Short Overview on Arabic Language

PRESENTED BY Ms. FADHELA JAMEEL

TUTOR IN ARABIC LANGUAGE

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

 

• Arabic is an ancient and modern SEMITIC language.
• Used as the main language by more than 350-400 million, the majority of which in the Middle East, and by all the main religious nations, Islam, Christian, Jews and others.
• Arabic language is speeding very fast in the world and amongst nations. It perhaps ranks 6th amongst the world languages. It is spoken by more than four million people in the USA. This is due to the ever-enlarging relationship between the Arab world and the international countries.
• The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters plus some symbols.
• Three letters are vowel letters, short or long.
• Writing style in Arabic is from right to left. Ex: the word AMERICA if written in Arabic style should be written as ACIREMA.
• Arabic language is written cursively, with the letters connected to one another: some letters connect only the preceding letters on the right side but not to the left side letters. These are known as “one -way connecters”. English letters do not have this character.
• The Arabic language can be divided into three categories:
  1. Classical of Historical Arabic (e.g The Qur’an and pre-islamic poetry).
  2. Literary or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), also called fus-haa. This is the Contemporary Arabic used in publishing and other media. It is the language as it is taught in schools worldwide, including the Middle East.
  3. Spoken Arabic, and called “ammiyya”, which is the informal Arabic heard in everyday life. This category contains all regional dialects, including Egyptian, Moroccan, and Levantine or Eastern Arabic.
• Letters Pronunciations in Arabic language sound equivalent to those in English but few letters are unique to the Arabic language and need to be learn from the table guide. For example: Thaa, Khaa, Dhaad, and so on.