Varieties of Arabic

There are many varieties of Arabic (dialects or otherwise) in existence. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. Some varieties of Arabic in North Africa, for example, are incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker from the Levant or the Persian Gulf. Within these broad regions further and considerable geographic distinctions exist, within countries, across country borders, even between cities and villages.

Another major distinction is to be made between the widely diverging colloquial spoken varieties, used for nearly all everyday speaking situations, and the formal standardized language, found mostly in writing or in prepared speech. The regionally prevalent variety is learned as the speaker's first language while the formal language is subsequently learned in school. The formal language itself varies between its modern iteration, Modern Standard Arabic (often called MSA in English) and the Classical Arabic that serves as its basis, though Arabic speakers typically do not make this distinction.

The largest differences between the classical/standard and the colloquial Arabic are the loss of grammatical case; a different and strict word order, the loss of the previous system of grammatical mood, along with the evolution of a new system; the loss of the inflected passive voice, except in a few relic varieties; restriction in the use of the dual number and (for most varieties) the loss of the feminine plural. Many Arabic dialects, North African Arabic in particular also have significant vowel shifts and unusual consonant clusters. Unlike other dialects, in Moroccan Arabic first person singular verbs begin with a n- (ن).

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