Introduction
Arabic is the fourth most spoken language in the world. About 315 million people in 58 countries speak Arabic as their first language, according to Ethnologue. Learning Arabic will make you stand out, as there are very few people from the West that speak Arabic. Having command of Arabic will make you appear clever and sophisticated.
Arabic is a Southern-Central Semitic language. It is spoken in most parts of the Arabian Peninsula, parts of Middle East, and North Africa. In these regions, the languages with the most number of speakers, in chronological order are Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Hebrew. These languages belong to different language families. Turkish is part of the Turkic family. The Indo-European language family is represented by Kurdish and Persian. Hebrew and Arabic belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family. Aside from these major languages, people in the Middle East speak around 20 minority languages.
Learning a language is learning about the culture of the country where the language is spoken. Arab culture is rich and interesting. Learning the language will enable you to read some of the famous classic literature.