(1) The Arabic language has official status in over 20countries and is spoken by more than 250 million people. However, the term “Arabic language” itself is used rather loosely and refers to different varieties of the language. Arabic is characterized by an interesting linguistic dichotomy: the written form of the language, Modem Standard Arabic MSA), differs in a non-trivial fashion from the various spoken varieties of Arabic, each of which is a regional dialect. MSA is the only variety that is standardized, regulated, and taught in schools. This is necessitated because of its use in written communication in formal settings. The regional dialects, used primarily for day-to-day dealings and spoken communication, are not taught formally in schools, and remain somewhat absent from traditional, and certainly official, written communication. (2) A regional dialect doesn’t have an explicit written set of grammar but there is certain authoritative organization. Furthermore, even though they are spoken varieties it is certainly possible to produce dialectal Arabic text by spelling out words using the same spelling rules used in MSA, which are mostly phonetic (3) There is a reasonable level of mutual intelligibility across the dialects, but the extent to which a particular individual is able to understand other dialects depends heavily on that person’s own dialect and their exposure to Arab culture and literature from outside of their own country. For example, the typical Arabic speaker has little trouble understanding the Egyptian dialect, thanks in no small part to Egypt’s history in literature, movie-making and television show production, and their popularity across the Arab world. On the other hand, the Moroccan dialect, especially in its spoken form, is quite difficult to understand by a Levantine Syrian or Lebanese) speaker. Therefore, from a scientific point of view, the dialects can be considered separate languages in their own right, much like North Germanic languages Norwegian/Swedish/Danish) and West Slavic languages Czech/Slovak/Polish).
According to Par (3), the dialect best understood by most Arabic speakers is