What are they?
- Quranic Arabic is the language of the Quran. It is part of Classical Arabic, the language of early Islamic literature, hadith and poetry.
- Modern Standard Arabic is the formal Arabic used today in books, newspapers, news broadcasts and official speeches across the Arab world. It grew out of Classical Arabic.
Arabs call both of them al-fuṣḥā (الْفُصْحَى), “the most eloquent”, to separate them from the everyday spoken dialects.
What they share
- The same 28-letter alphabet
- The same root-and-pattern system for building words
- Largely the same grammar, including verb forms and sentence structure
- A large shared vocabulary of core words
Someone who knows MSA well can understand much of the Quran, and someone who studies Quranic Arabic can read a lot of MSA.
Vocabulary
The biggest difference is vocabulary. MSA has many words for modern things, such as هَاتِف (hātif, telephone) and حَاسُوب (ḥāsūb, computer). Quranic Arabic has words for religious and classical ideas that are less common in news Arabic.
Some words have changed meaning. سَيَّارَة (sayyārah) means “car” in MSA. In the Quran, in the story of Yusuf, it means a travelling caravan (Quran 12:10). Both meanings come from the root س ي ر, to travel.
Style and vowels
- The Quran is printed with full vowel marks. Most MSA is written without them.
- Quranic Arabic uses rhythm, rhyme and word order for emphasis in ways MSA usually does not.
- Quranic Arabic always uses case endings. In spoken MSA they are often dropped.
Which should you learn first?
It depends on your goal:
- If your main goal is to understand the Quran, prayer and duas, start with Quranic Arabic. You will learn the most frequent Quranic words and the grammar you need.
- If your main goal is to read news or work in an Arabic-speaking country, start with MSA and add a dialect later.
- If you want both, start with either. The overlap is large, and progress in one helps the other.
