Arabic language

**Arabic** is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world. Having emerged in the 1st century, it is named after the Arab people; the term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula, as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece.</nowiki>

Since the 7th century, Arabic has been characterized by diglossia, with an opposition between a standard prestige language—i.e., Literary Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Classical Arabic—and diverse vernacular varieties, which serve as mother tongues. Colloquial dialects vary significantly from MSA, impeding mutual intelligibility. MSA is only acquired through formal education and is not spoken natively. It is the language of literature, official documents, and formal written media. In spoken form, MSA is used in formal contexts, news bulletins and for prayers. This variety is the lingua franca of the Arab world and the liturgical language of Islam. It is an official language of 26 states and 1 disputed territory, the third most after English and French. It is also one of six official languages of the United Nations.

Spoken varieties are the usual medium of communication in all other domains. They are not standardized and vary significantly, some of them being mutually unintelligible. The International Organization for Standardization assigns language codes to 33 varieties of Arabic, including MSA. Arabic vernaculars do not descend from MSA or Classical Arabic. Combined, Arabic dialects have 362 million native speakers, while MSA is spoken by 274 million L2 speakers, making it the sixth most spoken language in the world.

Arabic is traditionally written with the Arabic alphabet, a right-to-left abjad and the official script for MSA. Colloquial varieties were not traditionally written; however, the emergence of social media has seen a significant increase in dialects written online. Besides the Arabic alphabet, dialects are also often written in Latin script from left to right or in Hebrew characters (in Israel) with no standardized orthography. Hassaniya is the only variety officially written in a Latin alphabet.; Maltese also uses a Latin script, though it is widely classified as distinct from Arabic dialects.

## Vowels

Vowel phonemes of Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic

Most common vowel system among Arabic dialects

## Consonants

Note: the table and notes below discusses the phonology of Modern Standard Arabic among Arabic speakers and not regional dialects.

1. ↑ Emphatic consonants are pronounced with the back of the tongue approaching the pharynx (see pharyngealization). They are pronounced with velarization by the Iraqi and Arabic Gulf speakers. /q/, /ħ/, and /ʕ/ can be considered the emphatic counterparts to /k/, /h/, and /ʔ/ respectively.
2. ↑ /t/ and /k/ are aspirated [tʰ] and [kʰ], whereas /tˤ/ and /q/ are unaspirated.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Depending on the region, the plosives are either alveolar or dental.
4. ↑ The Sudanese usually pronounce /q/ (ق) as [ɢ] even in Literary Arabic.
5. ↑ ض [dˤ] was historically [ɮˤ], a value it retains among older speakers in a few isolated dialects.
6. ↑ When speaking Modern Standard Arabic, the phoneme represented by the Arabic letter **ǧīm** (ج) is pronounced [d͡ʒ], [ʒ], [ɡ], or [ɟ] depending on the speaker's native dialect. Outside the Arab League, [d͡ʒ] is the preferred taught variant.
7. ↑ In Modern Standard Arabic /ɡ/ is either the standard pronunciation for **ǧīm** (ج) or is used in foreign words which may be transcribed more commonly with ج, غ, ق or ك or less commonly ݣ‎ (used in Morocco) or ڨ‎ (used in Tunisia and Algeria), mainly depending on the regional spoken variety of Arabic or the commonly diacriticized Arabic letter.
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 /θ/ and /ð/ may be approximated to [t] and [d] or [s] and [z], respectively.
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 In most regions, uvular fricatives of the classical period have become velar or post-velar.
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 The "voiced pharyngeal fricative" /ʕ/ (ع) is described as neither pharyngeal nor fricative, but a creaky-voiced epiglottal approximant. Its unvoiced counterpart /ħ/ (ح) is likewise epiglottal, although it is a true fricative. Thelwall asserts that the sound of ع is actually a pharyngealized glottal stop [ʔˤ].
11. ↑ The voiced emphatic dental fricative ظ [ðˤ] is mostly pronounced as a voiced emphatic alveolar fricative [zˤ] in Egypt and Lebanon.
12. ↑ Emphatic [rˤ] exists in Northwestern African pronunciations and in Egypt when accompanied by /a/ or /u/ and plain when accompanied by /i/ or /j/; in closed syllables, then it is plain when the first preceding voweled consonant has /i/ or if /j/ is present, but emphatic if the first preceding voweled letter is accompanied by /a/ or /u/. The trill /r/ is sometimes reduced to a single vibration when single, but it remains potentially a trill, not a flap [ɾ]: the pronunciation of this single trill is between a trill [r] and a flap [ɾ]. ⟨r⟩ is in free variation between a trill [r] and a flap [ɾ] in Egypt and the Levant.
13. ↑ In most pronunciations, /ɫ/ as a phoneme occurs in a handful of loanwords. It also occurs in الله *Allah* /ʔaɫˈɫaːh/, the name of God, except when it follows long or short /i/ when it is not emphatic: بسم الله **bismi l-lāh** /bis.milˈlaːh/ ("in the name of God"). However, /ɫ/ is absent in many regions, such as the Nile Valley, and is more widespread in certain regions, such as Iraq, where the uvulars have velarized surrounding instances of /l/ in the environment of emphatic consonants when the two are not separated by /i/.

## References

1. ↑  Al-Azraqi. (2019). Delateralisation in Arabic and Mehri. *Dialectologia*, 23: 1–23. https://raco.cat/index.php/Dialectologia/article/download/366597/460520/
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Watson (2002)
3. ↑ Watson (2002)