Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the insertion of a male's penis into a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The term may also describe other sexual penetrative acts, such as anal sex, oral sex and fingering, or use of a strap-on dildo, which can be practiced by heterosexual and homosexual pairings or more than two partners.
Sexual intercourse can play a strong role in human bonding, often being used solely for pleasure and leading to stronger emotional bonds. Non-penetrative sex (for example, non-penetrative cunnilingus) has been referred to as "outercourse", but may also be among the sexual acts contributing to human bonding and considered intercourse. The term sex can be taken to mean any mutual genital stimulation or to mean any form of sexual activity (i.e. all forms of intercourse and "outercourse"). Individuals can be at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, and thus safe sex practices are advised.
In human societies, some jurisdictions have placed various restrictive laws against certain sexual activities such as gay sex, sex with minors, incest, extramarital sex, position-of-trust sex, prostitution, sodomy, public lewdness, polygamy and rape. Religious beliefs can play a role in decisions about sex, or its purpose, as well; for example, with virginity pledges. Some sections of Christianity commonly view sex between a married couple for the purpose of reproduction as holy, while other sections may not. Modern Judaism and Islam view sexual intercourse between husband and wife as a spiritual and edifying action. Hinduism and Buddhism views on sexuality have differing interpretations.
Sexual intercourse between non-human animals is more often referred to as copulation; for most, mating and copulation occurs at the point of estrus (the most fertile period of time in the female's reproductive cycle), which increases the chances of successful impregnation. However, bonobos, dolphins, and chimpanzees are known to engage in sexual intercourse even when the female is not in estrus, and to engage in sex acts with same-sex partners. Like humans engaging in sex primarily for pleasure, this behavior in the above mentioned animals is also presumed to be for pleasure, and a contributing factor to strengthening their social bonds.
In animals, copulation ranges from a purely reproductive activity to one of emotional bonding between mated pairs. Sexual intercourse and other sexual activity typically plays a powerful role in human bonding. For example, in many societies, it is normal for couples to have frequent intercourse while using some method of birth control, sharing pleasure and strengthening their emotional bond through sex even though they are deliberately avoiding pregnancy.
In humans and bonobos, the female undergoes relatively concealed ovulation so that both male and female partners commonly do not know whether she is fertile at any given moment. One possible reason for this distinct biological feature may be formation of strong emotional bonds between sexual partners important for social interactions and, in the case of humans, long-term partnership rather than immediate sexual reproduction.
Humans, bonobos, dolphins, and chimpanzees are all intelligent social animals, whose cooperative behavior proves far more successful than that of any individual alone. In these animals, the use of sex has evolved beyond reproduction, to apparently serve additional social functions. Sex reinforces intimate social bonds between individuals to form larger social structures. The resulting cooperation encourages collective tasks that promote the survival of each member of the group.
Vaginal sexual intercourse, also called coitus, is the human form of copulation. While its main natural purpose and result is reproduction, it is often performed entirely for pleasure and/or as an expression of love and emotional intimacy. Coitus is the basic reproductive method of humans, and may be preceded by foreplay, which leads to sexual arousal of the partners, resulting in the erection of the penis and (usually) natural lubrication of the vagina. To engage in coitus, the erect penis is inserted into the vagina and one or both of the partners move their hips to move the penis backward and forward inside the vagina to cause friction, typically without fully removing the penis. In this way, they stimulate themselves and each other, often continuing until orgasm in either or both partners is achieved. For human females, stimulation of the clitoris plays a significant role in sexual intercourse; most women (70-80%) achieve orgasm only with direct clitoral stimulation, though indirect clitoral stimulation (for example, via vaginal intercourse) may also be sufficient (see orgasm in females).
Penetration by the hardened, erect penis is additionally known as intromission, or by the Latin name immissio penis (Latin for "insertion of the penis"). During ejaculation, which usually accompanies male orgasm, a series of muscular contractions delivers semen containing male gametes known as sperm cells or spermatozoa from the penis into the vagina. The subsequent route of the sperm from the vault of the vagina is through the cervix and into the uterus, and then into the fallopian tubes. Millions of sperm are present in each ejaculation, to increase the chances of one fertilizing an egg or ovum (see sperm competition). When a fertile ovum from the female is present in the fallopian tubes, the male gamete joins with the ovum, resulting in fertilization and the formation of a new embryo. When a fertilized ovum reaches the uterus, it becomes implanted in the lining of the uterus - known as the endometrium - and a pregnancy begins. Unlike most species, human sexual activity is not linked to periods of estrus and can take place at any time during the reproductive cycle, even during pregnancy. Where a sperm donor has sexual intercourse with a woman who is not his partner, for the sole purpose of impregnating the woman, this may be known as "natural insemination", as opposed to artificial insemination. However, most sperm donors donate their sperm through a sperm bank and pregnancy is achieved through artificial insemination.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in 2005 that each year 123 million women become pregnant world-wide, and around 87 million of those pregnancies or 70.7% are unintentional. About 46 million pregnancies yearly reportedly end in induced abortion. About 6 million U.S. women become pregnant per year. Out of known pregnancies, two-thirds result in live births and roughly 25% in abortions; the remainder end in miscarriage. However, many more women become pregnant and miscarry without even realizing it, instead mistaking the miscarriage for an unusually heavy menstruation. The U.S. teenage pregnancy rate fell by 27 percent between 1990 and 2000, from 116.3 pregnancies per 1,000 girls aged 15–19 to 84.5. This data includes live births, abortions, and fetal losses. Almost 1 million American teenage women, 10% of all women aged 15–19 and 19% of those who report having had intercourse, become pregnant each year. Britain has been stated to have a teenage pregnancy rate similar to America's.
Reproduction methods and pregnancy also extend to gay and lesbian couples. For gay male pairings, there is the option of surrogate pregnancy; for lesbian couples, there is donor insemination in addition to choosing surrogate pregnancy. Further, developmental biologists have been researching and developing techniques to facilitate biological same-sex reproduction, though this has yet to be demonstrated in humans (see same-sex reproduction). Surrogacy and donor insemination remain the primary methods. Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman carries and delivers a child for another couple or person. The woman may be the child's genetic mother (traditional surrogacy) or she may carry a pregnancy to delivery after having another woman's eggs transferred to her uterus (gestational surrogacy). Gay and lesbian pairings who want the host to have no genetic connection to the child may choose gestational surrogacy and enter into a contract with an egg donor. Gay male couples might decide that they should both contribute semen for the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) process, which further establishes the couple's joint intention to become parents. Lesbian couples often have contracts drafted to extinguish the legal rights of the sperm donor, while creating legal rights for the parent who is not biologically related to the child.
In addition to vaginal intercourse, sexual intercourse can encompass other forms of insertive sexual behavior, such as oral sex and anal intercourse. Sexual acts, other than as a means of reproduction, are varied: Oral sex consists of all the sexual activities that involve the use of the mouth, tongue, and throat to stimulate genitalia. It is sometimes performed to the exclusion of all other forms of sexual activity, and may include the ingestion or absorption of semen or vaginal fluids. While there are many sexual acts involving the anus, anal cavity, sphincter valve and/or rectum, the most common meaning of anal sex is the insertion of a man's penis into another person's rectum.
Non-penetrative sex acts are also common. These acts are sometimes seen among heterosexuals as maintaining "technical virginity." Some gay men view frotting and oral sex as maintaining their virginity, while other gay men consider the acts to be their main form of intercourse. The phrase "to have sex" can mean any or all of these behaviors (intercourse and outercourse), and there are a number of sex positions.
||The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (November 2011)|
By their late teenage years, at least 3/4 of all men and women have had intercourse, and more than 2/3 of all sexually experienced teens have had 2 or more partners. Among sexually active 15- to 19-year-olds in the U.S., 83% of females and 91% of males reported using at least one method of birth control during last intercourse.
There are a variety of safe sex practices, including non-penetrative sex acts, and heterosexual couples may use oral or anal sex (or both) as a means of contraception. In 2004, the Guttmacher Institute indicated in 2002 that 62% of the 62 million women aged 15–44 are currently using a contraceptive method, that among U.S. women who practice contraception, the Pill is the most popular choice (30.6%), followed by tubal sterilization (27.0%) and the male condom (18.0%), and that 27% of teenage women using contraceptives choose condoms as their primary method.
In 2006, a survey conducted by The Observer showed that most adolescents in Britain were waiting longer to have sexual intercourse than they were only a few years earlier. In 2002, 32% of British teenagers were having sex before the age of 16; in 2006, it was only 20%. The average age a teen lost his/her virginity was 17.13 years in 2002; in 2006, it was 17.44 years on average for girls and 18.06 for boys. The most notable drop among teens who reported having sex was 14- and 15-year-olds. A 2008 survey conducted by YouGov for Channel 4 showed that 40% of all 14- to 17-year-olds are sexually active, 74% of sexually active 14- to 17-year-olds have had a sexual experience under the age of consent, and 6% of teens would wait until marriage before having sex. Sexually transmitted infections are also on the increase in Britain. One in nine sexually active teens has chlamydia and 790,000 teens have sexually transmitted infections. In 2006, The Independent newspaper reported that the biggest rise in sexually transmitted infections was in syphilis, which rose by more than 20%, while increases were also seen in cases of genital warts and herpes.
The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB) indicated in 2010 that 1 of 4 acts of vaginal intercourse are condom protected in the U.S. (1 in 3 among singles), condom use is higher among black and Hispanic Americans than among white Americans and those from other racial groups, and adults using a condom for intercourse were just as likely to rate the sexual extent positively in terms of arousal, pleasure and orgasm than when having intercourse without one.
Intercourse often ends when the man has ejaculated. Thus the partner might not have time to reach orgasm. In addition, many men[weasel words] suffer from premature ejaculation. Conversely, many women require a substantially longer duration of stimulation than men before reaching an orgasm.
A survey of Canadian and American sex therapists said that the average time for intromission was 7 minutes and that 1 to 2 minutes was too short, 3 to 7 minutes was adequate and 7 to 13 minutes desirable, while 10 to 30 minutes was too long.
Anorgasmia is regular difficulty reaching orgasm after ample sexual stimulation, causing personal distress. This is much more common in women than in men. The physical structure of the act of coitus favors penile stimulation over clitoral stimulation. The location of the clitoris then usually necessitates manual stimulation in order for the female to achieve orgasm. About 15% of women report difficulties with orgasm, 10% have never climaxed, and 40-50% have either complained about sexual dissatisfaction or experienced difficulty becoming sexually aroused at some point in their lives. 75% of men and 29% of women always have orgasms with their partner.
Vaginismus is involuntary tensing of the pelvic floor musculature, making coitus distressing, painful, and sometimes impossible for women. It is a conditioned reflex of the pubococcygeus muscle, sometimes referred to as the "PC muscle". Vaginismus can be a vicious cycle for women, they expect to experience pain during intercourse, which then causes a muscle spasm, which leads to painful intercourse. Treatment of vaginismus often includes both psychological and behavioral techniques, including the use of vaginal dilators. A new medical treatment using Botox is in the testing phase. Some women also experience dyspareunia, a medical term for painful or uncomfortable intercourse, of unknown cause.
About 40% of males suffer from some form of erectile dysfunction (ED) or impotence, at least occasionally. For those whose impotence is caused by medical conditions, prescription drugs such as Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra are available. However, doctors caution against the unnecessary use of these drugs because they are accompanied by serious risks such as increased chance of heart attack. Moreover, using a drug to counteract the symptom—impotence—can mask the underlying problem causing the impotence and does not resolve it. A serious medical condition might be aggravated if left untreated.
A more common sexual disorder in males is premature ejaculation (PE). The American Urological Association (AUA) estimates that premature ejaculation could affect 21 percent of men in the United States. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is examining the drug dapoxetine to treat premature ejaculation. In clinical trials, those with PE who took dapoxetine experienced intercourse three to four times longer before orgasm than without the drug. Another ejaculation-related disorder is delayed ejaculation, which can be caused as an unwanted side effect of antidepressant medications such as Fluvoxamine.
Although disability-related pain and mobility impairment can hamper intercourse, in many cases the most significant impediments to intercourse for individuals with a disability are psychological. In particular, people who have a disability can find intercourse daunting due to issues involving their self-concept as a sexual being, or partner's discomfort or perceived discomfort.
In humans, sex has been claimed to produce health benefits as varied as improved sense of smell, stress and blood pressure reduction, increased immunity, and decreased risk of prostate cancer. Sexual intimacy, as well as orgasms, increases levels of the hormone oxytocin, also known as "the love hormone", which helps people bond and build trust.  Sex is also known as one of many mood repair strategies which means it can be used to help dissipate feelings of sadness or depression.  A long-term study of 3,500 people between 30 and 101 by clinical neuropsychologist David Weeks, MD, head of old age psychology at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland, found that "sex helps you look between four and seven years younger", according to impartial ratings of the subjects' photos. Exclusive causation, however, is unclear, and the benefits may be indirectly related to sex and directly related to significant reductions in stress, greater contentment, and better sleep that sex promotes.
In contrast to its benefits, sexual intercourse can also be a disease vector. There are 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) every year in the U.S., and worldwide there are over 340 million STDs a year. More than half of all STDs occur in adolescents and young adults aged 15–24 years. At least one in four U.S. teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease. In the US, about 30% of 15–17 year old adolescents have had sexual intercourse, but only about 80% of 15–19 year old adolescents report using condoms for their first sexual intercourse. More than 75% of young women age 18–25 years felt they were at low risk of acquiring an STD in one study. Some sexually transmitted infections include:
Safe sex is a relevant harm reduction philosophy. Condoms and dental dams are widely recommended for the prevention of STDs. According to reports by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and World Health Organization, correct and consistent use of latex condoms reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately 85%–99% relative to risk when unprotected.
People, especially those who get little or no physical exercise, have a slightly increased risk of triggering heart attack or sudden cardiac death when they engage in sexual intercourse, or any other vigorous physical exercise which is engaged in on a sporadic basis. Increased risk is temporary with incidents occurring within a few hours of the activity. Regular exercise reduces but does not eliminate the increased risk.
Alex Comfort and others posit three potential advantages of intercourse in humans, which are not mutually exclusive: reproductive, relational, and recreational. While the development of the Pill and other highly effective forms of contraception in the mid- and late 20th century increased people's ability to segregate these three functions, they still overlap a great deal and in complex patterns. For example: A fertile couple may have intercourse while contracepting not only to experience sexual pleasure (recreational), but also as a means of emotional intimacy (relational), thus deepening their bonding, making their relationship more stable and more capable of sustaining children in the future (deferred reproductive). This same couple may emphasize different aspects of intercourse on different occasions, being playful during one episode of intercourse (recreational), experiencing deep emotional connection on another occasion (relational), and later, after discontinuing contraception, seeking to achieve pregnancy (reproductive, or more likely reproductive and relational).
Nearly all Americans marry during their lifetime; yet close to half of all first marriages are expected to end in separation or divorce, many within a few years, and subsequent marriages are even more likely to end. Sexual dissatisfaction is associated with increased risk of divorce and relationship dissolution.
According to the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB), in 2010, men whose most recent sexual encounter was with a relationship partner reported greater arousal, greater pleasure, fewer problems with erectile function, orgasm, and less pain during the event than men whose last sexual encounter was with a non-relationship partner. According to the Journal of Counseling & Development, many women express that their most satisfying sexual experiences entail being connected to someone, rather than solely basing satisfaction on orgasm.
With regard to adolescent sexuality, sexual intercourse is also often for relational and recreational purposes. However, teenage pregnancy is usually disparaged, and research suggests that the earlier onset of puberty for children puts pressure on children and teenagers to act like adults before they are emotionally or cognitively ready, and thus are at risk to suffer from emotional distress as a result of their sexual activities. Some studies have found that engaging in sex leaves adolescents, and especially girls, with higher levels of stress and depression. A majority of adolescents in the United States have been provided with some information regarding sexuality, though there have been efforts among social conservatives in the United States government to limit sex education in public schools to abstinence-only sex education curricula.
One group of Canadian researchers found a relationship between self esteem and sexual activity. They found that students, especially girls, who were verbally abused by teachers or rejected by their peers were more likely than other students to engage in sex by the end of the Grade 7. The researchers speculate that low self esteem increases the likelihood of sexual activity: "low self-esteem seemed to explain the link between peer rejection and early sex. Girls with a poor self-image may see sex as a way to become 'popular', according to the researchers".
In India, there is growing evidence that adolescents are becoming more sexually active outside of marriage, which is feared to lead to an increase in the spread of HIV/AIDS among adolescents, as well as the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and add to the conflict between contemporary social values. In India, adolescents have relatively poor access to health care and education, and with cultural norms opposing extramarital sexual behavior, "these implications may acquire threatening dimensions for the society and the nation".
Not all views on adolescent sexual behavior are negative, however. Psychiatrist Lynn Ponton writes, "All adolescents have sex lives, whether they are sexually active with others, with themselves, or seemingly not at all," and that viewing adolescent sexuality as a potentially positive experience, rather than as something inherently dangerous, may help young people develop healthier patterns and make more positive choices regarding sex. Likewise, others state that long-term romantic relationships allow adolescents to gain the skills necessary for high-quality relationships later in life and develop feelings of self-worth. Overall, positive romantic relationships among adolescents can result in long-term benefits. High-quality romantic relationships are associated with higher commitment in early adulthood and are positively associated with self-esteem, self-confidence, and social competence.
While sexual intercourse is the natural mode of reproduction for the human species, humans also have intricate moral and ethical guidelines which regulate the practice of sexual intercourse and that vary according to religious and governmental laws. Some governments and religions also have strict designations of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" sexual behavior, which include restrictions on the types of sex acts which are permissible. A historically prohibited or regulated sex act is anal sex.
Sexual intercourse with a person against their will, or without their informed legal consent, is referred to as rape, and is considered a serious crime in most countries. More than 90% of rape victims are female, 99% of rapists male, and only about 5% of rapists are strangers to the victims.
Most 'developed' countries have age of consent laws specifying the minimum legal age a person may engage in sexual intercourse with substantially older persons, usually set at about 16–18, while the legal age of consent ranges from 12–20 years of age or is not a matter of law in other countries. Sex with a person under the age of consent, regardless of their stated consent, is often considered to be sexual assault or statutory rape depending on differences in ages of the participants.
Some countries codify rape as any sex with a person of diminished or insufficient mental capacity to give consent, regardless of age.
The expression "sexual intercourse" has been used as a term of art in England and Wales and New York State. In England and Wales, from its enactment to its repeal on the 1 May 2004, section 44 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 read:
Where, on the trial of any offence under this Act, it is necessary to prove sexual intercourse (whether natural or unnatural), it shall not be necessary to prove the completion of the intercourse by the emission of seed, but the intercourse shall be deemed complete upon proof of penetration only.
According to cases decided on the meaning of the statutory definition of carnal knowledge under the Offences against the Person Act 1828, which was in identical terms to this definition, the slightest penetration was sufficient. The book "Archbold" said that it "submitted" that this continued to be the law under the new enactment.
See Kaitamaki v R  AC 147,  3 WLR 137,  2 All ER 435, 79 Cr App R 251,  Crim LR 564, PC (decided under equivalent legislation in New Zealand).
Section 7(2) of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976 contained the following words: "In this Act . . . references to sexual intercourse shall be construed in accordance with section 44 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 so far as it relates to natural intercourse (under which such intercourse is deemed complete on proof of penetration only)". The Act made provision, in relation to rape and related offences, for England and Wales, and for courts-martial elsewhere.
From 3 November 1994 to 1 May 2004, section 1(2)(a) of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (as substituted by section 142 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) referred to "sexual intercourse with a person (whether vaginal or anal)". This section created the offence of rape in England and Wales.
The penal code in New York State provides: § 130.00 Sex offenses; definitions of terms: 1. "Sexual intercourse" has its ordinary meaning and occurs upon any penetration, however slight.
There is considerable legal variability regarding definitions of and the legality of sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex or gender. For example, in 2003 the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that female same-sex relations did not constitute sexual intercourse, based on a 1961 definition from Webster's Third New International Dictionary, in Blanchflower v. Blanchflower, and thereby an accused wife in a divorce case was found not guilty of adultery based on this technicality. Some countries, such as Islamic countries, consider homosexual behavior to be an offense punishable by imprisonment or execution.
Sexual intercourse has traditionally been considered an essential part of a marriage; many religious customs required consummation of the marriage by sexual intercourse, and the failure for any reason to consummate the marriage was a ground for annulment, which did not require a divorce process. Annulment declaration implied that the marriage was void from the start – i.e. there was in law no marriage. Furthermore, continuing sexual relations between the marriage partners is commonly considered a 'marital right' by many religions, permissible to married couples, generally for the purpose of reproduction. Today, there is wide variation in the opinions and teachings about sexual intercourse relative to marriage and other intimate relationships by the world's religions. Examples:
In some cases, the sexual intercourse between two people is seen as counter to religious law or doctrine. In many religious communities, including the Catholic Church and Mahayana Buddhists, religious leaders are expected to refrain from sexual intercourse in order to devote their full attention, energy, and loyalty to their religious duties.
Opposition to same-sex marriage is largely based on the belief that sexual intercourse and sexual orientation should be of a heterosexual nature. The recognition of such marriages is a civil rights, political, social, moral, and religious issue in many nations, and the conflicts arise over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into marriage, be required to use a different status (such as a civil union, which either grant equal rights as marriage or limited rights in comparison to marriage), or not have any such rights. A related issue is whether the term marriage should be applied.
In zoology, copulation is often termed as the process in which a male introduces sperm into the female's body. Spiders have separate male and female sexes. Before mating and copulation, a male spins a small web and ejaculates on to it. He then stores the sperm in reservoirs on his large pedipalps, from which he transfers sperm to the female's genitals. Females can store sperm indefinitely.
Many animals which live in the water use external fertilization, whereas internal fertilization may have developed from a need to maintain gametes in a liquid medium in the Late Ordovician epoch. Internal fertilization with many vertebrates (such as reptiles, some fish, and most birds) occur via cloacal copulation (see also hemipenis), while mammals copulate vaginally, and many basal vertebrates reproduce sexually with external fertilization.
However, some terrestrial arthropods do use external fertilization. For primitive insects, the male deposits spermatozoa on the substrate, sometimes stored within a special structure, and courtship involves inducing the female to take up the sperm package into her genital opening; there is no actual copulation. In groups such as dragonflies and spiders, males extrude sperm into secondary copulatory structures removed from their genital opening, which are then used to inseminate the female (in dragonflies, it is a set of modified sternites on the second abdominal segment; in spiders, it is the male pedipalps). In advanced groups of insects, the male uses its aedeagus, a structure formed from the terminal segments of the abdomen, to deposit sperm directly (though sometimes in a capsule called a "spermatophore") into the female's reproductive tract.
Humans, bonobos, chimpanzees and dolphins are species known to engage in heterosexual behaviors even when the female is not in estrus, which is a point in her reproductive cycle suitable for successful impregnation. These species, and others, are also known to engage in homosexual behaviors. Humans, bonobos and dolphins are all intelligent social animals, whose cooperative behavior proves far more successful than that of any individual alone. In these animals, the use of sex has evolved beyond reproduction, to apparently serve additional social functions. Sex reinforces intimate social bonds between individuals to form larger social structures. The resulting cooperation encourages collective tasks that promote the survival of each member of the group.
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al-ʿArabiyyah in written Arabic (Naskh script)
|Pronunciation||/al ʕarabijja/, /ʕarabiː/|
|Spoken in||Primarily in the Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa|
|Native speakers||More than 310 million (2006)|
|Writing system||Arabic alphabet, Syriac alphabet (Garshuni)|
|Official language in||Standard Arabic is the official language of 26 states, the third most after English and French|
|ISO 639-3||ara Arabic (generic)|
Dispersion of native Arabic speakers as the majority (green) or minority (chartreuse) population
Use of Arabic as the sole official language (green) and an official language (blue)
|This article contains Arabic text, written from right to left in a cursive style with some letters joined. Without proper rendering support, you may see unjoined Arabic letters written left-to-right instead of right-to-left or other symbols instead of Arabic script.|
Arabic (العربية al-ʻarabīyah or عربي/عربى ʿarabī) is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century CE. This includes both the literary language (Modern Standard Arabic or Literary Arabic, used in most written documents as well as in formal spoken occasions, such as lectures and radio broadcasts) and the spoken Arabic varieties, spoken in a wide arc of territory stretching across the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, most closely related to Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic and Phoenician. Written Arabic is distinct from and more conservative than all of the spoken varieties, and the two exist in a state known as diglossia, used side-by-side for different societal functions.
Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political and/or ethnic reasons. If considered multiple languages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, it counts more than 300 million first language speakers (according to some estimates, as high as 340 million), more than that of any other Semitic language. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic, with more than 50 million native speakers — still greater than any other Semitic language.
The modern written language (Modern Standard Arabic) is derived from the language of the Quran (known as Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic). It is widely taught in schools, universities, and used to varying degrees in workplaces, government and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the official language of 26 states and the liturgical language of Islam. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the grammatical standards of Quranic Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpoint in the spoken varieties, and adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, especially in modern times.
Arabic is the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad script, and is written from right-to-left.
Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world, like Persian, Turkish, Kazakh, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Malay and Hausa. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Romance languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, owing to both the proximity of European and Arab civilizations and 700 years of Muslim/Moorish rule in some parts of the Iberian peninsula referred to as Al-Andalus.
Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Greek, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, Turkish in medieval times and contemporary European languages in modern times. However, the current tendency is to coin new words using the existing lexical resources of the language, or to repurpose old words, rather than directly borrowing foreign words.
Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Theoretically, Classical Arabic is considered normative, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-ʿArab). In practice, however, modern authors almost never write in pure Classical Arabic, instead using a literary language with its own grammatical norms and vocabulary, commonly known as Modern Standard Arabic. This 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" (فصحى fuṣḥā) 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., ḏahaba "to go") that is not present in the spoken varieties. However, when multiple Classical synonyms are available, MSA tends to prefer words with cognates in the spoken varieties over words without cognates. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined a large number of terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times (and in fact continues to evolve). Some words have been borrowed from other languages, notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling not real pronunciation (e.g., فيلم fīlm "film" or dimūqrāṭiyyah "democracy"). However, the current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., farʿ "branch", also used for the branch of a company or organization; jināḥ "wing", also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.) or to coin new words using existing lexical resources (e.g., širkah "corporation", ištirākiyyah "socialism", both ultimately based on the verb šarika "to share, partner with"; jāmiʿah "university", based on jamāʿah "to gather, unite"; jumhūriyyah "republic", based on jumhūr "multitude"). An earlier tendency was to re-purpose older words that had fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif "telephone" < "invisible caller (in Sufism)"; jarīdah "newspaper" < "palm-leaf stalk").
Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. 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. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic. Historically, Algerian Arabic was taught in French Algeria under the name darija.
Note that even during Muhammad's lifetime, there were dialects of spoken Arabic. Muhammad spoke in the dialect of Mecca, in the western Arabian peninsula, and it was in this dialect that the Quran was written down. However, the dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula were considered the most prestigious at the time, so the language of the Quran was ultimately converted to follow the eastern phonology. It is this phonology that underlies the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. The phonological differences between these two dialects account for some of the complexities of Arabic writing, most notably the writing of the glottal stop or hamza (which was preserved in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech) and the use of ʾalif maqṣūrah (representing a sound preserved in the western dialects but merged with ā in eastern speech).
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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. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. 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 the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.
The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, similar to the issue with Chinese, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, etc. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a significant complicating factor: A single written form, significantly different from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites a number of sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language, despite significant issues of 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 the Romance languages. Also, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to all non-Moroccans other than Algerians and Tunisians, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers. However, there is some mutual comprehensibility between conservative varieties of Arabic even across significant geographical distances. This suggests that the spoken varieties, at least, should linguistically be considered separate languages.
On the other hand, a significant difference between Arabic and the Romance languages is that the latter also correspond to a number of different standard written varieties, each of which separately informs the related spoken varieties, while all spoken Arabic varieties share a single written language. Indeed, a similar situation exists with the Romance languages in the case of Italian. As spoken varieties, Milanese, Neapolitan and Sicilian (among others) are different enough to be largely mutually incomprehensible, yet since they share a single written form (Standard Italian), they are often said by Italians to be dialects of the same language. As in many similar cases, the extent to which the Italian varieties are locally considered dialects or separate languages depends to a large extent on political factors, which can change over time. Linguists are divided over whether and to what extent to incorporate such considerations when judging issues of language and dialect.
The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is an important source of vocabulary for languages such as Baluchi, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, English, French, German, Gujarati, Hausa, Hindustani, Italian, Indonesian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kutchi, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sindhi, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish Urdu and Wolof as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for book (كتاب kitāb) has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "livre", "libro", "llibre" and "livro", respectively, German and English which use the Germanic "Buch" and "Book", Hausa which uses "littafi", Tagalog which uses "aklat", Hebrew which uses "sefer", Gujarati which uses "chopdi", Marathi which uses "pustak", Malayalam which uses "pustakam" and Bengali which uses "boi".
In addition, English has many Arabic loanwords, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Examples of such words include admiral, adobe, alchemy, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, alkaline, almanac, amber, arsenal, assassin, candy, carat, cipher, coffee, cotton, ghoul, hazard, jar, kismet, lemon, loofah, magazine, mattress, sherbet, sofa, sumac, tariff and many other words. Other languages such as Maltese and Kinubi derive ultimately from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.
Terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit "prayer" < salat) (صلاة ṣalāt), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq "logic"), economic items (like English coffee) to placeholders (like Spanish fulano "so-and-so") and everyday conjunctions (like Hindustani lekin "but", or Spanish hasta "until"). Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as salat 'prayer' and imam 'prayer leader.'
In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic. For example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri.
Some words in English and other European languages are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them are commonly used words like "coffee" (qahwah), "cotton" (quṭn) and "magazine" (maḫāzin). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali", "zenith" and "nadir". Some words in common use, such as "intention" and "information", were originally calques of Arabic philosophical terms.
Arabic words also made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara. Variants of Arabic words such as kitāb (book) have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.
Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts). In addition, many cultural, religious and political terms have entered Arabic from Iranian, notably Middle Persian or Parthian, and to a lesser extent, (Classical) Persian, and Hellenistic Greek (kimiya has as origin the Greek chymia, meaning in that language the melting of metals); see Histoire de la Médecine de l`Antiquité au XXe siècle, Roger Dachez, Tallandier 2008, p. 251), alembic (distiller) from ambix (cup), qalam (pen, pencil, feather) from kalamata (cane), almanac (climate), from almenichiakon (calendar) (for the origin of the last three borrowed words, see Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Foundations of Islam, Seuil, L'Univers Historique 2002. Some arabic borrowings from Semitic or Persian languages are, as presented in De Prémare`s above-cited book:
- rahman (merciful), from Hebrew and Aramaic, where it had a similar meaning, but also meant the very proper name of the unique God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims from the Arabian peninsula (the Arabs themselves used it similarly: during the life of Prophet Muhammad, and by others, e.g., Musailima ibn Habib) who were the initiators of another monotheistic sect, whose only one God was called in his own name Ar-Rahman.
- nabi (prophet), old non-Arab term that came into Arabic from Aramaic and Hebrew before the emergence of Islam.
- medina, word of Aramaic or Hebrew origin; Alfred-Louis de Prémare explains in The Foundations Of Islam (p. 101) that the Jews were long before Arabs a sedentary population of 'Arabian desert'.
- jizya, the tax imposed by the caliphate on individuals of religion other than Islam (dhimmis), a tax in addition to the levy on agricultural land (kharadjy). The term comes from the Syriac (gzita), which is in turn borrowed from Persian (gazit).
- kharaj, kharadji, land tax originally imposed only on non-Muslims, which comes from the Persian term "kharazh", a term which designate the act by which the wealthy citizens were taxed, some times imposed upon states, Strapis were supposed to collect them.
- jazeera, as in the well-known form Al Jazeera, means island and has its origin in Syriac gazīra/gzīrta.
- faruk (Savior), is the naturalized form of the Aramaic word poruk, which in the Syriac Bible (Peshita) means the Savior or Liberator. Once naturalized, the term produced mnemonic derivatives or shortcuts, so the f-r-q (meaning cutting) became a folk etymological explanation for faruk: the Savior was one who cuts (separates) the truth from falsehood.
- munafiq (hypocrite), a term borrowed from Ethiopian, where it had the sense of heretical sect.
- lāzaward is taken from Persian lājward, the name of a blue stone, lapis lazuli. This word was borrowed in several European languages to mean (light) blue - azure in English, azur in French and azul in Spanish.
As, throughout the Islamic world, Arabic occupied a position similar to that of Latin in Europe, many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc. were coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots, especially in Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.
Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is closely associated with the religion of Islam because the Qur'an is written in the language, but it is nevertheless also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans. Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the Quranic script and recite the Qur'an. Among Non-Arab Muslims, translations of the Qur'an are most often accompanied by the original text.
Some Muslims present a monogenesis of languages and claim that the Arabic language was the language revealed by God for the benefit of mankind and the original language as a prototype symbolic system of communication, based upon its system of triconsonantal roots, spoken by man from which all other languages were derived, having first been corrupted. Statements spread in later centuries regarding the Arabic language being the language of Paradise are not considered authentic according to the scholars of Hadith and are widely discredited.
The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of in eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Fāw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic. By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq and the Ghassanids in southern Syria appeared. The Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic script.
Colloquial Arabic is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the varieties within and outside of the Arabian peninsula, followed by that between sedentary varieties and the much more conservative Bedouin varieties. All of the varieties outside of the Arabian peninsula (which include the large majority of speakers) have a large number of features in common with each other that are not found in Classical Arabic. This has led researchers to postulate the existence of a prestige koine dialect in the one or two centuries immediately following the Arab conquest, whose features eventually spread to all of the newly conquered areas. (These features are present to varying degrees inside the Arabian peninsula. Generally, the Arabian peninsula varieties have much more diversity than the non-peninsula varieties, but have been understudied.)
Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian North African dialects (especially Moroccan Arabic) and the others. Moroccan Arabic in particular is nearly incomprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Algeria (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Egyptian films and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fīh, and North African kayən all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now sound very different.
|Variety||I love reading a lot||When I went to the library||I only found this old book||I wanted to read a book about the history of women in France.|
(liturgical or poetic only)
|ʾanā ʾuḥibbu l-qirāʾata kaṯīran||ʿindamā ḏahabtu ʾilā l-maktabati||lam ʾajid ʾillā hāḏā l-kitāba l-qadīma||kuntu ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaqraʾa kitāban ʿan tārīḫi l-marʾati fī-farānsā|
|Modern Standard Arabic||ʾanā ʾuḥibb al-qirāʾa kaṯīran||ʿindamā ḏahabtu ʾilā l-maktabah||lam ʾajid ʾillā hāḏā l-kitāb al-qadīm||kuntu ʾurīd ʾan ʾaqraʾ kitāb ʿan tārīḫ al-marʾa fī-farānsā|
|Moroccan||ana ʕziz ʕlija bzzaf nqra||melli mʃit l-lmaktaba||lqit ɣir had l-ktab l-qdim||kent baɣi nqra ktab ʕla tarix l-ʕjalat f-fransa|
|Tunisian||e:ne nħibb il-qre:je barʃa||waqtelli mʃi:t l il-maktba||ma-lqi:t-ʃ ke:n ha l-kte:b l-qdi:m||kunt nħibb naqra kte:b ʕala tari:x l-mra fi fra:nsa|
|Western Libyan||ʾaniː nħieb li-ɡraːja halba||lamma mʃeːt lil-maktba||malgeːtiʃ ʾiːlla ha li-ktaːb le-gdiːm||kunt nibi nagra ktaːb ʔleː tariːx e-nsawiːn fiː fraːnsa|
|Egyptian||ana baħebb el-ʔera:ja ʔawi||'lamma roħt el-mak'taba||ma-l'ʔet-ʃ 'ella l-ke'ta:b el-ʔa'di:m da||ana kont-e ʕawz-aʔra kta:b ʕan tari:x el-setta:t fe fa'ransa|
|Urban Palestinian||ba'ħɪbb ᵊl-ʔɪ'ra:je kti:r||'lamma 'rʊħᵊt ʕal-'maktabe||ma la'ʔe:tᵊʃ 'illa ha-l-ᵊk'ta:b l-ᵊʔ'dīm||ka:n 'bɪddɪ 'ʔaʔra kta:b ʕan ta'rīx ᵊl-'mara fɪ f'ra:nsa|
|Lebanese/Syrian||kti:r bħibb il-ʔi'ræ:je||'lamma 'reħit ʕal-'maktebe||ma lʔēt 'illa ha-l-ik'tæ:b le-ʔ'di:m||kæ:n 'beddi 'ʔeʔra ktæ:b ʕan te'rīx l-'mara b-'fræ:nse|
|Iraqi||'a:ni a'ħibb el-q'ra:ja 'kulliʃ||'lamman 'reħit lel-maktaba||ma li'ge:t ɣe:r ha:ða l-keta:b al-qadi:m||redet aqra keta:b ʕan tari:x al-niswan eb-fransa|
|Saudi (Hijazi)||'ana a'ħob il-gra:ja kθi:r||'lamma roħt l-'mekteba||ma lge:t ɣe:r ha:ða l-kta:b il-gedi:m||kont abɣa agra kta:b ʕan tari:x il-ħari:m fi fransa|
|Kuwaiti||ʔa:na wa:yed aħibb agra:||lamman reħt al-maktaba||ma lige:t illa hal keta:b al-gadi:m||kent abi: agra keta:b an tari:x el-ħari:m eb fransa|
|Written Arabic||أنا أحب القراءة كثيرا||عندما ذهبت إلى المكتبة||لقد وجدت فقط هذا الكتاب القديم||كنت أرغب في قراءة كتاب عن تاريخ المرأة في فرنسا|
According to Charles A. Ferguson, the following are some of the characteristic features of the koine that underlies all of the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula. Although many other features are common to most or all of these varieties, Ferguson believes that these features in particular are unlikely to have evolved independently more than once or twice, and together suggest the existence of the koine:
The major dialect groups are:
Other varieties include:
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The "colloquial" spoken varieties of Arabic are learned at home and constitute the native languages of Arabic speakers. "Formal" Literary Arabic (usually specifically Modern Standard Arabic) is learned at school; although many speakers have a native-like command of the language, it is technically not the native language of any speakers. Both varieties can be both written and spoken, although the colloquial varieties are rarely written down, and the formal variety is spoken mostly in formal circumstances, e.g., in radio broadcasts, formal lectures, parliamentary discussions, and to some extent between speakers of different colloquial varieties. Even when the literary language is spoken, however, it is normally only spoken in its pure form when reading a prepared text out loud. When speaking extemporaneously (i.e. making up the language on the spot, as in a normal discussion among people), speakers tend to deviate somewhat from the strict literary language in the direction of the colloquial varieties. In fact, there is a continuous range of "in-between" spoken varieties: from nearly pure Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), to a form that still uses MSA grammar and vocabulary but with significant colloquial influence, to a form of the colloquial language that imports a number of words and grammatical constructions in MSA, to a form that is close to pure colloquial but with the "rough edges" (the most noticeably "vulgar" or non-Classical aspects) smoothed out, to pure colloquial. The particular variant (or register) used depends on the social class and education level of the speakers involved, and the level of formality of the speech situation. Often it will vary within a single encounter, e.g., moving from nearly pure MSA to a more mixed language in the process of a radio interview, as the interviewee becomes more comfortable with the interviewer. This type of variation is characteristic of the diglossia that exists throughout the Arabic-speaking world.
Although Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a unitary language, its pronunciation varies somewhat from country to country and from region to region within a country. The variation in individual "accents" of MSA speakers tends to mirror corresponding variations in the colloquial speech of the speakers in question, but with the distinguishing characteristics moderated somewhat. Note that it is important in descriptions of "Arabic" phonology to distinguish between pronunciation of a given colloquial (spoken) dialect and the pronunciation of MSA by these same speakers. Although they are related, they are not the same. For example, the phoneme that derives from Proto-Semitic /g/ has many different pronunciations in the modern spoken varieties, e.g., [d͡ʒ ~ ʒ ~ j ~ ɡʲ ~ ɡ]. Speakers whose native variety has either [d͡ʒ] or [ʒ] will use the same pronunciation when speaking MSA, even speakers from Cairo, whose native Egyptian Arabic has [ɡ], normally use [ɡ] when speaking MSA. [j] of Persian Gulf is the only pronunciation which isn't pronounced in MSA, but instead [d͡ʒ~ʒ].
Another example: Many colloquial varieties are known for a type of vowel harmony in which the presence of an "emphatic consonant" triggers backed allophones of nearby vowels (especially of the low vowels /aː/, which are backed to [ɑ(ː)] in these circumstances, and very often fronted to [æ(ː)] in all other circumstances). In many spoken varieties, the backed or "emphatic" vowel allophones spread a fair distance in both directions from the triggering consonant; in some varieties (most notably Egyptian Arabic), the "emphatic" allophones spread throughout the entire word, usually including prefixes and suffixes, even at a distance of several syllables from the triggering consonant. Speakers of colloquial varieties with this vowel harmony tend to introduce it into their MSA pronunciation as well, but usually with a lesser degree of spreading than in the colloquial varieties. (For example, speakers of colloquial varieties with extremely long-distance harmony may allow a moderate, but not extreme, amount of spreading of the harmonic allophones in their MSA speech, while speakers of colloquial varieties with moderate-distance harmony may only harmonize immediately adjacent vowels in MSA.)
As mentioned above, the pronunciation of the vowels differs from speaker to speaker, in way that tends to echo the pronunciation of the corresponding colloquial variety. Nonetheless, there are some common trends. Most noticeable is the differing pronunciation of /a/ and /aː/, which tend towards fronted [æ(ː)], [a(ː)] or [ɛ(ː)] in most situations, but a back [ɑ(ː)] in the neighborhood of emphatic consonants. (Some accents and dialects, such as those of Hijaz, have central [ä(ː)] in all situations.) The vowels /u/ and /i/ are often affected somewhat in emphatic neighborhoods as well, with generally more back and/or centralized allophones, but the differences are less great than for the low vowels. The pronunciation of short /u/ and /i/ tends towards [ʊ~o] and [ɪ~e] in many dialects.
The definition of both "emphatic" and "neighborhood" vary in ways that echo (to some extent) corresponding variations in the spoken dialects. Generally, the consonants triggering "emphatic" allophones are the pharyngealized consonants /tˤ dˤ sˤ ðˤ/; /q/; and /r/, if not followed immediately by /i(ː)/. Frequently, the uvular fricatives /x ɣ/ also trigger emphatic allophones; occasionally also the pharyngeal consonants /ʕ ħ/ (the former more than the latter). Many dialects have multiple emphatic allophones of each vowel, depending on the particular nearby consonants. In most MSA accents, emphatic coloring of vowels is limited to vowels immediately adjacent to a triggering consonant, although in some it spreads a bit farther: e.g., waqt [wɑqt] "time"; waṭan [wɑtˤɑn] "homeland"; wasṭ al-madīnah [wæstˤɑl-mædiːnɐ] "downtown" (sometimes [wɑstˤɑl-mædiːnæ] or similar).
In a non-emphatic environment, the vowel /a/ in the diphthong /aj/ tends to be fronted even more than elsewhere, often pronounced [æj] or [ɛj]: hence sayf [sajf ~ sæjf ~ sɛjf] "sword" but ṣayf [sˤɑjf] "summer"). However, in accents with no emphatic allophones of /a/ (e.g., in the Hijaz), the pronunciation [äj] occurs in all situations.
Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" /tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, ðˤ/ (ط, ض, ص, ظ), which exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization [tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, ðˤ] as well as varying degrees of velarization [tˠ, dˠ, sˠ, ðˠ], so they may be written with the "Velarized or pharyngealized" diacritic ( ̴ ) as: /t̴, d̴, s̴, ð̴/. This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, /dˤ/ is written ⟨D⟩; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, ⟨ḍ⟩.
Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark šaddah, which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: qabala "he accepted" vs. qabbala "he kissed."
Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)—and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC). The syllable types with three morae (units of time), i.e. CVC and CVV, are termed heavy syllables, while those with four morae, i.e. CVVC and CVCC, are superheavy syllables. Superheavy syllables in Classical Arabic occur in only two places: at the end of the sentence (due to pausal pronunciation), and in words such as ḥārr "hot", māddah "stuff, substance", taḥājjū "they disputed with each other", where a long ā occurs before two identical consonants (a former short vowel between the consonants has been lost). (In less formal pronunciations of Modern Standard Arabic, superheavy syllables are common at the end of words or before clitic suffixes such as -nā "us, our", due to the deletion of final short vowels.)
In surface pronunciation, every vowel must be preceded by a consonant (which may include the glottal stop [ʔ]). There are no cases of hiatus within a word (where two vowels occur next to each other, without an intervening consonant). Some words do underlyingly begin with a vowel, such as the definite article al- or words such as ištarā "he bought", ijtimāʿ "meeting". When actually pronounced, one of three things happens:
Word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic. It bears a strong relationship to vowel length. The basic rules for Modern Standard Arabic are:
Examples:kitāb(un) "book", kā-ti-b(un) "writer", mak-ta-b(un) "desk", ma-kā-ti-b(u) "desks", mak-ta-ba-tun "library" (but mak-ta-ba(-tun) "library" in short pronunciation), ka-ta-bū (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = ka-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-bū-h(u) (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-bū (dialect), ka-ta-ba-tā (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-tab-tu (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = ka-tabt (short form or dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-jal-la-(tan) "magazine", ma-ḥall(-un) "place".
These rules may result in differently stressed syllables when final case endings are pronounced, vs. the normal situation where they are not pronounced, as in the above example of mak-ta-ba-tun "library" in full pronunciation, but mak-ta-ba(-tun) "library" in short pronunciation.
The restriction on final long vowels does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen from loss of original final -hu/hi.
Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence mad-ra-sa "school", qā-hi-ra "Cairo". This also affects the way that Modern Standard Arabic is pronounced in Egypt. In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: bay-tayn "two houses", mā-sat-hum "their table", ma-kā-tīb "desks", zā-rat-hīn "sometimes", mad-ra-sat-hum "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)
The final short vowels (e.g., the case endings -a -i -u and mood endings -u -a) are often not pronounced in this language, despite forming part of the formal paradigm of nouns and verbs. The following levels of pronunciation exist:
This is the most formal level actually used in speech. All endings are pronounced as written, except at the end of an utterance, where the following changes occur:
| ʾanā ʾuḥibbu l-qirāʾata kaṯīran | ʿindamā ḏahabtu ʾilā l-maktabati | lam ʾajid ʾillā hāḏā l-kitāba l-qadīma | kuntu ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaqraʾa kitāban ʿan tārīḫi l-marʾati fī-farānsā |- ! Modern Standard Arabic | ʾanā ʾuḥibb al-qirāʾa kaṯīran | ʿindamā ḏahabtu ʾilā l-maktabah | lam ʾajid ʾillā hāḏā l-kitāb al-qadīm | kuntu ʾurīd ʾan ʾaqraʾ kitāb ʿan tārīḫ al-marʾa fī-farānsā |- ! Moroccan | ana ʕziz ʕlija bzzaf nqra | melli mʃit l-lmaktaba | lqit ɣir had l-ktab l-qdim | kent baɣi nqra ktab ʕla tarix l-ʕjalat f-fransa |- ! Tunisian | e:ne nħibb il-qre:je barʃa | waqtelli mʃi:t l il-maktba | ma-lqi:t-ʃ ke:n ha l-kte:b l-qdi:m | kunt nħibb naqra kte:b ʕala tari:x l-mra fi fra:nsa |- ! Western Libyan | ʾaniː nħieb li-ɡraːja halba | lamma mʃeːt lil-maktba | malgeːtiʃ ʾiːlla ha li-ktaːb le-gdiːm | kunt nibi nagra ktaːb ʔleː tariːx e-nsawiːn fiː fraːnsa |- ! Egyptian | ana baħebb el-ʔera:ja ʔawi -un (with nunation) are left off. The ending -an is left off of nouns preceded by a tāʾ marbūṭah ة (i.e. the -t in the ending -at- that typically marks feminine nouns), but pronounced as -ā in other nouns (hence its writing in this fashion in the Arabic script).
This is a formal level of pronunciation sometimes seen. It is somewhat like pronouncing all words as if they were in pausal position (with influence from the colloquial varieties). The following changes occur:
This is the pronunciation used by speakers of Modern Standard Arabic in extemporaneous speech, i.e. when producing new sentences rather than simply reading a prepared text. It is similar to formal short pronunciation except that the rules for dropping final vowels apply even when a clitic suffix is added. Basically, short-vowel case and mood endings are never pronounced, and certain other changes occur that echo the corresponding colloquial pronunciations. Specifically:
As mentioned above, many spoken dialects have a process of emphasis spreading, where the "emphasis" (pharyngealization) of emphatic consonants spreads forward and back through adjacent syllables, pharyngealizing all nearby consonants and triggering the back allophone [ɑ(ː)] in all nearby low vowels. The extent of emphasis spreading varies. For example, in Moroccan Arabic, it spreads as far as the first full vowel (i.e. sound derived from a long vowel or diphthong) on either side; in many Levantine dialects, it spreads indefinitely, but is blocked by any /j/ or /ʃ/; while in Egyptian Arabic, it usually spreads throughout the entire word, including prefixes and suffixes. In Moroccan Arabic, /i u/ also have emphatic allophones [o~ɔ e~ɛ].
Unstressed short vowels, especially /i u/, are deleted in many contexts. Many sporadic examples of short vowel change have occurred (especially /a/→/i/, and interchange /i/↔/u/). Most Levantine dialects merge short /i u/ into /ǝ/ in most contexts (all except directly before a single final consonant). In Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, short /u/ triggers labialization of nearby consonants (especially velar consonants and uvular consonants), and then short /a i u/ all merge into /ǝ/, which is deleted in many contexts. (The labialization plus /ǝ/ is sometimes interpreted as an underlying phoneme /ŭ/.) This essentially causes the wholesale loss of the short-long vowel distinction, with the original long vowels /aː iː uː/ remaining as half-long [aˑ iˑ uˑ], phonemically /a i u/, which are used to represent both short and long vowels in borrowings from Literary Arabic.
Most spoken dialects have monophthongized original /aj aw/ to /eː oː/ (in all circumstances, including adjacent to emphatic consonants). In Moroccan Arabic, these have subsequently merged into original /iː uː/.
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic [v] is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic [p] became [f] extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between [p] and [b]. The Iraqi Arabic uses also sounds [ɡ], [t͡ʃ] and uses Persian adding letters, e.g.: گوجة gawjah – a plum; چمة čimah – a truffle and so on.
Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes [ɮˤ] and [ðˤ] coalesced into a single phoneme [ðˤ]. Many dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb) subsequently lost interdental fricatives, converting [θ ð ðˤ] into [t d dˤ]. Most dialects borrow "learned" words from the Standard language using the same pronunciation as for inherited words, but some dialects without interdental fricatives (particularly in Egypt and the Levant) render original [θ ð ðˤ ɮˤ] in borrowed words as [s z zˤ dˤ].
Pharyngealization of the emphatic consonants tends to weaken in many of the spoken varieties, and to spread from emphatic consonants to nearby sounds. In addition, the "emphatic" allophone [ɑ] automatically triggers pharyngealization of adjacent sounds in many dialects. As a result, it may difficult or impossible to determine whether a given coronal consonant is phonemically emphatic or not, especially in dialects with long-distance emphasis spreading. (A notable exception is the sounds /t/ vs. /tˤ/ in Moroccan Arabic, because the former is pronounced as an affricate [t͡s] but the latter is not.)
As in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual morphology (i.e. method of constructing words from a basic root). Arabic has a nonconcatenative "root-and-pattern" morphology: A root consists of a set of bare consonants (usually three), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern in order to form words. For example, the word for "I wrote" is constructed by combining the root k-t-b "write" with the pattern -a-a-tu "I X'd" to form katabtu "I wrote". Other verbs meaning "I X'd" will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. qaraʾtu "I read", ʾakaltu "I ate", ðahabtu "I went", although other patterns are possible (e.g. šaribtu "I drank", qultu "I said", takallamtu "I spoke", where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix -tu is always used).
From a single root k-t-b, numerous words can be formed by applying different patterns:
Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long ā) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive).
The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long ā) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwīn).
Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.
Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-ī/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).
Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.
Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive.
The past and non-past paradigms are sometimes also termed perfective and imperfective, respectively, indicating the fact that they actually represent a combination of tense and aspect. The moods other than the indicative occur only in the non-past, and the future tense is signaled by prefixing sa- or sawfa onto the non-past. The past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g. past katab- vs. non-past -ktub-), and also use completely different sets of affixes for indicating person, number and gender: In the past, the person, number and gender are fused into a single suffixal morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number) are used. The passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.
The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, kataba "to write". Note that in Modern Standard Arabic, many final short vowels are dropped (indicated in parentheses below), and the energetic mood (in either long or short form, which have the same meaning) is almost never used.
Unlike in most languages, Arabic has virtually no means of deriving words by adding prefixes or suffixes to words. Instead, they are formed according to a limited (but fairly large) number of templates applied to roots.
For verbs, a given root can construct up to fifteen different verbs, each with one or more characteristic meanings and each with its own templates for the past and non-past stems, active and passive participles, and verbal noun. These are referred to by Western scholars as "Form I", "Form II", and so on through "Form XV" (although Forms XI to XV are rare). These forms encode concepts such as the causative, intensive and reflexive. These forms can be viewed as analogous to verb conjugations in languages such as Spanish in terms of the additional complexity of verb formation that they induce. (Note, however, that their usage in constructing vocabulary is somewhat different, since the same root can be conjugated in multiple forms, with different shades of meaning.)
Examples of the different verbs formed from the root k-t-b "write" (using ḥ-m-r "red" for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects):
|I||kataba||"he wrote"||yaktubu||"he writes"|
|II||kattaba||"he made (someone) write"||yukattibu||"he makes (someone) write"|
|III||kātaba||"he corresponded with, wrote to (someone)"||yukātibu||"he corresponds with, writes to (someone)"|
|IV||ʾaktaba||"he dictated"||yuktibu||"he dictates"|
|VI||takātaba||"he corresponded (with someone, esp. mutually)"||yatakātabu||"he corresponds (with someone, esp. mutually)"|
|VII||inkataba||"he subscribed"||yankatibu||"he subscribes"|
|VIII||iktataba||"he copied"||yaktatibu||"he copies"|
|IX||iḥmarra||"he turned red"||yaḥmarru||"he turns red"|
|X||istaktaba||"he asked (someone) to write"||yastaktibu||"he asks (someone) to write"|
Form II is sometimes used to create transitive denominative verbs (verbs built from nouns); Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.
The associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic. This is similar to the process by which, for example, the English gerund "meeting" (similar to a verbal noun) has turned into a noun referring to a particular type of social, often work-related event where people gather together to have a "discussion" (another lexicalized verbal noun). Another fairly common means of forming nouns is through one of a limited number of patterns that can be applied directly to roots, such as the "nouns of location" in ma- (e.g. maktab "desk, office" < k-t-b "write", maṭbax "kitchen" < ṭ-b-x "cook").
The only three genuine suffixes are as follows:
The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive.
The following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.
|Tense/Mood||Past||Present Subjunctive||Present Indicative||Future||Imperative|
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic scripts to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern versions of the alphabet—in particular, the fa had a dot underneath and qaf a single dot above in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals).
However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting.
After Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi finally fixed the Arabic script around 786, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin script, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy.
|ا||aː||ā||ʾ||ā||aa||aa / A||a||a/e/é|
|ي||j, iː||y||y; ī||y; e||y; ii||y||y; i/ee; ei/ai|
There are a number of different standards for the romanization of Arabic, i.e. methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin script. There are various conflicting motivations involved, which leads to multiple systems. Some are interested in transliteration, i.e. representing the spelling of Arabic, while others focus on transcription, i.e. representing the pronunciation of Arabic. (They differ in that, for example, the same letter ي is used to represent both a consonant, as in "you" or "yet", and a vowel, as in "me" or "eat".) Some systems, e.g. for scholarly use, are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic script. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written sh in English. Other systems (e.g. the Bahá'í orthography) are intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. These less "scientific" tend to avoid diacritics and use digraphs (like sh and kh). These are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems, and may lead to ambiguities, e.g. whether to interpret sh as a single sound, as in gash, or a combination of two sounds, as in gashouse.
During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin script only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic script as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.
To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter ⟨ع⟩. There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter ⟨د⟩, may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, ⟨ض⟩, may be written as D.
In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However, in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals (٠ – ١ – ٢ – ٣ – ٤ – ٥ – ٦ – ٧ – ٨ – ٩) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty" just like in the German language (vierundzwanzig) and Classical Hebrew, and 1975 is said "a thousand and nine-hundred and five and seventy" or, more eloquently, "five and seventy and nine-hundred and a thousand."
Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab League. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.
Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around 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 in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also 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.
|English||Arabic||Arabic (vowelled)||Romanization (DIN 31635)||IPA|
|al-ingilīziyyah (varies)||/alʔinɡ(i)liːzijja/ (varies)|
|Peace (Usually Islamic)||السلام عليكم||السَّلامُ عَلَيْكُمْ||ʾassalāmu ʿalaykum||/ʔassalaːmu ʕalajkum/|
|How are you||کيف الحال؟||کَيْفَ ٱلْحَال؟||kayfa l-ḥāl||/kajfa lħaːl/|
|Goodbye||مع السلامة||مَعَ السّلامَة||maʿa s-salāma||/maʕa ssalaːma/|
|Please||من فضلك||مِنْ فَضْلِك||min faḍlik||/min fadˤlik,/|
|What's your name?||ما اسمك؟||مَا ٱسْمُك؟||mā ʾismuk(a/i)?||/ma ʔismuk(a, i)/|
|I don't understand.||لا أفهم||لا أفْهَم||lā ʾafham||/laː ʔafham/|
|I don't speak Arabic.||لا أتكلم العربية||لا أتَكَلّمُ الْعَرَبيّة||lā ʾatakallamu l-ʿarabiyyah||/laː ʔatakallamu lʕarabijja/|
|I don't know.||لا أعرف||لا أعْرِف||lā ʾaʿrif||/laː ʔaʕrif/|
|I'm hungry.||أنا جائع||أنا جائِع||ʾanā jāʾiʿ||/ʔanaː ɡaːʔiʕ/|
|Eleven||أحد عشر||أَحَدَ عَشَر||ʾaḥad(a) ʿašar||/ʔaħad(a) ʕaʃar/|
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