Arabic Language - Classical, Modern Standard, and Spoken Arabic

Classical, Modern Standard, and Spoken Arabic

Arabic usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; colloquial or dialectal Arabic.

Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Theoretically, Classical Arabic is considered normative, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the Lisān al-ʿArab). In practice, however, modern authors almost never write in pure Classical Arabic, instead using a literary language with its own grammatical norms and vocabulary, commonly known as Modern Standard Arabic. This is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" (فصحى fuṣḥā) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic.

Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows:

• Certain grammatical constructions of CA that have no counterpart in any modern dialect (e.g., the energetic mood) are almost never used in MSA.
• No modern spoken variety of Arabic has case distinctions. As a result, MSA is generally composed without case distinctions in mind, and the proper cases added after the fact, when necessary. (Because most case endings are noted using final short vowels, which are normally left unwritten in the Arabic script, it is unnecessary to determine the proper case of most words.) The practical result of this is that MSA, like English and Mandarin Chinese, is written in a strongly determined word order, and alternative orders that were used in CA for emphasis are rare. In addition, because of the lack of case marking in the spoken varieties, most speakers cannot consistently use the correct endings in extemporaneous speech. As a result, spoken MSA tends to drop or regularize the endings except when reading from a prepared text.
• In CA, the verb normally precedes the subject (VSO order); when the subject is fronted (SVO order), it is usually accompanied by the focusing particle ʼinna. MSA, following the spoken varieties, tends towards SVO order, and rarely uses ʼinna.
• The numeral system in CA is complex and heavily tied in with the case system. This system is never used in MSA, even in the most formal of circumstances; instead, a significantly simplified system is used, approximating the system of the conservative spoken varieties.

MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., ḏahaba "to go") that is not present in the spoken varieties. However, when multiple Classical synonyms are available, MSA tends to prefer words with cognates in the spoken varieties over words without cognates. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined a large number of terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times (and in fact continues to evolve). Some words have been borrowed from other languages, notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling not real pronunciation (e.g., فيلم fīlm "film" or dimūqrāṭiyyah "democracy"). However, the current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., farʿ "branch", also used for the branch of a company or organization; jināḥ "wing", also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.) or to coin new words using existing lexical resources (e.g., širkah "corporation", ištirākiyyah "socialism", both ultimately based on the verb šarika "to share, partner with"; jāmiʿah "university", based on jamāʿah "to gather, unite"; jumhūriyyah "republic", based on jumhūr "multitude"). An earlier tendency was to re-purpose older words that had fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif "telephone" < "invisible caller (in Sufism)"; jarīdah "newspaper" < "palm-leaf stalk").

Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows, as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media, such as poetry and printed advertising. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic. Historically, Algerian Arabic was taught in French Algeria under the name darija.

Note that even during Muhammad's lifetime, there were dialects of spoken Arabic. Muhammad spoke in the dialect of Mecca, in the western Arabian peninsula, and it was in this dialect that the Quran was written down. However, the dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula were considered the most prestigious at the time, so the language of the Quran was ultimately converted to follow the eastern phonology. It is this phonology that underlies the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. The phonological differences between these two dialects account for some of the complexities of Arabic writing, most notably the writing of the glottal stop or hamza (which was preserved in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech) and the use of ʾalif maqṣūrah (representing a sound preserved in the western dialects but merged with ā in eastern speech).