How many dialects of Arabic are there?
Varieties of Arabic
There are many varieties of Arabic (also called dialects of Arabic or vernacular languages) in existence. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. It is classified as a macrolanguage comprising 30 modern varieties, including its standard form. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. Some varieties of Arabic in North Africa, for example, are not easily comprehensible to an Arabic speaker from the Levant or the Persian Gulf. Within these broad regions further and considerable geographic distinctions exist, within countries, across country borders, even between cities and villages.
Hilalian dialects
Nevertheless, there are several enclaves of Pre-Hilalian Arabic dialects in this area, including old urban dialect-speaking cities (such as Fez, Rabat, Tlemcen, Constantine, Tunis) and four major sedentary rural dialects speaking areas as well as several Berber speaking areas.
Arabs
Arabic has developed into at least two distinct forms. Classical Arabic is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times (7th to 9th centuries). It is based on the medieval dialects of Arab tribes. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the direct descendant used today throughout the Arab world in writing and in formal speaking, for example, prepared speeches, some radio broadcasts, and non-entertainment content, while the lexis and stylistics of Modern Standard Arabic are different from Classical Arabic. Colloquial Arabic, an informal spoken language, varies by dialect from region to region; various forms of the language are in use today and provide an important force for Arab cohesion.
Damascus Arabic
Damascus Arabic ("llahže ššāmiyye") or Damascus Dialect is a North Levantine Arabic spoken dialect, indigenous to and spoken primarily in Damascus. As the dialect of the capital city of Syria, and due to its use in the Syrian broadcast media, it is prestigious and widely recognized by speakers of other Syrian dialects, as well as in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan. Accordingly, in modern times it is sometimes known as Syrian Arabic or the Syrian Dialect; however, the former term may also be used to refer to the group of similar urban sedentary dialects of the Levant, or to mean Levantine Arabic in general.
Gulf Arabic
Gulf Arabic has 10 personal pronouns. The conservative dialect has preserved the gender differentiation of the 2nd and 3rd person in the plural forms, whereas dual forms have not survived. The following table bears the generally most common pronouns:
Some pronouns, however, have other (less frequent, resp. local) forms:
Arabic grammar
It also has six vowel phonemes (three short vowels and three long vowels). These appear as various allophones, depending on the preceding consonant. Short vowels are not usually represented in the written language, although they may be indicated with diacritics.
Jordanian Arabic
Jordanian Arabic is a continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by the population of the Kingdom of Jordan. Jordanian Arabic varieties are Semitic. They are spoken by more than 6 million people, and understood throughout the Levant and, to various extents, in other Arabic-speaking regions. As in all Arab countries, language use in Jordan is characterized by diglossia; Modern Standard Arabic is the official language used in most written documents and the media, while daily conversation is conducted in the local colloquial varieties.
Defective script
A broadly defective script is the Arabic abjad. The modern script does not normally write short vowels, but for the first few centuries of the Islamic era, long vowels were not written and many consonant letters were ambiguous as well. The Arabic script derives from the Aramaic, and not only did the Aramaic language have fewer phonemes than Arabic, but several originally distinct Aramaic letters had conflated (become indistinguishable in shape), so that in the early Arabic writings 28 consonant phonemes were represented by only 18 letters—and in the middle of words, only 15 were distinct. For example, medial represented , and represented . A system of diacritic marks, or "pointing," was later developed to resolve the ambiguities, and over the centuries became nearly universal. However, even today unpointed texts of a style called " are found, where these consonants are not distinguished.
Moroccan Arabic
Moroccan Arabic has many regional dialects and accents as well. Its mainstream dialect is the one used in Casablanca, Rabat and Fas and therefore it dominates the media eclipsing the other regional dialects like the ones spoken in Tangiers and Oujda.
Arabic
Arabic () ' or () ' or ) is a Central Semitic language that first emerged in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the of the Arab world. It is named after the Arabs, a term initially used to describe peoples living from Mesopotamia in the east to the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, in northwestern Arabia, and in the Sinai Peninsula. Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage comprising 30 modern varieties, including its standard form, Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic.
Lebanese Arabic
Lebanese Arabic or Lebanese is a variety of North Levantine Arabic, indigenous to and spoken primarily in Lebanon, with significant linguistic influences borrowed from other Middle Eastern and European languages, and is in some ways unique from other varieties of Arabic. Due to multilingualism among Lebanese people (a majority of the Lebanese people are bilingual or trilingual), it is not uncommon for Lebanese people to mix Lebanese Arabic, French, and English into their daily speech.
Languages of Egypt
Arabic came to Egypt in the 7th century, and Egyptian Arabic has become the modern spoken language of the Egyptians, is understood by almost all Egyptians and is based on Egyptian Coptic grammar. In southern Egypt, Saidi Arabic is the main spoken language for most non-urbanized people. Of the many varieties of Arabic, Egyptian Arabic is the most widely understood first dialect in the Middle East-North Africa, probably due to the influence of Egyptian cinema throughout the Arabic-speaking world.
Omani Arabic
Omani Arabic (also known as Omani Hadari Arabic) is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Al Hajar Mountains of Oman and in a few neighboring coastal regions. It is the easternmost Arabic dialect. It was formerly spoken by colonists in Kenya and Tanzania, but most or all of them have shifted to Swahili. There are several distinct dialects of Omani Arabic, such as Dhofari Arabic and Shihhi Arabic.
Middle East
Arabic, with all its dialects, are the most widely spoken languages in the Middle East, with Literary Arabic being official in all North African and in most West Asian countries. Arabic dialects are also spoken in some adjacent areas in neighbouring Middle Eastern non-Arab countries. It is a member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Several Modern South Arabian languages such as Mehri and Soqotri are also spoken Yemen and Oman. Another Semitic language such as Aramaic and its dialects are spoken mainly by Assyrians and Mandaeans. There is also a Oasis Berber-speaking community in Egypt where the language is also known as Siwa. It is a non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic language.
Tunisian Arabic
Nowadays and due to dialect leveling, the main dialect varieties of Tunisian Arabic are Northwestern Tunisian (also spoken in Northeastern Algeria), southwestern Tunisian, Tunis dialect, Sahil dialect, Sfax dialect and southeastern Tunisian. All of these varieties are Hilalian excepting the Sfax one.
Arabic phonology
Modern Standard Arabic has six vowel phonemes forming three pairs of corresponding short and long vowels (). Many spoken varieties also include and . Modern Standard Arabic has two diphthongs (formed by a combination of short with the semivowels and ) in Classical Arabic with no allophones. Allophony in different dialects of Arabic can occur, and is partially conditioned by neighboring consonants within the same word. As a general rule, for example, and are:
Libyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic ( "Lībī"; also known as Sulaimitian Arabic) is a variety of Arabic spoken in Libya and neighboring countries. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misurata. The eastern variety extends beyond the borders to the east into western Egypt. A distinctive southern variety, centered on Sabha, also exists and is more akin to the western variety.
Gulf Arabic
Gulf varieties' closest related relatives are other dialects native to the Arabian Peninsula, i.e. Najdi Arabic and Bahrani Arabic. Although spoken over much of Saudi Arabia's area, Gulf Arabic is not the native tongue of most Saudis, as the majority of them do not live in Eastern Arabia. There are some 200,000 Gulf Arabic speakers in the country, out of a population of over 30 million, mostly in the aforementioned Eastern Province.
Varieties of Arabic
The largest differences between the classical/standard and the colloquial Arabic are the loss of grammatical case; a different and strict word order; the loss of the previous system of grammatical mood, along with the evolution of a new system; the loss of the inflected passive voice, except in a few relic varieties; restriction in the use of the dual number and (for most varieties) the loss of the feminine plural. Many Arabic dialects, Maghrebi Arabic in particular, also have significant vowel shifts and unusual consonant clusters. Unlike other dialect groups, in the Maghrebi Arabic group, first person singular verbs begin with a n- (ن).
Demographics of Africa
Around a hundred languages are widely used for inter-ethnic communication. Arabic, Somali, Berber, Amharic, Oromo, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Manding, Fulani and Yoruba are spoken by tens of millions of people. 
Twelve dialect clusters (which may group up to a hundred linguistic varieties) are spoken by 75 percent, and fifteen by 85 percent, of Africans as a first or additional language.
Varieties of Arabic
The greatest variations between kinds of Arabic are those between regional language groups. These can be divided many ways, but the following typology is usually used:
These large regional groups do not correspond to borders of modern states. In the western parts of the Arab world, varieties are referred to as الدارجة "ad-dārija", and in the eastern parts, as العامية "al-ʿāmmiyya". Nearby varieties of Arabic are mostly mutually intelligible, but faraway varieties tend not to be. Varieties west of Egypt are particularly disparate, with Egyptian Arabic speakers claiming difficulty in understanding North African Arabic speakers, while North African Arabic speakers' ability to understand other Arabic speakers is mostly due to the widespread popularity of Egyptian Standard and to a lesser extent, the Lebanese popular media (this phenomenon is called asymmetric intelligibility). One factor in the differentiation of the varieties is the influence from other languages previously spoken or still presently spoken in the regions, such as Coptic in Egypt, French, Ottoman Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Berber, Punic or Phoenician in North Africa, Himyaritic, Modern South Arabian and Old South Arabian in Yemen and Aramaic in the Levant. Speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties are often able to communicate by switching to Modern Standard Arabic.
Levantine Arabic
The primary division between Arabic dialects in ancient times was between Northern Old Arabic, spoken in the southern Levant, and Old Hijazi, spoken in the northern, and later central Hijaz. The main representatives of Northern Old Arabic were Safaitic, Hismaic, and Nabataean Arabic. Tens of thousands of graffiti in the Safaitic and Hismaic scripts cover the deserts of southern Syria and present-day Jordan. The Safaitic inscriptions sometimes exhibit the article ʾ(l), a shared areal isogloss with the Arabic substrate of the Nabataean inscriptions. Many Safaitic inscriptions exhibit all of the features typical of Arabic. The Hismaic script was used to compose two long texts in an archaic stage of Arabic before the language acquired the definite article.
Arabic
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, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages.
Arabic grammar
Classical Arabic has 28 consonantal phonemes, including two semi-vowels, which constitute the Arabic alphabet.
Arabic
Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. Some of the most influenced languages are Persian, Turkish, Spanish, Urdu, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Hindi, Malay, Maldivian, Indonesian, Pashto, Punjabi, Tagalog, Sindhi, and Hausa, and some languages in parts of Africa. Conversely, Arabic has borrowed words from other languages, including Greek and Persian in medieval times, and contemporary European languages such as English and French in modern times.
Hejazi Arabic phonology
Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken in the Hejaz region, one by the urban population "" originally spoken in the major cities of Jeddah, Medina, Mecca and Ta'if who constitute the majority, and another by the bedouin or rural populations. However, the term most often applies to the urban variety which is discussed in this article.Hejazi consonant inventory mostly depends on the speaker, urban speakers use 26 with no interdental phonemes or 28 phonemes with the phonemes and being used partially due to the influence of Modern Standard Arabic and neighboring dialects, in addition to the marginal phoneme and two foreign phonemes ⟨پ⟩ and ⟨ڤ⟩ used by a number of speakers. In general, Hejazi speakers pronounce as or merge it with depending on the word, with the classicized pronunciation being an optional allophone, as it is always used when pronouncing the letter's name (), and when reading or speaking Standard or Classical Arabic. On the other hand rural or bedouin speakers use 27 consonant phonemes completely merging the phoneme /dˤ/ with /ðˤ/ .
Culture of Egypt
Arabic is Egypt's official language, it came to Egypt in the 7th century, and the Egyptian Arabic dialect today has become the modern speech of the country. Of the many varieties of Arabic, it is the most widely spoken second dialect, due to the influence of Egyptian cinema and media throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Egypt's position in the heart of the Arab world has also had reversed influence, adopting many words, phrases, and proverbs from neighboring Arabic speaking areas such as the Maghreb area and the Mashriq. Today the daily Egyptian Arabic adopted several French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Armenian and English words to its dictionary, as well as keeping several other words from its own ancient languages such as Coptic and Demotic.
Tajwid
The Arabic alphabet has 28 basic letters, plus hamzah (ء).
Arabic
"Arabic" usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic and "colloquial" or "dialectal" Arabic. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran, 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-ʻArab). 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 (MSA).
Arabic media
The term "Arab" refers to any individual who speaks Arabic as a first language and can be ethnically and religiously heterogeneous in its makeup. The Arab world, according to scholars, consists of 22 countries in the Middle East and Africa which belong to the Arab League, including Algeria, Bahrain, the Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
Arabic grammar
The largest differences between the classical/standard and the colloquial Arabic are the loss of morphological markings of grammatical case; changes in word order, an overall shift towards a more analytic morphosyntax, the loss of the previous system of grammatical mood, along with the evolution of a new system; the loss of the inflected passive voice, except in a few relic varieties; restriction in the use of the dual number and (for most varieties) the loss of the feminine plural. Many Arabic dialects, Maghrebi Arabic in particular also have significant vowel shifts and unusual consonant clusters. Unlike other dialects, in Maghrebi Arabic first person singular verbs begin with a n- (ن).
Hejazi Arabic phonology
Hejazi has eight vowel phonemes: three short , , and five long , , , and , with length as a distinctive feature, and two diphthongs and . Unlike other Arabic dialects, Hejazi did not develop allophones for the vowels and in the vicinity of emphatic consonants, and they are always pronounced as an open front or open central depending on the speaker, and retains most of the long and short vowels of Classical Arabic with no vowel reduction, though in a few number of foreign words the long is optionally pronounced .
Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian is a North African dialect of the Arabic language which is a Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt around the capital Cairo. Egyptian Arabic evolved from the Quranic Arabic which was brought to Egypt during the seventh-century AD Muslim conquest that aimed to spread the Islamic faith among the Egyptians. Egyptian Arabic is influenced by the Egyptian Coptic language which was the native language of the Egyptians prior to the Islamic conquest, and later it had influences by other languages such as French, Italian, Greek, Turkish and English. The 94 million Egyptians speak a continuum of dialects, among which Cairene is the most prominent. It is also understood across most of the Arabic-speaking countries due to the predominance of Egyptian influence on the region as well as Egyptian media including Egyptian cinema which has had a big influence in the MENA region for more than a century along with the Egyptian music industry, making it the most widely spoken and one of the most widely studied varieties of Arabic.
Pluricentric language
Pre-Islamic Arabic can be considered a polycentric language. In Arabic-speaking countries different levels of polycentricity can be detected.
Modern Arabic is a pluricentric language with varying branches correlating with different regions where Arabic is spoken and the type of communities speaking it. The vernacular varieties of Arabic include Gulf Arabic (spoken in the Persian Gulf kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait), Iraqi Arabic, Levantine Arabic (spoken in Levantine countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine), Egyptian Arabic, Sudanese Arabic, and Maghrebi Arabic (spoken in Northwestern Africa), among many others. In addition, many speakers use Modern Standard Arabic in education and formal settings. Therefore, in Arabic-speaking communities, diglossia is frequent.
Tunisian Arabic
Tunisian Arabic is one of the Arabic languages within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It is a variety of Maghrebi Arabic like Moroccan and Algerian Arabic, which are mostly unintelligible to Modern Standard or Mashriqi Arabic speakers. It has a considerable number of pre-hilalian dialects but is usually considered in its koiné form to be a mostly Hilalian variety of Maghrebi Arabic because it was affected by the immigration of Banu Hilal in the 11th century, as were the other Maghrebi varieties.
Varieties of Arabic
The most obvious phonetic difference between the two groups is the pronunciation of the letter ق "qaf", which is pronounced as a voiced in the Urban varieties of the Arabian Peninsula (like the Hejazi dialect in the ancient urban cities of Mecca and Medina) as well as in the Bedouin dialects across all Arabic-Speaking Countries, but is voiceless mainly in the post-Arabized Urban centers as either (with being an allophone in few words mostly in North African cities) or (merging with ) in the urban centers of Egypt and the Levant, all of which were mostly Arabized after the Islamic Conquests.
Arabic
As the modern written language, Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities, and is 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 Classical Arabic, and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties, and has 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-classical era, especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while the latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Latin and vernaculars (or today's French, Czech or German) in medieval and early modern Europe. This view though does not take into account the widespread use of Modern Standard Arabic as a medium of audiovisual communication in today's mass media—a function Latin has never performed.
Maghrebi Arabic
Maghrebi Arabic (Western Arabic; as opposed to Eastern Arabic or Mashriqi Arabic) is an Arabic dialect continuum spoken in the Maghreb region, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Western Sahara, and Mauritania. It includes Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan, and Hassaniya Arabic. Speakers of Maghrebi Arabic call their language Derja, Derija or Darija (; meaning "to rise or advance step by step"). This serves to differentiate the spoken vernacular from Modern Standard Arabic. As the Maltese language is believed to have been immediately derived from Siculo-Arabic and ultimately from Tunisian Arabic, it contains some typical Maghrebi Arabic areal characteristics."Darija", "Derija" or "Delja" () means "everyday/colloquial language"; it is also rendered as "", "derija" or "darja". It refers to any of the varieties of colloquial Maghrebi Arabic. Although it is also common in Algeria and Tunisia to refer to the Maghrebi Arabic varieties directly as languages, similarly it is also common in Egypt and Lebanon to refer to the Mashriqi Arabic varieties directly as languages. For instance, Algerian Arabic would be referred as "Dzayri" (Algerian) and Tunisian Arabic as "Tounsi" (Tunisian), and Egyptian Arabic would be referred as "Masri" (Egyptian) and Lebanese Arabic as "Lubnani" (Lebanese).
Jijel Arabic
Pre-Hilalian Arabic dialects remained intact only in a small area around Jijel while they were heavily mixed with bedouin dialects in the areas of Constantine, Mila, Collo and El Milia. Pre-Hilalian dialects also remain in the urban areas of Fez, Rabat, Tlemcen, Constantine and Tunis. Tlemcen Arabic and Jijel Arabic remain very close. Jijel Arabic is also amongst the most Berber-influenced Arabic dialects of Algeria.
Arabic phonology
A more precise description is J. C. E. Watson's. Here the stressed syllable follows the marker ' and variant rules are in brackets:Modern Arabic dialects all maintain rules (1) and (2). But if there is neither a final superheavy syllable nor a heavy penultimate syllable, their behaviour varies. Thus in Palestinian, rule (3) is instead 'otherwise stress the first syllable (up to the antepenult): ‘he wrote’, ‘man’', whereas the basic rules of Cairene (to which there are exceptions) are:Spoken varieties differ from Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic not only in grammar but also in pronunciation. Outside of the Arabian peninsula, a major linguistic division is between "sedentary" varieties, largely urban varieties. Inside the Arabian peninsula and in Iraq, the two types are less distinct; but the language of the urbanized Hijaz, at least, strongly looks like a conservative sedentary variety.
Algerian Arabic
Pre-Hilalian Arabic dialects are generally classified in three types: urban, "village" sedentary and Jewish dialects. Several Pre-Hilalian dialects are spoken in Algeria:
Varieties of Arabic
"True pronunciations differ; transliterations used approach an approximate demonstration. Also, the pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic differs significantly from region to region."
For the sake of comparison, consider the same sentence in German and Dutch:Or in Spanish and Portuguese:Some linguists do argue that the varieties of Arabic are different enough to qualify as separate languages in the way that Spanish and Portuguese or German and Dutch do. However, as Reem Bassiouney points out, perhaps the difference between 'language' and 'dialect' is to some degree political rather than linguistic.
Varieties of Arabic
When it comes to phonetics the Arabic dialects differ in the pronunciation of the short vowels (, and ) and a number of selected consonants, mainly , and the interdental consonants , and , in addition to the dental .
Damascus Arabic
DA is one of the most represented and researched Arabic dialects; 
It has been researched or discussed by Grotzfeld (1965), Amrbros (1977), Cowell (1964) Cantineau and Helbaoui (1953), Kuhnt (1958), Kassab (1970), Ferguson (1961), Bloch (1964) and (1965), Bergsträsser (1924), which also contains around fifty-pages worth of transcribed DA, and the twelve-volume course written by the US Defense Language Institute (1983).
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic (, , autonym: "il-lahje š-šāmiyye") is a broad variety of Arabic and the main vernacular spoken Arabic of the eastern coastal strip of the Levantine Sea that includes parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Israel, and Turkey. With numerous dialects and over 30 million native speakers worldwide, it is considered one of the five major varieties of Arabic. In the frame of the general diglossia status of the Arab world, Levantine Arabic is used for daily spoken use, while most of the written and official documents and media use Modern Standard Arabic.
Arabic verbs
Arabic verbs ( '; '), like the verbs in other Semitic languages, and the entire vocabulary in those languages, are based on a set of two, three, four and also five (but mainly three) consonants called a root ("triliteral" or "quadriliteral" according to the number of consonants). The root communicates the basic meaning of the verb, e.g. ' 'write', ' 'read', " 'eat'. Changes to the vowels in between the consonants, along with prefixes or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as person, gender, number, tense, mood, and voice.
International Association of Arabic Dialectology
AIDA is nowadays the leading international association in this field of research and it has become a center that joins scholars from all over the world who are interested in any aspect of Arabic dialectology, including dialects which have not been described yet, dialectal geography, specific aspects of phonology, morphology and syntax, code-switching, koiné language, pidgin, creole, the lexicon of Arabic dialects, dialectal atlases, comparative and diachronic studies, sociolinguistics, teaching of Arabic dialects, and so on.
Dialect continuum
Arabic is a standard case of diglossia. The standard written language, Modern Standard Arabic, is based on the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an, while the modern vernacular dialects (or languages) branched from Classical Arabic a few hundred years earlier , from North Western Africa through Egypt, Sudan, and the Fertile Crescent to the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq. The dialects use different analogues from the huge Arabic language inventory, use different shortcuts and have been influenced by different substrate and superstrate languages. Adjacent dialects are mutually understandable to a large extent, but those from distant regions are not at all.
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian (or Ṣayhadic or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Old South Arabian languages (e.g. Awsānian), of which very little evidence has survived, however. A sole surviving Sayhadic language is attested in Jabal Rāziḥ in far north-west of Yemen, though the varieties of speech in neighboring areas have both Arabic and Sayhadic features, and it is difficult to classify them as either Arabic dialects with a Sayhadic substratum, or Sayhadic languages that have been restructured under pressure of Arabic.
Tunisian Arabic morphology
There are significant differences in morphology between Tunisian and Standard Arabic. Standard Arabic marks 13 person/number/gender distinctions in the verbal paradigm, whereas the dialect of Tunis marks only 7 (the gender distinction is found only in the third person singular). Nomadic Tunisian Arabic dialects also mark gender for the second person in singular, in common with most spoken varieties of Arabic elsewhere in the Arabic world.
Arabic phonology
Of all the mainstream varieties of Arabic, Moroccan Arabic is likely the one that has diverged the most from Classical Arabic, similarly to the position of French in the Romance languages and English among the Germanic languages. As described above, Moroccan has heavily innovated in its vowel phonology, under heavy Berber influence. Short vowels and merged into . More recently, most instances of short have also merged into ; the few that remain are mostly in the vicinity of velars and uvulars, which suggests an alternative analysis with phonemically rounded consonants (e.g. labiovelars) and only one short vowel . This schwa, in turn, is phonemically deleted in all contexts except directly followed by a single word-final consonant or in some three-consonant words of the shape "CəCC". This inevitably results in some very long, complex consonant clusters, which (unlike most other Arabic varieties) Moroccan Arabic is remarkably tolerant of, only tending to insert epenthetic schwas to break up the clusters at a slow rate of speech. Unlike in other varieties, doubled consonants are never reduced, but are pronounced clearly whether occurring at the beginning of a word, end of a word, between vowels or before or after a consonant. With the collapse of short vowels, speakers no longer perceive a long vs. short distinction in vowels, which has been replaced with a "full" vs. "reduced/unstable" distinction. "Full" vowels (actually pronounced half-long) substitute for both the long and short vowels of Classical Arabic in borrowings; as a result, these borrowings can be immediately identified by their phonology.
List of lingua francas
Arabic script was adopted by many other languages such as Urdu, Persian, Swahili (changed to Latin in the late 19th century), Turkish (switched to Latin script in 1928), and Somali (changed to Latin in 1972). Arabic became the lingua franca of these regions not simply because of commerce or diplomacy, but also on religious grounds since Arabic is the language of the Qur'an, Islam's holy book, sacred to Muslims. Arabic remains the lingua franca for 23 countries (25 with the Palestinian territories and Western Sahara), in the Middle East, North Africa, Horn of Africa, in addition to Chad and Eritrea. Despite a few language script conversions from Arabic to Latin as just described, Arabic is the second most widely used alphabetic system in the world after Latin. Arabic script is/has been used in languages including Afrikaans, Azeri, Bosnian, Hausa, Kashmiri, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Malay, Morisco, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Sindhi, Somali, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Urdu, Uyghur, and Uzbek.
Arabic
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive.
Palestinian Arabic
The dialects spoken by the Arabs of the Levant – the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean – or Levantine Arabic, form a group of dialects of Arabic. Arabic manuals for the "Syrian dialect" were produced in the early 20th century, and in 1909 a specific "Palestinean Arabic" manual was published.
North Levantine Arabic
With over 24 million native speakers worldwide as of 2015, Northern Levantine Arabic is used for daily speech mainly in Lebanon and Syria, while most of the written and official documents and media use Modern Standard Arabic. Its dialect continuum has been described as one of the two ""dominant (prestigeful) dialect centres of gravity for Spoken Arabic"".
Arabic Language International Council
In accordance with the (16 May 2007) the United Nations General Assembly proclamation of the International Year of Languages in 2008, the Arabic Language International Council was established by the Arab universities association. The organization was formed within the framework of the UN's effort to promote Unity in diversity, and also in recognition of the UN's push for multilingualism as a means of promoting, protecting and preserving diversity of languages and cultures globally, particularly in the paramount importance attributed to the quality of the organization's six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish).
Egyptian Arabic
The total number of Egyptian Arabic users in all countries is over 64.5 million, 62.3 million of which are native speakers in Egypt, including several regional dialects. In addition, there are immigrant Egyptian communities in the Middle East, Europe, North America, Latin America, Australia and South East Asia. Among the spoken varieties of Arabic, standard Egyptian Arabic (based on the dialect of the Egyptian capital) is the only one to have become a lingua franca in other parts of the Arabic-speaking world for two main reasons: the proliferation and popularity of Egyptian films and other media in the region since the early 20th century as well as the great number of Egyptian teachers and professors who were instrumental in setting up the education systems of various countries in the Arabian Peninsula and also taught there and in other countries such as Algeria and Libya; although this is changing as Damascus Arabic is taking its rule in the media. Also, many Lebanese artists choose to sing in Egyptian and Lebanese. Standard Egyptian Arabic when used in documents, broadcast media, prepared speeches, and sometimes in liturgical purpose, is Cairene Arabic with loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic origin or code-switching between Cairene Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic.
List of countries where Arabic is an official language
The local dialects of Arabic spoken by Arab minorities in Iran (like Ahwazi Arabs, Khamseh Arabs, Marsh Arabs as well as Arabs in Khorasan) are Khuzestani Arabic and Mesopotamian Arabic, (also known as Iraqi Arabic) mainly in Khuzestan Province as well as Khorasani Arabic especially in Khorasan Province.
Arabic phonology
Modern Standard Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes (8 vowels in most modern dialects). All phonemes contrast between "emphatic" (uvularized) consonants and non-emphatic ones. Some of these phonemes have coalesced in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through borrowing or phonemic splits. A "phonemic quality of length" applies to consonants as well as vowels.
Modern Standard Arabic
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossiathe use of two distinct varieties of the same language, usually in different social contexts. This diglossic situation facilitates code-switching in which a speaker switches back and forth between the two dialects of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. People speak MSA as a third language if they speak other languages native to a country as their first language and colloquial Arabic dialects as their second language. Modern Standard Arabic is also spoken by people of Arab descent outside the Arab world when people of Arab descent speaking different dialects communicate to each other. As there is a prestige or standard dialect of vernacular Arabic, speakers of standard colloquial dialects code-switch between these particular dialects and MSA.
Varieties of Arabic
Classical Arabic varies widely from a dialect to another with , and being the most common:
Classical Arabic (Modern Standard ) varies widely from a dialect to another with , and being the most common:Classical interdental consonants and become or in some words in Egypt, Sudan, most of the Levant, parts of the Arabian peninsula (urban Hejaz and parts of Yemen). In Morocco, Algeria and other parts of North Africa they are consonantly , but remain and in most of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Tunisia, parts of Yemen, rural Palestinian, Eastern Libyan, and some rural Algerian dialects. In Arabic-speaking towns of Eastern Turkey, (Urfa, Siirt and Mardin) they respectively become .
Northern varieties are influenced by the Aramaic language.
Arabic
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic scripts to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern versions of the alphabet—in particular, the "faʼ" had a dot underneath and "qaf" a single dot above in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals).
Peninsular Arabic
Peninsular Arabic, or Southern Arabic, are the varieties of Arabic spoken throughout the Arabian Peninsula. This includes the countries of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Southern Iraq and the tribal people of Jordan (the native Jordanians).
Demonstrative
Arabic has also a three-way distinction. Very rich, with more than 70 variants, the demonstrative pronouns in Arabic principally change depending on the gender and the number. They mark a distinction in number for singular, dual, and plural. For example :
Arabic
The Classical Arabic language as recorded was a poetic koine that reflected a consciously archaizing dialect, chosen based on the tribes of the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, who spoke the most conservative variants of Arabic. Even at the time of Muhammed and before, other dialects existed with many more changes, including the loss of most glottal stops, the loss of case endings, the reduction of the diphthongs and into monophthongs , etc. Most of these changes are present in most or all modern varieties of Arabic.
Egyptian Arabic
As the status of Egyptian Arabic as opposed to Classical Arabic can have such political and religious implications in Egypt, the question of whether Egyptian Arabic should be considered a "dialect" or "language" can be a source of debate. In sociolinguistics, Egyptian Arabic can be seen as one of many distinct varieties that, despite arguably being languages on "abstand" grounds, are united by a common "dachsprache" in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).
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 hardly comprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Libya (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Egyptian films and other media).
Arabic
According to Charles A. Ferguson, the following are some of the characteristic features of the koiné 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:Of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost: , which merged with . But the consonant is still found in many colloquial Arabic dialects. Various other consonants have changed their sound too, but have remained distinct. An original lenited to , and – consistently attested in pre-Islamic Greek transcription of Arabic languages – became palatalized to or by the time of the Quran and , , or after early Muslim conquests and in MSA (see Arabic phonology#Local variations for more detail). An original voiceless alveolar lateral fricative became . Its emphatic counterpart was considered by Arabs to be the most unusual sound in Arabic (Hence the Classical Arabic's appellation ' or "language of the '"); for most modern dialects, it has become an emphatic stop with loss of the laterality or with complete loss of any pharyngealization or velarization, . (The classical "" pronunciation of pharyngealization still occurs in the Mehri language and the similar sound without velarization, , exists in other Modern South Arabian languages.)
Arabic
As mentioned above, many spoken dialects have a process of "emphasis spreading", where the "emphasis" (pharyngealization) of emphatic consonants spreads forward and back through adjacent syllables, pharyngealizing all nearby consonants and triggering the back allophone in all nearby low vowels. The extent of emphasis spreading varies. For example, in Moroccan Arabic, it spreads as far as the first full vowel (i.e. sound derived from a long vowel or diphthong) on either side; in many Levantine dialects, it spreads indefinitely, but is blocked by any or ; while in Egyptian Arabic, it usually spreads throughout the entire word, including prefixes and suffixes. In Moroccan Arabic, also have emphatic allophones and , respectively.
Baghdad Arabic
Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background. Nevertheless, the number and phonetic character of most of the 28 consonants has a broad degree of regularity among Arabic-speaking regions. Note that Arabic is particularly rich in uvular, pharyngeal, and pharyngealized ("emphatic") sounds. The emphatic coronals (, , , and ) cause assimilation of emphasis to adjacent non-emphatic coronal consonants. The phonemes ⟨پ⟩ and ⟨ڤ⟩ (not used by all speakers) are not considered to be part of the phonemic inventory, as they exist only in foreign words and they can be pronounced as ⟨ب⟩ and ⟨ف⟩ respectively depending on the speaker.
Phonetic notes:
Hejazi Arabic
Hejazi Arabic verbs, as with the verbs in other Semitic languages, and the entire vocabulary in those languages, are based on a set of three, four also five consonants (but mainly three consonants) called a root ("triliteral" or "quadriliteral" according to the number of consonants). The root communicates the basic meaning of the verb, e.g. ' 'to write', ' 'to eat'. Changes to the vowels in between the consonants, along with prefixes or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as :
Hejazi Has a single indicative present verb mood instead of the three Classical Arabic present verb moods (indicative رفع, subjunctive نصب, jussive ), it also includes present progressive tense which was not part of the Classical Arabic grammar, and has a two grammatical number in verbs (Singular and Plural) instead of the Classical (Singular, Dual and Plural).
Varieties of Arabic
Language mixes and changes in different ways. Arabic speakers often use more than one variety of Arabic within a conversation or even a sentence. This process is referred to as code-switching. For example, a woman on a TV program could appeal to the authority of the formal language by using elements of it in her speech in order to prevent other speakers from cutting her off. Another process at work is "leveling", the "elimination of very localised dialectical features in favour of more regionally general ones." This can affect all linguistic levels—semantic, syntactic, phonological, etc. The change can be temporary, as when a group of speakers with substantially different Arabics communicate, or it can be permanent, as often happens when people from the countryside move to the city and adopt the more prestigious urban dialect, possibly over a couple of generations.
Arabic
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.
Arabic phonology
Arabic syllable structure consists of an optional syllable onset, consisting of one or two consonants; an obligatory syllable nucleus, consisting of a vowel optionally preceded by and/or followed by a semivowel; and an optional syllable coda, consisting of one or two consonants. The following restrictions apply:The placement of word stress in Arabic varies considerably from one dialect to another, and has been the focus of extensive research and debate.
Monophthongization
Classical Arabic has two diphthongs, ~ and ~. In the majority of modern Arabic dialects, these diphthongs are realised as the long vowels and , respectively. These monophothongized mid vowels developed further into and , respectively, in Urban North African dialects. Some notable exceptions to this monophthongization are some rural Lebanese dialects, which partially preserves the original pronunciations of these diphthongs. Other Urban Lebanese dialects (i.e. Beitruti) uses the mid vowels and , another exception is the Sfax dialect of Tunisian Arabic which is known mostly for its conservation of the Classical Arabic diphthongs and .
Dual (grammatical number)
Among living languages, Modern Standard Arabic has a mandatory dual number, marked on nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. (First-person dual forms, however, do not exist; compare this to the lack of third-person dual forms in the old Germanic languages.) Many of the spoken Arabic dialects have a dual marking for nouns (only), and its use can be mandatory in some dialects, and not mandatory in others. Likewise, Akkadian had a dual number, though its use was confined to standard phrases like "two hands", "two eyes", and "two arms". The dual in Hebrew has also atrophied, generally being used for only time, number, and natural pairs even in its most ancient form.
Western Neo-Aramaic
In the last three villages where the language still survives, the dialect of Bakh'a appears to be the most conservative. It has been less influenced by Arabic than the other dialects, and retains some vocabulary that is obsolete in other dialects. The dialect of Jubb'adin has changed the most. It is heavily influenced by Arabic, and has a more developed phonology. The dialect of Maaloula is somewhere between the two, but is closer to that of Jubb'adin. Cross-linguistic influence between Aramaic and Arabic has been mutual, as Syrian Arabic itself (and Levantine Arabic in general) retains an Aramaic substratum.
Polypersonal agreement
The same is true also of Arabic and Akkadian. A number of modern Arabic dialects incorporate both direct and indirect object pronouns, e.g. Egyptian Arabic "he didn't write them to me". (In Classical Arabic the equivalent would be three words: .)
Scrabble letter distributions
Arabic-language editions use the following 100 tiles:Although Arabic letters have up to four forms, Scrabble tiles use the isolated form. In some sets, as found in some Arabic-based alphabets that are not the standard modern Arabic, a dotless yeh (alif maqsura) may be used ى‎, and for the letter he the final form ‎ھ (heh doachashmee) may appear, as it is in some Arabic-based alphabets, as in Urdu, the isolated form of the letter. The pattern of using the isolated forms in composing words is also found in Arabic crosswords and is one of the rare situations when Arabic letters are not connected to each other.
Arabic
The "colloquial" spoken dialects 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 and TV broadcasts, formal lectures, parliamentary discussions and to some extent between speakers of different colloquial dialects. Even when the literary language is spoken, however, it is normally only spoken in its pure form when reading a prepared text out loud and communication between speakers of different colloquial dialects. 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.
Although Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a unitary language, its pronunciation varies somewhat from country to country and from region to region within a country. The variation in individual "accents" of MSA speakers tends to mirror corresponding variations in the colloquial speech of the speakers in question, but with the distinguishing characteristics moderated somewhat. Note that it is important in descriptions of "Arabic" phonology to distinguish between pronunciation of a given colloquial (spoken) dialect and the pronunciation of MSA by these same speakers. Although they are related, they are not the same. For example, the phoneme that derives from Classical Arabic has many different pronunciations in the modern spoken varieties, e.g., including the proposed original . Speakers whose native variety has either or will use the same pronunciation when speaking MSA. Even speakers from Cairo, whose native Egyptian Arabic has , normally use when speaking MSA. The of Persian Gulf speakers is the only variant pronunciation which isn't found in MSA; is used instead, but may use [j] in MSA for comfortable pronunciation. Another reason of different pronunciations is influence of colloquial dialects. The differentiation of pronunciation of colloquial dialects is the influence from other languages previously spoken and some still presently spoken in the regions, such as Coptic in Egypt, Berber, Punic or Phoenician in North Africa, Himyaritic, Modern South Arabian and Old South Arabian in Yemen and Oman, Aramaic and Canaanite languages (including Phoenician) in the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Varieties of Arabic
In this case, is most likely to be used as it is not associated with a particular region and is the closest to a dialectical middle ground for this group of speakers. Moreover, given the prevalence of movies and TV shows in Egyptian Arabic, the speakers are all likely to be familiar with it. Iraqi "aku", Levantine "fīh" and North African "kayn" all evolve from Classical Arabic forms ("yakūn", "fīhi", "kā'in" respectively), but now sound very different.
Khalil Gibran International Academy
Further, the federal government has stated that the country is in critical need of Arabic and Chinese speakers, and grants have been given out for schools teaching those subjects.
Modern Arabic language is a dialect continuum with two dozen varieties that might be considered languages in their own right. They are the majority language in 20 countries of the Arab world, which has a population of some 325 million people.
Arabic
Classical Arabic is the liturgical language of 1.8 billion Muslims, and Modern Standard Arabic is one of six official languages of the United Nations. All varieties of Arabic combined are spoken by perhaps as many as 422 million speakers (native and non-native) in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world. 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 from left to right with no standardized orthography.
Arabic grammar
For classical Arabic grammarians, the grammatical sciences are divided into five branches:The grammar or grammars of contemporary varieties of Arabic are a different question. Said M. Badawi, an expert on Arabic grammar, divided Arabic grammar into five different types based on the speaker's level of literacy and the degree to which the speaker deviated from Classical Arabic. Badawi's five types of grammar from the most colloquial to the most formal are Illiterate Spoken Arabic ( ), Semi-literate Spoken Arabic ( ), Educated Spoken Arabic ( ), Modern Standard Arabic ( ), and Classical Arabic ( ).
Varieties of Arabic
The main dialectal variations in Arabic consonants revolve around the six consonants; , , , , and .
Tunisian Arabic
Finally, each of the six dialects have specific vocabulary and patterns.
List of countries where Arabic is an official language
As of 2018, there are 25 independent nations where Arabic is an official language. The following is a list of sovereign states and territories where Arabic is an official or "de facto" official language.
Arabic
Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coalesced into a single phoneme . Many dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb) subsequently lost fricatives, converting into . Most dialects borrow "learned" words from the Standard language using the same pronunciation as for inherited words, but some dialects without interdental fricatives (particularly in Egypt and the Levant) render original in borrowed words as .
Classical Arabic
Proto-Central Semitic, Proto-Arabic, various forms of Old Arabic, and some modern Najdi dialects to this day have alternation in the performative vowel of the prefix conjugation, depending on the stem vowel of the verb. Early forms of Classical Arabic allowed this alternation, but later forms of Classical Arabic levelled the /a/ allomorph:
Arabic
Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages (Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Phoenician), the Ancient South Arabian languages, and various other Semitic languages of Arabia such as Dadanitic. The Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include:
There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of the northern Hejaz. These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor, Proto-Arabic. The following features can be reconstructed with confidence for Proto-Arabic:
Arabic
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 six moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive, shorter energetic and longer energetic), the fifth and sixth moods, the energetics, exist only in Classical Arabic but not in MSA. There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive.
Sudan
Sudan has 597 groups that speak over 400 different languages and dialects. Sudanese Arabs are by far the largest ethnic group in Sudan. They are almost entirely Muslims; while the majority speak Sudanese Arabic, some other Arab tribes speak different Arabic dialects like Awadia and Fadnia tribes and Bani Arak tribes who speak Najdi Arabic; and Rufa'a, Beni Ḥassān, Al-Ashraf, Kinanah and Rashaida who speak Hejazi Arabic. In addition, the Western province comprises various ethnic groups, while a few Arab Bedouin of the northern Rizeigat and others who speak Sudanese Arabic share the same culture and backgrounds of the Sudanese Arabs.
Arabic grammar
Arabic verbs ( "fi‘l"), like the verbs in other Semitic languages, are extremely complex. Verbs in Arabic are based on a root made up of three or four consonants (called a triliteral or quadriliteral root, respectively). The set of consonants communicates the basic meaning of a verb, e.g. k-t-b 'write', q-r-’ 'read', ’-k-l 'eat'. Changes to the vowels in between the consonants, along with prefixes or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as tense, person and number, in addition to changes in the meaning of the verb that embody grammatical concepts such as mood (e.g. indicative, subjunctive, imperative), voice (active or passive), and functions such as causative, intensive, or reflexive.
Arabic language in Israel
Modern Standard Arabic (also known as Standard Arabic or Literary Arabic), is currently an auxiliary language in Israel and its use on government documents is mandated by law. Spoken Arabic dialects are spoken primarily by Arab citizens of Israel and Israeli Druze, as well as by some Mizrahi Jews, particularly those of the older generation who immigrated from Arabic-speaking countries. In 1949, 156,000 Palestinian Arabs were left inside Israel's armistice line, most of whom did not speak Hebrew. Today the majority of Arab Israelis, who constitute over a fifth of the Israeli population, speak Hebrew fluently, as a second language.
Varieties of Arabic
This process of accommodation sometimes appeals to the formal language, but often does not. For example, villagers in central Palestine may try to use the dialect of Jerusalem rather than their own when speaking with people with substantially different dialects, particularly since they may have a very weak grasp of the formal language. In another example, groups of educated speakers from different regions will often use dialectical forms that represent a middle ground between their dialects rather than trying to use the formal language, to make communication easier and more comprehensible. For example, to express the existential "there is" (as in, "there is a place where..."), Arabic speakers have access to many different words:
List of diglossic regions
The situation with the Literary Arabic (الفصحى "al-fuṣ-ḥā") versus spoken varieties of Arabic (العامية "al-`āmmiyya" or الدارجة "ad-dārija") differs from country to country, but every Arab country's official language is "standard Arabic" (MSA). Certain dialects have obtained a level of prestige. There is no consensus on which variety of Arabic should be taught to foreigners, although generally MSA is, since nearly all written Arabic texts exist in that variety.
Algerian Arabic
Algerian language includes several distinct dialects belonging to two genetically different groups: pre-Hilalian and Hilalian dialects.
Arabic
Although Classical Arabic was a unitary language and is now used in Quran, its pronunciation varies somewhat from country to country and from region to region within a country. It is influenced by colloquial dialects.
Algerian Saharan Arabic
Algerian Saharan Arabic (also known as Saharan Arabic, Tamanrasset Arabic, Tamanghasset Arabic) is a structurally distinct variety of Arabic spoken by an estimated 100,000 people in Algeria, predominantly along the Moroccan border with the Atlas Mountains. It is also spoken by about 10,000 people in neighbouring regions of Niger and Mali.
Arab world
While Arabic dialects are spoken in a number of Arab League states, Literary Arabic is official in all of them. Several states have declared Arabic to be an official or national language, although Arabic is today not as widely spoken there. As members of the Arab League, however, they are considered part of the Arab world under the standard territorial definition.
Mashriqi Arabic
Mashriqi Arabic (Eastern Arabic), or Mashriqi ʿAmmiya, is the varieties of Arabic spoken in the Mashriq, including the countries of Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, and Iraq. The variety is sometimes referred to as "Eastern Arabic", as opposed to "Western Arabic" (Maghrebi Arabic or Darija) and includes Mesopotamian Arabic and Gulf Arabic, along with Levantine Arabic. Speakers of Mashriqi call their language ʿAmmiya, which means "dialect" in Modern Standard Arabic.