Arabic

Arabic is spoken by almost 200 million people in more than twenty two countries, from Morrocco to Iraq, and as far south as Somalia and the Sudan. As the language of Quran, the Holy book of Islam, it is thought as a first language in Muslim states throughout the world. Arabic language originated in Saudi Arabia in pre-Islamic times, and spread rapidly across the Middle East.

The languages of northern India, Turkey, Iran, Portugal, and Spain are full of words of Arabic origin. Modern arabic varies a good deal from country to country, differing as much as, say Spanish and Portuguese. However, the classical written arabic has changed little over the centuries.

Origin

The Arabic script evolved from the Nabataean Aramaic script. It has been used since the 4th century AD, but the earliest document, an inscription in Arabic, Syriac and Greek, dates from 512 AD. The Aramaic language has fewer consonants than Arabic, so during the 7th century new Arabic letters were created by adding dots to existing letters in order to avoid ambiguities. Further diacritics indicating short vowels were introduced, but are only generally used to ensure the Qur’an was read aloud without mistakes.

There are two main types of written Arabic:

• Classical Arabic – the language of the Qur’an and classical literature. It differs from Modern Standard Arabic mainly in style and vocabulary, some of which is archaic. All Muslims are expected to recite the Qur’an in the original language, however many rely on translations in order to understand the text.
• Modern Standard Arabic – the universal language of the Arabic-speaking world which is understood by all Arabic speakers. It is the language of the vast majority of written material and of formal TV shows, lectures, etc.

Each Arabic speaking country or region also has its own variety of colloquial spoken Arabic. These colloquial varieties of Arabic appear in written form in some poetry, cartoons and comics, plays and personal letters. There are also translations of the bible into most varieties of colloquial Arabic.
Arabic has also been written with the Hebrew, Syriac and Latin scripts.

Arabic and Islam

The Qur’an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deem it impossible to translate in a way that would adequately reflect its exact meaning—indeed, until recently, some schools of thought maintained that it should not be translated at all. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are used by all Muslims, whatever their mother tongue. While Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of salah, prayer), it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews, and smaller sects such as Iraqi Mandaeans.

A majority of the world’s Muslims do not speak Arabic, but only know some fixed phrases of the language, such as those used in Islamic prayer, without necessarily knowing their meaning. However, learning Arabic is an essential part of the curriculum for anyone attempting to become an Islamic religious scholar.

Writing system

The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (Nabataean), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). 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 other Semitic languages, is written from right to left.

The influence of Arabic on other languages

Main article: Influence of Arabic on other Languages
The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries dominated by Islam or Islamic power. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages as diverse as Berber, Kurdish, Persian, Swahili, Urdu, Hindi (especially the spoken variety), Bengali, Turkish, Malay, and Indonesian, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example the Arabic word for book /kita:b/ is used in all the languages listed, apart from Malay and Indonesian (where it specifically means “religious book”). In addition, Spanish and Portuguese both have large numbers of Arabic loan words.
The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit “prayer” < salat), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq “logic”), economic items (like English “sugar”) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano “so and so”) and everyday conjunctions (like Urdu lekin “but”.) Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most religious terms used by Muslims around the world 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 mediated by other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic; for example, most Arabic loanwords in Urdu entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri.

In common with other European languages, many English words are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them are commonly-used words like “sugar” (sukkar), “cotton” (quṭn) and “magazine” (maḫāzin). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include “algebra”, “alcohol”, “alchemy”, “alkali” and “zenith