Arabic Language

We had a port lecturer who talked a bit about the Arabic language. I’m going to share some of what he said. (I am not going to bother to say “the lecturer said” in front of each item, but you should infer that such a qualifier is put on all of the rest of this entry.)

There are 22 Arabic counties. Each speaks the same language. The dialect differences may be sufficient for any native to recognize which country the other speaker comes from, but they all can understand each other.

The language contains almost every sound that the human tongue is capable of making. There were 3 or 4 example sounds that the speaker made that I have never made (at least not as part of an attempt to utter a word).

The grammar was refined around the 1400’s when the Muslim religion was expanding. The intent was to enable other non-Arab speaker to “read” the Koran, or more specifically to pronounce all of the text within the Koran exactly the same way. All of the dots surrounding Arabic letters help to define the specific pronunciation.

Each Arabic sound has three ways to write it: one if it is at the beginning of the word, a different way if it is in the middle of the word, and a third way if it is at the end of the word. This makes typing Arabic a nightmare.

English has a singular form when the subject is one item, and a plural for two or more. Arabic has three forms: one if there is one item, a second if there are two, and a third form for 3 or more. Example would be something like: one boy, two boyan, three boys.

Many English words come from Arabic. “Chemistry” and “algebra” are examples. Our number system uses the Arabic numbers.