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NYU Abu Dhabi’s alumni and students celebrate World Arabic Language Day
17 Dec 2020
Gulf Today, Staff Reporter
In celebration of World Arabic Language Day on Dec.18, NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) has connected with ten current and former students who now speak Arabic as a result of learning the language during their time at the University.
Over the past decade, NYUAD has been igniting students’ passion for the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the official language of 22 countries worldwide.
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Victoria Anatolyevna Blinova: Originally from Russia, NYUAD alumna Class of 2017 Victoria Blinova majored in Social Research and Public Policy, with a minor in Arabic. She decided to learn Arabic when she moved to Abu Dhabi, during her freshman year. Blinova chose to learn the Shami dialect because she had many friends from that region. Blinova said that Arabic helped her significantly in job applications.
Abu Dhabi: One of the most widely spoken languages in the world, Arabic will be celebrated across the world tomorrow. Marked every year on December 18, Arabic Language Day commemorates the day in 1973 when the United Nations first adopted Arabic as one of its six working languages.
More than 400 million people speak the language across the Arab world. It is the lingua franca of the UAE, and the Arabian Gulf, of the Levantine and a number of African nations. And as the liturgical language of Islam, Arabic is held in high honour by nearly two billion Muslims.
Fluent expats
While native Arabic speakers are found throughout the UAE, many expats are also keen to master the world’s fifth most widely spoken language. In fact, some are so fluent that it would be difficult to set them apart from native speakers.