Consider 

• Arabic is spoken by around 280 million people over an area extending from Morocco, Algeria, and Libya in the west to Oman in the east, and from the borders of Turkey in the north to Sudan and the Sahara in the south.
• Arabic is the official language of 22 countries.
• Arabic is the religious language linking Muslims in the world, i.e. a community of more than 1 billion people (more than 20% of world population), spread across 60 countries.
• Arabic is one of the six official languages of the United Nations Organization and one of the official working languages of many other international and regional organizations.
• Arabic is one of the world�s top ten languages.

What are the differences in Arabic dialects?

Classical Arabic language is the version formerly used in the Arabian Peninsula. It is the language of the Koran, of pre-Islamic poetry, and of classical literature. It is stylistically elaborate and is the language of royal courts and literary circles.

Modern Standard Arabic is a modernized and simplified version of Classical Arabic. MSA now serves for formal written and spoken communications in the media, in business, and in politics throughout the Arab world.

Colloquial Arabic is the medium of daily spoken informal communication and it varies from region to region.

Arabic represents a case of diglossia, a situation where two languages, or two varieties of the same language, coexist in one community and serve different functions. The different Arabic dialects are the native spoken varieties of Arabic used in daily interactions among Arabs. They differ from Classical Arabic and MSA, and also from each other in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. There are different dialects depending on the country and there are also many sub-dialects within the same country. The northern Moroccan Arabic dialect, for example, differs considerably from the eastern one.

Arabic dialects are generally classified into five major groups:

• dialects of Western countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Western Libya)
• dialects of the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq
• dialects of the Levant
• dialects of Egypt and Sudan
• dialects of Sub-Saharan Arab countries

Will Arabic-speaking people understand one another�s dialect?

This depends on the dialects involved, how close their respective countries are, and the extent to which the speakers of one dialect are exposed to the others� variety. Almost all Arabs understand the Egyptian Arabic dialect no matter how distant from Egypt they are as they are often exposed to it through Egyptian media.