8/10/2019 History of the Arabic Language

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History of the Arabic Language

The Arabic language is spoken today by over 250 million people in the Middle East and NorthAfrica. A number of other native languages are also spoken in this part of the orld such as!urdish" #erber" and Mahri. Arabic is also used as a religious language by the orld$sMuslims" ho total around one billion people. Arabic is therefore also learned to variouslevels of proficiency" as a venerated" liturgical language" by many Muslims mainly in Asia%e.g." &akistan" Malaysia" 'hina( and Africa %e.g." )enegal(.

The language that is spoken by the native speakers of Arabic is usually referred to as *dialect*+,- /1. The numerous dialects are purely spoken and are used in parallel to another form of thelanguage that is primarily ritten but is also spoken in the media today. This coe3istence ofto forms of the same language to serve different purposes is knon as diglossia. This formof Arabic goes back to pre4slamic poetry and is commonly referred to as fu)a 678/91:+; ? 1:

%elegant or clear language( in Arabic. 4n English it is called Modern )tandard Arabic"'lassical Arabic and sometimes literary Arabic or @ur$anic Arabic. hile these multipledesignations in English seem to offer a breakdon of the different kinds of fu)a that coe3ist today" the Arabic designation sees the different types ithin a large continuum. This)tandard Arabic is standard in that it remains almost e3clusively the only recogniBed languageof literacy across the Arabic speaking orld. 4t also enCoys a special position for Arabicspeakers because of the large body of te3ts that has been produced in this form of thelanguage particularly around the golden age of the 4slamic civiliBation. 4n addition to the4slamic religious te3ts and the classical Arabic literary te3ts" maCor scholarly contributions to

the fields of science" medicine" astronomy" mathematics" and sociology for instance ereritten in the middle ages in this standard Arabic language. Most students learning Arabic asa foreign language tend to get e3posure to this standard ritten language first before theylearn a dialect.

Educated speakers of Arabic do mi3 the standard language and their on dialects to varyingdegrees depending on the situation. hile roughly four maCor regional dialects of Arabicspoken in the Arab orld today have been identified" a multitude of dialectic variations can benoted even ithin one single country. The four regional dialects are divided into the folloinggeneral categoriesD Arabic of the Maghreb %North Africa(" Egyptian Arabic %Egypt and the

)udan(" evantine Arabic %ebanon" )yria" Fordan and &alestineG&alestinians in 4srael(" and4raHiGIulf Arabic. These dialects can differ greatly from one another to the point of mutualunintelligibility.

4n terms of language typology" Arabic belongs to the )emitic family of languages. )ome ofthe members of this language family that are spoken today include Arabic" Aramaic %relativelysmall communities mostly in 4raH and )yria(" Amharic %the national language of Ethiopia("Tigre %spoken in Eritrea(" and ebre %spoken in 4srael(. There ere many other members ofthis language family hich have disappeared over time. These include" for e3ample" Akkadian%spoken in ancient Mesopotamia(" &hoenician %spoken in hat is today ebanon(" and Eblaite%spoken in ancient )yria(.

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The )emitic languages first came to light in the Arabian &eninsula. Jver the course ofmillennia these languages spread as different groups left the Arabian &eninsula" carrying theirlanguages ith them" into various parts of the Middle East and neighboring areas.

#eginning in the Kth century 'E" the Arab 'onHuests %also knon as 4slamic or Muslim

'onHuests( carried speakers of various Arabic dialects" ith their religion of 4slam and theirlanguage of Arabic" out of the Arabian &eninsula into almost all of the Middle East and NorthAfrica" est into the 4berian &eninsula and all the ay east to 'hina. Jver time" as theincoming Arabs intermarried ith indigenous peoples mostly in the Middle East and NorthAfrica" the Arabic language became the prominent language of these regions. hile some ofthe native languages such as !urdish %4raH and )yria(" #erber %Algeria and Morocco(" Mahri%Lemen(" and Febali %Jman( are still spoken in this area" some languages have graduallyshrunk. Aramaic" for e3ample" the language that as spoken most idely in the Middle East

before the 'onHuests" is still spoken in pockets in today$s )yria and 4raH. 4n Egypt" thelanguage that as spoken before the Muslims came as 'optic" a direct descendant of the

Anciant Egyptian language. Today it only survives as a liturgical language of the 'optic'hurch.

As a result of the contact Arabic has had ith other languages over the past 5 centuries"many languages of the orld have borroed ords from Arabic. &ersian %a member of the4ndoEuropean language family( and Turkish %a member of the Altaic language family(" fore3ample" are replete ith Arabic ords. The very name of the language *)ahili"* spoken inEast Africa" is an Arabic ord. )panish and &ortuguese have a large Arabic vocabulary%appro3imately 000 ords( dating back to the eight centuries of contact in the 4berian&eninsula under Muslim rule. English too has its share of ords borroed from Arabic

typically ords starting ith *al.* )ome of these ords had been borroed by Arabicspeakers themselves from other languages. Oor e3ample" the English ord *alchemy* comesfrom the Arabic PQ