Modern Standard
Arabic (MSA) is the literary standard across the Middle East and North Africa,
and one of the official six languages of the United Nations. Most printed
matter in the Arab World—including most books, newspapers, magazines, official
documents, and reading primers for small children—is written in MSA.
"Colloquial" Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties
derived from Arabic spoken daily across the region and learned as a first
language. They are not typically written, although a certain amount of
literature (particularly plays and poetry) exists in many of them. Literary
Arabic is the official language of all Arab countries and is the only form of
Arabic taught in schools at all stages.
The
sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of
the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia – the use of two distinct varieties of
the same language, usually in different social contexts.[3] Educated
Arabic-speakers are usually able to communicate in MSA in formal situations
across national boundaries – thus, MSA is a classic example of a Dachsprache.
This diglossic situation facilitates code-switching in which a speaker switches
back and forth between the two varieties of the language, sometimes even within
the same sentence. In instances in which highly educated Arabic-speakers of
different nationalities engage in conversation but find their dialects mutually
unintelligible (e.g. a Moroccan speaking with a Kuwaiti), they are able to code
switch into MSA for the sake of communication.
Although
closely based on Classical Arabic (especially from the pre-Islamic to the
Abbasid period, including Qur'anic Arabic), literary Arabic continues to
evolve. Classical Arabic is considered normative; modern authors attempt (with
varying degrees of success) to follow the syntactic and grammatical norms laid
down by Classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and to use the vocabulary
defined in Classical dictionaries (such as the Lisan al-Arab.)
