Where Standard Arabic is spoken
Standard Arabic is spoken in 35 countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and 31 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Egypt | 94% | 104,572,180 |
| Saudi Arabia | 100% | 36,544,400 |
| Algeria | 74% | 34,796,650 |
| Sudan | 61% | 30,785,053 |
| Iraq | 68% | 28,616,712 |
| Yemen | 74% | 23,783,896 |
| Morocco | 62% | 23,180,312 |
| Syria | 80% | 19,092,320 |
| Jordan | 100% | 11,174,000 |
| Tunisia | 90% | 10,843,920 |
| United Arab Emirates | 78% | 7,825,116 |
| Libya | 74% | 5,447,332 |
| Palestine | 100% | 5,385,010 |
| Lebanon | 86% | 4,613,453 |
| Somalia | 34% | 4,425,882 |
| Mauritania | 85% | 3,678,834 |
| South Sudan | 27% | 3,429,999 |
| Chad | 17% | 3,245,912 |
| Oman | 81% | 3,160,612 |
| Kuwait | 100% | 3,138,360 |
| Qatar | 89% | 2,271,360 |
| Israel | 20% | 1,880,524 |
| Iran | 2% | 1,767,738 |
| Bahrain | 87% | 1,363,194 |
| Canada | 2.3% | 892,280 |
| Western Sahara | 100% | 652,271 |
| Comoros | 66% | 594,093 |
| Turkey | 0.6% | 471,069 |
| Eritrea | 4.9% | 310,854 |
| United Kingdom | 0.3% | 205,377 |
| Mali | 0.9% | 197,915 |
| Cameroon | 0.4% | 120,768 |
| Djibouti | 7.3% | 72,633 |
| Niger | 0.2% | 55,320 |
| Tanzania | Not given | Not given |
Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.
Standard Arabic has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.
How many people speak Standard Arabic?
Wikidata gives about 335 million first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2023). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where Standard Arabic sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Standard Arabic as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Afro-Asiatic
- Semitic
- West Semitic
- Central Semitic
- Arabian
- Arabic
- Standard Arabic
More about Standard Arabic
Codes: ISO 639-3 arb, Glottolog stan1318. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.
Questions about Standard Arabic
Where is Standard Arabic spoken?
Standard Arabic is spoken in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and 31 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 94% of the population of Egypt, which is about 104,572,180 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.
How many people speak Standard Arabic?
Wikidata gives about 335 million first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2023). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is Standard Arabic in?
Glottolog places Standard Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic family, in the branch Semitic, West Semitic, Central Semitic, Arabian and Arabic.