Chadian and French victory
87-845: The Toyota War ( Arabic : حرب التويوتا , romanized : Ḥarb al-Tūyūtā , French : Guerre des Toyota ), also known as the Great Toyota War , which took place in 1987 in Northern Chad and on the Chad–Libya border , was the last phase of the Chadian–Libyan War . It takes its name from the Toyota pickup trucks, primarily the Toyota Hilux and the Toyota Land Cruiser , used to provide mobility for
174-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
261-610: A common strategy, Habré was able to retake almost all of northern Chad, and in the following months, inflicted new heavy defeats on the Libyans, until a ceasefire putting an end to the conflict was signed in September. The ceasefire left open the issue of the disputed Aouzou Strip , which was eventually assigned to Chad by the International Court of Justice in 1994. Since 1983, Chad was de facto partitioned, with
348-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
435-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
522-453: A gift to Africa", even if Libya refused to leave the disputed Aouzou Strip. On 3 October the two countries resumed diplomatic relations, and another important step was made when the two countries agreed in September 1990 to refer the dispute to the International Court of Justice . On 3 February 1994, the court ruled in favour of Chad, thus definitively solving the Aouzou controversy by assigning
609-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
696-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
783-567: A possibility that France was not disposed to tolerate. As a result, Mitterrand forced Habré to accept the mediation efforts of the Organisation of African Unity 's Chairman, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia , which resulted in a ceasefire on 11 September. It was assumed that war would, sooner or later, resume, but in the end the ceasefire violations were relatively minor. Gaddafi announced in May 1988 that he would recognise Habré as President of Chad "as
870-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
957-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
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#17327834678371044-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
1131-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
1218-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
1305-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
1392-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
1479-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
1566-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
1653-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
1740-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
1827-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
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#17327834678371914-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
2001-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
2088-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
2175-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
2262-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
2349-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
2436-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
2523-593: The Chadian Armed Forces (FAT) which had maintained its loyalty to Wadel Abdelkader Kamougué . At the opening of 1987, the last year of the war, the Libyan expeditionary force was still impressive, comprising 8,000 soldiers, 300 tanks, multiple rocket launchers ( rocket artillery ) and regular artillery pieces, Mi-24 helicopters, and sixty combat aircraft. These forces did not have a unified command but were divided into an Operational Group South, active in
2610-530: The French Air Force to keep Libyan aircraft grounded and, most importantly, to provide 400 new Toyota pickups equipped with MILAN anti-tank guided missiles . It is these trucks that gave the name "Toyota War" to this last phase of the Chadian-Libyan conflict. Habré selected as the first target for his reconquest of northern Chad the well-fortified Libyan communications base of Fada . It
2697-621: The Tibesti with 2,500 men, and an Operational Group East, centered in Faya-Largeau . Though formidable, the Libyan military disposition in Chad was marred by serious flaws. The Libyans were prepared for a war in which they would provide ground and air support to their Chadian allies, who would then act as assault infantry, and provide reconnaissance. By 1987, however, Muammar Gaddafi had lost his allies, exposing Libya's inadequate knowledge of
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2784-741: The Transitional Government of National Unity (GUNT) forces fighting against Hissène Habré and was a recipient of aid from Libya . FAT began to disintegrate during 1982 as a result of defeats inflicted by Habré's Armed Forces of the North (FAN). Most remaining soldiers accepted integration into FAN or resumed their insurgency as codos . The Military of Chad is divided into three main branches of service: The Armed Forces of Chad have around 2.2 million women available to be drafted into their military as well as around 1.9 million men. People are considered fit for military service in Chad at
2871-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
2958-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
3045-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
3132-781: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Chadian Armed Forces The Chadian Armed Forces ( Forces Armées Tchadiennes or FAT) were
3219-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
3306-571: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
3393-834: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
3480-512: The Chadian troops as they fought against the Libyans, and as technicals . The 1987 war resulted in a heavy defeat for Libya, which, according to American sources, lost one tenth of its army, with 7,500 men killed and US$ 1.5 billion worth of military equipment destroyed or captured. Chadian forces suffered 1,000 deaths. The war began with the Libyan occupation of northern Chad in 1983, when Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi , refusing to recognise
3567-648: The Chadian victories in the first three months of 1987, more than 3,000 Libyan soldiers had been killed, captured, or deserted. Large numbers of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery, fixed-wing aircraft, and helicopters were captured or destroyed. In some cases, Libya sent its own aircraft to bomb abandoned Libyan equipment to deny its use to the Chadians. It was reported that, in many cases, Libyan soldiers had been killed while fleeing to avoid battle. At Ouadi Doum, panicked Libyans had suffered high casualties running through their own minefields. The fall of Ouadi Doum
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3654-502: The FANT column withdrew to Chadian soil. The attack had been opposed by France, which refused to provide FANT with intelligence and logistical support, causing FANT to suffer considerable losses. The French Defence Minister André Giraud [ fr ] let it be known that "France was not implicated in any way" in the attack and "had not been informed of it". The American reaction was markedly different, as it had previously supported
3741-581: The GUNT rebelled against Gaddafi, stripping Libya of its main cover of legitimacy for its military presence in Chad. Seeing an occasion to unify Chad behind him, Habré ordered his forces to pass the 16th parallel so as to link up with the GUNT rebels (who were fighting the Libyans in Tibesti ) in December. A few weeks later a bigger force struck at Fada , destroying the local Libyan garrison. In three months, combining methods of guerrilla and conventional warfare in
3828-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
3915-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
4002-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
4089-620: The age of 20. People in Chad can volunteer to join the military at age 18, however if you wait until age 20 there is a 3-year service obligation. There is also no minimum age for volunteers as long as guardian consent is given. Women in Chad are subject to 1 year of compulsory military or civic service at the age of 21. The government of Chad spends around 4.2% of their GDP on their armed forces. The Chadian Armed Forces spend about One-Hundred and One million dollars in military spending. The Chadian Armed Forces are ranked eleventh overall recent military growth. This African military article
4176-436: The amount of Libyan forces in the country to a total of 11,000 by March. In March 1987, the main Libyan air base of Ouadi Doum was captured by Chadian forces. Although strongly defended by minefields , 5,000 soldiers, tanks, armoured vehicles, and aircraft, the Libyans' base fell to a smaller Chadian attacking force led by Djamous equipped with trucks mounted with machine guns and antitank weapons . Observers estimated that, in
4263-434: The area against the bombing were rejected, as Aouzou had been retaken against the wishes of French President François Mitterrand . Instead, Mitterrand called for international mediation to settle competing claims to the disputed territory . After a succession of counterattacks, toward the end of August, the Libyans finally drove the 400 Chadian soldiers out of the town. This victory – the first by Libyan ground forces since
4350-463: The area. Libyan garrisons came to resemble isolated and vulnerable islands in the Chadian Sahara . Also significant was the low morale among the troops, who were fighting in a foreign country, and the structural disorganization of the military of Libya , which was in part induced by Muammar Gaddafi 's fear of a military coup against him. This fear led him to avoid the professionalization of
4437-433: The armed forces. The Libyans also had to deal with the greatly strengthened Chadian National Armed Forces (FANT), which was composed of 10,000 highly motivated soldiers, led by experienced and able commanders, such as Idriss Déby , Hassan Djamous and Head of State Hissène Habré himself. And while FANT previously had no air power, limited mobility, and few anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, by 1987, it could count on
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#17327834678374524-467: The army of the central government of Chad from 1960 to 1979, under the southern presidents François Tombalbaye and Félix Malloum , until the downfall of the latter in 1979, when the head of the gendarmerie , Wadel Abdelkader Kamougué , assumed command. Joined by gendarmerie units, FAT became a regional force representing primarily the Sara ethnic group of the five southern prefectures . It joined with
4611-533: The attempted reconquest of the Aouzou Strip ; it now welcomed the Chadian raid. Because of domestic opposition, internal demoralisation, and international hostility, Gaddafi assumed a more conciliatory attitude following his defeat. On the other side, Habré also found himself vulnerable, as the French feared that the attack on Maatan as-Sarrah was only the first stage of a general offensive into Libya proper,
4698-451: The base, Djamous avoided a frontal assault and used his forces' high mobility to surround the Libyan positions and then unleashed his troops, destroying the defending garrison. In the battle , 784 Libyans were killed and 100 tanks destroyed, while 50 FANT soldiers died. The unexpected defeat stunned Gaddafi, who then reacted on 4 January by recalling to service all of the army reservists . In an act of defiance towards France, he also ordered
4785-481: The bombing of Arada , well south of the 16th parallel. France retaliated with a new airstrike on Ouadi Doum and destroyed its radar system, effectively blinding the Libyan Air Force in Chad for several months. Gaddafi attempted to contain the FANT threat by rushing several new battalions into Chad (especially to Faya-Largeau and Ouadi Doum ), including units of the elite Revolutionary Guard . This brought
4872-439: The confrontation, and was now leaving Chad so that the opposition could play its part in fighting Habré. These military actions left Habré in control of Chad and in a position to threaten the expulsion of Libya from the Aouzou Strip , affected the international perception of Libya as a significant regional military power, and cast renewed doubt on the competence and determination of Libyan soldiers, especially in engagements beyond
4959-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
5046-594: The country's borders to which they evidently felt no personal commitment. The Toyota War attracted considerable interest in the United States, where the possibility of using Habré to overthrow Gaddafi was given serious consideration. As part of the Reagan Administration 's support for his government, Habré, during a visit to Washington , received a pledge of US$ 32 million worth of aid, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles . In August 1987,
5133-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
5220-418: The encouraged Chadians carried their offensive into the disputed Aouzou Strip, occupying the town of Aouzou following another battle in which the Libyans suffered severe losses in troops and abandoned equipment. In retaliation, Libya intensified its air bombardments of towns in the north, usually from altitudes beyond the range of FANT's shoulder-fired missiles. Appeals by Habré for French air missions to defend
5307-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
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#17327834678375394-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
5481-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
5568-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
5655-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
5742-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
5829-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
5916-586: The leadership of the organisation. Taking advantage of the GUNT's difficulties, Habré struck a series of accords with smaller rebel factions, which left the GUNT at the beginning of 1986 with only three of the eleven factions that had originally signed the Lagos Accord in 1979. The remaining factions were Goukouni's People's Armed Forces (FAP), Acheikh's armed branch of the Democratic Revolutionary Council (CDR) and that part of
6003-510: The legitimacy of the Chadian President Hissène Habré , militarily supported the attempt by the opposition Transitional Government of National Unity (GUNT) to overthrow Habré. The plan was foiled by the intervention of France which, first with Operation Manta and later with Operation Epervier , limited Libyan expansion to north of the 16th parallel , in the most arid and sparsely inhabited part of Chad. In 1986,
6090-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
6177-624: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
6264-575: The northern half controlled by the rebel Transitional Government of National Unity (GUNT) headed by Goukouni Oueddei and supported on the ground by Libyan forces , while the south was held by the Western-backed Chadian government guided by Hissène Habré . This partition on 16th parallel (the so-called Red Line) into Libyan and French zones of influence was informally recognised by France in 1984, following an accord between France and Libya to withdraw their forces from Chad. The accord
6351-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
6438-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
6525-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
6612-597: The region, so the news of his victory could reach the headlines. Habré quickly reacted to this setback and to the continued bombing of FANT concentrations in northern Chad. On September 5, 1987, he mounted a surprise raid against the key Libyan air base at Maaten al-Sarra . Reportedly, 1,000 Libyans were killed, 300 were captured, and hundreds of others were forced to flee into the surrounding desert. Chad claimed that its troops destroyed about 32 aircraft – including Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 and MiG-23 fighters, Sukhoi Su-22 fighter-bombers , and Mil Mi-24 helicopters – before
6699-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
6786-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
6873-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
6960-496: The start of the Toyota War – was apparently achieved through close-range air strikes, which were followed by ground troops advancing cross-country in jeeps, Toyota all-terrain trucks, and light armoured vehicles . For the Libyans, who had previously relied on ponderous tracked armour, the assault represented a conversion to the desert warfare tactics developed by FANT. To highlight the victory, Gaddafi flew foreign journalists to
7047-757: The territory to the southern country. Monitored by international observers, the withdrawal of Libyan troops from the Strip began on the 15 April and was completed by the 10 May. The formal and final transfer of the Aouzou Strip from Libya to Chad took place on the 30 May, when the sides signed a joint declaration stating that the Libyan withdrawal had been effected. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
7134-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
7221-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
7308-405: Was a severe setback for Libya. Deserted by most of their Chadian allies, Libyan forces found themselves isolated in foreign territory, and the loss of the main Libyan air base in Chad prevented Libya from providing close air cover to its troops. In general, the offensive against FANT had exposed the vulnerability of Libya's heavy armour to a more mobile enemy. On Gaddafi's orders, a general withdrawal
7395-415: Was defended by 2,000 Libyans and the bulk of the Democratic Revolutionary Council (CDR) militia (Gaddafi's closest Chadian allies), well-provided with armour and artillery. Hassan Djamous, the thirty-year-old FANT commander-in-chief, pitched about 4,000–5,000 men against Fada's Libyan garrison. Taking advantage of his army's superior knowledge of the terrain, which apparently included unknown access points to
7482-505: Was not respected by Libya, which maintained at least 3,000 men stationed in northern Chad. During the period between 1984 and 1986, in which no major clash took place, Habré greatly strengthened his position thanks to Western support and Libya's failure to respect the Franco-Libyan 1984 agreement. From 1984 onwards, the GUNT also suffered increasing factional tensions, centered on the fight between Goukouni and Acheikh ibn Oumar over
7569-464: Was undertaken from Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Prefecture , beginning with Faya-Largeau . The town had served as the main Libyan base during the preceding four years, but was in danger of being encircled. Its garrison of 3,000 men, together with the survivors of Ouadi Doum, retired toward the Libyan base at Maatan-as-Sarra, north of the Chadian border. In an attempt to reduce the damage inflicted to his international standing, Gaddafi announced that Libya had won
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