Modern Standard Arabic, the formal written and broadcast register used across the Arab world today, derives directly from Classical Arabic, the language of the Quran, and belongs to the Central Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family alongside Hebrew and Aramaic, though everyday spoken Arabic varies considerably by region into dialects, including Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf and Maghrebi Arabic, that differ from each other and from Modern Standard Arabic enough to challenge mutual intelligibility across the more distant dialect pairs despite speakers' shared literacy in the formal written standard.
Modern Standard Arabic functions as a deliberately conservative register maintained close to its Classical Arabic source specifically because that source is scripture, giving Arabic an unusually strong and continuously reinforced link between its formal contemporary register and a seventh-century religious text, unlike most other major world languages whose classical and modern forms have drifted much further apart. Arabic script, an abjad primarily marking consonants, spread historically well beyond Arabic itself to write Persian, Urdu, Ottoman Turkish and other languages of the Islamic world, carrying religious as well as linguistic influence.