Arabic

Classification, Dialects, Morphology, and the Alphabet

Arabic is classified by linguists as a member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages. It therefore has affinity with ancient languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and the Akkadian language of Mesopotamia. It is also related to indigenous languages spoken today in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Ge'ez, Amharic, and Tigrinya). The Maltese language originated as an Arabic dialect, resulting from Arab cultural influence in Malta, Sicily, and southern Italy during the Middle Ages. Arabic is not philologically related to either Persian (classified as an Indo-European language) or the Turkic languages (classified as Altaic languages), although many Arabic loanwords have been assimilated by them. There are a number of subdivisions within the Arabic language itself, the most significant of which are formal literary Arabic and spoken (colloquial) Arabic. The former, known as “classical Arabic” or al-fusha, is the language of the Qur'an and an enormous body of written literature produced without significant interruption in Islamicate lands between the 7th and 19th centuries. For generations, scholars and intellectuals studied and codified it, and it evolved into the formal Arabic written and spoken today (known to students in the West as Modern Standard Arabic).

Formal Arabic coexists with various local and regional vernacular Arabic dialects, a phenomenon known as diglossia. While formal Arabic is used in most writings and official and ceremonial addresses, the dialects (lahjāt) are used mainly in everyday speech. They differ significantly from formal Arabic, which native speakers tend to consider the superior form of the language. Moreover, some Arabic dialects differ from each other to such an extent that they are mutually unintelligible. This is especially the case with dialects from the western and eastern edges of Arab lands. Colloquial Egyptian, on the other had, is widely understood in Arab countries because of the leading role Egypt plays in education, politics, and the production of movies and programming for radio and television. Through the centuries, literary and colloquial Arabic have influenced each other—a reason for the language's ongoing vitality.

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