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127-649: The name Beja , derived from Arabic : بجا , romanized :  bijā , is most common in English-language literature. Native speakers use the term Bidhaawyeet (indefinite) or Tubdhaawi (definite). Beja is held by most linguists to be part of the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, constituting the only member of the Northern Cushitic subgroup. As such, Beja contains

254-410: A maddah is placed on any other letter to denote the name of the letter, though some letters may take on a dagger alif . For example: ⟨ لٓمٓصٓ ⟩ ( lām - mīm - ṣād ) or ⟨ يـٰسٓ ⟩ ( yāʼ-sīn) The waṣlah ⟨ وَصْلَة ⟩ , alif waṣlah ⟨ أَلِف وَصْلَة ⟩ or hamzat waṣl ⟨ هَمْزَة وَصْل ⟩ looks like the head of

381-403: A clitic definite article, or have an indefinite suffix. Definite articles indicate gender, number, and case. The indefinite suffix marks gender only, and does not appear in the nominative case. For feminine common nouns, the indefinite suffix is -t ; for masculine nouns and feminine proper nouns, -b . The indefinite suffixes only appear after vowels. The definite article is proclitic. It has

508-575: 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

635-493: A consonant of unknown value. Ehret proposes that it might be a voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/ . Some linguists and paleographers believe that they have uncovered evidence of an earlier stage of Beja, referred to in different publications as "Old Bedauye" or "Old Beja." Helmut Satzinger has identified the names found on several third century CE ostraca (potsherds) from the Eastern Desert as likely Blemmye , representing

762-435: 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

889-413: A corresponding deverbal noun (Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa: "noun of action"; Vanhove: "action noun"; Roper: "nomen actionis"). For weak verbs, the deverbal noun is formed by a suffix -ti attached to the imperative root (see above). For strong verbs, deverbal nouns are not entirely predictable. Examples: There are patterns in strong verb deverbal nouns related to the structure of the citation form of

1016-422: A diacritic over or under an alif , wāw , or yā . Which letter is to be used to support the hamzah depends on the quality of the adjacent vowels and its location in the word; Consider the following words: ⟨ أَخ ⟩ /ʔax/ ("brother"), ⟨ إسْماعِيل ⟩ /ʔismaːʕiːl/ ("Ismael"), ⟨ أُمّ ⟩ /ʔumm/ ("mother"). All three of above words "begin" with

1143-1081: 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

1270-440: A fixed root. Verbs conjugate for a number of tense, aspect, modality, and polarity variations, which have been given different names by different linguists: (Roper analyzes additional subjunctive forms where Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa, and Vanhove see a conditional particle.) Each of the above forms has a corresponding negative. (Vanhove refers to the imperative negative as the "prohibitive".) The past continuous and past share

1397-815: A form of Old Beja. He also identifies several epigraphic texts from the fifth and sixth centuries as representing a later form of the same language. Nubiologist Gerald Browne, Egyptologist Helmut Satzinger, and Cushiticist Klaus Wedekind believed that an ostracon discovered in a monastery in Saqqarah also represents the Old Beja language. Browne and Wedekind identified the text as a translation of Psalm 30 . Nasals other than /m/ and /n/ are positional variants of /n/ . The consonants /χ/ and /ɣ/ only appear in Arabic loanwords in some speakers' speech; in others', they are replaced by /k/ or /h/ and /g/ . Some speakers replace /z/ in Arabic loanwords with /d/ . Beja has

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1524-487: 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

1651-488: A letter is called a kasrah ⟨ كَسْرَة ⟩ and designates a short /i/ (as in "me", "be") and its allophones [i, ɪ, e, e̞, ɛ] (as in "Tim", "sit"). For example: ⟨ دِ ⟩ /di/ . When a kasrah is placed before a plain letter ⟨ ﻱ ⟩ ( yā’ ), it represents a long /iː/ (as in the English word "steed"). For example: ⟨ دِي ⟩ /diː/ . The kasrah

1778-479: A long fatħah , was used for a contracted (assimilated) sin . Thus ⟨ ڛ سۣ سۡ سٚ ⟩ were all used to indicate that the letter in question was truly ⟨ س ⟩ and not ⟨ ش ⟩ . These signs, collectively known as ‘alāmātu-l-ihmāl , are still occasionally used in modern Arabic calligraphy , either for their original purpose (i.e. marking letters without i‘jām ), or often as purely decorative space-fillers. The small ک above

1905-462: A manner converb -a . The past continuous stem for strong verbs is not derivable from any other verb stem. The negative of the past continuous is identical to that of the past: There is only one past tense negative form. For both weak and strong verbs, the past negative is formed through a deverbal participial or converbal form (see above) followed by the present negative of the irregular verb aka "to be". Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa describe

2032-690: 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

2159-552: A modified Kurdish yā' ێ ; in the system devised by Muhammad Adaroob Muhammad it is represented by yā' with a shaddah يّ ; in the Red Sea University system, it is not distinguished from the yā' for /j/ or /iː/ . In the Usakana system, /oː/ is written with a modified Kurdish wāw ۆ ; in the system devised by Muhammad Adaroob Muhammad it is represented by wāw with a shaddah وّ ; in the Red Sea University system, it

2286-454: A number of linguistic innovations that are unique to it, as is also the situation with the other subgroups of Cushitic (e.g. idiosyncratic features in Agaw or Central Cushitic). The characteristics of Beja that differ from those of other Cushitic languages are likewise generally acknowledged as normal branch variation. The relation of the Northern Cushitic branch of Cushitic to the other branches

2413-450: A past negative. Negative forms are not derived from corresponding positive forms, but are independent conjugations. Every verb has a corresponding deverbal noun, which Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa refer to as a "noun of action", Vanhove calls an "action noun", and Roper a "nomen actionis". Numerous serial verb constructions exist which connote different aspectual and potential meanings. The third person masculine singular positive imperative

2540-577: A phonetic aid; i.e. show the correct pronunciation for children who are learning to read or foreign learners. The bulk of Arabic script is written without ḥarakāt (or short vowels). However, they are commonly used in texts that demand strict adherence to exact pronunciation. This is true, primarily, of the Qur'an ⟨ ٱلْقُرْآن ⟩ ( al-Qurʾān ) and poetry . It is also quite common to add ḥarakāt to hadiths ⟨ ٱلْحَدِيث ⟩ ( al-ḥadīth ; plural: al-ḥādīth ) and

2667-462: A red dot placed above, below, or beside the rasm , and later consonant pointing was introduced, as thin, short black single or multiple dashes placed above or below the rasm . These i‘jām became black dots about the same time as the ḥarakāt became small black letters or strokes. Typically, Egyptians do not use dots under final yā’ ( ي ), which looks exactly like alif maqṣūrah ( ى ) in handwriting and in print. This practice

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2794-594: 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

2921-462: 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",

3048-470: 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

3175-404: A small ṣād on top of an alif ⟨ ٱ ⟩ (also indicated by an alif ⟨ ا ⟩ without a hamzah ). It means that the alif is not pronounced when its word does not begin a sentence. For example: ⟨ بِٱسْمِ ⟩ ( bismi ), but ⟨ ٱمْشُوا۟ ⟩ ( imshū not mshū ). This is because in Arabic, the first consonant in

3302-414: A superscript kaf or a small superscript hamza ( nabrah ), and lam with a superscript l-a-m ( lam-alif-mim ). Although normally it is sometimes not considered a letter of the alphabet, the hamza هَمْزة ( hamzah , glottal stop ), often stands as a separate letter in writing, is written in unpointed texts and is not considered a tashkīl . It may appear as a letter by itself or as

3429-431: A trend towards simplifying Arabic grammar. The sign ⟨ ـً ⟩ is most commonly written in combination with ⟨ ـًا ⟩ ( alif ), ⟨ ةً ⟩ ( tā’ marbūṭah ), ⟨ أً ⟩ (alif hamzah) or stand-alone ⟨ ءً ⟩ ( hamzah ). Alif should always be written (except for words ending in tā’ marbūṭah, hamzah or diptotes) even if an

3556-507: 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

3683-507: 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

3810-399: A vocalised text, they may be written even if they are not pronounced (see pausa ). See i‘rāb for more details. In many spoken Arabic dialects, the endings are absent. Many Arabic textbooks introduce standard Arabic without these endings. The grammatical endings may not be written in some vocalized Arabic texts, as knowledge of i‘rāb varies from country to country, and there is

3937-470: A vowel opening the syllable, and in each case, alif is used to designate the initial glottal stop (the actual beginning). But if we consider middle syllables "beginning" with a vowel: ⟨ نَشْأة ⟩ /naʃʔa/ ("origin"), ⟨ أَفْئِدة ⟩ /ʔafʔida/ ("hearts"—notice the /ʔi/ syllable; singular ⟨ فُؤاد ⟩ /fuʔaːd/ ), ⟨ رُؤُوس ⟩ /ruʔuːs/ ("heads", singular ⟨ رَأْس ⟩ /raʔs/ ),

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4064-476: 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

4191-469: A word must always be followed by a vowel sound: If the second letter from the waṣlah has a kasrah, the alif-waslah makes the sound /i/. However, when the second letter from it has a dammah, it makes the sound /u/. It occurs only in the beginning of words, but it can occur after prepositions and the definite article. It is commonly found in imperative verbs, the perfective aspect of verb stems VII to X and their verbal nouns ( maṣdar ). The alif of

4318-678: 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

4445-399: Is a fixed stem followed by a present/imperfective conjugated form of the verb diya "to say." Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa's strong stem is similar to the past continuous/aorist stem (next section), and identical for all numbers, genders, and persons, except the first person plural, which has a prefixed n- . For Vanhove, there are distinct singular and plural stems which are identical to

4572-590: 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

4699-559: 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

4826-450: Is a small curl-like diacritic placed above a letter to represent a short /u/ (as in "duke", shorter "you") and its allophones [u, ʊ, o, o̞, ɔ] (as in "put", or "bull"). For example: ⟨ دُ ⟩ /du/ . When a ḍammah is placed before a plain letter ⟨ و ⟩ ( wāw ), it represents a long /uː/ (like the 'oo' sound in the English word "swoop"). For example: ⟨ دُو ⟩ /duː/ . The ḍammah

4953-520: Is also used in copies of the muṣḥaf ( Qurʾān ) scribed by ‘Uthman Ṭāhā . The same unification of yā and alif maqṣūrā has happened in Persian , resulting in what the Unicode Standard calls " Arabic Letter Farsi Yeh ", that looks exactly the same as yā in initial and medial forms, but exactly the same as alif maqṣūrah in final and isolated forms. At

5080-404: Is always written with the i‘jām —consonant pointing, but only religious texts, children's books and works for learners are written with the full tashkīl —vowel guides and consonant length. It is however not uncommon for authors to add diacritics to a word or letter when the grammatical case or the meaning is deemed otherwise ambiguous. In addition, classical works and historic documents rendered to

5207-418: Is based on the past/perfective stem, and the persons are based on the future stem; no negative jussive is given: They give various examples of the jussive with translations into English, in order to give a sense of the meaning: Vanhove identifies a complex "potential" form composed of a nominalizing suffix -at followed by a present/imperfective reduced conjugation of the verb m'a 'come' ( eeya in

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5334-478: 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

5461-625: Is considered aesthetically pleasing. An example of a fully vocalised ( vowelised or vowelled ) Arabic from the Bismillah : بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ bismi l-lāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Especially-Merciful. Some Arabic textbooks for foreigners now use ḥarakāt as a phonetic guide to make learning reading Arabic easier. The other method used in textbooks

5588-408: 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

5715-472: 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

5842-402: Is followed by a present tense/imperfective conjugated form of the verb diya "to say", as the future is. There is distinct disagreement between the major grammars of the past century on the modal conjugation or conjugations referred to as "jussive," "optative," and "potential." Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa describe a "jussive" with the following paradigm. For strong verbs, the first person

5969-445: Is identical to that of the past continuous/aorist (above). The present or imperfective has two stems for positive strong verbs, while the negative strong stem is identical to that used for the imperative (and thus also for past/perfective verbs). Weak negative verbs add the prefix ka- to positive past/perfective forms. The strong future stem is described differently by Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa and by Vanhove. Both agree that it

6096-453: Is not distinguished from the wāw for /w/ or /uː/ . Pitch accent is not marked in any orthography. In Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa (2006 and 2007), stressed syllables are indicated in boldface. In addition to these two systems and several academic systems of transcribing Beja texts, it is possible that Beja was at least occasionally written in the Greek alphabet -based Coptic script during

6223-574: 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

6350-443: Is not usually written in such cases. When a fathah is placed before the letter ⟨ ﻱ ⟩ (yā’), it creates an /aj/ (as in "l ie "); and when placed before the letter ⟨ و ⟩ (wāw), it creates an /aw/ (as in "c ow "). Although paired with a plain letter creates an open front vowel (/a/), often realized as near-open (/ æ /), the standard also allows for variations, especially under certain surrounding conditions. Usually, in order to have

6477-417: Is not. Grammatical cases and tanwīn endings in indefinite triptote forms: The shadda or shaddah ⟨ شَدَّة ⟩ ( shaddah ), or tashdid ⟨ تَشْدِيد ⟩ ( tashdīd ), is a diacritic shaped like a small written Latin " w ". It is used to indicate gemination (consonant doubling or extra length), which is phonemic in Arabic. It is written above the consonant which

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6604-855: 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

6731-413: Is phonetic romanisation of unvocalised texts. Fully vocalised Arabic texts (i.e. Arabic texts with ḥarakāt /diacritics) are sought after by learners of Arabic. Some online bilingual dictionaries also provide ḥarakāt as a phonetic guide similarly to English dictionaries providing transcription. The ḥarakāt حَرَكَات , which literally means 'motions', are the short vowel marks. There

6858-409: Is some ambiguity as to which tashkīl are also ḥarakāt ; the tanwīn , for example, are markers for both vowels and consonants. The fatḥah ⟨ فَتْحَة ⟩ is a small diagonal line placed above a letter, and represents a short /a/ (like the /a/ sound in the English word "cat"). The word fatḥah itself ( فَتْحَة ) means opening and refers to the opening of

6985-420: Is the citation form of the verb. Weak verbs have a long final suffix -aa while strong verbs have a short final suffix -a . For both weak and strong verbs, the negative imperative is formed by an identical set of prefixes baa- (for masculine singular and common plural) and bii- (for feminine singular). Strong verbs use a negative imperative root which has a lengthened vowel. Every Beja verb has

7112-572: 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

7239-590: 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

7366-413: 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

7493-745: Is to be doubled. It is the only ḥarakah that is commonly used in ordinary spelling to avoid ambiguity . For example: ⟨ دّ ⟩ /dd/ ; madrasah ⟨ مَدْرَسَة ⟩ ('school') vs. mudarrisah ⟨ مُدَرِّسَة ⟩ ('teacher', female). Note that when the doubled letter bears a vowel, it is the shaddah that the vowel is attached to, not the letter itself: ⟨ دَّ ⟩ /dda/ , ⟨ دِّ ⟩ /ddi/ . Shaddah s are encoded U+0651 ّ ARABIC SHADDA , U+FE7C ﹼ ARABIC SHADDA ISOLATED FORM , or U+FE7D ﹽ ARABIC SHADDA MEDIAL FORM . The i‘jām ( إِعْجَام ; sometimes also called nuqaṭ ) are

7620-479: Is unknown. Christopher Ehret proposes, based on the devoicing of Proto-Cushitic voiced velar fricatives, that Northern Cushitic is possibly more closely related to South Cushitic than to the other branches. The identification of Beja as an independent branch of Cushitic dates to the work of Enrico Cerulli between 1925 and 1951. Due to Beja's linguistic innovations, Robert Hetzron argued that it constituted an independent branch of Afroasiatic. Hetzron's proposal

7747-424: Is used as the conjugated auxiliary. (NB: Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa see verbs of the form CiCiC as having identical past continuous [aorist] and future stems. Some verbs of other forms have different stems, which would lead to a greater divergence between the forms described by them and those described by Vanhove.) E.M. Roper, describing the same dialect as Vanhove, identifies the stem employed as being identical to

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7874-405: Is used as the seat for these diacritics at the beginning of a word. Long /aː/ is written with 'alif ( ا ) preceded by fatḥah, or alif maddah ( آ ) when word-initial. Long /iː/ is written with yā' ي preceded by kasrah. Long /uː/ is written with wāw و preceded by ḍammah. The systems vary on the representation of long /eː/ and long /oː/ . In the Usakana system, /eː/ is written with

8001-460: Is used for the former and ⟨deh⟩ for the latter. Similarly, ⟨keh⟩ is /kh/ , ⟨teh⟩ is /th/ , ⟨seh⟩ is /sh/ . Single ⟨o⟩ is not used. In all Arabic orthographies, short vowels are written with the same diacritics used in Arabic: fatḥah for /a/ ( ـَ ), kasrah for /i/ ( ـِ ), ḍammah for /u/ ( ـُ ). 'Alif (ا)

8128-524: 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

8255-504: Is usually not written in such cases, but if yā’ is pronounced as a diphthong /aj/ , fatḥah should be written on the preceding letter to avoid mispronunciation. The word kasrah means 'breaking'. Kasrah s are encoded U+061A ؚ ARABIC SMALL KASRA , U+0650 ِ ARABIC KASRA , U+FE7A ﹺ ARABIC KASRA ISOLATED FORM , or U+FE7B ﹻ ARABIC KASRA MEDIAL FORM . The ḍammah ⟨ ضَمَّة ⟩

8382-663: Is usually not written in such cases, but if wāw is pronounced as a diphthong /aw/ , fatḥah should be written on the preceding consonant to avoid mispronunciation. The word ḍammah (ضَمَّة) in this context means rounding , since it is the only rounded vowel in the vowel inventory of Arabic. Ḍammah s are encoded U+0619 ؙ ARABIC SMALL DAMMA , U+064F ُ ARABIC DAMMA , U+FE78 ﹸ ARABIC DAMMA ISOLATED FORM , or U+FE79 ﹹ ARABIC DAMMA MEDIAL FORM . The superscript (or dagger) alif ⟨ أَلِف خَنْجَرِيَّة ⟩ ( alif khanjarīyah ),

8509-422: Is usually produced automatically by entering alif lām lām hāʾ . The word consists of alif + ligature of doubled lām with a shaddah and a dagger alif above lām , followed by ha' . The maddah ⟨ مَدَّة ⟩ is a tilde -shaped diacritic, which can only appear on top of an alif (آ) and indicates a glottal stop /ʔ/ followed by a long /aː/ . In theory,

8636-498: Is written as short vertical stroke on top of a letter. It indicates a long /aː/ sound for which alif is normally not written. For example: ⟨ هَٰذَا ⟩ ( hādhā ) or ⟨ رَحْمَٰن ⟩ ( raḥmān ). The dagger alif occurs in only a few words, but they include some common ones; it is seldom written, however, even in fully vocalised texts. Most keyboards do not have dagger alif . The word Allah ⟨ الله ⟩ ( Allāh )

8763-445: 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

8890-409: The kāf in its final and isolated forms ⟨ ك  ـك ⟩ was originally an ‘alāmatu-l-ihmāl that became a permanent part of the letter. Previously this sign could also appear above the medial form of kāf , when that letter was written without the stroke on its ascender . When kaf was written without that stroke, it could be mistaken for lam , thus kaf was distinguished with

9017-474: The Bible . Another use is in children's literature. Moreover, ḥarakāt are used in ordinary texts in individual words when an ambiguity of pronunciation cannot easily be resolved from context alone. Arabic dictionaries with vowel marks provide information about the correct pronunciation to both native and foreign Arabic speakers. In art and calligraphy , ḥarakāt might be used simply because their writing

9144-568: 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

9271-494: 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

9398-419: 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

9525-920: 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. Arabic diacritics#Fatḥah The Arabic script has numerous diacritics , which include consonant pointing known as iʻjām ( إِعْجَام ), and supplementary diacritics known as tashkīl ( تَشْكِيل ). The latter include

9652-454: 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

9779-571: 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

9906-834: 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

10033-670: The Middle Ages. Beja nouns and adjectives have two genders: masculine and feminine, two numbers: singular and plural, two cases: nominative and oblique, and may be definite, indefinite, or in construct state . Gender, case, and definiteness are not marked on the noun itself, but on clitics and affixes. Singular-plural pairs in Beja are unpredictable. Plurals may be formed by: A small number of nouns do not distinguish between singular and plural forms. Some nouns are always plural. A few nouns have suppletive plurals. A noun may be prefixed by

10160-412: 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

10287-690: 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

10414-531: The Roman orthography, the vowels are written with the letters corresponding to the IPA symbols (i.e., ⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩ ). Long vowels are written with doubled signs. As /e/ and /o/ cannot be short vowels, they only appear as ⟨ee⟩ and ⟨oo⟩ , respectively. The single ⟨e⟩ sign, however, does have a use: To distinguish between /ɖ/ and /dh/ , ⟨dh⟩

10541-576: 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

10668-406: The article on the noun itself does not indicate case. However, agreeing adjectives will be marked for oblique case. No article or indefinite suffix may be applied to the possessed noun. The possessed noun follows the possessor. Examples: (The noun tak 'man' has the suppletive plural (n)da 'men'; raaw 'friend' has the shortened plural raw 'friends'.) Postpositions follow nouns in

10795-574: 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

10922-458: The definite article are used which do not distinguish between cases, but maintain gender distinctions. In some dialects (e.g. that described by Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa for Port Sudan) the reduced forms maintain number distinctions; in others (e.g. that described by Vanhove and Roper for Sinkat) they do not. Possessive relationships are shown through a genitive suffix -ii (singular possessed) or -ee (plural possessed) which attaches to

11049-411: The definite article is considered a waṣlah . It occurs in phrases and sentences (connected speech, not isolated/dictionary forms): Like the superscript alif, it is not written in fully vocalized scripts, except for sacred texts, like the Quran and Arabized Bible. The sukūn ⟨ سُكُونْ ⟩ is a circle-shaped diacritic placed above a letter (  ْ ). It indicates that

11176-414: The diacritic points that distinguish various consonants that have the same form ( rasm ), such as ⟨ ص ⟩ /sˤ/ , ⟨ ض ⟩ /dˤ/ . Typically i‘jām are not considered diacritics but part of the letter. Early manuscripts of the Quran did not use diacritics either for vowels or to distinguish the different values of the rasm . Vowel pointing was introduced first, as

11303-412: The diphthong ay ( IPA /aj/ ). A fatḥah , followed by the letter ⟨ ﻭ ⟩ ( wāw ) with a sukūn , ( ـَوْ ) indicates /aw/ . Sukūn s are encoded U+0652 ْ ARABIC SUKUN , U+FE7E ﹾ ARABIC SUKUN ISOLATED FORM , or U+FE7F ﹿ ARABIC SUKUN MEDIAL FORM . The sukūn may have also an alternative form of

11430-587: 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

11557-728: 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

11684-607: 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

11811-567: The first- and third-person forms are identical. The copular subject will be in the nominative case, the copular complement in the oblique. Oblique -b becomes -w before -wa . Copular complements that end in a vowel will employ an epenthetic y between the final vowel and any vowel-initial copular clitic. Examples: Beja verbs have two different types, first noted by Almkvist: "strong verbs," which conjugate with both prefixes and suffixes and have several principal parts ; and "weak verbs," which conjugate with suffixes only and which have

11938-578: The five vowels /a/ , /e/ , /i/ , /o/ , and /u/ . /e/ and /o/ only appear long, while /a/ , /i/ , and /u/ have long and short variants. Beja has pitch accent . Both Roman and Arabic script have been used to write Beja. The Roman orthography below is that used by the Eritrean government and was used in a literacy program at Red Sea University in Port Sudan from 2010 to 2013. Three Arabic orthographies have seen limited use: The first below

12065-488: The following forms with masculine monosyllabic nouns that do not begin with /h/ or /ʔ/ (note that an initial glottal stop is usually omitted in writing, and that all words that appear to be vowel-initial actually begin with a glottal stop): The feminine definite articles begin with ⟨ t ⟩ but are otherwise identical ( tuu- , too- , taa- , tee- ). With nouns longer than one syllable and with nouns that begin with /h/ or /ʔ/ , reduced forms of

12192-510: 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

12319-412: The general public are often rendered with the full tashkīl , to compensate for the gap in understanding resulting from stylistic changes over the centuries. The literal meaning of تَشْكِيل tashkīl is 'variation'. As the normal Arabic text does not provide enough information about the correct pronunciation, the main purpose of tashkīl (and ḥarakāt ) is to provide a phonetic guide or

12446-418: The genitive. Examples: Adjectives follow the nominal heads of noun phrases. They agree in gender, number, case, and definiteness, and carry case and definiteness markers of the same form as nouns. Clauses may be composed of two noun phrases or a noun phrase and a predicative adjective followed by a copular clitic. The copula agrees in person, gender, and number with the copula complement (the second term), but

12573-597: 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

12700-613: 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

12827-604: 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)

12954-420: 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

13081-434: The letter to which it is attached is not followed by a vowel, i.e., zero -vowel. It is a necessary symbol for writing consonant-vowel-consonant syllables, which are very common in Arabic. For example: ⟨ دَدْ ⟩ ( dad ). The sukūn may also be used to help represent a diphthong. A fatḥah followed by the letter ⟨ ﻱ ⟩ ( yā’ ) with a sukūn over it ( ـَيْ ) indicates

13208-883: 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

13335-590: The more central (/ ä /) or back (/ ɑ /) pronunciation, the word features a nearby back consonant, such as the emphatics, as well as qāf , or rā’ . A similar "back" quality is undergone by other vowels as well in the presence of such consonants, however not as drastically realized as in the case of fatḥah . Fatḥah s are encoded U+0618 ؘ ARABIC SMALL FATHA , U+064E َ ARABIC FATHA , U+FE76 ﹶ ARABIC FATHA ISOLATED FORM , or U+FE77 ﹷ ARABIC FATHA MEDIAL FORM . A similar diagonal line below

13462-505: The mouth when producing an /a/ . For example, with dāl (henceforth, the base consonant in the following examples): ⟨ دَ ⟩ /da/ . When a fatḥah is placed before a plain letter ⟨ ا ⟩ ( alif ) (i.e. one having no hamza or vowel of its own), it represents a long /aː/ (close to the sound of "a" in the English word "dad", with an open front vowel /æː/, not back /ɑː/ as in "father"). For example: ⟨ دَا ⟩ /daː/ . The fatḥah

13589-782: 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

13716-462: The non-reduced present/imperfective). Vanhove describes the potential as expressing "epistemic modalities of inference or near-certainty." Examples below, with the potential verbs in bold: Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

13843-424: 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

13970-549: 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

14097-423: The past continuous as being used for "habitual, repeated actions of the (more distant) past." It is the verb conjugation used for counterfactual conditionals, which leads to Roper's identifying this tense as the "conditional". It is also frequently used in narratives. The past or perfective stem for strong verbs is identical to the citation form (imperative) stem, with predictable phonetic modifications. The negative

14224-420: The past continuous/aorist (for him, "conditional"—see above), just as Vanhove does. However, he understands the form with n- as being used only with the first person plural, as Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa do. In addition to the future, Bidhaawyeet has a similar form expressing desire to undertake an act or intention to do so. The citation root takes a suffix -a for all persons, genders, and numbers, and

14351-421: The past continuous/aorist first person singular and plural, respectively. Similarly, for weak verbs, Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa have a future stem ending in -i with a first person plural -ni , followed by a present tense/imperfective conjugation of diya . Vanhove sees the -i as a singular future, and the -ni as a general plural. For negative verbs, the negative present/imperfective of diya

14478-453: The possessing noun. If the possessing noun is feminine, the genitive marker will begin with t ; if the possessed is feminine, the suffix will end with t . When the suffix does not end with the feminine marker t , it reduces to -(t)i , whether singular or plural (that is, the singular/plural distinction is only marked for feminine possessa). Because this suffix adds a syllable to the noun, full forms of articles cannot be used; thus,

14605-410: 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

14732-458: 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

14859-524: The same sequence /ʔaː/ could also be represented by two alif s, as in * ⟨ أَا ⟩ , where a hamza above the first alif represents the /ʔ/ while the second alif represents the /aː/ . However, consecutive alif s are never used in the Arabic orthography. Instead, this sequence must always be written as a single alif with a maddah above it, the combination known as an alif maddah . For example: ⟨ قُرْآن ⟩ /qurˈʔaːn/ . In Quranic writings,

14986-779: The small high head of ḥāʾ ( U+06E1 ۡ ARABIC SMALL HIGH DOTLESS HEAD OF KHAH ), particularly in some Qurans. Other shapes may exist as well (for example, like a small comma above ⟨ʼ⟩ or like a circumflex ⟨ˆ⟩ in nastaʿlīq ). The three vowel diacritics may be doubled at the end of a word to indicate that the vowel is followed by the consonant n . They may or may not be considered ḥarakāt and are known as tanwīn ⟨ تَنْوِين ⟩ , or nunation. The signs indicate, from left to right, -an, -in, -un . These endings are used as non-pausal grammatical indefinite case endings in Literary Arabic or classical Arabic ( triptotes only). In

15113-458: 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

15240-563: 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

15367-468: The time when the i‘jām was optional, unpointed letters were ambiguous. To clarify that a letter would lack i‘jām in pointed text, the letter could be marked with a small v- or seagull -shaped diacritic above, also a superscript semicircle (crescent), a subscript dot (except in the case of ⟨ ح ⟩ ; three dots were used with ⟨ س ⟩ ), or a subscript miniature of the letter itself. A superscript stroke known as jarrah , resembling

15494-501: 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

15621-427: The verb. However, these are not consistent. A further derived form is a suffix -aa attached to the citation root, and then followed by -b for masculine nouns and -t for feminine. Examples: This form may be used as an adjective, but it is also employed in the construction of multiple conjugated negative forms. Wedekind, Wedekind, and Musa analyse this form as a participle. Martine Vanhove analyses it as

15748-453: The vowel marks termed ḥarakāt ( حَرَكَات ; sg. حَرَكَة , ḥarakah ). The Arabic script is a modified abjad , where all letters are consonants, leading it up to the reader to fill in for vowel sounds. Short consonants and long vowels are represented by letters but short vowels and consonant length are not generally indicated in writing. Tashkīl is optional to represent missing vowels and consonant length. Modern Arabic

15875-451: 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

16002-488: Was generally rejected by other linguists, and Cerulli's identification of Beja as the sole member of a North Cushitic branch remains standard today across otherwise divergent proposals for the internal relations of the Cushitic language family. Christopher Ehret proposes the following sequence of sound changes between Proto-Cushitic and Beja: Ehret's reconstructed Proto-Cushitic /z/ is not a voiced alveolar fricative , but

16129-420: Was that used by the now defunct Website Sakanab; the second was devised by Muhammad Adaroob Muhammad and used in his translation of E.M. Roper's Beja lexicon; the third was devised by Mahmud Ahmad Abu Bikr Ooriib, and was employed briefly at Red Sea University in 2019. No system of writing has gained wide support. The only system to have been employed in publications by more than one writer is the Latin script. In

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