The fourth article of the Basic Law of the Syrian Arab Republic states that the official language of Syria is Arabic. In addition to the officially adopted literary version, several everyday colloquial varieties or dialects are widely circulated in the country. Despite their prevalence, academics believe that vernacular Arabic is just a distorted language of illiterate people.
Some statistics and facts
- More than 15 million people speak Arabic in Syria.
- On the territory along the Mediterranean coast, the Syro-Palestinian dialect of Arabic is widespread, in which almost 9 million inhabitants of the republic communicate.
- In the Aleppo region, Mesopotamian is popular - at least 1.8 million speakers.
- In the east of the Syrian Desert, there are up to half a million speakers of the Nedji dialect of Arabic.
- National minorities in Syria speak their own languages. The most popular are Armenian, North Kurdish, Adyghe and Kabardian.
- Arabic is one of the six official languages of the UN and a means of interethnic communication for all Arab countries.
Arabic: history and modernity
The official language of Syria is considered by linguists to belong to the Afrasian family, and in the world it is spoken by more than 290 million people, for 240 of whom Arabic is their mother tongue. Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an and is often used for religious purposes.
The writing system was created on the basis of the Arabic alphabet, and the vocabulary has not changed much over the centuries and is still the original Arabic lexicon today. Arabic is written from right to left, capital letters are not used, and punctuation marks are placed opposite, from left to right.
A single standard applies only to modern literary Arabic, while dialects are very different from each other in different countries and even in opposite territories of the same state. That is why speakers of different dialects are not always able to understand each other in communication.
Tourist notes
Foreign languages are widely studied in Syrian schools, and many residents of cities under 40 speak English or French. But the situation in Syria lately is not very conducive to tourism, and therefore it is better to postpone a visit to the country until better times, until the situation stabilizes.
