MasterAdmin wanted me to give you a litle info about Arabic language and culture. I don't speak Arabic very well, but I do know a bit about the culture and Islam.

General Facts about Arabic
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* Arabic is spoken as a first language by over 200 million people living in the Middle East.

* Arabic is spoken as a second language by Muslims around the world - they can be found in former Soviet states, Southeast Asia, Sub-saharan Africa...

* Arabic has several dialects which vary quite a bit from each other in vocabulary and pronunciation(and a little bit in grammar). Arabic speakers can understand speakers of other dialects without much difficulty, although they may have trouble understanding words not used in their own dialect(though they usually get it by context). Most Arabic speakers are familiar with colloquial terms of other dialects.

* The Arabic of newspapers and TV broadcasts is Modern Standard Arabic, which is close to the Arabic of the Qur'aan.

* The most widely understood dialect of Arabic is probably Egyptian, as most of the music and movies of the Arab world are produced in Egypt.

Grammar bits
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* Arabic is an Afro-Asiatic language, meaning it is in the same family of languages as Hebrew, Ethiopian, and Somali(w00t).

* Arabic has two genders, masculine and feminine.

* Arabic words have "stems", for example the stem "k-t-b" has to do with writing. "katab" is "to write"(he wrote). "kaatib" is a clerk. "kitaab" is a book. "maktab" is a place of writing, or a desk or office.

* Arabic has a special "dual form" form when there are two of something in addition to the plural.

* Instead of simply adding a suffix to form plurals(like most words in English), most Arabic words form plurals by changing vowel combinations within the stem, for example in English the plural of "mouse" is "mice", and the plural of "maTHaf" is "maTaaHif"(museums).

* Arabic verbs add prefixes as well as suffixes in regular conjugation.

Pronunciation bits
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* Depending on the dialect, some Arabic speakers interchange the sounds g/j, j/y, q/g/(nothing), k/ch

* Arabic has several sounds that aren't in English or other European languages.

Errr...what else should I say about it? Um...it's really, really fun, so learn it! Anyone who knows anything about Arabic(cough, Mixaelus, cough, Jasper) can add to the list.