Langenesis

Afro-Asiatic family

Arabic

1500 CE – today Living

Arabic (1500 CE – today) is a living Afro-Asiatic language. Lineage: Proto-Afro-Asiatic → Proto-Semitic → … → Old Arabic → Classical Arabic → Arabic.

See Arabic on the interactive map
Speakers
400M (400,000,000)
ISO 639-3
arb
Glottocode
stan1318

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the literary and formal register. Spoken varieties (Egyptian, Levantine, Maghrebi, Gulf, etc.) are mutually divergent; a selection is tracked as sister nodes descending from Classical Arabic.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Afro-Asiaticc. 10,000 BCE – 7,000 BCE
  2. Proto-Semiticc. 4,000 BCE – 2,500 BCE
  3. Proto-West Semiticc. 3,000 BCE – 2,000 BCE
  4. Proto-Central Semiticc. 2,500 BCE – 1,500 BCE
  5. Old Arabicc. 800 BCE – 500 CE
  6. Classical Arabic500 CE – 1500 CE
  7. Arabic1500 CE – today

Sister languages 6

Also descended from Classical Arabic.

Sources