ARABIC LANGUAGE
Arabs are very proud of their language. It is the language of the Koran.
It
is originally the language of the nomadic tribes of the northern and central
regions of the Arabian Peninsula. It was only during the Muslim conquest and
expansion of the seventh and eighth centuries that Arabic spread into
the areas where it is now spoken. In the process, it largely supplanted, the
indigenous languages of the conquered regions, including Aramaic in the
Levantine, Coptic in Egypt, Berber in North Africa, and Greek in the former
Byzantine Empire.
In written form, some early inscriptions exist. Arabic of the pre-Classical period is found in inscriptions of central and northwestern Arabia, with Classical Arabic itself appearing in inscriptions dating from at least the fourth century. Pre-Islamic poetry, the Koran from the first half of the seventh century, and the language of contemporary Bedouin provided the basis for the codification of the language during the eighth and ninth centuries. MSA, the official language of all Arab countries, is modeled on Classical Arabic, which exerts a continuing influence on the form and style of its modern variant.
The
linguistic development of the vernacular forms of Arabic are controversial, but
one theory which has a lot 
of
support, argues that the colloquial dialects grew out of a wide-spread koine or
heavily dialectally mixed lingua franca, which was used during the Muslim
conquest; subsequent regional differences are explained by specific geographical
and regional indigenous influences and normal change over time.
Linguistic Affiliation
Arabic is a Semitic
language of the Arabo-Canaanite subgroup. It belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family
of languages--the bulk of which are spoken in Africa--which has several major
branches: Semitic (including languages such as Arabic); Berber; Chadic (including
languages such as Hausa); Cushitic (including languages
such as Somali); and Ancient Egyptian, whose modern descendent, Coptic, is
preserved as a liturgical language.
Arabic and Canaanite--which includes Hebrew, Phoenician, and several extinct languages--are distantly related to Aramaic. Other even more distant relatives are the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Akkadian, an extinct language once spoken in Mesopotamia.
Arabic itself is commonly subclassified as Classical Arabic, Eastern Arabic, Western Arabic, and Maltese. A modernized form of Classical Arabic exists and is referred to as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).
Eastern Arabic, sometimes referred to as Mesopotamian Arabic, includes the Arabic dialects spoken in a large region encompassing North Africa (Egypt and Sudan), the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula), and Arabic speaking communities in Asia.
Orthography
Arabic uses an alphabetic system normally employing symbols for only consonants and long vowels. There is a fairly close match between the written symbols and their phonemic, or linguistic function. Short vowels are typically not written even though much morphological and grammatical meaning is signaled by vowels. Because only roots and stems of an inflected word are written the reader has to infer its particular meaning from context. When vowels are symbolized, as in children's books or learners' manuals, super- and subscript diacritics are used. Writing is written from right to left.
Arabic script is an important orthography used to write many non-Arabic languages, for example, Persian, Pushto, Urdu, and at one time, Swahili and Hausa.
Linguistic sketch
The following sketch of Modern Standard Arabic, is generally valid for all "neo-Arabic" dialects. Details may differ depending on the colloquial vernacular.
MSA
has a grammatical system known as the "root and pattern system." Words
typically are made up of roots which consist of three consonants, though a few
have four or five; the roots, unpronounceable as such, are 
associated
with a general meaning, thus the sequence ktb has an association with the
meaning "writing." Patterns of vowel sequences, which can be thought
of as templates, (sometimes as prefixes and suffixes, and sometimes with
additional consonants) are then "added" to, or within, roots following
general, well-defined models. These patterns then generate various nominal and
verbal stems which have a variety of functions; to give a few examples, in nouns
they indicate habitual occupations, colors, or diminutives, and in verbs, they
form participles, causatives, and passives. This root-pattern system is
productive in both MSA and in the vernaculars, including Algerian variants.
Nouns are inflected and morphologically marked for case (nominative, genitive, and accusative), gender (masculine and feminine), number (singular, plural, dual, and collective) and determination (definite and indefinite). Plural in many nouns is marked by ablaut, that is, the vowel pattern within a root varies between singular and plural forms, akin to alternations in English as in the verb sing, sang, and sung, or the noun mouse and mice.
In
verbs--which occur in two basic stems, the perfect and imperfective--person,
number, mood, and aspect are marked by prefixes and suffixes. Templates for
verbs fall into ten commonly, and four rarely, used shapes and
meanings. Their meanings indicate, for example, verbs that relate intensity,
repetition, causation, intention, and belief.
In addition to the nominal and verbal systems there is a another system of particles. Particles include such things as function words which express syntactic relationships, for example, conjunctions, prepositions, interrogatives, and pronouns. Compared to the root-pattern system of other word categories these are quite simple in their formation.
Word order in Classical Arabic is VSO (verb-subject-object) with stylistic variation possible, but colloquial dialects are SVO, like English. Evidence indicates that MSA is also becoming SVO.
Generally speaking, the colloquial dialects, Algerian Arabic included, have a simpler inflectional system than Classical or Modern Arabic. They usually have less distinctions involving number (for example. loss of the dual--a form indicating or referring to "two of") and gender in the verb. Nouns (and adjectives) have lost case endings, and all mood distinctions (indicative, subjunctive, and jussive) have disappeared in verbs. In losing inflectional affixes the vernaculars have tended to become more "analytical," marking grammatical relations by function words; for example, the genitive (possessive) construction now uses a particle between noun and possessor whereas in MSA a simple juxtaposition of noun and possessor with inflection marks the relationship.
Phonologically the language, in all of its variants, has a set of emphatic consonants contrasting with a plain set. This gives Arabic its own particular, distinctive sound. Colloquial Arabic tends to have less consonants than MSA but with more complexity in the vowel inventory and syllable structure.
Arabic in the Gulf
Gulf Arabic, or
North Arabian Colloquial Arabic, is widely spoken in the Arabic regions of Iraq--from
Baghdad south to the regions adjacent to the Persian Gulf--and in the Arabian
Peninsula. Other dialects of Arabic as well as other Semitic languages, not
considered Arabic as such, but closely related though not
mutually intelligible, are spoken in the southern part of the peninsula,
especially in Yemen and Oman. Of the some 9 million people who speak variants of
Gulf Arabic, upwards of 1.5 million live in Kuwait; the others are in Iraq (4
million), Saudi Arabia (2 million), United Arab Emirates (600,000), Iran
(600,000), Bahrain (300,000), Qatar (160,000), and Oman (50,000).
In
Bahrain, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates, Gulf Arabic is the major vernacular.
In some of these countries there is also significant numbers of immigrants:
Farsi speakers in Bahrain and Qatar, and in the Emirates, immigrants speaking
Egyptian Arabic, Baluchi, Farsi, Pushto, and Somali. Egyptian Arabic speakers
actually outnumber indigenous Gulf Arabic speakers. In Saudi Arabia most
inhabitants speak other but related dialects of Arabic, namely, West Arabian
Colloquial Arabic and Najdi Arabic. In the southern peninsular countries of Oman
and Yemen there are insignificant numbers of Gulf speakers; in both countries
other related dialects of 
Arabic
are used, as well as the related Semitic language, Modern South Arabian.
The term Gulf Arabic is used by some authorities to refer to the colloquial variants of Arabic spoken along the Persian Gulf littoral and also to the dialects spoken in Iraq from the Baghdad area south east to the Gulf. Other authorities speak of Gulf Arabic as those variants spoken from Basra in southern Iraq, through Kuwait, Bahrain, eastern Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arabic Emirates, and Oman. Scholars generally recognize the close affiliation of central and southern Iraqi dialects to those of the Gulf region.
Arabic in North Africa
Algerian,
Libyan, and Tunisian variants of Arabic are closely related and are mutually
intelligible. Within Algeria and the region in general there is considerable
linguistic diversity, and the dialect picture is complex. Major cities, such as
Algiers, Oran, and 
Constantine,
are identified as centers of their own urban dialects, which can in turn be
distinguished from the dialects spoken by nomadic peoples. Linguistic
differences between these communities are sufficiently large to create serious
problems in comprehension.
Although Moroccan Colloquial Arabic is part of the western subdivision of Arabic it is not mutually intelligible with Algerian Arabic and other dialects of northwest Africa
