ARABIC MADE SIMPLE

AHLAN WA SAHLAN - WELCOME

Arabic is an ancient semitic language that has stood the test of time, which hardly changed  in more than 1500 years. Today, it is still a living language spoken by more than 400 million Arabs living in 22 countries bordering North Africa and situated the Middle East, essentially spanning two continents. Arabic is also spoken in the Comores Islands.  However, 400 million is not a true reflection of all the Arabic speakers of the world, since there are several millions of non-Arab, Arabic speakers, living outside of Arab countries. To further impact on this figure, Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam and the Qur'an, and attested to by more than 2 billion Muslims throughout the modern world. Because Arabic is the language of the Qur'an, which has been orally preserved, handed down from huffaath  to huffaath since its revelation to this very day, Classical Arabic (lughatul arabiyyah) remained in its pristine unchanged state all this time. It is said that Arabic is the "fourth" most spoken language in the world but its best that you be the judge of that.

Colours represent countries where Arabic is widely spoken

Undoubtedly Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world yet it is not widely spoken throughout the world but rather confined to China. However China has a large  Muslim population many of whom read, speak and prayer in Arabic especially among the  Hui, Dongxiang, and the Salar . They even use a Perso-Arabic Script to write  Xiao'erjing  script which is also written from right to left. 

A Chinese-Arabic-Xiaoerjing dictionary from the
early days of the People's Republic of China.

 An Arabic book on Islamic ritual, with a parallel Chinese translation
in the  Xiao'erjing script, published in Tashkent in 1899

English is said to be the second most spoken language in the world yet there a very few countries where English is predominantly spoken other than the  British Isles, Australia and the United States of America.  Having said that, the United Kingdom is supposed to be the home of English but we find large groups of people speak Shelta and Irish -the language spoken  in Ireland. Scottish -the language spoken in Scotland. Cornish -the language spoken in Cornwall England. Manx Gaelic -the language spoken in the Isle of Man. Welsh -the language spoken in Wales. In Australia only 77% of its population speaks English. The balance of its inhabitants speak either indigenous languages, Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and of course Arabic. In the USA most people speak English as a second language because America is made up of global emigrants from every conceivable country. Grandparents and parents tend to raise their offspring speaking their mother tongue which in most cases is not English.

However, English is also spoken in Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Israel, Lesotho, Liberia, Malaysia, Micronesia, Namibia, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Suriname, Swaziland, Tonga, Vanuatu, Zimbabwe, many Caribbean states, Zambia, etc. But each of these countries have 2 or more indigenous languages with some have as many as 11 languages, South Africa in particular and there are other countries that have even more.  

Spanish is rated as the third most spoken language in the world. Be that as it may, the mere fact that Arabs ruled Spain for more than 800 years implies that the Spanish language even though said to be of Roman origin contains more Arabic vocabulary than any other languages that's been influence by Arabic. With the colonization of the Americas Spanish is widely spoken in South America and Mexico but also as a second language. Many of the older South American country's people speak one or more of the native Indian tongues indigenous to that specific country. Quechuan, Aimaran, Aymara and Mapudungun are  co-official languages spoken alongside Spanish.

ARABIC MADE SIMPLE

Arabic can roughly be divided into three categories, viz Colloquial Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Classical Arabic. Colloquial Arabic can be described as spoken Arabic influenced or somewhat corrupted by other languages spoken in a region. For example, Arabic spoken in the Levant, is marginally   influenced by Aramaic, Armenian, Circassian, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ladino and Turkish and is  quite different from Hijazi Arabic spoken in Arabia and not completely mutually  understood, yet the amount of classical Arabic words in both dialects still renders it comprehensible by the Levantine and Hijazi speakers.  Amongst the various Arabic dialects, the "North African Arabic" dialect is spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Tanzania and Sudan,; then there is  the "Egyptian Arabic" dialect spoken in Egypt, parts of Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan; and lastly there is "Gulf Arabic" that is spoken in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

Whereas Modern Standard Arabic is the Arabic used by newspapers, Television, Movies makers, book publishers and news broadcast throughout the Arab World and is fully understood by all throughout the Arab World. MSA is the language that all students of the Arabic language needs to acquire to be able to universally communicate with all Arabic speaking communities. But Classical Arabic is the Arabic of Qur'an and used for prayer by the 2 billion Muslims throughout the world. 

Al-Qur'an nil-Kareem

Classical Arabic is unique in its style, pronunciation, verse and rhyme and can be said to be as different from MSA as old Shakespearean English sounds different from modern day English.

And We have certainly made the Qur'an easy for remembrance, so is there any
who will remember? Chapter 54 / Sūratul-Qamar (The Moon)

Arabic made simple,  will concentrate on  MSA and Classical Arabic which will very quickly give students a good grounding in the construction,  morphology ( sarf) and grammar (naghu) of the the Arabic language. Having said that, any language is fairly easy to learn once the verbs are mastered, the rest is just vocabulary. But first, I need to introduce the concept of conjunction and pronouns. Regardless of language, there are roughly only six pronouns, three singular and three plural. viz. he/she, you and I ( singular). They/them, you all, and us (Plural). Once this is well understood, referring to anyone becomes simple, as will be demonstrated in the next blog.