Section One - Grammar and Spelling
1.
Gender:
Arabic has two genders. The genders are
usually referred to as masculine and feminine,
but the situation is more complicated than
that: the 'feminine' singular forms are
also used to express 'singulatives', which
are plurals of inanimate objects of both
grammatical genders.
2.
Case: Arabic has three cases –
nominative, accusative and genitive. Normally,
nouns take the ending -u(n) in the nominative,
-i(n) in the genitive and -a(n) in the accusative.
3.
Plurals: Arabic has three numbers
– singular, plural and dual. The plural
of a noun is formed by a suffix in some
cases (sound plurals), but frequently the
vowel structure of a word is changed to
form the plural (broken plurals). There
are a number of patterns of how this is
done. Some singular nouns take several plurals.
Section Two - Punctuation
1.
Commas:
In Arabic text, commas are the opposite
to English ones, that is they look like
6s rather than 9s. The letter و means 'and',
and should be used instead of and sometimes
together with commas in lists (they are
not just big commas!).
2.
Speech marks: Either «...» or ""
can be used, and they work in the same way
as in English.
3.
Semi-colons: These look like upside
down Roman semi-colons: ؛
4.
Capitalisation: There is no capitalisation
in Arabic.
Section Three - Measurements and Abbreviations
Measurements:
Most units are written out in full in Arabic,
except units that have metres and grams
in them, which are usually shortened to
the Arabic abbreviation of the letter 'm'.
Figures are written from left to right and
a full stop must be used in decimals. Arabic
numerals look like this:
Percentage
signs are written on the left-hand side
of the numeral.
Section Four - Hyphenation
Words cannot be split over two lines in Arabic so there is no hyphenation.
Section Five - Miscellaneous Peculiarities
When English is written within Arabic text it stays in the usual
English word order, ie. it is written from
left to right within the Arabic right to
left text. This is maintained when a whole
English phrase is spread over two lines:
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Section Six - Geographic Distribution
Arabic is one of the world's major languages, spoken in a broad
belt extending from the Arabian Peninsula
across the Fertile Crescent and on to the
Atlantic Ocean. It is the official language
of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, United Arab Emirates,
Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, Syria,
Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia,
Algeria, and Morocco, making it the mother
tongue of about 215 million people. In addition
many millions of Muslims in other countries
have some knowledge of Arabic, it being
the language of the Muslim religion and
of the sacred Koran.
Arabic is spoken/used in the following countries:
Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros (Federal
Islamic Republic), Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Gaza Strip, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan,
Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates,
United States of America, West Bank, Western
Sahara, Yemen Arab Republic.
Language Family
Family: Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic)
Subgroup: Semitic
Branch: North Arabic
Source: http://www.worldlanguage.com/Languages/Arabic
- Copyright © Kenneth Katzner, The Languages
of the World, Published by Routledge.
Section Seven - Character Set
