The Arabic language has an impressive range of dialects that vary depending on country, geography, social class, gender, age, and environment. Even though there is a standard language used in the Arab world (Modern Standard Arabic), it is not a natively spoken language because each country has its own unique colloquial dialect.
These dialects form a geographical “dialect chain” where neighboring countries understand each other but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be mutually intelligible. For example, there is a mutual intelligibility between Moroccans and Algerians but an asymmetric intelligibility between Moroccans and Iraqis.
Let’s demonstrate the linguistic diversity across the Arabic colloquial dialects for the word “cat”.
