The Lord’s Prayer in Arabic:
Arabic (300s- ) is the main language of North Africa, the Middle East and, according to the Prophet Muhammad, of Paradise. It is the language of the Koran. In 1974 it became one of the official languages of the United Nations. It is the largest language in Africa, the fourth largest in the world (after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi/Urdu).
- Speakers: 526 million (295m native)
- Countries: official in 27 – only English and French can claim more
- Script: Arabic (28 letters, runs right to left), since about 375.
- Language family: Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family
Arabic is a close cousin of Hebrew, Phoenician, Amharic (Ethiopia), Akkadian (Babylonia), Punic (Carthage) and Aramaic (what Jesus spoke) and a distant cousin of Tuareg (Berber), Ancient Egyptian, Somali, Hausa, Oromo, etc.
Arabic spread from Arabia to North Africa and the Fertile Crescent from the 600s onwards by means of the Arab Empire. At first it was the language of religion and rule, then of the towns, then of most people.
Arabic was spoken in Spain from the 700s to the 1500s and in Sicily from at least the 900s to the 1100s. Maltese comes from Sicilian Arabic. So do the English words admiral, giraffe and mattress.
Written Arabic is called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or, in Arabic, the Most Eloquent Arabic. It is what you learn at school and see in books and newspapers. It is loosely based on the Classical Arabic of the Koran. Osama bin Laden used it in his speeches. You hear it sometimes on Al Jazeera. It is the most formal, educated level of Arabic. The Arabic you hear on the street is often considerably different.
The main dialects of street Arabic are almost separate languages. Some of the spoken Arabic west of Egypt, for example, is not understood in the Persian Gulf. Most people, though, know more than one form of Arabic and can code-switch as needed. The best understood street dialect is that of Egypt because of all the film, television and music it produces.
In the Persian Gulf people use pidgin Arabic with foreign workers.
Neighbouring languages have tons of words from Arabic, languages like Spanish, Portuguese, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Somali, Swahili and Hausa.
English has about 2,000 root words from Arabic, mainly by way of French, Italian, Spanish and Latin. Among them:
- 1200s: admiral, candy, syrup, sugar, mattress, elixir, scarlet, chess, cotton, lute, saffron
- 1300s: caliph, alchemy, Aldebaran, Algol, zenith, nadir, orange, azure, checkmate, rook (chess), amber, alkali, borax
- 1400s: lemon, spinach, jar (container), carat, crimson
- 1500s: mosque, emir, vizier, sultan, artichoke, apricot, arsenal, magazine, alcohol, algebra, Rigel, Betelgeuse, calibre, caliper, giraffe, assassin, gauze, lacquer, monsoon, sheikh, talc, tariff, Gibraltar
- 1600s: Muslim, minaret, Koran, coffee, alcove, sofa, algorithm, Vega, genie, zero, harem, sherbet, gazelle, guitar, lime (fruit), sequin, Sahara, Abyssinia, madrasah
- 1700s: fake, ghoul, carmine, cheque, tambourine, adobe, Allah
- 1800s: Islam, tangerine, so long, safari, alfalfa, tuna, wadi, burka, hijab
- 1900s: intifada
– Abagond, 2013, 2015.
See also:
[…] Arabic (300s- ) is the main language of North Africa, the Middle East and, according to the Prophet Muhammad, of Paradise. It is the language of the Koran. In 1974 it became one of the official languages of the United Nations. It is the largest language in Africa, the fourth largest in the world (after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi/Urdu)….English has about 2,000 root words from Arabic, mainly by way of French, Italian, Spanish and Latin. Among them:1200s: admiral, candy, syrup, sugar, mattress, elixir, scarlet, chess, cotton, lute, saffron1300s: caliph, alchemy, Aldebaran, Algol, zenith, nadir, orange, azure, checkmate, rook (chess), amber, alkali, borax1400s: lemon, spinach, jar (container), carat, crimson1500s: mosque, emir, vizier, sultan, artichoke, apricot, arsenal, magazine, alcohol, algebra, Rigel, Betelgeuse, calibre, caliper, giraffe, assassin, gauze, lacquer, monsoon, sheikh, talc, tariff, Gibraltar1600s: Muslim, minaret, Koran, coffee, alcove, sofa, algorithm, Vega, genie, zero, harem, sherbet, gazelle, guitar, lime (fruit), sequin, Sahara, Abyssinia, madrasah1700s: fake, ghoul, carmine, cheque, tambourine, adobe, Allah1800s: Islam, tangerine, so long, safari, alfalfa, tuna, wadi, burka, hijab1900s: intifada […]
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[…] 1200s: admiral, candy, syrup, sugar, mattress, elixir, scarlet, chess, cotton, lute, saffron1300s: caliph, alchemy, Aldebaran, Algol, zenith, nadir, orange, azure, checkmate, rook (chess), amber, alkali, borax1400s: lemon, spinach, jar (container), carat, crimson1500s: mosque, emir, vizier, sultan, artichoke, apricot, arsenal, magazine, alcohol, algebra, Rigel, Betelgeuse, calibre, caliper, giraffe, assassin, gauze, lacquer, monsoon, sheikh, talc, tariff, Gibraltar1600s: Muslim, minaret, Koran, coffee, alcove, sofa, algorithm, Vega, genie, zero, harem, sherbet, gazelle, guitar, lime (fruit), sequin, Sahara, Abyssinia, madrasah1700s: fake, ghoul, carmine, cheque, tambourine, adobe, Allah1800s: Islam, tangerine, so long, safari, alfalfa, tuna, wadi, burka, hijab1900s: intifadaSee on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Aramaic (what Jesus spoke) and Hebrew are as close as Spanish and Portuguese. If you know one you understand a lot of the other, and the two languages also borrowed from each other. Arabic is much more distant to these two. Related, definitely, but not nearly as close and only a little understandable to either. Lumping them all together might give a different impression.
Arabic originated in Africa? I’d like to read up on that. Never heard that before. All of these languages fall into the group of Afro-Asian languages, so there is certainly an African connection, but originating there? And the alphabets? Didn’t they all originate in Asia? Canaanite, Hebrew, Phoenician, Arabic; they all are essentially one alphabet, but in different letter styles. If you have evidence the alphabets are based on E. African writing forms I’m curious to see it.
I followed the link by Bulanik. You know, so much of this is semantics and politics. Was Arabic a colonizing language? Did people give up their language and cultural past for a new one willingly? Which historians have written the history of that? Are they less biased than the western ones? What would these African peoples be today if they had been allowed to progress in their original language and culture?
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@ Edwin Rowe
In the post I listed as “close cousins” of Arabic those that are Semitic. “Distant cousins” are other Afro-Asiatic languages.
I had not heard about an African origin of Arabic either. I start Arabic in Arabia in the AD 300s because that is where it first appears in writing.
From what I know Afro-Asiatic and even Semitic languages probably started somewhere in or near Ethiopia. So I would not be surprised if Arabic did too.
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@ Edwin Rowe
Arabic spread by means of the Arab Empire, so it was certainly a colonial language at one point. It had its greatest success in regions where an Afro-Asiatic languages was already spoken, like Aramaic, Coptic, Punic or one of the Berber languages.
It did not take place overnight: 150 years after the Arab conquest of Egypt, there were still government records being kept in Greek. (Likewise in Spain in the late 1500s there were still records kept in Arabic.)
Arabic spread in part through intermarriage. Arab men could and did marry non-Arab women regardless of race. So long as your father was Arab and your birth legitimated you would be considered Arab too. So there were and are Arabs, even high-ranking ones, who are black by American standards.
Arabic is still spreading as a native language in Sudan, but I do not know the particulars.
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