Arabic Language Dialects
The Arabic language, one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, has a rich, time-honored history that dates back to the 8th Century B.C. Over the thousands of years that span its history, the Arabic language has significantly evolved to its modern form, including 12 dialects spoken in 28 countries around the world.
Today, over 200 million people in the world speak some form of this Semitic language.
How Arabic Dialects Developed
While the nomadic lifestyles of early Arabians helped spread and strengthen the Arabic language, historians point to the spread of Islam as the pivotal factor that helped this language spread beyond the ancient small nomad tribes who first spoke it.
As new peoples in different regions read the Qur'an (the Islamic holy text) and converted to Islam, they also began replacing their traditional languages (which mainly included "South Arabian" languages now considered to be "dead") with Arabic.
With new cultures adopting Arabic, the language slowly became nuanced in various regions, as remnants of traditional languages shaped and altered the Arabic language. These slight changes marked the birth of the modern Arabic dialect.
Types of Arabic Dialects
Like some of the Romance languages, including Spanish and French, the Arabic language is characterized by diglossia – a linguistic term that refers to a difference between the written versus the spoken form of a language.
When written, Arabic is nearly always scribed in the "Modern Standard Arabic," the classic, universal form of the language that all Arabic speakers understand. However, when spoken, Arabic dialects can be distinguished as different regions have developed their own nuanced version of this Semitic language.
Some of the different Arabic dialects include:
- Arabian Arabic: This is primarily spoken in Saudi Arabia. Arabian Arabic can be broken down into further sub-dialects, which include Bahraini Arabic, Gulf Arabic and Hejazi Arabic.
- Egyptian Arabic: This is primarily spoken in Egypt. It is one of the most commonly spoken Arabic dialects, with over 76 million people around the world who speak Egyptian Arabic.
- Lebanese Arabic: This is primarily spoken in Lebanon. Unlike many other Arabic dialects, Lebanese Arabic has remarkably simple syntax (sentence structure) and style, as it doesn't use different cases.
Other noteworthy Arabic dialects include:
- Andalusian Arabic
- Iraqi Arabic
- Moroccan Arabic
- Palestinian Arabic
- Sudanese Arabic
- Yemeni Arabic
Since many of these modern Arabic dialects differ significantly from the Modern Standard Arabic, they are often unintelligible to each other. Consequently, the Modern Standard Arabic is used for documents, broadcasts and other public media.
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