Media Room

Five Facts to celebrate our beautiful Arabic language!

 December 18^th marks the official celebration of The United Nations Arabic Language Day, established in 2010 to commemorate the multilingualism and cultural diversity of one of the six official languages of the UN.

Celebrate the day with a few of the most interesting facts about this incredible language.

1. 1. Arabic is the 5^th most spoken language in the World

2.  

3. With more than 300 million speakers today, it is the official language of 22 countries.

8.  
9.  
10.  2. Don’t Worry About Capitalizing in Arabic

1. Grammar haters, rejoice! The Arabic language doesn’t mess around with pesky capital and lower-case letters, instead using single and double quotation marks when necessary.

3.  
4.  
5. 3. Arabic is Incredibly Descriptive

6.  

7. Did you know that Arabic has an extremely extensive vocabulary? Let’s take love for example. Diverse words can be used to describe it depending on the varied stages you might experience. Your initial attraction to someone is referred to as “hawa”. “Hiyam” is the word for the love felt when you’ve lost all logic and reason in the face of the depth of your emotion whereas “shaghaf” is all about passionate love.

   Hate is no different. Whether you hate someone, extremely hate someone, or hate with disgust and aversion, you are either feeling “Karah”, “Boghd” or “Makt” respectively.

8. So don’t worry about finding the words to express your feelings in Arabic!

1. 4. Arabic is a “super hard language” for English speakers to learn 
2. 
   
3.   
4. According to The Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies (SLS), in order to reach proficiency, 88 weeks, or 2200 class hours is the amount of time necessary, which can be translated into approximately 1.69 years. It is no surprise that Arabic made their list of the world’s most difficult languages, as it has very few words that resemble those in European languages. Additionally, its lack of vowels gives reading an extra element of trickiness.

1. 5. The Lebanese played a major role in the Arabic Renaissance “Al Nahda”

Their impact was massive both in the literary world and in journalism. To name a couple of examples only, the first Arabic encyclopedia “Da’irat al Ma’aref”, and modern Arabic dictionary were published by “Al Mou’allem” Boutros Al Boustany, known as the Father of the Arabic renaissance.

In addition, the Lebanese set literary societies in the diaspora to revive and renew the language. The most famous one being “The Pen League” “Al Rabita al Qalamya” due to the membership of internationally renowned Gebran Khalil Gebran, who was also its president. Established in New York in 1920, its aim, according to its secretary, another famed Lebanese author Mikhail Neaimy, was to “lift Arabic literature from the quagmire of stagnation and imitation, and to infuse a new life into its veins so as to make of it an active force in the building up of the Arab nations”.

Other societies included: “Al Isba Al Andalousia”, established, supported and presided by Michel Neeman Maalouf from Zahle, in Sao Paolo Brazil.

With these facts under your belt, you’re now officially ready to celebrate Arabic Language Day!