Modern Standard Arabic

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA; Arabic: اللغة العربية الفصحى‎ al-luġatu l-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā "the most eloquent Arabic language"), Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech.

Most western scholars distinguish two standard (al-)fuṣḥā (الفصحى) varieties of the Arabic language: the Classical Arabic (CA) (اللغة العربية التراثية) of the Qur'an and early Islamic (7th to 9th centuries) literature, and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) (اللغة العربية المعيارية الحديثة), the standard language in use today. The modern standard language is based on the Classical language. Most Arabs consider the two varieties to be two registers of one language, although the two registers can be referred to in Arabic as فصحى العصر fuṣḥā l-ʿaṣr (MSA) and فصحى التراث fuṣḥā t-turāṯ (CA).

Read more about Modern Standard Arabic:  Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, Formal Spoken Arabic, Common Phrases

Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or standard:

    The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    An indirect quotation we can usually expect to rate only as better or worse, more or less faithful, and we cannot even hope for a strict standard of more and less; what is involved is evaluation, relative to special purposes, of an essentially dramatic act.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)