Egypt With Omar Sharif

The Arabic language is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab world and is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world. Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century and is the liturgical language of Islam. Because of its liturgical role, Arabic has lent many words to other Islamic languages, akin to the role Latin has in Western European languages.

During the Middle Ages Arabic was also a major vehicle of culture, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy, with the result that many European languages have also borrowed numerous words from it.

The influence of the Arabic language on other languages.

In common with other European languages, many English words are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian, among them every-day vocabulary like "sugar" (sukkar), "cotton" (quṭn) or "magazine" (makāzin). More recognizable are words like "algebra", "alcohol" and "zenith"

The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries dominated by Islam or Islamic power. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages as diverse as Berber, Farsi, Swahili, Urdu, spoken Hindi, Turkish, Malay, Indonesian, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example the Arabic word for book /kita:b/ is used in all the languages listed apart from Malay and Indonesian.

The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber taẓallit "prayer" salat), academic terms (like Uyghur mentiq "logic"), economic items (like English "sugar") to placeholders (like Spanish fulano "so and so") and everyday conjunctions (like Urdu lekin "but".) Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most religious terms used by Muslims around the world 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 mediated by other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic; for example, most Arabic loanwords in Urdu entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri.

Dialects and descendants

"Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern—especially 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 Arabic (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now sound very different.

The major groups are:

-Egyptian Arabic

-Maghreb Arabic (Algerian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Maltese and western Libyan)

-Levantine Arabic (Western Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and western Jordanian, Cypriot Maronite Arabic)

-Iraqi Arabic (and Khuzestani Arabic) - with significant differences between the more Arabian-like gilit-dialects of the south and the more conservative qeltu-dialects of the northern cities

-Gulf Arabic (Saudi Arabian, Western Iraq, Eastern Syrian , Jordanian and parts of Oman)

-East Arabian Arabic (Bahrain, Saudi Eastern Province, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, and Oman)

Other varieties include:

-Ḥassānīya (in Mauritania and western Sahara)

-Andalusi Arabic (extinct, but important role in literary history)

-Sudanese Arabic (with a dialect continuum into Chad)

-Hijazi Arabic (west coast of Saudi Arabia, Northern Saudi Arabia, eastern Jordan, Western Iraq)

-Najdi Arabic (Najd region of central Saudi Arabia)

-Yemeni Arabic (Yemen to southern Saudi Arabia)

-Maltese, which is spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. It falls within the Maghreb Arabic group, although numerous sound changes have rendered it phonologically very different from its nearest relative, Tunisian Arabic. It also contains a large number of Italian and English borrowings

Dialectal variations:

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 Maghreb 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) distinguish between [p] and [b]. Interdental fricatives ([θ] and [ً]) are rendered as stops [t] and [d] in some dialects (such as Levantine, Egyptian, and much of the Maghreb); some of these dialects render them as [s] and [z] in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes [d] and [ً] coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use [d] exclusively, while those with such fricatives use [ً]. Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, [ً] is rendered as [z] (in the Middle East) or [d] (in North Africa) in dialects without interdental fricatives. Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render Standard [q] (a voiceless uvular stop): it retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb (and among the Druze), while it is rendered [ɡ] in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan) and as a glottal stop in many prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Additionally, confessional differences may sometimes be distinguished: in the case of [q], some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as [k], as do Shia Bahrainis. Thus, Arabs instantly give away their geographical (and class) origin by their pronunciation of a word such as qamar "moon": [qamar], [ɡamar], [ʔamar] or [kamar]

Islamic calligraphy:

Islamic calligraphy is an aspect of Islamic art that has co-evolved alongside the religion of Islam and the Arabic language.

Arabic/Persian calligraphy is associated with geometric Islamic art (the Arabesque) on the walls and ceilings of mosques as well as on the page. Contemporary artists in the Islamic world draw on the heritage of calligraphy to use calligraphic inscriptions or abstractions in their work.