Arabic for Dummies Nada Shaath Bell High School What is the Arabic Language? An alphabetical Language with 28 letters  Has its own alphabetical characters  Of Semitic origin (root)  Spoken by about 186 million people in 22 countries  Considered a very difficult language due to its vast vocabulary and  special grammatical characteristics Can be classified into 3 forms:  Classical Arabic  Modem Standard Arabic  Local dialects  ابحرم Hello The root of Arabic مكيلع ملاسلا Greetings (Peace be upon you) Arabic alphabet Arabic alphabet Arabic alphabet: History The Arabic alphabet was used to write the Nabataean dialect of  Aramaic, The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late fourth-century  inscription from Jabal Ramm (50 km east of Aqaba), but the first dated one is a trilingual inscription at Zebed in Syria from 512. The epigraphic record is extremely sparse, with only five certainly  pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions surviving, though some others may be pre-Islamic. ريخلا حابص Good morning Arabic alphabet: Structure 28 basic letters and  Is written from right to left.  There is no difference between written and  printed letters The writing is unicase (i.e. the concept of  upper and lower case letters does not exist). Most of the letters are attached to one  another. The Arabic alphabet is an impure abjad  ريخلا ءاسم Good day (evening) “Dots” in the Arabic alphabet Arabs relied on their extensive knowledge of their language to  distinguish one letter from another having the same shape. Later “Dots” were added above and below the letters to  differentiate them The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also  the first surviving Arabic papyrus, dated April 643. ةديعس ةليل Good night Diacritics in the Arabic alphabet Short vowel and hamzas were added, beginning sometime in the  last half of the sixth century, Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been  commissioned by an Umayyad governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf: a dot above = a, a dot below = i, a dot on the line = u, and doubled dots gove tanwin. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 by al-Farahidi. ءاقللا ىلا See you (later)