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The Arabic Language
Arabic originated from the Semitic language family, one of the oldest groups of languages (it has more than 3000 years of history). About 225 million pople across the Arab world speak Arabic.Dialects
There are three main forms of Arabic. The official one is modern Arabic, which is the language of information and the one that everyone speaks. Daily conversation is based upon colloquial Arabic, which is completely different from the standard language and includes dialects sometimes unintelligible one with the other. For instance, the Middle East and the Maghreb dialect are considered two separate languages, as they are so different that people leaving in these two areas can't communicate between them. Finally, there is the more formal form of Arabic, which is the language of the Qu'ran and of literature.This coexistence of different languages it's called by linguists "disglossia" (which literally means two tounges). In the case of Arabic, the phenomenon is due the fact that next to Modern Arabic (the standard, highly codified form of language), the primary dialects of it have developed in widespread languages (the numerous dialects of Spoken Arabic). The same phenomenon occurs in the coexistence of written Latin with the spoken romance languages of French, Italian and Spanish.
History
The origins of Arabic date back to 3000 thousands years ago, from a group of languages called the Semitic Language family. The exact origins of the Semitic language family are still to be proven, but it is quite certain that they developed in the Mediterranean area, in particular in the Levant coasts and in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin.The first documentation of written Arabic is dated 4th century AD, but it was only from the 7th century onwards that it flourished as a major language. Indeed, in this period Arabic became the language of the Qu'ran and Islam began its rise as one of the strongest existing religions. At the same time, the Arabic Empire expanded its territories more and more and Arabic became the language of the power. Arabic has always been striclty related to religion and associated to sacrality; as a consequence, changes in it structure and vocabulary have never be frequent and many normative languages accademies have been created throughout the Arab world (Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Amman) with the function of control of the language.
Different from the past, nowadays Arabic is going through a slow process of modernization and has incorporated brand-new terms which didn't exist in the past. What is more, only in recent time both standard and colloquial Arabic has began to include colloquialisms, giving an input to the revitalization of the language. Unfortunately, the study of this process has began only recently, so to have detailed studies about the phenomenon we might have to wait a few years more.
Literature
The first form of Arabic literature was a collection of poems (500 AD) which were read aloud and handed down orally. These primitive works followed a free structure, as the standards of poetry were established only in the 8th century and since then have not changed anymore.The Nahada or Renaissance period was fundamental as for prose, since it gave rise to a literary revival which ended up with the birth of the Modern Arabic Novel. Prose developed following two lines: the first was the Neo-Classical line, which took its inspiration from works that had been written in the previous centuries, such as the Maquama and the Thousand and One Nights. The second line was the Modernist, which began with translations of West popular novels and later produced original works based on classical novel, even if it wasn't written any particular relevant piece.
Modern novel had its Golden Age in the 20th century, when writers such as Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Price for Literature in 1988.