Arabic
Arabic is not an endangered language and has different varieties including, Old north-Arabic (Literary Arabic), Safa(Safaite), Mardin Arabic, Damascus Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Jerusalem Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Nedjdi, Hidjazi, ‘Omani Arabic, Hadramawt, Egyptian, Tripolitanian, Tunisian, Algerian, Orani, Tlemseni, Moroccan, Maltese, Maghrebine Arabic, Spanish Arabic and Bedouin Arabic. an Afro-Asiatic language that is mainly spoken in the Arabic world and adjacent regions. A study conducted by researchers at King Saud University identified three major varieties of contemporary Arabic (Habash, 2010, Farghaly and Shaalan, 2009, Harrat et al., 2017): classified as 1) Classical Arabic, 2) Modern standard Arabic, and 3) Arabic Dialect. In a lot of Arabic speaking countries, a distinction has not been made between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard. Most Arabic speakers consider classical and standard Arabic language as the same language with a few exceptions.
Classical Arabic language is mainly used in texts, classic literature, and the Quran. Modern Standard Arabic has contemporary terms for computer and terms that are not in the Quran. On the other hand, Arabic dialect is used in everyday communication and informal conversations. (Boudad et al. 2017). There are about 400 million native speakers, and it is the fourth most spoken language (worlddata.info, 2024). As in many other languages, the Arabic language has subdivided into many different dialects. Some of the dialects are similar to each other; they use the same words, but their pronunciation is not intelligible, or their words have different meanings. This Afro-Asiatic language uses distinctive, signifying grammatical marks to be placed above or below the Arabic letters that have specific functions on words in sentences for an accurate interpretation- incorrect marking or parsing can lead to a misunderstanding of the real meaning of what is meant to be conveyed. Arabic is the language of the Quran, therefore it is crucial to have a clear religious interpretation and understanding through the syntax of the language. Even though there are many dialects, they all use the same script; the Arabic script contains 28 letters, including three long vowels (a,i,u), with the markings on those vowels representing the short vowel and thirteen diacritics that makes this language distinctive and complete with their sound system (Azmi and Aljafari, 2018).
Prior research suggests that the Arabic language is classified in 3 main varieties (Habash, 2010, Farghaly and Shaalan, 2009, Harrat et al., 2017): 1) Classical Arabic, a form of Arabic language used in literary texts and Quran1 Sharaf and Atwell (2012a), 2) Modern Standard Arabic, used for writing as well as formal conversations, and 3) Arabic Dialect, used in daily life communication, informal exchanges, etc (Boudad et al., 2017).
There are 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, commonly known as Modern Standard Arabic. There are about 400 million native speakers of all varieties.
Researchers and studies then grouped different varieties and categories together such as the dialects of the Arabian Peninsula; Mesopotamian and Babylonian (sic.) dialects; Syrian dialects; Egyptian dialects; North-Western African dialects; and Maltese (Rosenhouse 44).
While there are classifications on different varieties using countries or regions, there are also different distinctions that can be made between two different groups. One group is called Sedentary and one is Bedouin. Although the Sedentary dialect type was more popular, overtime, it was replaced by Bedouin (Holes). The history goes that Bedouin first emerged through many different people using it as a common language. Eventually this language transitioned into the sedentary dialect which grew a large following as it also simplified and changed the Bedouin dialect to be accessible to more people (Miller 48).
