The Arabic language

As a belly dancer, you get to hear Arabic from your very first beginner class. After having danced for a while and listened to many different songs, you might begin to recognise certain words that appear in many song lyrics: habibi, eini, leili and albi. Arabic is a beautiful language, and it is a big language.

Approximately 200 million people in the Middle East and North Africa speak Arabic, and Arabic is the religious language for Muslims all over the world. Arabic belongs to the Semitic family of languages together with languages like classical and modern Hebrew and Aramaic.

Structure of the language
The main principal in Semitic languages is that words are made from a root consisting of 3 consonants. In Arabic, this is very consistent. The 3 root consonants are embellished with different vowel patterns, prefixes, suffixes and inserted consonants to create different patterns, which then becomes different words. The simplest pattern is a-a-a. By adding this pattern to a root you get a verb, 3. person singular, masculine, past tense.

If you apply this a-a-a pattern to the root k-t-b, you get the word kataba (He wrote).

The root k-t-b has to do with writing, and by using the different patterns you get a variety of words that have something to do with writing. The A-i pattern gives you an active participle (someone who does something) Katib = one who writes, an author. By adding the prefix ma- to the root you get a noun that indicates a place for an action.Maktab =a place where you write, an office. Plural is created with certain vowel patterns, for instance kitab/kutub= book/books.
Maktaba: library
Katiba: brigade (people who have been conscripted)
Maktoub: It is written (it is destiny, something you can’t do anything with)

Grammatical treats for language nerds
The sentence structure in classical Arabic (Fusha, pronounced fos-ha) is VNO. This means that the verb comes first in the sentence, followed by the noun and then the object.
Kataba al-katib kitaban. Wrote the author a book = The author wrote a book.
In Arabic dialect (Ammiyya), which is the Arabic that people actually speak in their everyday lives, the order of the words is the same as in English: NVO. That means that the sentence starts with a noun, followed by a verb and finishes with an objective. Al-ktab sna’ livri. The author wrote a book.(Algerian Arabic dialect, from Wahran)

The definite article ‘al’ is placed in front of the word, like ‘the’ in English. There are 2 grammatical genders in the Arabic language, and verbs are conjugated in 2 genders.

The further west you come in the Arabic language area, (North Africa), the shorter the vowel gets, and it almost sounds like people only pronounce the consonants. These dialects sound harsher than the soft and melodious dialect spoken by people in the Middle East.

Classical Arabic (Al-arabiyya al-fusha)
The earliest Arabic text that has been discovered dates back to 328AD. This text was written using the Aramaic alphabet, adapted for the occasion. Until 600 AD Arabs used the Aramaic alphabet when writing their texts in Arabic. During the 6th century a strong Arabic culture emerged, with expanding trade and a new religion, Islam. This saw the rise of the written Arabic language. It came from 2 sources; the artistic language used for poetry amongst Arabic tribes in pre-Islamic times, and the language of the Quran. The language in the Quran is quite similar to the language of pre-Islamic poetry, but also contains elements from the dialect spoken by the prophet Muhammad.
In the 7th century, Arabic grammarians did a big job standardising the language, as it was a religious language that one mustn’t be careless about. It was also used as the administrative language in a vast empire, and had to be precise in order to avoid misunderstandings. The written classical Arabic is pretty much unchanged after being in use for many centuries, and it is the official orthography from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east.

Modern Arabic written language (Al-arabiyya al mu’asira)
This language is more or less identical with Al-Fusha, but has certain stylistic and syntactical traits due to influence from the spoken dialects and European languages. A number of new words and expressions have made their way into the language as a result of the development of the society. Efforts are being made to avoid accepting modern foreign words into the language. The preference is to create new words based on the language’s own system of building words.
The word car is made from the root s-y-r, which has to do with walking. An intensive pattern is made from doubling of the middle consonant, and combined with the vowels a-a-a one gets the word sayyara. Something that walks really fast = car.
Both classical and modern Arabic are purely written languages, that no one speaks as their mother tongue. In addition to functioning as written languages, they are spoken in official situations, for instance on the news, in political speeches, cultural programs, religious and formal events. They are also spoken when Arabs from different countries talk together, as their local dialects can be so different that they will not understand each other.
Children learn to write Al-Fusha in school, but because the written language can sometimes be so different from the local dialect, it can be almost like a foreign language. It can almost be compared to Australians speaking English, but having only learned to read and write in German.
There are still areas with high numbers of illiteracy in the Arab world, and because the official language through out the region is something you must learn in school rather than at home, many people don’t master it. Those people will have a hard time following the news and political debates, because they are being held in a ‘foreign language’.

Spoken dialects (Al-Ammiyya)
There are 2 main groups of dialects. Western Arabic dialects includes the dialects from Morocco in the West to Libia in the East. Easter Arabic dialects include dialects from parts of Libia, Egypt, Sudan andall the Arabic states in the Middle East and the Arabic peninsula. A Moroccan and an Iraqi will struggle understanding each other, unless they can converse politely in al-Fusha. Most Arabs, however, understand Egyptian Arabic. Egypt is the leading film producing country in the Arab world, and there are daily Egyptian films and shows on TV throughout the Arab world. Very many highly educated Egyptians work as teachers and in the administration in the countries in the Arab Gulf, and this has to a certain degree influenced the local dialects there. The spoken language is never written, except in dialogues in film scripts and plays.

For various reasons, there is no desire to create new written languages based on the local dialects. Classical Arabic is the language of the Quran, and therefore cannot not be changed. There are strong Pan Arabic movements in the Arab world. Al-Fusha therefore continues to be the standard written language, even though that makes learning how to read and write more difficult and complicated for children going to school.

Arabic has 28 letters, and is written from the right to the left. Only consonants are written, however 3 letters can also function as vowels. The patterns for creating words are so strong and so consistent that one doesn’t need vowels to understand what is written. The consonants tell the reader which pattern is used in every word. Signs for short vowels (a,i,u) can be written over or under the word, but this is almost only done in the Quran and certain holy books. Urdu (Pakistan) and Farsi (Iran) are also written with the Arabic alphabet, but with small modifications. For instance, the Arabic alphabet doesn’t contain the letter ‘G’. This letter does exist in Farsi, so the Persians made their own letter.

The Arabic letters are very well suited to calligraphy. Through history, depicting the world in pictures has been haram (forbidden) according to Islam. Instead the alphabet has been used as a prominent element in decorations and adornments. Several calligraphic fonts have developed, from very formal, geometric and angular letters to the most ornate, intricate and wavy letters.

Arabic is a very flowery language. The Arabs have an old and rich literary culture with many big poems (Qasida) from pre-Islamic times. People appreciate the sound of the language, and appreciate eloquence. There is a string of polite greetings people go through when meeting each other, when someone has been to the hammam (Turkish bath), to mosque etc.
As a Norwegian, I will say ‘Hi’ when I meet someone, and they will reply ’Hi’. In Arabic the greeting is Salam aleykoum (Peace be with you). The reply is Wa alleikoum assalam wa rahmatuallah wa barakatho. (And may peace be with you and God’s mercy and his blessings). Then pleasantries are exchanged for some time before the conversation can start in earnest.