Arabic

Arabic (/ˈærəbɪk/;Arabic: العَرَبِية‎, al-ʻarabiyyah [alʕaraˈbijja] or Arabic: عربي ,عربى‎ ʻarabī [ˈʕarabiː]) is the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century and its modern descendants excluding Maltese. Arabic is spoken in a wide arc stretching across Western Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. Arabic belongs to the Afroasiatic family.

The literary language, called Modern Standard Arabic or Literary Arabic, is the only official form of Arabic. It is used in most written documents as well as in formal spoken occasions, such as lectures and news broadcasts.

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Phoenician. Standard Arabic is distinct from and more conservative than all of the spoken varieties, and the two exist in a state known as diglossia, used side-by-side for different societal functions.

Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, both written and orally, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political or religious reasons (see below). If considered multiple languages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, it is perhaps spoken by as many as 422 million speakers (native and non-native) in the Arab world, making it one of the six most-spoken languages in the world. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic with 89 million native speakers—still greater than any other Afroasiatic language. Arabic also is a liturgical language of 1.6 billion Muslims. It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.

Lesson 1 (E-girls album)

Lesson 1 is the debut studio album of the Japanese super girl group E-girls. It was released on April 17, 2013 in two different editions.

Background

The album was announced on February 26, via the group and LDH official websites. It was revealed the album prices and some details about the editions, being released in two editions: limited with a DVD and a regular CD only. In March 18, jacket covers and tracklist were revealed, the CD including fourteen tracks and DVD including all music videos released up to date and a bonus live video from EXILE's "EXILE Live Tour 2011 Tower of Wish ~Negai no Tou~". The album was also put in pre-order in Japan's iTunes Store, including an acoustic version of the song "Love Letter" as a special pre-order track only. The first press of the CD+DVD edition includes a 64-page photobook. First presses of both editions feature a special packaging and include a card with a serial code which give access to a free wallpaper download though their official website. If codes of the album and their previous release, "Candy Smile", are entered, the page also offers the download for an unreleased song.

Lesson

A lesson is a structured period of time where learning is intended to occur. It involves one or more students (also called pupils or learners in some circumstances) being taught by a teacher or instructor. A lesson may be either one section of a textbook (which, apart from the printed page, can also include multimedia) or, more frequently, a short period of time during which learners are taught about a particular subject or taught how to perform a particular activity. Lessons are generally taught in a classroom but may instead take place in a situated learning environment.

In a wider sense, a lesson is an insight gained by a learner into previously unfamiliar subject-matter. Such a lesson can be either planned or accidental, enjoyable or painful. The colloquial phrase "to teach someone a lesson", means to punish or scold a person for a mistake they have made in order to ensure that they do not make the same mistake again.

Lessons can also be made entertaining. When the term education is combined with entertainment, the term edutainment is coined.

Arabic grammar

Arabic grammar (Arabic: النحو العربي‎ an-naḥw al-‘arabī or قواعد اللغة العربية qawā‘id al-lughah al-‘arabīyah) is the grammar of the Arabic language. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages.

The article focuses both on the grammar of Literary Arabic (i.e. Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, which have largely the same grammar) and of the colloquial spoken varieties of Arabic. The grammar of the two types is largely similar in its particulars. Generally, the grammar of Classical Arabic is described first, followed by the areas in which the colloquial variants tend to differ (note that not all colloquial variants have the same grammar). The largest differences between the two systems are the loss of grammatical case; the loss of the previous system of grammatical mood, along with the evolution of a new system; the loss of the inflected passive voice, except in a few relic varieties; and restriction in the use of the dual number.

Arabic script

The Arabic script is a writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, dialects of Mandinka, the Sorani and Luri dialects of Kurdish, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, and others. Even until the 16th century, it was used to write some texts in Spanish. It is the third-most widely used writing system in the world, after Latin and Chinese.

The Arabic script is written from right to left in a cursive style. In most cases the letters transcribe consonants, or consonants and a few vowels, so most Arabic alphabets are abjads.

The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Qurʼān, the holy book of Islam. With the spread of Islam, it came to be used to write languages of many language families, leading to the addition of new letters and other symbols, with some versions, such as Kurdish, Uyghur, and old Bosnian being abugidas or true alphabets. It is also the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy.

The Arabic script has the ISO 15924 codes Arab and 160.