Arabic is by far the most widely spoken language in the Middle East and North Africa (henceforth MENA). Additional languages widely spoken in different parts of the MENA regions include Tamazight (also known as Berber, though the use of this term is declining in favor of the term used by its own speakers) in North Africa, Kurdish and neo-Aramaic in Mesopotamia and parts of Syria, and Modern Hebrew in the part of historical Palestine now known as Israel. The focus of this entry is on Arabic and Hebrew: Arabic due to its prominence throughout the region and Hebrew due to its status as an official language (alongside Arabic) in Israel and because it is the language that is most easily compared to Arabic given ...

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