Arab Culture - Language

Language

The Arabic language is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab and Islamic world. Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century and is the liturgical language of Islam, in addition to widespread use as a vernacular language. Arabic is spoken in a variety of dialects. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the language of the media and of educated Arabs, is different from the everyday spoken Arabic.

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Famous quotes containing the word language:

    I now thinke, Love is rather deafe, than blind,
    For else it could not be,
    That she,
    Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
    And cast my love behind:
    I’m sure my language to her, was as sweet,
    And every close did meet
    In sentence, of as subtile feet,
    As hath the youngest Hee,
    Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

    I invented the colors of the vowels!—A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.
    Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)

    To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)