Arabic language

Arabic
العَرَبِيَّة / عَرَبِيّ ʻarabiyy / al-ʻarabiyyah
al-ʿArabiyyah in written Arabic (Naskh script)
Pronunciation	/ʕaraˈbijː/, /ʔalʕaraˈbijːah/
Native to	Countries of the Arab League, minorities in neighboring countries and some parts of Asia,Africa, Europe etc.
Native speakers	420 million (2016)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic languages Arabic
Standard forms	Modern Standard Arabic
Dialects	Western (Maghrebi) Central (incl. Egyptian, Sudanese) Northern (incl. Levantine, Mesopotamian) Peninsular (Gulf, Hejazi, Najdi, Yemeni)
Writing system	Arabic alphabet Arabic Braille Syriac alphabet (Garshuni) Hebrew alphabet (Judeo-Arabic languages) Greek alphabet (Cypriot Maronite Arabic) Latin script (Maltese, Lebanese Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Libyan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic)
Signed forms	Signed Arabic (national forms)
Official status
Official language in	Modern Standard Arabic is an official language of 28 states, the third most after English and French List Algeria Bahrain Comoros Chad Cyprus (recognized minority language) Djibouti Egypt Eritrea (national status) Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Mali (national status) Mauritania Morocco Niger (national status) Oman Palestine Qatar SADR Saudi Arabia Senegal (national status) Somalia South Sudan (national status) Sudan Syria Tunisia United Arab Emirates Yemen<br /r]] African Union Arab League Organisation of Islamic Cooperation United Nations
Regulated by	List Arabic Language International Council Algeria: Supreme Council of the Arabic language in Algeria Egypt: Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo Israel: Academy of the Arabic Language in Israel Iraq: Iraqi Academy of Sciences Jordan: Jordan Academy of Arabic Libya: Academy of the Arabic Language in Jamahiriya Morocco: Academy of the Arabic Language in Rabat Saudi Arabia: Academy of the Arabic Language in Riyadh Somalia: Academy of the Arabic Language in Mogadishu Sudan: Academy of the Arabic Language in Khartoum Syria: Arab Academy of Damascus (the oldest) Tunisia: Beit Al-Hikma Foundation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ar
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	arab1395
Linguasphere	12-AAC
Dispersion of native Arabic speakers as the majority (green) or minority (chartreuse) population
Use of Arabic as the sole official language (green) and an official language (blue)
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Arabic (Arabic: العَرَبِيَّة‎‎, Al-ʻarabiyyah [ʔalʕaraˈbijːah] or Arabic: عَرَبِيّ‎‎ ʻarabiyy [ʕaraˈbijː]) is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. It is named after the Arabs, a term initially used to describe peoples living from Mesopotamia in the east to the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, and from northwestern Arabia to the Sinai in the south.

Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, both written and orally, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political or religious reasons (see below). If Arabic is considered a single language, it is perhaps spoken by as many as 422 million speakers (native and non-native) in the Arab world, making it one of the six most-spoken languages in the world. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic with 94 million native speakers—still greater than any other Afroasiatic language. Arabic also is a liturgical language of 1.6 billion Muslims. It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.