Arabic Language - Overview From a Translation Company

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Closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic, Arabic is a Central Semitic
language. It consists of around thirty sub languages spoken mainly in
Algeria, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan,
Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestinian territories,
Syria, United Arab Emirates etc.
Modern Arabic is the most widely spread language of the Semitic
language family. It derives from Classical Arabic, the liturgical
language of Islam since the seventh century. Modern Arabic refers to
both literary Arabic (the official language of all Arab countries
which is taught in schools and used in media and administration) and
colloquial Arabic (varieties of the language spoken across the Middle
East and North Africa). In most cases these dialects are not mutually
intelligible - for example, a Moroccan may have trouble understanding
a person from Lebanon.
Arabic may prove a difficult language to learn for people using the
Latin alphabet since it uses a different writing system. Its alphabet
derives from the Aramaic script and it has only three vowels (with
their long forms) and two diphthongs, this making the pronunciation of
the words quite challenging. The Arabic script has been used since the
4th century AD and its first attested sample is an inscription dating
from 512 AD.
Another particularity of Arabic is that is that nouns have three
numbers - singular, dual and plural and three states - indefinite,
definite, and construct, all these resulting in various inflections.
The official language of a vast (but now extinct) empire, Arabic
reached many corners of the world where the Islamic religion was
practiced. Arabic was also extensively used by scholars, astronomers,
poets and politicians, all of them contributing to its development and
enrichment. Arabic is still very popular nowadays. It is spoken by
approximately 250 million people and it occupies the fifth position in
the top of the most widely spoken languages.
Its extensive use makes Arabic one of the most productive language as
far as translation industry is concerned. Several translation
companies nowadays offer translation services from and into Arabic as
well as free translation tools and dictionaries for the speakers of
his
language.
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