has been around for well over 1000 years. Some find it charming and polite, others find it intense, many others see it as a challenge. Modern Standard Arabic is the form you would find all over the media, the news, airports, diplomatic contexts and any formal procedures. However, there are around 25 Arab speaking countries that claim Arabic as an official or co-official language including Saudi Arabia, Chad, Algeria, Comoros, Eritrea, Djibouti, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Bahrain, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Arabic is part of the Central Semitic language family, which includes Hebrew, Aramaic and Phoenician. The Egyptian Arabic dialect is spoken by a total of68 millionpeople around the world, making it the 26th most-spoken language according to the Ethnologue. Seeing that Arabic is concentrated in a part of the world that is witnessing a heavy boom in business development, real estate, construction, technology, and other industries, the language facilitates business opportunities in both public and private sectors. Arabic is a member of the family of Semitic languages. All literary texts authored between the seventh and ninth centuries, as well as the Holy Quran, are written in Classical Arabic. Ethnologue. If you need to cancel a lesson, please cancel 12 hours in advance. experience teaching Arabic and English online. I also took comfort in the Egyptian-dubbed cartoons, stories in Levantine dialects, and shows in Gulf Arab dialects the latter, in particular, are more available these days than in years past. My Lessons & Teaching Style As one of the cradles of humankind, Egypt experienced some of the world's earliest forms of development in things like agriculture, religion, and urbanization. We live in the United States and can only visit Lebanon, our place of origin and heritage, infrequently. Most people do not use it much and only do so in formal settings (or, perhaps, for official purposes). Others have found excuses for sticking with Classical Arabic in education, too. Not only have they excluded their own dialects from important public spaces, they have also relatedly discouraged certain learning in private spaces and made it more difficult for parents in different segments of society, not just in a diaspora to pass on their cultural inheritances to children. Children do not seek out books written in an old Arabic, because they are full of unknown words and unfamiliar grammatical structures; parents struggle to instill a love of language and learning, or even to access these materials themselves. This discourages wider uptake and use, which in turn creates a scenario where Arabs cannot develop such phrases. Currently, Tunisia is a member of the League of Arab States. Across the board, even in richer Gulf Arab states, Arabic-speaking literacy rates are lower than expected given the amounts these governments spend on education. However, I know that it is spoken by a significant percentage of the population in Oman, and by the majority of the population in the U.A.E. Lacking legitimacy and acceptance, dialects are less useful at least now in different spheres like education, law, and administration (areas that also involve precedent, meaning that future changes are constrained by the past). Egypt relies on agriculture, tourism, natural gas, and petroleum trade for economic growth. They need hundreds of books, at least according to the early education studies I have read. By far one of the most popular dialects to learn, Egyptian Arabic is spoken natively in Egypt and Sudan. All maps, graphics, flags, photos and original descriptions 2022 worldatlas.com. Lets look at them more closely and find out where in the world people speak Arabic! If dialects were to disappear tomorrow, people would struggle to use Classical Arabic as an everyday language. Watching my son grow up, I have been thinking about why we should care so much given the choices we all make: to live somewhere new, while seeking to preserve our heritage, or to seek to improve our childrens chances in this globalized world, and thus try to overcome that selfsame heritage while having never left home. However, unlike what many language books and courses claim, it is not the lingua franca of the Arabic world. Speakers cant pass on their dialects fully because they lack institutional support, have few available tools, and suffer from sociocultural snootiness toward the spoken tongue(s). Arabic is a direct descendant of Classical Arabic, which was the version found in literary texts from the 7th to 9th centuries and in the Quran. This list even does not include other countries, where Arabic is an official language ("Arab countries in a broader sense") and where it is also important: Djibouti, Eritrea, Chad, Somalia, Comoros. The reason for the gap in Arabic speakers compared to the entire Saudi population is the large presence of an expat community, many of whom do not come from Arabic speaking countries. It lacks expressive qualities needed for everyday speech. It has also influenced other languages as well including Turkish, Bengali, Hindi, Indonesian and Tagalog. So how many people in the world speak Arabic? focusing more on improving your FOUR SKILLS (speaking,reading,listening and writing). You can also find elements of Arabic influence in, among many others, Portuguese, Turkish, Bosnian, Persian, Hebrew and even English by way of other languages (alcohol, sugar, and cotton, for example). The only information on this page lists the Arabic languages that are included in this macrolanguage (see this site for an explanation: http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/macrolanguages.asp). Today, Arabic is the widely spoken Semitic language. Nor can the proponents of one dialect, anywhere, impose it as a common language in the entire Arabic-speaking realm. Arabic is also a national language of Niger and Mali, and also spoken in Nigeria. The remainder of the popular primarily speaks English or indigenous languages - there are more than 100 languages that are native to Sudan. , with almost 4 percent of Belgiums population, roughly 2.5 percent of Frances population and nearly 1.5 percent of the United Kingdoms population speaking Arabic as a mother tongue. Learning how to read and write in Arabic script and to adopt Arabic phonology is an extra challenge that can give you new insights about world languages that arent staples of the Western world and how theyre different from and the same as the languages that are more closely related to ones found in Europe and the Americas. It is the primary language of the Arab World mostly found in Asia, Middle East, and North Africa. The problem is diglossia. in Morocco many speak Berber languages, but everyone there speaks it as a secound language and there are large Arabic-speaking minorities in other countries - Turkey up to 5 mio., Europe up to 10 mio., the Americas up to 30 mio., Iran up to 1.5 mio. Also found in North Africa, Algeria is home to more than 40 Arabic speakers. Sure, weve made some progress. Some Semitic languages have either gone extinct or have become greatly limited because of the spread of the Arabic language. My conclusion is that the number given in Ethnologue is no longer correct and should be updated. Mi vida antes del Covid- 19 (IMPERFECTO) A-2, Respecting your "do not sell my personal information " rights. However, Syria is among the world's worst countries in terms of human rights with frequent arrests and detention of activists, bloggers, and widespread disappearances. On the other hand, people degrade dialects all the time. But we can only find a handful of books available in that dialect or in other accessible, useful dialects, be they Egyptian or Iraqi. These events are said to have occurred around the 7th century C.E. Then its Sudan with 27 million, and following behind in the list are Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. The spread of the Arabic language occurred as a result of various nomadic tribes traveling out of the Arabic Peninsula. They have thus made an official language out of a form that nobody considers a native tongue, while making everyones different native tongues seem subpar, uncouth, and useless. For us, language knows no boundaries. Arabic is technically deemed a macrolanguage that comprises 30 different varieties. Egypt has a rich Arabic culture and history which gives it a distinctive national identity. Speak both languages English and Korean. http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/macrolanguages.asp. Surely, not everyone even in the core Arab countries speak natively Arabic, e.g. Gulf Arabic is known to be the closest dialect to Modern Standard Arabic, as it sounds elegant, formal (in comparison to other dialects) and well-preserved. You can also find Arabic speakers scattered across the globe where millions of Arab migrants resettled over the past few generations in places like Brazil, northern and central Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia. Other languages spoken in Algeria, which is Africa's largest country by land area, are French and Berber. teaching style will be very easy for you to follow. Your browser does not support JavaScript! There are 25 countries that claim Arabic as an official or co-official language: Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. And, of course, they need more than books to learn different dimensions of the language and God forbid! Ultimately, Arabics diglossia might last centuries in its current forms and with its negative consequences. They just need to get over their own barriers. But the project, like so many things in life, was not as simple as I initially assumed. Theres a notable number of Arabic speakers elsewhere in the world. Levantine Arabic dialects are often divided into two groups: North Levantine and South Levantine, although they are certainly mutually intelligible! If you can speak Arabic in a professional environment, youll likely be a hot commodity for companies and organizations that conduct business in these parts of the planet. Throughout its evolution, Arabic has influenced scores of global languages like Spanish, roughly one-third of the vocabulary of which comes from Arabic origin from the several centuries of contact that began with the Moor conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century. We combine AI and human talent to deliver a full suite of language solutions including translation, localization, interpretation, content creation, transcription, subtitling and strategic advisory. The ancient cities and great pyramids have been a source of revenue thanks to the millions of tourists who travel to Egypt every year. For a more detailed overview of the Arabic Speaking countries, check the table below: Learning Arabic today, especially the Modern Standard Arabic, opens up a channel of communication with the worlds Arabic speaking population of more than 466 million people. Even grammar teachers, copyeditors, and university-educated people speak routinely of their fear of making mistakes.. Arabic is spoken in most Arab nations. We will be updating all our speaker populations for the 30+ Arabic languages listed in the Ethnologue for our next edition (21st), to be released in February 2018. Libya 6.5 mio. By speaking someones language you learn about them, their culture and their ideas. Despite their denial and obstinacy, Arabs may not be able to save Classical Arabic, suppress dialects, or otherwise assert their preferences on everyone, anyway. Most Arabs also resist any suggestion of change, or of flexibility. Palestine 4.5 mio. The Arabic language is unique as it technically comprises of multiple varieties, but is commonly classified as one language. Classical Arabic was a dialect that was spoken between the 7th and 9th centuries and predated modern Arabic. Accessible books are rare, while common books are inaccessible. Unlike Classical Arabic, nonetheless, dialects are unregulated and so better allow users to create new words or absorb new phrases from foreign languages or the old language. Dialects are limited, too. It differs quite a lot from Modern Standard Arabic in grammar and vocabulary. Phoenician, the ancient language of modern day Lebanon no longer exist and Coptic, which the dominant language of Egypt is now only spoken in the Coptic Church. The problem is worse than the numbers suggest, although an illiteracy rate of 28% in Egypt should be alarming enough. Localization Strategy Made Simple Webinar Key Takeaways, Transcreation: Tailor Your Content For The Target Culture, 15 Localization Mistakes That Can Cost You Your Business. Knowing Arabic is incredibly important in the realm of business development, especially in the energy, construction, technology and real estate industries, which have given big economic boosts to many petroleum powerhouse countries like Saudi Arabia that claim Arabic as an official language. We face barrier after barrier, then reach plateau after plateau. Verbling needs Javascript to work. In the 7th century, Arabic spread with the Islamic conquests which extended across the Middle East, North Africa, Central and Western Asia, and even it parts of China. This group of dialects has come to grow further away from both Modern Standard Arabic and other dialects from the Arab world, making them extremely original and unique in sound! We will be updating speaker populations for all Arabic languages for the next edition of the Ethnologue. And what about parents who feel frustrated but have neither the resources nor the access to challenge others with institutional or informal power over the sale of written materials? Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy, Pope Franciss Apology to Canadas Indigenous Peoples, Faith and Vengeance: the Islamic States War in Afghanistan, Love, Lust and Literature with Selma Dabbagh, How Jordan Peterson Ruined His Image With Muslims, Bidens Bumpy Visit to Saudi Arabia Exposes U.S. Limits, Ancient Ethnic Hatreds Is Poor Shorthand and Dangerous. Tunisia, one of the smallest countries in Africa, was once a colony of France. Algeria 40.4 mio. You might know that its pretty popular in the Middle East and North Africa, but you might be surprised at just how many people speak Arabic in the entire world. Conversely, although we find many more books in Classical Arabic, my son understands very little of it. Blessed and condemned by fatherhood, I have tried my best to now do what I have failed to do in the past: learn, and thus teach. The inter-marriage between Arabs and native people groups further spread the language as well as give rise to further Arabic dialects. The population in Arab countries increased in the last years enormously, and also Arabic migrant communities have build in all over Western Europe and North America. The page that you accessed (https://www.ethnologue.com/language/ara), is for Arabic as a macrolanguage. And they cant access Classical Arabic which everyone glorifies but no one speaks as a native easily enough. Throughout its evolution, Arabic has influenced scores of global languages like Spanish, roughly one-third of the vocabulary of which comes from Arabic origin from the several centuries of contact that began with the Moor conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century. And, anyway, not every parent has the time, expertise, and inclination to create these materials for their kids! Prior to the Quran, much of the Arabic language was spoken. Everything else for children remains dominated by the high language of Classical Arabic. 274 million peoplespeak Modern Standard Arabic (native and non-native included). MSA is the most common form of Arabic and is the variety taught in schools and colleges and is most commonly used in the workplace, in government and in the media. In Egypt, the official language is Arabic. Also, Arabic is the vernacular lingua franca of Chad and still that of South Sudan. LLC Following the Islamic conquests that begin in the 7th century, Arabic spread far and wide across North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Western Asia and even to parts of China. Twenty-fifth edition.