Arabic language

Arabic is a semitic langauge spoken by more than 200 million people. It originated in the Arabian Pennensula in antiquity, and was spread to its current extent by the Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries AD. Today Arabic is the predominate langague of much of the Middle East and North Africa, and is spoken by minorities in Sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, and Central Asia. In addition, many langauges of the Islamic world, such as Persian, have borrowed their alphabet and much of their vocabulary from it. Arabic is the liturgical langauge of Islam and is an official or co-official language in 22 countries, which together make up the Arab world.