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Varieties of Arabic (or dialects or vernacular languages) are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian Peninsula.
- 373 million (2023)
- Arab world
- Egyptian
- Gulf
- Hassaniya
- Levantine
- Maghrebi
- Mesopotamian
- Sudanese
- Yemeni
- Hijazi Arabian
- Maltese
Egyptian Arabic has over 55 million speakers and is most widely spoken in, you guessed it, Egypt. This is the form of Arabic you are most likely to have heard in movies and TV, as the Egyptian media industry has had a huge impact on the Arabic film world. Because of this, the Egyptian dialect is one of the most widely understood in the Arabic world...
Gulf Arabic is a dialect most commonly spoken in Eastern Arabia. There are 36 million native speakers of Gulf, spread throughout the Arab world. This area includes the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, parts of eastern Saudi Arabia, southern Iraq, southern Iran, and northern Oman. Gulf Arabic is not necessarily its o...
Hassaniya Arabic is spoken by 3 million people across the Arab world. It is spoken in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Western Sahara. It was originally spoken by the Beni Hassan Bedouin tribes. These tribes extended their authority over a lot of area between Mauritania, Morocco, and Western Sahara between the 15th and...
Levantine Arabic has over 21 million speakers and is spoken in the 100-200 kilometer-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip. This dialect is largely only used as a spoken dialect, while many speakers remain true to MSA when writing. Levantine Arabic was produced along with North Mesopotamian Arabic, Anatolian Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic through a ...
Maghrebi Arabic has over 70 million speakers spread across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Western Sahara, and Mauritania. This dialect encompasses many smaller ones, like Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Libyan Arab, and Hassaniya Arabic. It has many differences in its spoken variety from Modern Standard Arabic. In fact, it has...
Mesopotamian Arabic is also known as Iraqi Arabic and has over 15 million speakers. It is made up of a continuum of varieties of Arabic native to the Mesopotamian basin. This includes Iraq, parts of Syria, Iran, and southeastern Turkey. Like Levantine Arabic, this dialect has sprung from the shift from Aramaic to Arabic. Due to Iraq’s incredible mu...
Sudanese Arabic is spoken throughout Sudan and has over 17 million native speakers. This dialect is similar to Egyptian Arabic due to the geographical closeness of the two countries but has distinctive characteristics that warrant its own dialect. Overall, Sudanese Arabic is more closely related to Hejazi Arabic in pronunciation. Sudanese Arabic ha...
Yemeni Arabic is another great example of Arabic dialects that has maintained many classical practices and tones. Yemeni Arabic is spoken by over 15 million people in Yemen, southwestern Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Djibouti. Because of the vast array of speakers, Yemeni Arabic can be subdivided into many different dialect groups. It maintains many c...
Hijazi Arabic is also known as Hejazi Arabic or, more commonly, West Arabian Arabic. This dialect is spoken by over 14 million people in the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia. This dialect is further divided along city and country lines, with both an urban and rural version. The urban version is spoken most widely in the cities of Jeddah, Mecca, and Med...
Maltese is an interesting dialect because it is so markedly different from MSA. It is even classified separately from Arabic, as it has many marked differences. It is descended from Siculo-Arabic, which is an extinct variety of Arabic developed in Sicily before being introduced to Malta. This occurred first in at the end of the 9th century and cont...
Nov 9, 2023 · There are dozens of Arabic dialects, and here we'll compare just 3: Moroccan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Syrian Arabic. These dialects have large speaker populations, are widely represented in the media, and are found in distinct geographical locations.
The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic.
- Signed Arabic (different national forms)
Feb 13, 2020 · The Arabic language has held the status of being an official language at the United Nations since 1974 and it’s the language of the Quran (the Muslim Holy Book). We will be comparing the different types of Arabic dialects and the influence it has on each region.
Varieties of Arabic (or dialects or vernacular languages) are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian Peninsula. There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to ...
3 days ago · Arabic language, a Semitic language spoken in areas including North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and other parts of the Middle East. The language of the Qur’an (the sacred book of Islam) is often considered the ideal archetype of Arabic’s many varieties, and the literary standard closely approaches that archetype.
