Localization in Modern Standard Arabic

Abstract

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language used in all Arabic countries. In this paper we describe an investigation of the uniformity of MSA across different countries. Many studies have been carried out locally or regionally on Arabic and its dialects. Here we look on a more global scale by studying language variations between countries. The source material used in this investigation was derived from national newspapers available on the Web, which provided samples of common media usage in each country. This corpus has been used to investigate the lexical characteristics of Modern Standard Arabic as found in 10 different Arabic speaking countries. We describe our collection methods, the types of lexical analysis performed, and the results of our investigations. With respect to newspaper articles, MSA seems to be very uniform across all the countries included in the study, but we have detected various types of differences, with implications for computational processing of MSA.

Word Usage Variations in Arabic Newspapers: A Corpus Investigation

“…As a result, MSA today has become a formal language that is widely used in both written and most of the spoken mediums throughout 21 Arab countries (Abdelali, 2004). Boudelaa and Wilson (2010) noted that MSA is the language used in written and formal oral communication, such as broadcast news, courtroom language and university lectures and generally the language of the mass media.…”

“…It is also a major factor of loan-word recognition from foreign language into Arabic that led to its use in Arabic newspapers. (Abdelali, 2004). Abdelali (2004) identified some differences in word usage in newspapers have been identified.…”

“…(Abdelali, 2004). Abdelali (2004) identified some differences in word usage in newspapers have been identified. For example, he mentioned that the word "training" was used in Arabic as ‫انررتص‬ (training), in Al-Khabar newspaper from Algeria, but Al-Jazirah, a newspaper from Saudi Arabia uses the word ‫انردرَة‬ (training).…”

“…Although the great effort of unifying Arabic language through MSA, variations and differences in the language usage still occur in the Arabic newspapers that use MSA Volume 14(2), June 2014(http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2014-1402 ISSN: 1675-8021 (Abdelali, 2004). This shows that the goal of using MSA in the process of standardizing Arabic language is not fully achieved.…”

“…The findings of this study will aid the understanding of newspaper readers around the world about the correct usage of these variations. Ahmed Abdelali (2004) conducted an almost similar study which explored the variations in MSA language usage between 11 Arabic newspapers. However, his study focused on newspapers from the Arab countries only in contrast to the current study, which included Arabic newspapers from non Arab countries.…”