Arabic is considered to be the language of the Arabian Peninsula. There are around 25 countries in the world that have given Arabic official language status. There are nearly 600 million Arabic speakers around the globe. Almost 450 million speak Arabic as their native language.

Different countries in which one can find Arabic speaking populations include but are not limited to: Algeria, Bahrain, Brazil, the Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Mexico, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Yemen.

Arabic speakers in the United States of America

There are more than one and a half million Arabic speakers in the United States, though some research institutes consider this number to be modest, since they believe that there are more than three million Arabs living throughout the United States. The majority of the Arabic speaking population in the United States has settled in metropolitan cities while the rest has settled in rural areas with rich soil suidiv for agricultural production. The Arabic population settled in metros is generally migrated in the second half of the twentieth century while those in rural areas have migrated earlier.

Two-thirds of the Arabs in the United States follow the Christian religion while the rest, for the most part, follow Islam. The United States’ largest Arabic speaking population is found in the states of: California, Florida, New York, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia. Major US cities with Arabic populations include, but are not limited to: Allentown, Arlington, Burbank, Glendale, Livonia, Detroit, Modesto, Sterling, Jersey City, Patterson and Phoenix. In the State of California specifically, rural areas such as the Imperial Valley and the Salinas Valley also have Arabic speaking populations which are mainly involved in agricultural business.

Arabic speakers in United Kingdom

There are over one million Arabic speaking people in the United Kingdom. Early immigrants are said to have arrived in the United Kingdom mostly during the nineteenth century. These Arabic immigrants were mainly from Yemen, a fact mostly due to the good diplomatic relationships between the two countries. The descendants of these Arabic speaking people were further joined by new immigrants from Yemen and their families in the twentieth century. These immigrants came to the UK mostly with the intention of working in the manufacturing industries in Sheffield and other areas.

Today one can find these Arabic speaking populations in: Birmingham, Sheffield, Cardiff and Liverpool. Apart from these communities, there are several professional communities including doctors, engineers and scientists that have taken asylum in the Greater London area.