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    Classical, Modern Standard and Spoken Arabic: Further Information:,, and See Also

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    Julian Andres Gutierrez Londoño
    - Classical Arabic is the language of the Quran from pre-Islamic Arabia to the Abbasid Caliphate. It follows strict grammatical and vocabulary standards. - Modern Standard Arabic largely maintains Classical Arabic grammar and vocabulary but has adopted new words and constructions from spoken varieties to describe modern concepts. It is taught in schools but differs from everyday spoken dialects. - Spoken or colloquial Arabic refers to many regional varieties that evolved from Classical Arabic. They differ enough to be mutually unintelligible between distant regions but native speakers can understand closely related varieties. They are typically unwritten but used informally.

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    Classical, Modern Standard and Spoken Arabic: Further Information:,, and See Also

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    Julian Andres Gutierrez Londoño
    41 views3 pages
    - Classical Arabic is the language of the Quran from pre-Islamic Arabia to the Abbasid Caliphate. It follows strict grammatical and vocabulary standards. - Modern Standard Arabic largely maintains Classical Arabic grammar and vocabulary but has adopted new words and constructions from spoken varieties to describe modern concepts. It is taught in schools but differs from everyday spoken dialects. - Spoken or colloquial Arabic refers to many regional varieties that evolved from Classical Arabic. They differ enough to be mutually unintelligible between distant regions but native speakers can understand closely related varieties. They are typically unwritten but used informally.

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    - Classical Arabic is the language of the Quran from pre-Islamic Arabia to the Abbasid Caliphate. It follows strict grammatical and vocabulary standards. - Modern Standard Arabic largely maintains Classical Arabic grammar and vocabulary but has adopted new words and constructions from spoken varieties to describe modern concepts. It is taught in schools but differs from everyday spoken dialects. - Spoken or colloquial Arabic refers to many regional varieties that evolved from Classical Arabic. They differ enough to be mutually unintelligible between distant regions but native speakers can understand closely related varieties. They are typically unwritten but used informally.

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    41 views3 pages

    Classical, Modern Standard and Spoken Arabic: Further Information:,, and See Also

    Uploaded by

    Julian Andres Gutierrez Londoño
    - Classical Arabic is the language of the Quran from pre-Islamic Arabia to the Abbasid Caliphate. It follows strict grammatical and vocabulary standards. - Modern Standard Arabic largely maintains Classical Arabic grammar and vocabulary but has adopted new words and constructions from spoken varieties to describe modern concepts. It is taught in schools but differs from everyday spoken dialects. - Spoken or colloquial Arabic refers to many regional varieties that evolved from Classical Arabic. They differ enough to be mutually unintelligible between distant regions but native speakers can understand closely related varieties. They are typically unwritten but used informally.

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    Classical, Modern Standard and spoken Arabic

    Further information: Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Varieties of Arabic


    See also: List of Arabic dictionaries

    Flag of the Arab League, used in some cases for the Arabic language

    Flag used in some cases for the Arabic language (Flag of the Kingdom of Hejaz 1916–1925).The flag
    contains the four Pan-Arab colors: black, white, green and red.

    Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical


    Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic.[38] It could also refer to any of 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 the Lisān al-ʻArab).
    Modern Standard Arabic 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 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 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.[39] 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. [40] This view though does
    not take into account the widespread use of Modern Standard Arabic as a medium of
    audiovisual communication in today's mass media—a function Latin has never performed.
    MSA 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" (‫فُصْ حَ ى‬ 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:

     Certain grammatical constructions of CA that have no counterpart in any modern


    vernacular dialect (e.g., the energetic mood) are almost never used in Modern
    Standard Arabic.
     Case distinctions are very rare in Arabic vernaculars. As a result, MSA is generally
    composed without case distinctions in mind, and the proper cases are added after
    the fact, when necessary. Because most case endings are noted using final short
    vowels, which are normally left unwritten in the Arabic script, it is unnecessary to
    determine the proper case of most words. The practical result of this is that MSA,
    like English and Standard Chinese, is written in a strongly determined word order
    and alternative orders that were used in CA for emphasis are rare. In addition,
    because of the lack of case marking in the spoken varieties, most speakers cannot
    consistently use the correct endings in extemporaneous speech. As a result,
    spoken MSA tends to drop or regularize the endings except when reading from a
    prepared text.
     The numeral system in CA is complex and heavily tied in with the case system.
    This system is never used in MSA, even in the most formal of circumstances;
    instead, a significantly simplified system is used, approximating the system of the
    conservative spoken varieties.
    MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that 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.[41] Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that
    transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., ‫ف ِْلم‬ film 'film'
    or ‫ديمقراطية‬ dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy').
    However, the current preference 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 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 the many national or regional varieties which constitute
    the everyday spoken language and evolved from Classical Arabic. Colloquial Arabic has many
    regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually
    unintelligible, and some linguists consider them distinct languages. [42] 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.[43]
    The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such
    as soap operas and talk shows,[44] 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, which is
    spoken in (predominantly Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from
    Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic, but is not mutually intelligible with any other variety of
    Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic.
    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 hamzah (which was
    preserved in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech) and the use of alif
    maqṣūrah (representing a sound preserved in the western dialects but merged with ā in
    eastern speech).[citation needed]

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