Arabic Language
I am Mohamed Humuma. I am on a Fulbright FLTA Scholarship at UW-Stevens Point (2008-2009). When I read this article I thought it would be a good idea if I write something. I would like to give a short introduction about Arabic language.
The Arabic language is one of the oldest and richest in the world. It dates from approximately the first century of the Common Era but its origins go as far as the time of Abraham the Patriarch. According to Arab historians, the people who settled the Arabian Peninsula spoke various languages and dialects, but when Abraham took his son Ishmael to Mecca and left him there with his mother Hager, the boy learned how to interact with the neighboring nomadic tribes. He was able to devise a new language that was based on Hebrew grammar and vocabulary, and that, according to Arab historians, is how Arabic became a Semitic language.
ARABIC ranks sixth in the world's league table of languages, with an estimated 186 million native speakers. As the language of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, it is also widely used throughout the Muslim world. It belongs to the Semitic group of languages which also includes Hebrew and Amharic, the main language of Ethiopia.
Arabic is now spoken in 22 countries extending from Morocco and Mauritania in the west of Africa to Iraq in the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. The Arab Gulf countries and those which border the east and west of the Red Sea also speak Arabic.
Arabic is one of the few languages that have the potential to hinder its learners due to its diaglossic nature. "Diaglossia" occurs when a language has a spoken dialect that is different from the one taught in schools and used for formal occasions. Students of Arabic witness this disparity when they travel to an Arab country and realize that the formal Arabic they learned in the classroom is only used to listen to the news on the radio or listen to a public lecture, while dialectical Arabic is used for daily activities and occurrences. For many Arabs, this disparity does not present a problem because they can communicate for everyday affairs in their dialects whether Egyptian, Libyan or Lebanese, etc., whereas for their formal communication they can use the "Fuss-ha", or what is now designated as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).
Learning Arabic is a little bit difficult. It certainly takes time and practice, but there are not many irregularities in the grammar. It's much less complicated than German.
There are 28 sounds; 25 consonants and three vowels – a, i, u – which can be short or long. Some of the sounds are unique to Arabic and difficult for foreigners to pronounce exactly.
The normal word order of a sentence is verb + subject + object and subject + verb + object.
Feminine nouns add the suffix …aat to form the plural but masculine nouns generally have a "broken" plural which involves changing vowels in the middle of the word: kitaab ("book"); kutub ("books").
Arabic has very few irregular verbs and does not use "is" or "are" at all in the present tense: "the king good" means "the king is good".
If you would like to read about the origins, development and the different styles of Arabic calligraphy as well as many other issues such as the alphabet, greetings, grammar and colors, I recommend visiting these pages.
http://st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_...
www.arabic2000.com
www.alkitaabtextbook.net
www.arabiclanguage.org
www.languageguide.org/arabic
www.islamicart.com/main/calligraphy/unique.ht...