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«About Arabic Language»

Arabic is a member of the Semitic language family. It is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic, and has its roots in a Proto-Semitic common ancestor. While Arabic is not the oldest of the Semitic languages, it shares many features with the common ancestor for all Semitic languages in the Afro-Asiatic group of languages: Proto-Semitic whose phonological, morphological, and syntactic features have been determined by linguists. Many linguists consider Arabic to be the most Semitic of any modern Semitic languages in terms of how completely it preserves the features of Proto-Semitic.

The earliest Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, texts 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 in reality 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-Faw (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.

Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, a member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested epigraphically since the 6th century, which has been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since the 7th century. Modern Arabic has many sub-languages which are spoken throughout the Arab world. These sub-languages are called "Colloquial Arabic" which is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to speak with speakers of another dialect of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern - especially Egyptian - films and other media).

One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. The major groups are: Egyptian Arabic, Maghrebi Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, East Arabian Arabic, Gulf Arabic.

Due to the enduring influence classical Islamic writings, the grammar of Arabic has changed relatively little in the last 1300 years. Arabic has three grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, and oblique/genitive, and nouns have gender (masculine or feminine), definiteness (definite, indefinite, construct), and number (singular, dual, plural). However, in modern spoken language, noun declensions and other inflectional forms are frequently discarded.

Sentence formation is either verbal, in which the subject follows the verb, or nominal, in which the sentence begins with the subject. In verbal sentences, verbs are always conjugated in the singular; nominal sentences require the verb to agree with the subject in number and gender.

Unlike in Indo-European languages, Arabic does not have verb tenses. Instead verbs show aspect. Perfective aspect denotes completed action. Imperfective aspect indicates that an action is incomplete, ongoing, or habitual. Arabic verbs also have no infinitive forms. In a dictionary, verbs are listed in their 3rd person masculine perfective form.

Words in Arabic are formed from a root set of typically three consonants separated by two vowels. The consonant combinations are used to establish the basic root concept; vowel changes and affixes alter the word's meaning. For example, k-t-b denotes the idea of writing. Vowels and affixes are added to produce associated words such as write, book, author, and library.

The Arabic alphabet was first developed by around 500 AD. It consists of 28 letters, all of which are consonants, and is written from right to left. Whether a letter is in initial, medial, or final position in a word determines the shape of the letter. Vowels are optionally indicated by diacritical marks above or below consonants. There are 6 vowel sounds in Arabic -- long a, i, u and short a, i, u. Among the consonants are several guttural sounds that make Arabic sound quite different from European languages.

Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world, akin to the role Latin has in most European languages. During the Middle Ages Arabic was also a major vehicle of culture, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy, with the result that many European languages have also borrowed numerous words from it.
 
 
Sources:
1. wikipedia (Click here)
2. Vistawide, World languages and cultures (Click here)