Modern Written Arabic, Volume III (of 3 books course), is based on materials which have been used at the Foreign Service Institute Arabic Language and Area School in Beirut and Tunis for a number of years to help members of the U. S. Foreign Service learn to read the modern Arabic press. This book contains the material for units 65-96.
A. Nashat Naja a member of the teaching staff of the School in both its locations planned and carried out the work in its present form, building on the second volume. In 1974 he began a complete re-write of the materials then in use. He continued the work through the difficult 1974-1975 period in Beirut subsequently completing it at the new location in Tunis. Mr. Naja carried out his work under three school directors: James A. Snow, Harlie L. Smith, Jr., and Margaret K. Omar.
Camera copy for this volume was prepared in Washington where the work was coordinated by Marianne L. Adams, the FSI Publications Officer who consulted with Dr. Snow and worked with Naguib Guirgis who typed the Arabic. Proofreading was done by Naim Owais with assistance from Grace Shahid, Souria H. Haddad and Mohamed Achalaoune, all of the FSI Washington Arabic staff. In addition Mr. Owais compiled the materials for the glossary. Maryko Deemer typed the English glosses. Dr. Smith and Dr. Snow contributed final editorial suggestions and checking.
You can find the previous volumes of the FSI Modern Written Arabic course here:
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FSI - Modern Written Arabic Course 1
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FSI - Modern Written Arabic Course 2
Modern Standard Arabic has developed out of Classical Arabic, the language of the Quran. During the era of the caliphate,Classical Arabic was the language used for all religious, cultural, administrative and scholarly purposes.
Modern Standard Arabic is the official Arabic language. It can be written and spoken, and there is no difference between the written and the spoken form.
In its written form, Modern Standard Arabic is the language of literature and the media. Books, newspapers, magazines, official documents, private and business correspondence, street signs and shop signs - all are written in Modern Standard Arabic.
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD. This includes both the literary language and varieties of Arabic spoken in a wide arc of territory stretching across the Middle East and North Africa. Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, both written and orally, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political and/or ethnic reasons (see below). If considered multiple languages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, it perhaps is spoken by as many as 280 million first language speakers, making it one of the half dozen most populous languages in the world. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic, with 54 million native speakers still greater than any other Semitic language.
Arabic Modern Standard Arabic is spoken in: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Palestine
Arabic Modern Standard Arabic has no known alternate names.
