The Arabic language is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab world and is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world with around 270 million speakers.
Classical Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century and is the liturgical language of Islam. Because of its liturgical role, Arabic has lent many words to other Islamic languages, akin to the role Latin has in Western languages.
During the Middle Ages Arabic was used widely in science, mathematics and philosophy, with the result that many European languages have borrowed numerous words from it. In common with other European languages, many English words are derived from Arabic, among them every-day vocabulary like 'sugar', 'cotton' and 'alcohol'.
