Where Is Arabic Spoken?
Mauretania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan have Arabic as their primary official language, although not all of the citizens of these countries are speakers of Arabic.  Arabic is also an official language of Israel, Djibouti, and Somalia.  There are also Arabic-speaking populations in Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the official languages of Malta, Maltese, is an interesting case. Even though it is related to the Algerian and Tunisian varieties of Arabic, and thus classified as a Semitic language, it is the only known form of Arabic that is written in the Latin script. Moreover, due to its linguistic isolation from the Arab world during the heyday of European colonization, it has been heavily influenced by Italian and English.

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I would like to thank all of the linguists who have volunteered their time to answer queries posted to the Linguist List. These pages represent a compilation of frequently asked questions about the Arabic language. The HTML of these pages was created by Carmen Cross, a Ph.D. student in Arabic linguistics at Georgetown University.  Please e-mail Carmen or the panel of linguists if you have any further questions about linguistics in general or Arabic in particular.