabic consonant phonemes
Labial Inter-
Dental/ Alveolar Post-
Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn-
plain emphatic emphatic plain
Nasal m n
Plosive voiceless t k q ʔ
voiced b 3 d ʒ~ d͡ʒ~ ɟ~ ɡʲ~ ɡ1
Fricative voiceless f θ6 s ʃ x~ χ5 ħ4 h
voiced ð ðˤ~ z ɣ~ ʁ5 ʕ4
Approximant l2 j w
Trill r
  1. This phoneme is represented by the Arabic letter jīm ( ج) and has many standard pronunciations. [ d͡ʒ] is characteristic of north Algeria, Iraq, also in most of the Arabian peninsula but with an allophonic [ ʒ] in some positions; [ ʒ] occurs in most of the Levant and most North Africa; and [ ɡ] is used in most of Egypt and some regions in Yemen and Oman. Generally this corresponds with the pronunciation in the colloquial dialects. In some regions in Sudan and Yemen, as well as in some Sudanese and Yemeni dialects, it may be either [ɡʲ] or [ ɟ], representing the original pronunciation of Classical Arabic. Foreign words containing / ɡ/ may be transcribed with ج‎, غ‎, ك‎, ق‎, گ‎, ݣ‎ or ڨ‎, mainly depending on the regional spoken variety of Arabic or the commonly diacriticized Arabic letter. Note also that in northern Egypt, where the Arabic letter jīm ( ج) is normally pronounced [ ɡ], a separate phoneme / ʒ/, which may be transcribed with چ, occurs in a small number of mostly non-Arabic loanwords, e.g., /ʒakitta/ "jacket".
  3. The emphatic consonant /dˤ/ was actually pronounced [ɮˤ], or possibly [d͡ɮˤ]—either way, a highly unusual sound. The medieval Arabs actually termed their language luġatu l-ḍād "the language of the Ḍād" (the name of the letter used for this sound), since they thought the sound was unique to their language. (In fact, it also exists in a few other minority Semitic languages, e.g., Mehri.)
  4. In many varieties, /ħ, ʕ/ (ح,‎ ع) are actually epiglottal [ʜ, ʢ] (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
  5. /x/ and /ɣ/ (خ,‎ غ) are often post-velar, though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible.
  6. /θ/ (ث) can be pronounced as [ t] or even [ s]. In some places of Maghreb it can be also pronounced as [ t͡s].


Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long ( geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark šaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."

Syllable structure

Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)—and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC). The syllable types with three morae (units of time), i.e. CVC and CVV, are termed heavy syllables, while those with four morae, i.e. CVVC and CVCC, are superheavy syllables. Superheavy syllables in Classical Arabic occur in only two places: at the end of the sentence (due to pausal pronunciation), and in words such as ḥārr "hot", māddah "stuff, substance", taḥājjū "they disputed with each other", where a long ā occurs before two identical consonants (a former short vowel between the consonants has been lost). (In less formal pronunciations of Modern Standard Arabic, superheavy syllables are common at the end of words or before clitic suffixes such as -nā "us, our", due to the deletion of final short vowels.)

In surface pronunciation, every vowel must be preceded by a consonant (which may include the glottal stop [ʔ]). There are no cases of hiatus within a word (where two vowels occur next to each other, without an intervening consonant). Some words do underlyingly begin with a vowel, such as the definite article al- or words such as ištarā "he bought", ijtimāʿ "meeting". When actually pronounced, one of three things happens:

  • If the word occurs after another word ending in a consonant, there is a smooth transition from final consonant to initial vowel, e.g., al-ijtimāʿ "meeting" /alid͡ʒtimaːʕ/.
  • If the word occurs after another word ending in a vowel, the initial vowel of the word is elided, e.g., baytu (a)l-mudīr "house of the director" /bajtulmudiːr/.
  • If the word occurs at the beginning of an utterance, a glottal stop [ʔ] is added onto the beginning, e.g., al-baytu huwa ... "The house is ..." /ʔalbajtuhuwa .../.



  • Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.
  • As a special exception, in Form VII and VIII verb forms stress may not be on the first syllable, despite the above rules: Hence inkatab(a) "he subscribed" (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), yankatib(u) "he subscribes" (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), yankatib "he should subscribe (juss.)". Likewise Form VIII ta "he bought", yašta "he buys".

Examples:kib(un) "book", -ti-b(un) "writer", mak-ta-b(un) "desk", ma--ti-b(u) "desks", mak-ta-ba-tun "library" (but mak-ta-ba(-tun) "library" in short pronunciation), ka-ta-bū (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = ka-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta--h(u) (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta- (dialect), ka-ta-ba-tā (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-tab-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-tabt (short form or dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-jal-la-(tan) "magazine", ma-ḥall(-un) "place".

These rules may result in differently stressed syllables when final case endings are pronounced, vs. the normal situation where they are not pronounced, as in the above example of mak-ta-ba-tun "library" in full pronunciation, but mak-ta-ba(-tun) "library" in short pronunciation.


Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo ( Egyptian Arabic) dialect a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-ra-sa "school", qā-hi-ra "Cairo". This also affects the way that Modern Standard Arabic is pronounced in Egypt. In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: bay-tayn "two houses", -sat-hum "their table", ma--tīb "desks", -rat-hīn "sometimes", mad-ra-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)

Levels of pronunciation


Full pronunciation
Full pronunciation with pausa


  • Final short vowels are not pronounced. (But possibly an exception is made for feminine plural -na, and shortened vowels in the jussive/imperative of defective verbs, e.g., irmi! "throw!".)
Formal short pronunciation


    • feminine plural -na
    • second-person singular feminine past-tense -ti, and likewise ʾanti "you (fem. sg.)"
    • sometimes, first-person singular past-tense -tu
    • sometimes, second-person masculine past-tense -ta, and likewise ʾanta "you (masc. sg.)"
    • final -a in certain short words, e.g., laysa "is not", sawfa "(future-tense marker)"
  • The nunation endings -an -in -un are not pronounced. However, they are pronounced in adverbial accusative formations, e.g., taqrīban تَقْرِيبًا "almost, approximately", ʿādatan عَادَةً "usually".
  • The tāʾ marbūṭah ending ة is unpronounced, except in construct state nouns, where it sounds as t (and in adverbial accusative constructions, e.g., ʿādatan عَادَةً "usually", where the entire -tan is pronounced).
  • The masculine singular nisba ending -iyy is actually pronounced , and is unstressed (but plural and feminine singular forms, i.e. when followed by a suffix, still sound as -iyy-).
  • Full endings (including case endings) occur when a clitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g., -nā "us/our").
Informal short pronunciation


    • Any remaining case endings (e.g. masculine plural nominative -ūn vs. oblique -īn) will be leveled, with the oblique form used everywhere. (However, in words like ʾab "father" and ʾax "brother" with special long-vowel case endings in the construct state, the nominative is used everywhere, hence ʾabū "father of", ʾaxū "brother of".)
    • Dual endings will often drop out except on nouns, and then used only for emphasis (similar to their use in the colloquial varieties); elsewhere, the plural endings are used (or feminine singular, if appropriate).

Colloquial varieties






In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic [ v] is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic [ p] became [f] extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between [ p] and [ b]. The Iraqi Arabic uses also sounds [ ɡ], [ t͡ʃ] and uses Persian adding letters, e.g.: گوجة gawjaha plum; چمة čimah a truffle and so on.



  • ك / k/ usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to / t͡ʃ/ in many words in Israel & the Palestinian Territories, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes /-ak/ (you, masc.) and /-ik/ (you, fem.), which become /-ak/ and /-it͡ʃ/, respectively. In Sana'a, Omani, and Bahrani /-ik/ is pronounced /-iʃ/.



Literary Arabic

Visualization of Arabic grammar from the Quranic Arabic Corpus.

As in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual morphology (i.e. method of constructing words from a basic root). Arabic has a nonconcatenative "root-and-pattern" morphology: A root consists of a set of bare consonants (usually three), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern to form words. For example, the word for "I wrote" is constructed by combining the root k-t-b "write" with the pattern -a-a-tu "I X'd" to form katabtu "I wrote". Other verbs meaning "I X'd" will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. qaraʾtu "I read", ʾakaltu "I ate", ðahabtu "I went", although other patterns are possible (e.g. šaribtu "I drank", qultu "I said", takallamtu "I spoke", where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix -tu is always used).


  • katabtu "I wrote"
  • kattabtu "I had (something) written"
  • kātabtu "I corresponded (with someone)"
  • ʾaktabtu "I dictated"
  • iktatabtu "I subscribed"
  • takātabnā "we corresponded with each other"
  • ʾaktubu "I write"
  • ʾukattibu "I have (something) written"
  • ʾukātibu "I correspond (with someone)"
  • ʾuktibu "I dictate"
  • ʾaktatibu "I subscribe"
  • natakātabu "We correspond each other"
  • kutiba "it was written"
  • ʾuktiba "it was dictated"
  • maktūb "written"
  • muktab "dictated"
  • kitāb "book"
  • kutub "books"
  • kātib "writer"
  • kuttāb "writers"
  • maktab "desk, office"
  • maktabah "library, bookshop"
  • etc.

Nouns and adjectives







Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms ( past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods ( indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive.


The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, kataba "to write". Note that in Modern Standard Arabic, many final short vowels are dropped (indicated in parentheses below), and the energetic mood (in either long or short form, which have the same meaning) is almost never used.




Examples of the different verbs formed from the root k-t-b "write" (using ḥ-m-r "red" for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):

Most of these forms are exclusively Classical Arabic
Form Past Meaning Non-past Meaning
I kataba "he wrote" yaktubu "he writes"
II kattaba "he made (someone) write" yukattibu "he makes (someone) write"
III kātaba "he corresponded with, wrote to (someone)" yukātibu "he corresponds with, writes to (someone)"
IV ʾaktaba "he dictated" yuktibu "he dictates"
V takattaba nonexistent yatakattabu nonexistent
VI takātaba "he corresponded (with someone, esp. mutually)" yatakātabu "he corresponds (with someone, esp. mutually)"
VII inkataba "he subscribed" yankatibu "he subscribes"
VIII iktataba "he copied" yaktatibu "he copies"
IX iḥmarra "he turned red" yaḥmarru "he turns red"
X istaktaba "he asked (someone) to write" yastaktibu "he asks (someone) to write"


The associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic. This is similar to the process by which, for example, the English gerund "meeting" (similar to a verbal noun) has turned into a noun referring to a particular type of social, often work-related event where people gather together to have a "discussion" (another lexicalized verbal noun). Another fairly common means of forming nouns is through one of a limited number of patterns that can be applied directly to roots, such as the "nouns of location" in ma- (e.g. maktab "desk, office" < k-t-b "write", maṭbax "kitchen" < ṭ-b-x "cook").

The only three genuine suffixes are as follows:

  • The feminine suffix -ah; variously derives terms from women from related terms for men, or more generally terms along the same lines as the corresponding masculine, e.g. maktabah "library" (also a writing-related place, but different than maktab, as above).
  • The feminine nisba suffix -iyyah. This is formed by adding the feminine suffix -ah onto nisba adjectives to form abstract nouns. For example, from the basic root š-r-k "share" can be derived the Form VIII verb ištaraka "to cooperate, participate", and in turn its verbal noun ištirāk "cooperation, participation" can be formed. This in turn can be made into a nisba adjective ištirākiyy "socialist", from which an abstract noun ištirākiyyah "socialism" can be derived. Other recent formations are jumhūriyyah "republic" (lit. "public-ness" < jumhūr "multitude, general public"), and the Gaddafi-specific variation jamāhīriyyah "people's republic" (lit. "masses-ness" < jamāhīr "the masses", pl. of jumhūr, as above).

Colloquial varieties



Tense/Mood Past Present Subjunctive Present Indicative Future Imperative

Writing system



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 all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh, which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah, which is commonly used in handwriting.

The Arabic writing system is sometimes seen to be more readable than the Latin writing system. Edward William Lane, the writer of "The Arabic-English Lexicon," complained once that he was so used to the cursive calligraphy of his Arabic manuscripts that the Western print strained his eyes.


After Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi finally fixed the Arabic script around 786, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.



Examples of different transliteration/transcription schemes
ء ʔ ʼ ʾ ˈˌ ʾ ' e ' 2
ث θ th ç c _t s/th
ح ħ H .h 7
ذ ð dh đ z' _d z/dh/th
ش ʃ sh š x ^s sh/ch
ص ş S .s s/9
ض D .d d/9'
ط ţ T .t t/6
ع ʕ ʻ ʿ ř E ` 3



To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter ⟨ع⟩. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter ⟨د⟩, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, ⟨ض⟩, may be written as D.



Language-standards regulators


Studying Arabic


English Arabic Arabic (vowelled) Romanization ( DIN 31635) IPA
English الإنجليزية
or الإنكليزية
or الإنْجلِيزِيّة
al-ingilīziyyah (varies) /alʔinɡ(i)liːzijja/ (varies)
Yes نعم نَعَمْ naʿam /naʕam/
No لا لا /laː/
Hello مرحبا مَرْحَبًا marḥaban /marħaban/
Peace (Usually Islamic) السلام عليكم السَّلامُ عَلَيْكُمْ ʾassalāmu ʿalaykum /ʔassalaːmu ʕalajkum/
How are you? کيف الحال؟ کَيْفَ ٱلْحَال؟ kayfa l-ḥāl /kajfa lħaːl/
Welcome أهلا أَهْلاً ʾahlan /ʔahlan/
Goodbye مع السلامة مَعَ السّلامَة maʿa s-salāma /maʕa ssalaːma/
Please من فضلك مِنْ فَضْلِك min faḍlik /min fadˤlik,/
Thanks شكرا شُكْرًا šukran /ʃukran/
Excuse me عفوا عَفْوًا ʿafwan /ʕafwan/
I'm sorry آسف آسِف ʾāsif /ʔaːsif/
What's your name? ما اسمك؟ مَا ٱسْمُك؟ mā ʾismuk(a/i)? /ma ʔismuk(a, i)/
How much? كم؟ كَمْ؟ kam? /kam/
I don't understand. لا أفهم لا أفْهَم lā ʾafham /laː ʔafham/
I don't speak Arabic. لا أتكلم العربية لا أتَكَلّمُ الْعَرَبيّة lā ʾatakallamu l-ʿarabiyyah /laː ʔatakallamu lʕarabijja/
I don't know. لا أعرف لا أعْرِف lā ʾaʿrif /laː ʔaʕrif/
I'm hungry. أنا جائع أنا جائِع ʾanā jāʾiʿ /ʔanaː ɡʲaːʔiʕ/
Orange برتقالي بُرْتُقَالِي burtuqālī /burtuqaːliː/
Black أسود أسْوَد ʾaswad /ʔaswad/
One واحد واحِد wāḥid /waːħid/
Two اثنان اِثْنَان iṯnān /iθnaːn/
Three ثلاثة ثَلاثَة ṯalāṯah /θalaːθa/
Four أربعة أرْبَعَة ʾarbaʿah /ʔarbaʕa/
Five خمسة خَمْسَة ḫamsah /xamsa/
Six ستة سِتّة sittah /sitta/
Seven سبعة سَبْعَة sabʿah /sabʕa/
Eight ثمانية ثَمَانِيَة ṯamāniyah /θamaːnija/
Nine تسعة تِسْعَة tisʿah /tisʕah/
Ten عشرة عَشَرَة ʿašarah /ʕaʃarah/
Eleven أحد عشر أَحَدَ عَشَر ʾaḥad(a) ʿašar /ʔaħad(a) ʕaʃar/
Twelve اثنا عشر إِثْنَا عَشَر ʾiṯnā ʿašar /ʔiθnaː ʕaʃar/
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