ARABIC LANGUAGE Courses

The Center for Modern Languages currently offers quarterly courses and intensive summer courses of the Arabic Language. They are organized according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

About the Arabic Language

The Arabian language belongs to the Semitic branch of South Afro-Asiatic family.

Arabic literature dates back to the sixth century A.D. and can be divided into three large groups:

•       Classical Arabic before Islam
•       Classical Arabic after the emergence of Islam
•       Modern Arabic

The Arabic alphabet comes from Nabataean and is a system that contains 28 cosonant letters. It is the second most widely used writing system in the world and has been adopted by other non- Semitic languages such as Modern Persian, Farsi or Urdu, Malay and some West African languages such as Hausa.

The Arabian script is written from right to left and books are read from back to front. It is based on 18 figures that vary depending on the preceding or following letter. As a result of a combination of dots below and above these figures, the 28 consonants completed with three long vowels allow you to write properly.

The task of writing the verses of the Koran as decoration for nearly 1,400 years has developed many different calligraphic styles, depending upon the historical period and geographic region of a given piece of writing. To Arabic people, calligraphy is considered to be a delicate art.