Arabic language among other languages

Category: History                  Written by: Daqeeq          Date: 10 Mar 2021

Daqeeq says….

Arabic language among other languages

Origin of Arabic language

The Arabic language has become the language of the Quran and Islam 14 hundred years.It is believed that it has originated in the Arabian Peninsula.

“Quraish of Mecca are said to be the first to speak Arabic ‘Fos ha’, and so the Quran today is that of the dialect or style of reading that Prophet Mohammed used ­himself,” says Hasan Al Naboodah, an Emirati historian and dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the UAE ­University in Al Ain.

Arabic started spreading with Islam in the 7th century, changing the native languages of countries in the Middle East and North Africawhile reaching as far as China in the east and Spain in the west.

Arabic speaking countries (MSA and dialects)

Nowadays Arabic is spoken as an official or co-official language in the following countries:

Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

And over 400 million speak it natively, making it the fifth language behind Mandarin, Spanish, English and Hindi.

Modern Arabic is in fact two languages: Modern standard Arabic (MSA) which is used in situations where formality is required (National TVs, News channels, government related documents, etc.) and colloquial Arabic, which differs according to the geographical area.

MSA is understood throughout the whole Arab world and is the language that’s taught in schools and to foreigners interested in learning Arabic.

There are 8 Arabic dialectal groups distributed as shown in the table below:

Source: Arabic Speaking Countries List – 2020 Upate | IstiZada

You won’t find anyone speaking MSA in the streets of an Arabic country but everyone will understand you if you speak it.

Arabic and the Internet

InternetWorldStats estimates of the number of Internet users by language as of March 31, 2020 as follows:

Despite being 4^th in the above table, Arabic content on the web accounted for 1.1% putting it in the 12^th place in the table provided by W3Techs estimating percentages of the top 10 million websites on the World Wide Web using various content languages as of January 31, 2021:

But the future looks bright. With the rise of lingual and translation companies in the Arab world, it is believed that the numbers of Arabic language status on the Internet will change soon. Here at Daqeeq we’re working towards that by building our own blog with articles published in both Arabic and English. If you’re looking to translate your articles to either Arabic or English don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

The importance of Arabic

While English is the current lingua franca, Arabic is one of the richest languages out there in terms of vocabulary, it includes over 12.3 million words, plus being the language of Islam, the second largest religion in the world.

Here is a list of countries where Arabic is a working language or has a special place due to its relation to Islam:

Cyprus, Eritrea, Iran, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Turkey.

Having your content translated to Arabic will open up a collective GDP of 2.522 trillion USD, which is approximately 4% of Gross World Product. Many Arab countries used to rely on petroleum production but that’s starting to change with the emergence of non-oil economy in many Arab countries. This means a huge development in business, technology, production and other sectors, making the Arab speaking region the promised land for investment.

With Expo Dubai around the corner, don’t hesitate to tap in the Arab markets in fear of language barrier. Here at Daqeeq we can localize your content to fit the Arab market and help you reap the fruits of the fast growing economy.