Arabic

Arabic
Language family	Semitic West Semitic Moabic Arabic

Arabic (اللغة العربية) is a Semitic language predominately spread across the Near East and northern Africa. It is one of four major living Semitic languages alongside the Amharic of Abyssinia, Aramaic, and Hebrew. Modern Arabic is starkly divided into two registers—Literary Arabic, a formal variety created in the Ottoman Empire of the 18th and 19th centuries—and the dialects, used in daily communications by the vast majority of native speakers. In the late 20th century, Arabic was the sixth most spoken language in the world and held official status in over twenty sovereign states.

Since the 7th century, Arabic has been a prominent international literary, liturgical, and diplomatic language. Today, it is a recognized language of the Organization of Democratic Nations and is simultaneously regulated by fourteen linguistic institutions in eleven countries. Due to this stature, Arabic, in its many forms, has had a considerable impact on the languages of the Near East, the Mediterranean, most of Africa, inner Asia, southern Asia, and Indonesia. Most speakers use the Arabic script or variations thereof to write the Arabic language, while small minorities in Malta, the Blessed Isles, Osmania, and other territories use variations of the Latin alphabet which often inspire romanizations.