History of Africa

The Arabic Language - History of the Arabic Language

The Arabic language is used in different dialects from Morocco to Iraq. Among Muslims it is considered a sacred language, since it was through it that the Quran was revealed. From 622 AD, the year of the Hegira (when Muhammad fled from Mecca and took refuge in Medina, marking the beginning of the Muslim calendar), Arabic became the most widespread living language within the trunk of Semitic languages. Currently, around 150 million people consider it their mother tongue.

There are two variants:classical and popular Arabic. The classic represents the sacred language of Islam and was born in the ancient tradition of oral literature of pre-Islamic nomadic peoples. The Qur'an was dictated in classical Arabic and it is in this language that people pray in mosques, repeating aloud the long suras that, according to belief, were dictated to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel. Colloquial Arabic is a normative language used in conversations and in the media. The phonetic system has 28 consonants and three vowels with a long and a short sound.

Arabic writing, which comes from Aramaic, is written from right to left and books are read backwards. It is based on 18 distinct figures that vary according to the letter. The 28 consonants are formed thanks to a combination of dots above and below these figures.

Several Arab terms were assimilated by the conquered peoples, as happened in Portugal during the Middle Ages. Some of these words are:nora, carat, canal, rice, sentinel and all words starting with al and el, for example cotton, customs, alcácer and alkaloid. Political positions — vizier, mayor and sheikh — and place names, such as Almeria and Zaragoza, also had their origin in the Arabic language.


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