The expressions Arabic and Classical Arabic usually refer to ?al luGat ul?\\arabi:yat ulfus'X\\a: ( Literally: the pure Arabic language - اللغة العربية؛الفصحى ) which is, according to Arabic speakers, both the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East (from Morocco to Iraq) and the language of the Qur'an. The expression media includes not only television, radio, newspapers and magazines, but also all written matter, including all books, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.
The word "Arabic", in a wide sense, can also refer to one of the many national or regional so-called "dialects", spoken daily across North Africa and the Middle East, which can sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensib le. These dialects are not frequently written.
It is sometimes difficult to separate concepts in Islam from concepts specific to Arab culture, from the language itself. The Qur'an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deemed it untranslatable, though this view has changed in some circles, e.g. those advocating the Islamization of knowledge in recent decades. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are too specific to translate in one phrase.
The English word algorithm is derived from the name of the inventor of algebra - an Arabic word like alchemy, alcohol, azimuth, nadir, zenith and oasis. Arabic numerals are what we use in English - but, except in some North African countries, modern Arabs generally use Hindi numerals. Spanish is the European language with the most borrowings from Arabic. See a List of the Arabic loan-words in Spanish.
Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to the Hebrew language. Many dialects are spoken in modern Arabic states such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco, but all of these countries use Modern Standard Arabic for printed media. Its function however is different from Western standard languages: it is mainly the language of the Qur'an (in its Classical form), and is not spoken in everyday life. Consequently, prestigious vernacular varieties have some of the functions that standard languages have in Western countries (see Chambers, Sociolinguisti c Theory). Arabic is the language of Islam, but is also spoken by Arab Christians and Oriental Jews.
Alphabet
The Arabic alphabet derives from the eastern version of Aramaic script (the western version resembles Greek of that era), a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script; but the underlying language does not vary as much between eastern and western variants as the scripts themselves do - a situation a little like the differences between Serb and Croat). Arabic, like Hebrew, is written from right to left.
note the "â" is inbetween "a" (car) and "e" (bed).
