All You Want to Know About Arabic Language Day 2022
2022 Arabic Language Day: Arab linguists and scholars were particularly interested in the language in the tenth century, compiling six Arabic dictionaries alongside more niche works.
Arabic is one of the world’s most widely spoken languages. Since 2012, the United Nations has observed Arabic Language Day on December 18 to honour the language and cultural diversity of the Middle Eastern region.
The annual celebration of Arabic culture falls on the day in 1973 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted Arabic as the international organization’s sixth official language.
Arabic Origin
Arabic is a member of the Afro-Asian language family, which also includes Hebrew and Aramaic. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Arabic first appeared in the Arabian Peninsula’s northwest. Its origins can be traced back to the eighth century BCE. Arabic, like most languages, evolved over time, influenced, defined, and refined by dynamic cultural events.
The Arabic language evolved significantly between the third and sixth centuries CE, with additional additions to the script made in the seventh century CE.
Arab linguists and scholars were particularly interested in the language in the tenth century, compiling six Arabic dictionaries alongside more niche works.
Diversity
Scholars have struggled to define Arabic as a language. Newspapers, novels, formal broadcasts, and political speeches are all written in Modern Standard Arabic, which differs slightly from Classical Arabic (the language of the Qur’an).
The spoken varieties of Arabic, on the other hand, vary greatly. Some of these are even mutually incomprehensible. The problem with classifying or excluding these varieties from the folds of Arabic is that they share common characteristics that are either not found uniformly across all varieties or are found in other languages as well.
Theme for Arabic Language Day 2022
In a bid to celebrate this diversity, the UN has declared the theme for this year’s Arabic Language Day as “The Contribution of the Arabic Language to Human Civilization and Culture”. UNESCO will shed light on Arabic’s numerous contributions to linguistic and cultural diversity, as well as knowledge production.