اللغة العربية الرسمية واللهجات

🗣️ The Arabic Language — A Linguistic Diversity

(1)

The Arabic language has official status in over 20 countries 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, known as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), differs significantly from the spoken varieties, which are regional dialects.
MSA is the only variety that is standardized, regulated, and taught in schools, because it is used in formal and written communication.
The regional dialects, on the other hand, are used for daily communication, are not taught formally, and are generally absent from official writing.

(2)

A regional dialect doesn’t have an explicit written set of grammar or an authoritative organization overseeing it.
Furthermore, even though these dialects are spoken varieties, there is a reasonable level of mutual intelligibility across them.
However, the degree to which a person can understand other dialects depends heavily on their own dialect and their exposure to Arab culture and literature from other countries.
For example, most Arabic speakers have little difficulty understanding the Egyptian dialect, due to Egypt’s strong presence in movies, TV, and literature across the Arab world.
In contrast, the Moroccan dialect is often hard to understand for speakers from the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, etc.).
From a linguistic perspective, these dialects could be viewed as separate languages, similar to North Germanic languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) and West Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak, Polish).

📝 Questions

1. The word This in Paragraph (1) refers to........
A. speaking in MSA
✅ B. teaching MSA in schools
C. speaking in regional dialect
D. teaching regional dialect in schools

2. In Paragraph (2), the author suggests that........
A. it is possible to write in dialects
B. there is a formal grammar in dialects
✅ C. there is only a spoken form of dialects
D. an organization checks the grammar of dialects

3. The words mutual intelligibility in Paragraph (2) are closest in meaning to........
A. uncertainty
B. difference
✅ C. similarity
D. matching

4. According to Paragraph (2), the dialect best understood by most Arabic speakers is........
A. Syrian
B. Moroccan
✅ C. Egyptian
D. Lebanese

5. The author refers to North Germanic and West Slavic languages to show the........
A. difference between them and MSA
B. difference between them and Arabic dialects
✅ C. similarity to the situation with Arabic dialects
D. similarity to the situation with MSA