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Arabic is a "Diglossic" language referring
to a situation where two distinct language varieties are in use
by a single population. In addition to the primary dialects, there
is a very different language, which is learned largely by formal
education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes
but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation.
Spoken Arabic
Colloquial Dialects
Colloquial Arabic is the spoken Arabic used by
Arabs in their everyday lives. Unlike modern standard Arabic, which
is uniform in all Arab countries, colloquial Arabic is subject to
regional variation, not only between different countries, but also
within regions in the same country.
There are over 30 different varieties of colloquial
Arabic which include:
- Egyptian
- spoken by about 46 million people in Egypt and perhaps the most
widely understood variety, thanks to the popularity of Egyptian-made
films and TV shows
- Algerian - spoken by about 22 million people
in Algeria
- Moroccan/Maghrebi - spoken in Morocco by
about 19.5 million people
- Sudanese - spoken in Sudan by about 19 million
people
- Saidi - spoken by about 19 million people
in Egpyt
- North Levantine - spoken in Lebanon and
Syria by about 15 million people
- Mesopotamian - spoken by about 14 million
people in Iraq, Iran and Syria
- Najdi - spoken in Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
Jordan and Syria by about 10 million people
The dialects in colloquial Arabic are so diverse that
even native speakers of Arabic may have difficulty understanding
Arabs from neighbouring countries, or in extreme cases: neighbouring
villages. The further away the countries, the greater the variation
between the dialects. However, in spite of the differences between
all Arabic dialects, their underlying syntactic structures are quite
similar.
Two coexisting varieties
of written Arabic
1. Classical Arabic
The language of poetry, classical literature and the Qur'an. Arabs
consider Classical Arabic as an important part of their culture.
Throughout Islamic history Classical Arabic has been the language
of royal and princely courts, the bureaucracy and the educated
2. Modern Standard Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), as its name indicates, is the
modern counterpart of Classical Arabic. It has become a means by
which individual Arabs from different countries can converse with
one another. MSA is the language of Islamic worship, contemporary
literature, journalism, television and scientific writing. It is
learned through formal education and is not acquired as a native
language by any Arabs. Almost without exception, it is MSA which
one hears on Arabic news broadcasts and other television programmes,
in school and speeches by presidents and ministers or discussions
by intellectuals.
The main difference between MSA and Classical Arabic
lies in the vocabulary and stylistic features; the morphology and
the basic syntactic norms have remained unchanged. MSA reflects
the needs of contemporary expression whereas Classical Arabic reflects
the needs of older styles.
Modern Standard Arabic versus
colloquial Dialects
An Arabic speaker will first learn her/his own regional colloquial
language (such as Egyptian, Moroccan or Levantine Arabic). But an
Arabic speaker will also, if s/he goes to school and wishes to be
considered educated, have to learn (in school, as a learned language)
Modern Standard Arabic.
How much MSA versus colloquial is used depends on
the speaker, the topic and the situation. At the other end of the
spectrum, public education as well as exposure to mass media, has
introduced MSA elements amongst the least educated so that it would
be equally difficult to find an Arab speaker whose speech is totally
unaffected by MSA.
Though MSA is indeed the standard written language
of most Arabic countries, it is necessary to identify the Arabic-speaking
country or community for which a translation is intended.
Arabic and the internet
While many Arabs use English or French as their preferred
language on the internet, the majority of Arabs, particularly in
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar,
Oman, and Syria use Arabic. Arabic language on the internet is presented
in different forms-formats-encoding techniques. One of the major
problems is transporting Arabic text over the internet is due to
the multiplicity of character sets.
.Arabic text is cursive, and the shapes of its characters
depend on their position in the word.
.The directionality of Arabic text is peculiar: While Arabic text
is written right-to-left, Arabic numbers are written left-to-right.
Solutions have started to emerge with browsers and
mail programmes building on new internet standards. The most "popular",
and less practical, is the GIF, which is a graphics form that can
be read on any operating system, whatever the browser. Nevertheless,
this way of representing text as a "picture" of the text,
rather than the actual text itself, is far from being acceptable.
Such pictures of text are not searchable, and there are are also
problems associated with loading time, lack of editing features
and tools, and other serious factors. These problems have encouraged
Arabic site owners to construct new web sites that support Arabic
text. The text format is now the natural and practical choice for
reading Arabic text over the internet.
The most common type of font used for the Arabic script
is called Nasekh, which is also the clearest (used in printing books,
newspapers and documents). But some Arabic writings are written
using other fonts which can differ considerably from Nasekh. In
terms of Desktop Publishing al-Nashir al-Sahafi is the industry
standard software for Arabic publishing, working with both Macintosh
and Windows.
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