Classification of Arabic languages

This article is about the historical language group. For the modern general language (macrolanguage), see Arabic. For the separate South Semitic language group, see Modern South Arabian languages.
North Arabian
South Central Semitic
Arabic
Geographic
distribution		North Africa, Middle East, Malta
Linguistic classificationAfro-Asiatic
Proto-languageProto-Arabic
Language codes
Glottologarab1394

In linguistics, the Arabic language can be divided into several historical and geographical categories, namely Old Arabic (spoken in pre-Islamic times), the literary varieties Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, and the various modern dialects.

Classifying the position of Arabic within the group of Semitic languages has long been an active area of research.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.