Q 01/05

Arabic belongs to which language family?

A) Turkic

B) Afroasiatic

C) Niger-Congo

D) Indo-European

Answer · why

B) Afroasiatic

Afroasiatic also takes in Hebrew, Amharic, Nigeria's Hausa and ancient Egyptian, so Arabic is a distant cousin of the language of the pharaohs.

Q 02/05

Arabic runs right to left, but which part of a line is still written left to right?

A) Names

B) Numbers

C) Questions

D) Titles

Answer · why

B) Numbers

Numbers keep their biggest digit on the left, as in English, so a line of Arabic with a date or a price in it changes direction and back again.

Q 03/05

Which letter comes first in the Arabic alphabet?

A) Jim

B) Alif

C) Mim

D) Lam

Answer · why

B) Alif

Alif is thought to have begun as a drawing of an ox's head, the same sign the Greeks turned into alpha and the Romans into A, so the Arabic and Englis...

Q 04/05

What is the term for a writing system like Arabic's, whose letters mainly record consonants?

A) An alphabet proper

B) A syllabary

C) A logography

D) An abjad

Answer · why

D) An abjad

An abjad spells out consonants and leaves readers to supply short vowels from context; Arabic's vowel marks are saved mainly for the Quran, children's...

Q 05/05

In Arabic names, what does 'ibn' or 'bin' mean?

A) Father of

B) Servant of

C) Son of

D) House of

Answer · why

C) Son of

Son of is what ibn or bin means; the reverse exists too: abu, 'father of', lets a man go by his child's name, as Mahmoud Abbas is known as Abu Mazen.