Arabic Writing & Language

Arabic Language

In the Arabic language there are 28 consonants and three vowels (a, i, u). The vowels can be both long and short sounds. In the Arabic language, there is no use of the words "is" or "are" in the present tense, so the "is" is assumed in sentences such as "he good" or "she good." Arabic is also written and read right to left, and all Arabic books open from the back with the index is in the front.

The Arabic script derived from the Nabataean Aramaic script. This script has been used since the 4th century AD and has less consonants than Arabic. In the 7th century, new letters were added along with a series of dots, which help to avoid ambiguities in the script. As the script evolved so did the diacritics.

Arabic can be written as a script or in transliteration. The script called abjad (aab jod) is written right to left using a series of cursive style Arabic consonants. The consonants change form in most cases, depending on where they are located within any one word. There are non-Arabic languages that use the Arabic-style abjad script, they are Baluchi, Dari, Kurdish, Perisn/Farsi, Punjabi, Urdu, Turkish, Sindhi, Tatar, Pashto, Malay, Morisco, Kyrghyz and many more. Transliteration is written in English letters as a pronunciation guide, mainly for non-native Arabic speakers.

There are over 30 different dialects of Arabic. Some of the most widely spoken dialects are Egyptian (spoken by about 50 million Egyptians and one of the most widely understood dialects), Algerian (spoken by about 20 million Algerians), Sudanese, Saidi (spoken by 19 million Egyptians), Mesopotamian (spoken in Iraq, Iran and Syria) and Najdi (spoken in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Syria by 10 million people).

In Arabic, there are two styles: Classical and Modern Standard. Classical Arabic is used mainly in the Qur'an, but also in classical literature. It is different from Modern Standard Arabic in vocabulary usage and style. In Classical Arabic, the vocabulary and style is archaic. This form of Arabic may be hard to understand once translated to English, so there are several translations available to make it easier to be understood. Modern Standard Arabic is the style spoken throughout the Arabic world, it is understood by every Arabic speaker and is used in media and lectures.