Swan in Arabic T-Shirt

Arabic (العربية) is a Semitic language, like Hebrew and Aramaic. Around 260 million people use it as their first language. Many more people can also understand it as a second language. It is written with the Arabic alphabet, which is written from right to left, like Hebrew. Since it is so widely spoken throughout the world, it is one of the six official languages of the UN, the others being English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Many countries speak Arabic as an official language, but not all of them speak it the same way. The language has many dialects or varieties, such as Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic, Maghrebi Arabic, Levantine Arabic and many others.