Amazing & Interesting Facts about Arabic Language

Arabs are unified by a language common to all, Arabic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Aramaic. The Semitic language family belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. This family included the languages of ancient Babylon, Palestine Assyria and Egypt.

By the 11th century, Arabic became the common medium of expression from China to France. The Muslim Arab civilization flourished in the Arabian Peninsula and also became the language of art, science, and technology. There are some unknown & very interesting facts about Arabic Language. Countries it is spoken in includes – Afghanistan, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Oman, Palestinian West Bank & Gaza, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Bahrain, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Interesting Facts about Arabic Language

The sacred language of Muslims

Arabic is the sacred language of Muslims. Before the dissension of the Quran, Arabic was chiefly an oral language. Arabic is considered a holy language as it is the language of the Quran. Hence it is the chief prayer language for Muslims.

Worldwide use of the Arabic language

Arabic is the written and spoken language of more than 150 million inhabitants of the Arab world. Arabic is spoken in a lot of the countries of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. According to the CIA’s The World Fact book, Arabic is spoken in around twenty-nine countries in this part of the world. In addition, around 3.12% of the world’s population has Arabic as their first language.

Arabic script widely used

Arabic script is also used by 1/7th of the world’s population. Millions of people in Africa and Asia write their languages in the Arabic alphabet.

Semitic language

Arabic belongs to the Semitic family of languages of which Hebrew is also a member. Arabic is a Semitic language.

Written in script, not printed

Arabic is written in script, not printed. Arabic inscriptions became widely available after the birth of Islam. It is the second most widespread script in the world.

About Arabic script

Arabic script reads from right to left and its alphabet contains 28 characters. Words are written horizontally from right to left. Numerals on the other hand are written from left to right. The number 4, 5, 6, 7 have various forms in the languages of Iran, Pakistan, and India.  It has complex text language, because it has script which is bidirectional. It is written right to left, apart from numbers and Latin words are written left to right. Many letters depending on whether they appear alone, at the start, middle or end of the word, change their form.

Letters that change form are always joined in both hand-written and printed Arabic. Hence, as in the English hand writing, it is cursive. Unlike many other alphabetic scripts, it denotes a high phonetic correctness, when diacritics are added.

Universally Written

It is written across the world, read and understood in its traditional form. Arabic has undergone regional and dialectical disparities.

Words Begin with a Consonant

Arabic includes many guttural sounds (unlike English). All words begin with a consonant followed by a vowel. The English language consists of many words with Arabic origin, such as: checkmate, cotton, magazine, algebra, mummy, and sherbet.

Additional Features

Another interesting fact about Arabic language is that some additional letters are used in Arabic to write place names or foreign words containing sounds which do not appear in Standard Arabic, such as /p/ or /g/.

Poetry

The earliest form of Arabic literature is Poetry.