10 interesting facts about the Arabic language

1. Arabs write from right to left using the Arabic “elm”. This is due to the fact that earlier, not papyrus was used for writing, but stone tablets on which cuneiform hieroglyphs were drawn with the help of a hammer and chisel. They also write from right to left in such languages ​​as Persian, Hebrew, Urdu, and Sindhi.
2. The Arabic language ranks first in terms of the number of speakers in the world fifth place, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afrasian group of languages. There are 5 conversational groups of modern Arabic dialects and more than 30 territorial dialects. Most of the people who speak Arabic live there in Egypt – about 69 million.
3. The Koran is considered the oldest work, written in classical Arabic literary language. This is the holy book of Muslims, which, according to the Islamic creed, was handed down by the Prophet Muhammad as the last testament to mankind.
4. From 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet eight characters have no corresponding sounds in the languages ​​of the Indo-European family. Such sounds are guttural, they are pronounced as if in the back of the throat. Learning the pronunciation of these sounds is the most difficult stage of learning Arabic.
5. Standard Arabic belongs to the six official languages ​​of the United Nations along with English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and French. Arabic acquired this status in 1973, which is the reason for celebrating the International Day of the Arabic Language.
6. Many so-called came to other languages ​​of the world “Arabisms” – words borrowed from the Arabic language (algorithm, algebra, Aldebaran, etc.). They especially influenced the Spanish language. This is due to the fact that a large part of the Iberian Peninsula was under Arab rule for a long time. The Arabic language itself contains almost no borrowed words.
7. I wonder what is in Arabic capital (capital) letters are missing. It is because of this that Arabs learning other languages ​​forget to capitalize sentences. At the time of writing it is not allowed to move the word from one line to another – you need to “stretch” it so that it fills the entire line. If the word does not fit, it is written upwards.
8. Arabic has “solar” and “lunar” letters, the ratio of which is 1:1, and there is also an article – definite, prepositive, singular. This division is based on the assimilation of the article. “Moon” letters when pronounced do not assimilate the article, and in writing it always appears the same.
9. There are as many as six forms of verbs in the third person in Arabic: masculine and feminine, singular, dual and plural. If letters are combined or other letters are added to them, then one of the four or three forms of writing letters is used. Therefore, the ligatures of this language are considered very difficult.
10. More than 10% of Spanish and Catalan (Valencian) words borrowed from Arabic. And in the Turkish language during the Ottoman Empire, the number of Arabic words was more than 80%. The Maltese language is also derived from Arabic, although the people of Malta claim that their language has Phoenician roots.

How is Arabic similar to Ukrainian?

And this is how the Arabic language sounds

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