اللغة العربية
Arabic, the official language of more than 20 countries, is the mother tongue of more than 300 million people. It's spoken throughout the Middle East, from Morocco to Iraq Also, because Arabic is the language of the Quraan and Islam, it's understood by more than 1.2 billion people across the world. Due to recent geopolitical events, Arabic has catapulted to the top f the list of important world languages. There are basically three different types of Arabic: Quraanic Arabic, local dialects, and Modern Standard Arabic:
Quranic Arabic is the Arabic used to write the Quraan, the holy book for Muslims. This form of Arabic is very rigid and hasn't changed much since the Quran was written approximately 1,500 years ago. Quranic Arabic is widely used in religious circles for prayers, discussions. Its usage is limited primarily within a strict religious context. It's the equivalent of Biblical English.
The regional dialects are the most informal type of Arabic. They tend to fall into four geographical categories: the North African dialect (Morocco Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya); the Egyptian dialect ; the shamm area (Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon); and Gulf Arabic (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain). Even though the words are pronounce differently and some of the everyday expressions differ dramatically from region to region, speakers from different regions an understand each other.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the most widely used and understood form of Arabic in the world. While it's not the native language of any speaker of Arabic, it's used in schools, news, broadcasts, and other formal settings. It's less rigid than the Quranic Arabic but more formal than the local dialects.
The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters.
Arabic is written right to left (except for numbers).
Most Arabic letters change their form slightly, depending on whether they are at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the word.
Unlike English, the Arabic letters are always pronounced in the same way. In English the letter “c” is sometimes pronounced like an “s” and sometimes like a “k”. In Arabic, the letters always retain their sound.
The Arabic letters in this post shows the letters in their basic stand-alone position.
Arabic is gender-specific language; nouns are masculine or feminine. Verb forms may change based on whether the person spoken to is male or female or dual.
Most of the consonants in Arabic have English equivalents. But a few are quite foreign to nonnative speakers. This post shows how the letters are transcribed in English, and this shows where is the right place to start your pronunciation from.
The verb “to be” is not necessary to form a simple sentence.
The article 'al ال' expresses the definite of a noun of any gender and number.
