The origin of Arabic dates from the ^second century in the Arabian Peninsula , in a form quite close to the modern standard Arabic today. Tradition gives the origin much earlier times: the Queen of Sheba , the former Yemen and tribal Arab missing have spoken that language in an earlier form. The first traces of Arabic script, as we know it today, dates back to the ^third century .

The Abd Daghma were the inhabitants of Taif and these are the first to invent writing Arabic .

Extension of the Arabic

Geographic spread

Extending the various Arabic dialects

Diglossia of Arabic

Linguistics distinguishes various registers of the Arabic language. Diglossia between literary language and vernacular languages.

Language Arabic literal

Arabic is a generic term that includes four historical periods of the same language in which unfolds successively Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic.

Classical Arabic

Arabic is the ancient pre-Islamic poetry, Quranic Arabic is the language of the sacred text of Muslims, the Quran and religious texts, classical Arabic is the actual language of the Muslim civilization.

Modern Standard Arabic

Modern Standard Arabic and "Arabic literal" born in the early nineteenth ^century in Egypt , after the introduction of printing and publications of modern books. It was adopted by the countries of North Africa a century and a half later. It is the common written language of all Arabic-speaking countries;

Languages Arabic vernacular

The vernacular oral different from each other in each region, and influenced by Arabic Standard Arabic dialect is called , the substrate , superstrate and loans differ by region.

• The differences between dialects less distant, like Algeria , the Tunisian and Moroccan , are not very large, but those between the "Tunisian Arabic" and "the Arab Syrian "are. (Note this difference through the pronunciation and derivation of words translated from dialect dialect. "My father," for example, from "abi" in countries of the Middle East to "bouya" in African countries north). Arabic is still widespread throughout the Arab literary taught at all in the Arab education system.
• The most important dialects are the Egyptian , the Chami , the Maghreb, Hejazi ... Cham is spoken in Syria , in Lebanon , in Jordan and Palestine , the Hassanya spoken in Mauritania at Morocco , the Western Sahara and in some areas of West Africa.
• Generally, among them speakers of different dialects instead use written Arabic, or a simplified form of written Arabic.

Combinations of dialects

Arabic languages, grouped into 4 main groups are difficult intercomprehensible within these groups, we can distinguish a couple of very different languages (at least as much as the Latin languages) in which the dialects are sufficiently strong to be noted.

Arab variants are derived from a diverse array itself, the Fassih, Semitic form heterogeneous language poets and its "lingua franca" of inter-tribal negotiations.

In the Maghreb, for example, Arabization began with the establishment of camps in Spain and the Arab province of Africa (Tunisia and eastern Algeria), the origin of languages and Andalusian ifricyennes, he continued with Arabization contamination on commercial and administrative people "Roman" indigenous, while the rural "savage" has kept the Amazigh language, urban communities have emerged with Moorish influence this constant Andalusian ifricyenne, particularly in Fez, Tetouan, Tlemcen (etc. ..) and the Arab liturgical requirements in these academic centers, and administrative of Arabization, especially from mrinides (XIII ^century) In parallel, since the ^eleventh century, and especially the ^thirteenth century Arab Bedouin populations (Sinai, Libyan, and perhaps cyrniennes Yemeni) inhabited the central and eastern Maghreb and the Saharan areas, influencing each with their own dialect (related to their unique origin and develop independently their own ...) populations Berber the most sensitive.

The group Maghreb-Hassani, and 3 types of language Maghreb ("Aruba", "Moorish" ifriquien) and Hassanya, while maintaining strong differences, have continued to exchange within coherent spaces and are now swallowed by the national standard dialects.

They are not at all intercomprehensible, but a simplified form of Maghreb allows understanding between traders for example, but often takes precedence in French diplomacy and the general trade.

In the Middle East

• Chami
  • Cilician
  • Alepo-Homi
  • Damasco-Lebanese
  • Jordanian-Palestinian
• Jazirien
• Irakiei
• Arab Gulf
• Hedjazo-Najdi
• Yemeni-Hadramaoui
• Egyptian cyrnien, Ghazaoui

Group Bedouin

• Bedouin: This is a group that knows a unity and a clear similarity with sedentary local dialects, especially Tripolitanian the jazirien, cyrnien, Palestinian and Jordanian-Najdi, the Hadramaoui ...
  • Libyan
  • Syro-Bedouin of north, northeast Syria (Lebanon), South jazirien
  • Syrian Bedouin-south (Palestine-Jordan-Syria-South)
  • Bedouin Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, and Jordan)
  • Bedouin nguvo-Sinai (Egypt and Palestine)

In the Maghreb

• Darija the Maghreb ( Arab Maghreb )
  • Dialects "urban" (non-Hilalian) of Morocco and western Algeria: dialects of ancient Rabat , Sal , Tangier , Tetouan , Fes , Meknes , Taza , Tlemcen
  • Pre-Hilalian mountain dialects: dialects of Jbala , Ghomari
  • Hilalian dialects of the Atlantic plains: dialects of Doukkala , Chaouia , Rhamna , Sraghna , Tadla , Gharb
  • Hilalian dialects of eastern Morocco and Algeria : Plateau of eastern Morocco , Oran , Algiers campaign
  • Dialects "urban" (Koine) to the strong influence Hilalian Moroccan : spoken in major cities of Morocco , the result of mixing of different dialects continued migration of rural populations to cities
  • South Arabic (transitional Hassani): dialects of Tafilalet , Giri, Tata
  • Algerian standard Koine dialects Hilalian urban and country people of Algeria
  • Tunisian Standard Koine dialects Hilalian urban and country people of Tunisia
  • Ifrikiyens dialects (not Hilalian): dialects of Jijel , Tunis , Kairouan , Annaba , Constantine , Bizerte , Tripoli , Malta
• Hassaniya, between Senegal and Niger to the south and the Anti-Atlas to the north.
  • group " Moroccan "(Daoublali, Yahiaoui, transitional Baamrani ...), with" South Arabic "
  • Sahrawi group (from the Adrar Sagya)
  • group-Trarza Tagant
  • East (between Tichit and Niger)

The Maltese spoken in Malta is close to the Arab Maghreb dialects.

Group Saharan

• Chad
  • Standard
  • Arabia (ethnic language)
  • Darfuri
• Sudan
  • Khartoum and post-Nubian
  • "Arabia" (ethnic language)
  • Nilotic

Vectors radiation Arabic

An initial vector of radiation is the Islamic religion. Arabic remained a language liturgy in most Muslim countries, although the Arabic Koran is now far from the modern Arabic language.

A second vector of radiation is the prose and poetry. Non-Arab writers have used the Arabic language for their publications, for example, Persian physician and philosopher Avicenna. The Norman kings of Sicily prided themselves on speaking Arabic.

A third vector of influence are the contemporary media, newspapers, radio, TV (pan-Arab news channels like Al Jazeera or Al-Arabiya ), and multiple possibilities of the web ( internet ).

An important vector oldest is the borrowing of Arabic words and expressions by non-Arabic languages, such as Romance languages, including French.

The Muslim religion

The language of Islam is Arabic, many words from religion first appeared in Arabic. Thus some religious words exist in Arabic, or have a more precise meaning in Arabic.

Arabization, as we have seen, is strongly linked to the influence of cultural, commercial and administrative states are first demanding the Koranic religion.

Thus, outside the Arab world itself, a great many languages, many people are (or were) marked with more or less important by the Arabic language and were written in Arabic script.

• In Europe:
  • The Castilian , the Portuguese and Ladino ( Judeo-Spanish ) are strongly influenced by the Arabic language, the Spanish variant Andalusian (which was largely written in Arabic script: Mudejar language ), absorbed and annihilated by the Castilian period (1240 to our days) is one of the most striking component, but the influence thereof on the two more northern dialects is coupled with the general influence of Islamic civilization over the kingdoms " Galician ". Since the ^thirteenth century, let alone the ^sixteenth century, Castilian has lost much of its Arabic vocabulary.
  • The Sicilian and Italian in particular the South to a lesser extent are largely influenced by the Arab period (ninth to ^eleventh century) and the continuation of civilization under the Normans in the twelfth ^century. The influx of Arabic speakers originating in Libya servile continued in modern times for operation sugar and helped to maintain and renew the Arabic vocabulary of the Latin language Sicilian.
  • The Serbo-Croatian , particularly that of Bosnia , and Albania have been Islamized in Ottoman times, and they have received numerous religious terminology, administrative, conceptual, from the Arabic via Turkish Ottoman.
  • The Turkish of Turkey , the Kurdish and Azeri South include more than one third of Arabic vocabulary, despite an undertaking, carried out in the twentieth ^century by the Republic of Turkey , to replace imports of Turkmen and neologisms, the use of vocabulary and Turkish-Ottoman Anatolia, highly Arabized, remained very strong.
  • The Tatar was influenced indirectly through the Persian and Turkish Seljuk (XIII-XV ^century and the Ottoman Turkish at the time of the State of Crimea (XVI-XVIII ^century), but like the Caucasian languages later Muslim (XVII-XIX) ( Abkhaz , Circassian , Chechen , Dagestani and even the north of Azerbaijan ) was very quickly Russified.
• Asia:
  • The Persian and other Iranian languages are so influenced by the Arabic vocabulary in all areas, some linguists have seen a Semitic language in the nineteenth ^century, only the Tajik north has undergone a significant Russian influence in the nineteenth ^century and especially the ^twentieth century.
  • The Turkish languages in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan - Uighur , Kazakh - Kyrgyz , Turkmen ) are also heavily influenced by some Persian influence, neologisms, as in Persian, are often from neologisms of modern standard Arabic.
  • Languages Urdu - Hindi , Sindhi , Punjabi , Rajastan and marahsti , and to a lesser extent, Bihari , the Bengali and some Dravidian languages, are heavily influenced by the Arabic language, the Urdu who in turn voluntarily opted for the " policy of Hindi as Arabized "to create the Pakistani language, and, like its neighboring Afghanistan and Iran, has kept the Arabic characters.
  • The Hui of China is spell, yet today, in Arabic, the dialect of the original features have led to distinguish their language of Mandarin and Jin , both groups Han neighbors, they comprise up to 20% of the small autonomous region of Ningxia.
  • The Javanese and Malay are superficially Arabized, substantially all the Tatar , the Kazakh or Wolof.
• Africa:
  • In the Maghreb the Arabization process is started from the ^eighth century, the Arabic language becomes religious, business and the Arabic language made its way into the Punic and Berber dialects plains and most important cities. Invasions Hilalian accelerate the Arabization of the population, introducing even more vocabulary, well beyond the language of religion or origin Koran itself.
  • The Muslim population of Chad , the Sudan and the Horn of Africa ( Tubu , Nubians , Darfuris , Afar , Oromo , Somali ) are to varying degrees so Arabized that most people speak Arabic and the language has undergone and some very direct influence over five centuries (even more for Somalia ).
  • Populations of eastern Bantu are all strongly marked by civilization Swahili , which, as completely as the Persian , has a structure certainly not Arabic, but a vocabulary, which reaches up to 50% of Arabic, it is written still plenty in Arabic script.
  • In West Africa , in the same way, the Islamization and Arabization of trade in the Middle Ages, then the Bedouin invasions have produced two layers of heavy Arabization, their languages written from the twelfth ^century in Arabic script This increased influence, especially on people Sahel-Saharan : Songhai , Fulani , Tuareg , and to a lesser extent in Wolof , Bambara , Mossi and Hausa , even if these languages were not really influenced by Islam that 'late modern age.

Arabic literature

Some famous Arab writers are:

• Naguib Mahfouz , winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.
• Averroes is a philosopher , a theologian Islamic , a lawyer , a mathematician and a doctor from the ^twelfth century Muslim.
• Ibn Khaldun , historian, philosopher and politician of the fourteenth ^century.
• Edward Said , is a literary theorist, critic and Palestinian intellectual of U.S. citizenship.
• Taha Hussein , novelist, essayist and literary critic of the ^twentieth century Egypt.
• Ahmad Amin , Arab thinker and writer.
• Imrou'l Qays , pre-Islamic poet, author of one of the poems suspended (Al Mu'allaqt ).
• Al-Mutanabbi , great poet of the city of Kufa.
• Nizar Qabbani , Syrian poet.
• Khalil Gibran , was a writer, poet, painter and photographer Lebanese citizenship.

The lexical borrowings from Arabic

The Arab has left a series of words in Romance languages (and from there to other European languages including French), especially the Spanish , to Italian and Portuguese.

Borrowing from French Arab

There are many words of Arabic origin in French. These loans were made either:

• directly (alkali alfa Alizari, Almah, Admiral, arrack, azimuth, baobab, baraka, Barbican, bard, Bedouin, corn, bordj, buckram, bunting, Kazi, blues, boss, caliph, cameo, cam, crap, Caou, Chott, mutt, fellah, gazelle, harem, chance, henna, skirt, kandjiar, brass, lute, crazy, North African, store, wadi, salaams, doctor, etc.).
• from a variety of Arabic dialects , especially Algeria (Bard, bezef, kif-kif, baton, Nuba, chuiya, mechoui, couscous, Mahboul, Doc, grab, Yod, etc..) Moroccan (Argan, mechoui , tagine, couscous, hash, leather goods) and Egypt (barge, pitch, Mamluk);
• through the Latin or medieval science (alcohol, algebra, alidade, amalgam, amber, Arcanna, edged, benzoin, benzine, borage, camphor, figure, mummy, alkanet, saffron, syrup, "zenith", etc.).
• through other European languages, mainly the Spanish (Alcalde, Alcaraz, alcove, chestnut, Alfange, outburst, Alguacil, aman, arroba, acerola, sheepskin, spinach, felucca, reef, etc..), the Italian (arsenal, artichoke, downstream, insult, damage, fool, coffee, packing, gauge, jug, cotton, giraffe, AH, store, sirocco, tariff, zero, etc..), the Occitan (still, apricot albrict, almanac almanac, alchemy alquimia, amber, assassin, eggplant eggplant, inn aubrja, azure, roe, camfan, carmine figure Chifra, cotton, tarragon jar Jari trap of Madraga, Magazine, petty, bottarga, coronation, saffron syrup, syrup, sugar, cup of TACA, drum tambor, tara tare, tariff rates, etc. ...) and Portuguese ( jailer );
• through the Turkish (minaret, muezzin), the Hindi (mogul) or Persian (thug).

On the other hand, the Arab sent the French words from other languages, especially the Hindi (Bonduca, candy), the Persian (alkekengi, Alkermes, aniline, eggplant, blue, slipper, borax, boron, customs orange cup, etc..) but also the Greek (still, almanac, antimony, etc.)..

Finally, include the case of the word apricot comes from the Latin praecoquum (which gave the pair early) and who returned to French in that form after a journey through the ancient Greek (praikkion), Arabic ( al-barquq) (which means plum or prune), the Spanish albaricoque; an intermediary Catalan albercoc aubercot had given word that did not, however, imposed albrict cons of Occitan to apricot .

As regards proper names, many names of stars also come from Arabic: Aldebaran , Betelgeuse , Algol , Alioth , Vega , Mizar , Fomalhaut , Altair , etc..

Borrowing the definite article in Arabic

It recognizes certain borrowings from Arabic in the Indo-European languages in that they often start with a-or al, which is simply the only definite article present in this language (it was usually when the word al Arabic begins with a "lunar consonant, that is to say principally q, m, k and b, and-when it begins with a" solar consonant, that is to say mainly, r, s, t and z, for details, see Arabic alphabet ).

Westerners who do not realize (the phenomenon of meta-analysis ), they sometimes kept the definite article and were agglutinated to the noun. The various Indo-European languages have not always kept the same definite article for a word borrowed from Arabic. Thus, the Spanish and Portuguese have retained more than French: to azcar algodn and in Spanish are cotton and sugar, for example, or, in dogana Italian opposite aduana Spanish. In French, it was alcohol, alkali, algebra, etc.. and the time of Voltaire were talking about the Koran.

Loan Arabic numerals

Arabic numerals used in the numbering West, were borrowed from the Arabs , who themselves had borrowed from the Indians .

Currently in the Arab world , only countries of the Maghreb (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Mauritania) use the numbers "Arab" in its Western form, the other countries use the ancient Arabic numerals, naturally called "Indian" (but they are different from the real figures Hindi).

The "Arabic numerals" in their current form were introduced in Europe by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci who has learned the use in the city of Bejaia capital of Kabylia ( Algeria ) in the Middle Ages. In 1202, Fibonacci published Liber Abaci (Book of Calculations "), a treaty on the calculations and accounting based on the decimal calculation at a time when the West was using the Roman numerals and calculated on abacus. This book is strongly influenced by his life in Arab countries and is also drawn in part from right to left. Through this publication, Fibonacci introduced the Arabic notation system in Europe. This system is much more powerful and faster than the Roman notation, and Fibonacci is fully aware. He labored yet to win for several centuries. The invention will be well received because the public no longer understood that the calculations were merchants. In 1280, Florence ban the use of Arabic numerals by the bankers. It was thought that the 0 brought confusion and difficulties to the point they called this system cifra (from sifr, zero in Arabic), who took the meaning of "secret code" in Latin , just as the word number in French.

Study of Arabic language

The language reflects the diversity of the Arabic language that comes in the forms diglossic a classical language and Koranic literature, but also in a multiplicity of dialects.

Linguistics, applied to each of these " levels of language , Arabic studies successively the following points of view.

Arabic pronunciation

The pronunciation of Arabic is studied by three complementary linguistic sciences should not confuse the phonetics , the phonology , and speech therapy. The latter is normative and includes the study of cantillation Arabic liturgical texts.

Writing Arabic

Example of Arabic script

The Arabic writing is a phenomenon that can be studied, either as graphic system of Arabic or point of view of the technical details of this writing.

The study of graphic system attempts to describe the Arabic alphabet and signs diacritics of Arabic among which stand out the specifics of the writing of the hamza. The Arab figures also incorporate the graphics system of Arabic. Linguistics also studies the problems of transliteration (as the Baha'i transliteration ) and transposition , but also uses the Arabic writing system for writing non-Arab languages (like Urdu ) which requires adaptations of the Arabic alphabet to this new use.

The technical details of the Arabic script is the calligraphy , the typography , the typing and the use of contemporary programs computer Here are some examples:

Note that DIN-31635 is a standard of the Deutsches Institut fr Normung adopted in 1982, it allows the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet, and this is the standard used in the field of Arabic studies in Western countries.

Grammar of the Arabic

Arabic grammar studies the formation of words, morphology , and composition into sentences, the syntax.

Semantics of Arabic

The study semantics of the Arabic language is attached to the meaning of words.

Movement of Arab

The style of Arabic studies the literal Arabic texts, and their use of figures of speech , both in prose than poetry.

from Arabic Lexicography

The lexicography of Arabic studies the vocabulary of this language and the composition of dictionaries.

More specifically, it examines the vocabulary of Islam , and the formation of Arabic names and Arabic names.

References