Arabic Spoken Here Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Arabic belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, which also includes Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic and Tigrinya (the latter two being spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea). Modern Standard Arabic is a prestige variety of Arabic used (mainly in written form) in literature, education, the media, and official and legal contexts. It is also the liturgical language of Islam, and the lingua franca of the Arab world and the Arab diaspora. Arabic has a wide range of dialects (about 30) spoken in many Asian and African countries, sometimes mutually unintelligible: for this reason, some linguists refer to Arabic as a language cluster rather than a single language.

According to the reference publication "Ethnologue", in 2023 Modern Standard Arabic was spoken as a second language by 274 million people worldwide. Native speakers of the various Arabic vernaculars amount to over 360 million. The most widespread Arabic dialect is Egyptian Arabic, spoken by over 100 million people (of which about 77 million are native speakers). In the 2022 edition of the "CIA World Factbook", Arabic is listed as the world's 6th most spoken language, spoken by 3.4% of the world's population.

Arabic has official or co-official status in a number of Asian and African countries (24 as of 2023). Of the countries listed in this quiz, Arabic is the only official language in Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Qatar, and Yemen. On the other hand, it has co-official status in Mali (along with 12 other languages), Morocco (along with Standard Moroccan Berber, also an Afroasiatic language), Somalia (along with Somali, another Afroasiatic language), and Iraq (along with Kurdish, a Indo-European language).

In some of the countries listed as incorrect answers, Arabic is officially recognized as a minority language (Turkey and Iran), or has been granted special status by the Constitution (Pakistan). Arabic is also one of the national languages of Niger and Senegal. In all these cases, the status of Arabic is tied to its role as the language of Islam.

Malta's case is an interesting one, as Maltese is a Semitic language - the only one written in the Latin script. However, being derived from Siculo-Arabic (spoken in Sicily in the Middle Ages), and heavily influenced by Sicilian and Italian, it is counted as a separate language rather than one of the Arabic dialects.

Arabic has no official status in any of the other countries listed. At some point of their history, the language had a prominent role in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, and Kenya. It is also spoken in some areas of Ethiopia, which borders Arabic-speaking countries such as Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti, though without any official recognition. As for Kazakhstan, unlike other parts of Central Asia it was never in the Arab sphere of influence, and the presence of Arabic speakers is negligible.