Closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic, Arabic is a Central Semitic language. It consists of around thirty sub languages spoken mainly in Algeria, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestinian territories, Syria, United Arab Emirates etc.

Modern Arabic is the most widely spread language of the Semitic language family. It derives from Classical Arabic, the liturgical language of Islam since the seventh century. Modern Arabic refers to both literary Arabic (the official language of all Arab countries which is taught in schools and used in media and administration) and colloquial Arabic (varieties of the language spoken across the Middle East and North Africa). In most cases these dialects are not mutually intelligible – for example, a Moroccan may have trouble understanding a person from Lebanon.

Arabic may prove a difficult language to learn for people using the Latin alphabet since it uses a different writing system. Its alphabet derives from the Aramaic script and it has only three vowels (with their long forms) and two diphthongs, this making the pronunciation of the words quite challenging. The Arabic script has been used since the 4th century AD and its first attested sample is an inscription dating from 512 AD.

Another particularity of Arabic is that is that nouns have three numbers – singular, dual and plural and three states - indefinite, definite, and construct, all these resulting in various inflections.

The official language of a vast (but now extinct) empire, Arabic reached many corners of the world where the Islamic religion was practiced. Arabic was also extensively used by scholars, astronomers, poets and politicians, all of them contributing to its development and enrichment. Arabic is still very popular nowadays. It is spoken by approximately 250 million people and it occupies the fifth position in the top of the most widely spoken languages.

Its extensive use makes Arabic one of the most productive language as far as translation industry is concerned. Several translation companies nowadays offer translation services from and into Arabic as well as free translation tools and dictionaries for the speakers of his language.

Ioana Mihailas is a linguist for Lingo24 Translation Agency London, a leading provider of high quality Arabic Translation Services. http://www.lingo24.com/