Arabic is one of the most influential languages in the world. More than 360 million people in 25 countries across Northern Africa and the Middle East speak Arabic as their first language. In addition, many words in English and other languages originated from Arabic through influence and contact with the Arab culture.
The Arabic language is one of the world's oldest languages, dating back 1,500 years. Arabic is a Proto-Semitic language that was first mentioned in the 1st century. Ancient Greek geographers named the language “Arabic” after the Arab people who lived on the Arabian Peninsula. The language ancestors of Arabic were the many dialects of the region, including Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, and Ancient North Arabian.
The first written trace of Old Arabic was found in a 1st-century Sabaic script. The oldest preserved papyrus using the 28-letter Arabic alphabet is dated 643 CE. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali standardized the language in the 7th century and was considered the Father of Arabic Grammar. Hundreds of years later, Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi created the first dictionary.
It is estimated that an English speaker will need about 1,600 hours to learn Arabic.
Learning the Arabic language could be challenging, but you can easily pick up a few essential words like “hello” or “brothers” in the Arabic language. However, if you need content writing in Arabic, you might need a professional to help you out!
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Arabic has 14 words for "love" that describe the various stages. For example, “ishq” refers to intense love, while “hawa” refers to infatuation.
Arabic has hundreds of words for "camel," depending on the breed, character, and position of a camel in a herd as well as other factors.
In Arabic, the present tense does not use the verb "to be." It is understood in the context. So, "I am Jack" is literally expressed as "I Jack."
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the standardized form of Arabic that all Arab countries commonly use in writing and official settings and is the Arabic language to learn. However, the language has diglossia characteristics, meaning colloquial Arabic is almost a separate language with many regional variants.
Learning the Arabic language isn’t very easy, especially for speakers of Romanic and Germanic languages. As for difficulty, only Japanese, Mandarin, and some tribal languages rank higher.
Arabic has three distinctive forms. Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur’an and literature. MSA is the official language for written documents. Dialectal Arabic variants are for everyday use.
Arabic is the native and official or co-official language in 25 countries: for example, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and more.
Both languages are difficult. However, complexity in speech is more prominent in Arabic, while the writing system in Mandarin Chinese is substantially harder.