The Arabic language is said to be a member of the Semitic language group, which is a sub-branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Like Arabic the other members of the Semitic language group are: Aramaic, Amharic, Amorite, Akkadian, Hebrew, Gurage, Geez, Moabite, Nabatean, Maltese, Syrica, Phonoecian, Tigrinya, Tigre, Punic and Ugaritic.

History about the Arabic language

The first written form of Arabic is found in the forty thousand inscriptions in Syria which date to around the fourth century. Some history scholars claim that the written form of Arabic existed in the region of modern day Jordan and Saudi Arabia in or around the fifth century B.C. This was known as the North Arabian language, and the Pre-Classical Arabic from which the new Classical Arabic language evolved was also basically derived from this older form of the Northern Arabic dialect. This North Arabic language was also spoken in the central region of Arabia. There were several regional dialects of the North Arabic language found in the ancient Arabian region.

The Classical Arabic language came into existence in the seventh century in the southern region of Arabia. It gained importance mainly because the Islamic holy book, the “Quran,” was written in this language. It became the language used for praying to God for all Muslims irrespective of the native language used they in their day to day communication.
In addition to this aspect, modern Standard Arabic has adapted a different writing style than Classical Arabian, but both have similar word and sentence structures.

The influence of the Arabic language on other languages

Arabic language has been a major influencing factor in the creation of a glossary of languages that include but are not limited to: Bengali, Berber, Hindustani, Indonesian, Kurdish, Kinubi, Maltese, Malay, Portuguese, Swahili, Spanish, Turkish, Tagalog and Urdu. Maltese and Kinubi are completely derived from the Arabic language. In addition to these languages, some scholars claim that English has some loan words from Arabic.
Yet, these words were not directly included in the English language but came about through Latin translations of Arabic text.

The Spanish language is nodiv for having borrowed the most words from the Arabic vocabulary, as compared to other languages. It is said that there are several thousands of Arabic words used in the Spanish language and the majority of these words are nouns.

The Arabic language is believed to have dominated more over the languages in the Islamic countries. Also the languages spoken in the western parts of the African continent came under the influence of Arabic mainly because of the spread of the Islamic faith in this region.

Arabic itself was influenced by the Berber, Egyptian and Persian languages in the earlier days of its history.