Classified alongside other Semitic languages like Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages, Arabic has more speakers than any other language that belongs to the Semitic language family. Spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language in the Middle East as well as North Africa, Arabic has many varied geographically distributed spoken varieties, some of them being mutually intelligible. The Arabic writing system is from right-to-left and it has incorporated many words from languages such as Hebrew, Persian, Syrian, Turkish and other contemporary European languages. Learn Arabic…. Arabic is the 5th most commonly spoken native language in the world. It is the official language of over 20 countries and there are well over 300 million native speakers of the language. These speakers are largely concentrated in the Middle East, but there are minority groups of native speakers throughout the world. It is also an official language of the United Nations, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Conference, and the African Union.