The Rising Importance of Arabic
Author: Jacob Lumbroso

Learning Arabic is an ever increasing skill in today's
complicated world. The continuing rise of oil prices and
the ongoing political and military instability in the
Middle East insures that Arabic speaking countries and
particularly those that are oil producing are of tremendous
importance.

From a historical perspective, the importance of the Arabic
language in the Islamic world is of course tied to it being
the language of the Koran. Islamic conquests beginning in
the 7th. Century CE carried the language beyond its
original borders replacing the previous languages of the
Middle East and North Africa.

Of course Arabic is important aside from the current
economic and political issues simply because of the number
of countries that speak it.  Arabic is spoken by over one
hundred and fifty million people throughout the world
including the following countries and territories: Algeria,
Bahrain, Chad, Comoros Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Gaza
Strip, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya,
Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia,
Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the
West Bank, Western Sahara, the Yemen Arab Republic.

Arabic can open doors to employment in a variety of
occupations such as in virtually any business related to
oil and travel. With the ongoing  war in Iraq, the military
finds itself in desperate need of translators and
interpreters. Intelligences serves like the CIA and the FBI
still find themselves desperately behind in the translation
of many documents. Consequently Arabic speakers are being
paid high wages to fill these critical services.

For the employee involved in finance or oil exploration
Arabic can be a critical asset. Studying the language to
order food, communicate with locals, and talk with taxi
drivers is certainly beneficial, but the ability to
communicate with Arabic speaking companies affords the
Arabic speaker a connection and edge in business that night
otherwise be missed in English only conversations.

Studying Arabic is one step to joining the ranks of
international business men and women oriented toward the
growing market found in the expanding Arabic market. Arabic
is one of the great languages of the world. Learning the
language is becoming part of a world-class education.
Arabic is spoken throughout the world in communities of
Arabic émigrés.

Arabic is not an easy language to learn and there is no
single method can insure that the proficiency will be
achieved without investment of time. So it's important to
vary your resources to insure that you maximize your
language learning experience. Learning Arabic is one of the
most complicated languages to learn for most English
speakers given the fact that a non Latin script is used.

Choosing the right course or methodology is of course
critical and that can make learning the language a relative
cake walk or much more difficult.


About the Author:

Jacob Lumbroso is a world traveler and an enthusiast for
foreign languages, history, and foreign cultures. He writes
articles on history and languages for
http://www.usedpimsleur.com and has used Pimsleur courses
to learn various languages.