MSA White Paper
- Details
- Written by AL Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is defined as the register of Arabic used in modern day media, especially Arabic TV channels and publications, both print and online. However, this term has not yet received adequate linguistic research and study efforts in order to establish standards to distinguish it from Classical Arabic (CA, or Classical Fus’ha Arabic). This white paper attempts to shed some light on the linguistic aspects that distinguish the two registers, and establish preliminary standards to achieve this.
It is worth mentioning that MSA should be distinguished from spoken dialects in various Arabic speaking countries. Dialects are spoken forms that makes Arabic diglossic, but they are not registers of Arabic.