ARAB LANGUAGE

The Arabic is a language belonging to the semitic family. Besides the Arabs, Semites are also Babylonians, the Assyrians and people of Mesopotamia and Syria. ARABIC ranks sixth in the world's league table of languages, with an estimated 200 million native speakers. Arabic is the language of the Qur'an, the central religious text of Islam. The Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters; it has only 3 long vowels: A, I and U (are represented by the letters 'alif, ya' and waw respectively). Words are written in horizontal lines from right to left, numerals are written from left to right.