Study Arabic Language Alphabet chart key

Classical Arabic is the liturgical language of 1.8 billion Muslims

Arabic al-ʻarabiyyah or ʻarabī or is a Central Semitic language that first emerged in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world.

Arabic (Arabic: العَرَبِيَّة‎) al-ʻarabiyyah [alʕaraˈbijːa] or (Arabic: عَرَبِيّ‎) ʻarabī [ˈʕarabiː] or Arabic pronunciation: [ʕaraˈbij]) is a Central Semitic language that first emerged in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world.[5] It is named after the Arabs, a term initially used to describe peoples living from Mesopotamia in the east to the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, in northwestern Arabia, and in the Sinai Peninsula. Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage comprising 30 modern varieties, including its standard form, Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic.

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages (Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Phoenician), the Ancient South Arabian languages, and various other Semitic languages of Arabia such as Dadanitic. The Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar.

Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. Some of the most influenced languages are Persian, Turkish, Spanish, Urdu, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Hindi, Malay, Maldivian, Indonesian, Pashto, Punjabi, Tagalog, Sindhi, and Hausa, and some languages in parts of Africa.