LITMIR.BIZ

      PREFACE

      The Arabic writing system in its current form dates back at least 1800 years. The language acquired a divine status when the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed in 610 AD. Since then it has become an important language not only to Arabs but also to millions of Muslims living in Africa, Asia and Europe.

      Arabic is the native language of well over 250 million people, thus ranking it as one of the most widely spoken world languages, behind only Chinese, English, Spanish and Hindi. There are many national and regional varieties of spoken Arabic, such as Egyptian, Iraqi, Tunisian, Moroccan and Lebanese, but the language presented in this book is based on Modern Standard Arabic, understood by all Arabic speakers and used throughout the Arab world in most written and broadcast material.

      The Arabic script is written from right to left. It is based on eighteen different letter forms derived from the script that was historically used to represent the Aramaic language of the ancient Middle East. These letters vary in appearance according to their position within the word (initial, middle or final) and whether they connect to the letters before and after them or not. Eight of the letters may be modified by marks (dots) above or below them in order to represent sounds not occurring in ancient Aramaic, resulting in the current complete Arabic alphabet of 28 letters.

      Arabic script has many artistic variations that produce beautiful calligraphy in the same way the Chinese language does. Arabic calligraphy has served as a form of decoration particularly in mosques where images of humans and animals are prohibited.

      Arabic letters can be divided into two types: those known as connectors (i.e. other letters can be attached to it), and non-connectors (which cannot be attached to other letters). Also, Arabic letters may change according to where they occur in the word (initial, medial or final).

      A word on Spoken Arabic

      Arabic is one of the few languages in the world (the other prominent languages being German and Greek) where there is a significant difference between the spoken variety and the written variety. Some linguists refer to these as the high variety for written Arabic and the low variety for spoken dialects. For Arabic the differences are not only between the written and spoken varieties, but also amongst the various regional varieties spoken across the Arab world. For this reason, we have opted in this book to use a simplified standard variety based on Modern Standard Arabic that is very close to all the Arabic dialects spoken across the Middle East and North Africa.

      A note on pronunciation

      For non-native speakers, some Arabic letters such as glottal fricatives and uvular stops are a little strange and can be challenging to pronounce. Therefore, in this volume every Arabic word or phrase is spelled out the way it should be sounded. We have also included a transliteration in the Roman alphabet based on the conventional transliterating system used by the International Phonetic Association symbols.

      PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

Arabic	Transcription	Approximate in English
Letter
	‘	a (as in and)
	b	b
	t	t
	th	th (as in three)
	j	j (as in jelly)
	h	does not exist
	kh	doesn’t exist (as in Spanish J)
	d	d
	dh	th (as in there)
	r	r
	z	z
	s	s
	sh	sh (as in shine)
	s	doesn’t exist (similar to sun)
	d	doesn’t exist (similar to Don)
	t	doesn’t exist (similar to Tokyo)
	z	doesn’t exist
	`	doesn’t exist
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