Arabic Language
Arabic is an official language in 26 countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Israel (along with Hebrew), Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world.
Arabic is a Semitic language that first emerged in the 1st to 4th centuries. It is the lingua franca of the Arab world and the liturgical language of Islam.
The Arabic language originates from the Arabian Peninsula. As the Muslim World expanded, Arabic spread into North Africa and Western Asia.
1. Arabic is the Fifth Most-Spoken Language in the World
There are more than 315 million Arabic speakers (or 4.23 percent of the world’s population) who speak Arabic. That places it behind Hindi, English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese in fourth to first place, respectively.
2.Arabic is the Official Language of over 20 Countries and the UN
Most of them are located in the Middle East like Jordan, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, to name a few. Others are located in Africa and include Egypt, Morocco, and Djibouti. By the way, you can also add the UN to that list of places where Arabic is an official language. In fact, In 2010, the UN even made December 18th Arabic National Day. Why? Because that was the day when the language was officially included alongside Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
3.There are 30 Different Arabic Dialects
Certainly, every language has its own dialects, but Arabic has 30 modern types of them. These dolects include Modern Standard Arabic, Gulf Arabic, and Levantine Arabic just to name a few. What’s more, they’re often spoken in places many hundreds, or even thousands, of miles apart from one another. However, the most commonly understood of all them is the Egyptian dialect.
4.. Arabic Sounds Like No Other Language
As a language learner, you know by now that no two languages are alike. However, if you were to make a list of languages that sound like nothing like any other language, Arabic would top that list. Probably the most well known is example is the Arabic letter hah (ح), which sounds a little like the “h” sound in English when laughing with a chest cold.
5. “To Be or Not to Be?”
In the case of Arabic, the answers is “not to be” as the present tense of the Arabic language has no verb “to be”. Though it does have equivalents to am, are, is, was, were, been, and being, they are not used at all in the present tense.
6. Still as Easy as ABC?
Rather than alphabet, Arabic actually uses an abjad — a system of symbols of glyphs that are used as constants. (Vowels are usually left for the reader to fill in, though Arabic uses diacritic marks to symbolize vowel sounds.) Still, once you get the hang of it, learning the Arabic alphabet is easy as alif, ba, tha.
7. Forget About Typing in ALL CAPS
Because it uses symbols (or glyphs) instead of letters, there are also no capital letters in Arabic. This means you don’t have to worry about shouting at somebody when you message them in Arabic.
8.Arabic words are written from right to left
Unlike many other widely used languages, Arabic words are written from right to left, and Arabic numbers are written from left to right.
9.Arabic is atleast 1500 years old
Classic Arabic originated in the sixth century, but earlier versions of the language existed including the Safaitic dialect, an old Arabic dialect used by the pre Islamic nomadic inhabitants of the SyroArabian desert which dates back to the 1st century.
10.Difficult to Learn:
A simple and easy vernacular can be learned in 24 weeks of study. Now consider the fact that in order to achieve fluency, a student will have to study Arabic for an average of 1.69 years. It could take even more time than that because of the difficulty level of the vernacular. And it is not only difficult for English speakers but for everyone else too.
11.You Speak Arabizi?
Arabizi is Arabic slang for using the Latin alphabet to text. Today’s young Arabs also use it to mean speaking using both Arabic and English. For instance, the phrase “Yalla, I’m hungry” combines both Arabic and English in the same statement. Even so, English has borrowed from Arabic long before phone texting came along. In fact, there are many words in English derived from Arabic that you likely use every day without even knowing. These include words like coffee, ghoul, loofa, sofa, sugar, tariff, racquet, sherbet, and many more.
12.Changes:
No huge changes have been made in Arabic for 1400 years. In order to preserve the Holy texts as they were, the Arabas made sure that their vernacular did not undergo a lot of changes. This is another aspect of the language that makes it unique. This makes it different from languages like Spanish that have a different version in every country where they are spoken. Although there are a few small differences between the Arabic of different countries, the people of those states can understand each other easily.
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