Arabic

Arabic ranks sixth in the world's league table of languages and is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages.

Arabic is spoken by more people than any other language in the Semitic language family and is spoken by more than 186 million people as a first language, most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic is also the official language of 22 countries and is the liturgical language of Islam since it is the language of the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book.

Brian Bishop, an expert on the Arabic Language, states;-

"The fact that Arabic is not well known in the Western world should perhaps be considered a point of regret considering that the Arabic language is spoken natively by over 150 million people"

To learn the poetic language of the Arabs is not something we should brush over and you can grab a 6 Day Free Trial Course at the bottom of this page or just click on the banner below to purchase the course.

The Article Below Was Contributed by:
Brian Bishop
Linguistics 450
April 24, 1998

The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian musnad. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Fāw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic. By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic alphabet.

You can read the full article by clicking A History of the Arabic Language and we guarantee you will find it enlightening and very interesting.

Is Arabic difficult to learn?

YES - and - No.

Learning Arabic certainly takes time and practice, but there are not many irregularities in the grammar, it is much less complicated than Latin, and probably simpler than German and anyone learning English will know that anything is easier than that.

Would you like to start learning to speak Arabic today with a 6 day Free Trial Course giving sample audio tracks with Arabic grammar and culture lessons?