varieties of Arabic

The Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the Nabatean alphabet used to write the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic, itself descended from Phoenician. The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late fourth-century inscription from Jabal Ram (50 km east of Aqaba), but the first dated one is a trilingual inscription at Zebed in Syria from 512. However, the epigraphic record is extremely sparse, with only five certainly pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions surviving, though some others may be pre-Islamic. Later, dots were added above and below the ...

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Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Structure of the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Abjadi order, Arabic alphabet - Presentation of the alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Primary letters, Arabic alphabet - Hamza, Arabic alphabet - Diacritics, Arabic alphabet - Numerals, Arabic alphabet - History, Arabic alphabet - Arabic alphabets of other languages, Arabic alphabet - Current uses of the alphabet for other languages, Arabic alphabet - Former uses of the alphabet for other languages, Arabic alphabet - Computers and the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Arabic keyboard layout

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The Arabic alphabet is written from right to left and is composed of 28 basic letters. Adaptations of the script for other languages such as Persian and Urdu have additional letters. There is no difference between written and printed letters; the writing is unicase (i.e. the concept of upper and lower case letters does not exist). On the other hand, most of the letters are attached to one another, even when printed, and their appearance changes as a function of whether they connect to preceding or fol ...

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Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Structure of the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Abjadi order, Arabic alphabet - Presentation of the alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Primary letters, Arabic alphabet - Hamza, Arabic alphabet - Diacritics, Arabic alphabet - Numerals, Arabic alphabet - History, Arabic alphabet - Arabic alphabets of other languages, Arabic alphabet - Current uses of the alphabet for other languages, Arabic alphabet - Former uses of the alphabet for other languages, Arabic alphabet - Computers and the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Arabic keyboard layout

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Main article: Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (which variety - Nabataean or Syriac - is a matter of scholarly dispute), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (Maghrebi) and Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different ...

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Arabic language, Arabic language - Literary and Modern Standard Arabic, Arabic language - Arabic and Islam, Arabic language - Classification and related languages, Arabic language - Dialects, Arabic language - Sounds, Arabic language - Vowels, Arabic language - Consonants, Arabic language - Syllable stucture, Arabic language - Stress, Arabic language - Dialectal variations, Arabic language - Grammar, Arabic language - Writing system, Arabic language - Calligraphy, Arabic language - Transliteration

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See varieties of Arabic for main article "Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the Maghreb dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Maltese, though descended from Arabic, is considered a separate language. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to conve ...

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Arabic language, Arabic language - Literary and Modern Standard Arabic, Arabic language - Arabic and Islam, Arabic language - Classification and related languages, Arabic language - Dialects, Arabic language - Sounds, Arabic language - Vowels, Arabic language - Consonants, Arabic language - Syllable stucture, Arabic language - Stress, Arabic language - Dialectal variations, Arabic language - Grammar, Arabic language - Writing system, Arabic language - Calligraphy, Arabic language - Transliteration

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See Arabic grammar ...

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Arabic language, Arabic language - Literary and Modern Standard Arabic, Arabic language - Arabic and Islam, Arabic language - Classification and related languages, Arabic language - Dialects, Arabic language - Sounds, Arabic language - Vowels, Arabic language - Consonants, Arabic language - Syllable stucture, Arabic language - Stress, Arabic language - Dialectal variations, Arabic language - Grammar, Arabic language - Writing system, Arabic language - Calligraphy, Arabic language - Transliteration

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Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages other than Arabic, including Persian, Kurdish, Malay and Urdu. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology. For example, the Arabic language lacks a [p] phoneme, so many languages add their own letter to represent [p] in the script, though the specific letter used varies from language to language ...

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Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Structure of the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Abjadi order, Arabic alphabet - Presentation of the alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Primary letters, Arabic alphabet - Hamza, Arabic alphabet - Diacritics, Arabic alphabet - Numerals, Arabic alphabet - History, Arabic alphabet - Arabic alphabets of other languages, Arabic alphabet - Current uses of the alphabet for other languages, Arabic alphabet - Former uses of the alphabet for other languages, Arabic alphabet - Computers and the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Arabic keyboard layout

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The Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several character sets, including ISO-8859-6 and Unicode, in the latter thanks to the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, neither of these sets indicate the form each character should take in context. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character. When one wants to encode a particular written form of a character, there are extra code points provided in Unicode which can be used to express the exact written form desired. The Arabi ...

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Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Structure of the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Abjadi order, Arabic alphabet - Presentation of the alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Primary letters, Arabic alphabet - Hamza, Arabic alphabet - Diacritics, Arabic alphabet - Numerals, Arabic alphabet - History, Arabic alphabet - Arabic alphabets of other languages, Arabic alphabet - Current uses of the alphabet for other languages, Arabic alphabet - Former uses of the alphabet for other languages, Arabic alphabet - Computers and the Arabic alphabet, Arabic alphabet - Arabic keyboard layout

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Arabic grammar - Cardinal numerals. Cardinal numerals (al-aʻdād al-aṣliyyat) from 1-10 (zero is ṣifr, from which the English words "cipher" and "zero" are ultimately derived) 1 See also:

Arabic grammar, Arabic grammar - History, Arabic grammar - Phonology, Arabic grammar - Noun, Arabic grammar - State, Arabic grammar - Article, Arabic grammar - Inflection, Arabic grammar - Gender, Arabic grammar - Genitive construction Iḍāfa, Arabic grammar - Nisba, Arabic grammar - Pronoun, Arabic grammar - Personal pronouns, Arabic grammar - Enclitic pronouns, Arabic grammar - Demonstratives, Arabic grammar - Numerals, Arabic grammar - Cardinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Ordinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Verb, Arabic grammar - Perfect, Arabic grammar - Imperfect, Arabic grammar - Mood, Arabic grammar - Voice, Arabic grammar - Weak verbs, Arabic grammar - Stem formation, Arabic grammar - Participle, Arabic grammar - Infinitive, Arabic grammar - Syntax

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The term "Arabic" may refer either to literary Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic or to the many localized varieties of Arabic commonly called "colloquial Arabic." Arabs consider literary Arabic as the standard language and tend to view everything else as mere dialects. Literary Arabic, al-luġatu-l-ʻarabiyyatu-l-fuṣḥā (Literally: "the most eloquent Arabic language" — See also:

Arabic language, Arabic language - Literary and Modern Standard Arabic, Arabic language - Arabic and Islam, Arabic language - Classification and related languages, Arabic language - Dialects, Arabic language - Sounds, Arabic language - Vowels, Arabic language - Consonants, Arabic language - Syllable stucture, Arabic language - Stress, Arabic language - Dialectal variations, Arabic language - Grammar, Arabic language - Writing system, Arabic language - Calligraphy, Arabic language - Transliteration

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A pronominal paradigm consists of 12 forms: In singular and plural, the 2nd and 3rd persons differentiate gender, while the 1st person does not. In the dual, there is no 1st person, and only a single form for each 2nd and 3rd person. Traditionally, the pronouns are listed in order 3rd, 2nd, 1st. Arabic grammar - Personal pronouns. Arabic grammar - Enclitic pronouns. Enclitic forms of the pronoun (See also:

Arabic grammar, Arabic grammar - History, Arabic grammar - Phonology, Arabic grammar - Noun, Arabic grammar - State, Arabic grammar - Article, Arabic grammar - Inflection, Arabic grammar - Gender, Arabic grammar - Genitive construction Iḍāfa, Arabic grammar - Nisba, Arabic grammar - Pronoun, Arabic grammar - Personal pronouns, Arabic grammar - Enclitic pronouns, Arabic grammar - Demonstratives, Arabic grammar - Numerals, Arabic grammar - Cardinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Ordinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Verb, Arabic grammar - Perfect, Arabic grammar - Imperfect, Arabic grammar - Mood, Arabic grammar - Voice, Arabic grammar - Weak verbs, Arabic grammar - Stem formation, Arabic grammar - Participle, Arabic grammar - Infinitive, Arabic grammar - Syntax

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Arabic grammar - State. The Arabic noun can take one of three states of definiteness: definite, indefinite or construct state. The definite state is marked by the article al-. The indefinite state is marked by an ending -n (nunation). The construct state is unmarked and occurs in the f ...

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Arabic grammar, Arabic grammar - History, Arabic grammar - Phonology, Arabic grammar - Noun, Arabic grammar - State, Arabic grammar - Article, Arabic grammar - Inflection, Arabic grammar - Gender, Arabic grammar - Genitive construction Iḍāfa, Arabic grammar - Nisba, Arabic grammar - Pronoun, Arabic grammar - Personal pronouns, Arabic grammar - Enclitic pronouns, Arabic grammar - Demonstratives, Arabic grammar - Numerals, Arabic grammar - Cardinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Ordinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Verb, Arabic grammar - Perfect, Arabic grammar - Imperfect, Arabic grammar - Mood, Arabic grammar - Voice, Arabic grammar - Weak verbs, Arabic grammar - Stem formation, Arabic grammar - Participle, Arabic grammar - Infinitive, Arabic grammar - Syntax

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Due to the rapid expansion of Islam in the 8th century, many people learned Arabic as a lingua franca. For this reason, the earliest grammatical treatises on Arabic are often written by non-native speakers. The earliest grammarian who is known to us is ʻAbd Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq (died 735 (117 H)). The efforts of three generations of grammarians culminated in the book of the Persian sc ...

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Arabic grammar, Arabic grammar - History, Arabic grammar - Phonology, Arabic grammar - Noun, Arabic grammar - State, Arabic grammar - Article, Arabic grammar - Inflection, Arabic grammar - Gender, Arabic grammar - Genitive construction Iḍāfa, Arabic grammar - Nisba, Arabic grammar - Pronoun, Arabic grammar - Personal pronouns, Arabic grammar - Enclitic pronouns, Arabic grammar - Demonstratives, Arabic grammar - Numerals, Arabic grammar - Cardinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Ordinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Verb, Arabic grammar - Perfect, Arabic grammar - Imperfect, Arabic grammar - Mood, Arabic grammar - Voice, Arabic grammar - Weak verbs, Arabic grammar - Stem formation, Arabic grammar - Participle, Arabic grammar - Infinitive, Arabic grammar - Syntax

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Classical Arabic has 28 consonantal phonemes (including two semi-vowels), originally corresponding to the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet. (By Koranic times, however, the letter alif no longer represented a glottal stop, but a long [a:]. As a result, a diacritic symbol, hamza, was introduced to represent this sound. In addition, some of these phonemes have coalesced in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through borrowing or phonemic splits ...

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Arabic grammar, Arabic grammar - History, Arabic grammar - Phonology, Arabic grammar - Noun, Arabic grammar - State, Arabic grammar - Article, Arabic grammar - Inflection, Arabic grammar - Gender, Arabic grammar - Genitive construction Iḍāfa, Arabic grammar - Nisba, Arabic grammar - Pronoun, Arabic grammar - Personal pronouns, Arabic grammar - Enclitic pronouns, Arabic grammar - Demonstratives, Arabic grammar - Numerals, Arabic grammar - Cardinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Ordinal numerals, Arabic grammar - Verb, Arabic grammar - Perfect, Arabic grammar - Imperfect, Arabic grammar - Mood, Arabic grammar - Voice, Arabic grammar - Weak verbs, Arabic grammar - Stem formation, Arabic grammar - Participle, Arabic grammar - Infinitive, Arabic grammar - Syntax

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Main Article: Languages of Egypt The Ancient Egyptian language, which formed a separate branch among the family of Afro-Asiatic languages, was among the first written languages, and is known from hieroglyphic inscriptions preserved on monuments and sheets of papyrus. The Coptic language, the only extant descendant of Egyptian, is today the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. The "Koiné" dialect of the Greek language was important in Hellenistic Alexandria, and was used in the philosophy and science of that culture, a ...

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