The Modern Standard Arabic language
and how it is written

Where Modern Standard Arabic ranks

Modern Standard Arabic is the 5th most-spoken language in the world by total speakers ^[1,2]. Here it is among its neighbours in the ranking, on one scale.

“How are you?” in Modern Standard Arabic

The design of Arabic script

An abjad: its 28 letters write consonants and long vowels, and short vowels are optional marks above or below. It runs right to left as a cursive in which most letters join their neighbours^[8]. It grew out of the Nabataean form of the Aramaic alphabet^[4,5].

Abjad (consonants). Letters write consonants; short vowels are optional marks.

Kind

Abjad (consonants)

Direction

Right to left (numbers left to right)

Took shape

By the 6th century CE in the Arabian Peninsula

Line of descent

Phoenician → Aramaic → Nabataean → Arabic

Traditional surface

Paper

Own digits

٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩

Also writes

مصري Egyptian ArabicKiswahili SwahiliHausa Hausaشامي Levantine Arabicعربي سوداني Sudanese Arabic

• One letter, four shapes

  Most letters change shape depending on whether they stand alone or sit at the start, middle or end of a word, so ه, ـهـ and ـه are one letter^[8,9].

• Dots tell twins apart

  Several letters share one skeleton and differ only in their dots: ب (b), ت (t) and ث (th) are the same stroke with one dot below, two above or three above^[5].

• Six letters never reach forward

  ا, د, ذ, ر, ز and و join the letter before them but never the one after, so many words are written in separate pieces^[8].

• Calligraphy with a measuring stick

  The 10th-century vizier Ibn Muqla is credited with proportioned script: the rhombic dot made by the reed pen became the unit, and the height of alif set the size of every other letter^[7].

• Nobody's mother tongue

  Children grow up speaking Egyptian, Levantine or Gulf Arabic and learn the standard at school, so most Arabic speakers switch between two forms every day — a situation linguists call diglossia^[3].

• Vowels on demand

  Short vowels are usually left unwritten and added as marks only in the Quran, poetry and children's books, where every sound must be exact^[8].

Explore the letters

Numbers in Arabic script

Modern Standard Arabic's relatives among the 38

Modern Standard Arabic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family (Semitic). These are the other languages with 50 million or more speakers in the same family; the closest — in the same branch — come first.

• مصريEgyptian ArabicSame branch: Semitic · 118M
• አማርኛAmharicSame branch: Semitic · 78M
• شاميLevantine ArabicSame branch: Semitic · 58M
• عربي سودانيSudanese ArabicSame branch: Semitic · 54M
• HausaHausaChadic · 95M

Modern Standard Arabic across the hub

The main page compares all 38 languages. Each link opens it on Modern Standard Arabic.

• Preview it in the explorer →with all 38 side by side
• Hear it in the voice tour →“How are you?” in every language, spoken in turn
• Trace its script's family tree →from the first alphabets and Chinese oracle bones
• Compare its digits →ten ways to write 0–9
• See its share of speakers →an interactive breakdown by script, family and region

Sources

1. Ethnologue — What are the top 200 most spoken languages? (2026)
2. Wikipedia — List of languages by total number of speakers (Ethnologue 2026 figures, retrieved October 2026)
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Arabic language
4. Omniglot — Nabataean alphabet
5. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Alphabet: the Arabic alphabet
6. United Nations — Arabic Language Day
7. Asian Art Museum, San Francisco — The history of Islamic calligraphy
8. The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 9: Middle East-I (Arabic)
9. Omniglot — Arabic alphabet
10. Omniglot — Useful phrases in Modern Standard Arabic

Checked October 25, 2026. Speaker numbers are Ethnologue's 2026 estimates, which count each language separately (Arabic and Chinese varieties are listed one by one). Maps shade whole countries, not regions within them. Found an error? Tell us.