Classical Arabic and its modern version Modern Standard Arabic are synthetic languages. To the contrary, English is an analytical one. In a synthetic language, the form of any word indicates almost all its grammatical characteristics such as gender, person, number, tense and others. In analytical languages, additional words fulfill these functions, and the meaning words are responsible predominantly for the semantics. For example, the English verb "do" can be interpreted in different syntactic contexts as follows: 1) imperative - "Do it!", 2) infinitive - "I can do it", 3) present tense - "I do it", 4) past tense - "Did I do it?". An Arabic word rarely can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, the Arabic word "katabti" corresponds exclusively to "you wrote" female, singular, second person, past tense.
To change an English word's grammatical characteristics, such as the number, tense or voice, we often use final inflections. For example: apple - apples, work- worked, although sometimes we change the whole word, as in: mouse - mice, think - thought. Arabs use internal inflection, the sequence of vowels transforming in a predictable manner, to change the grammatical characteristics of a word. The internal inflection can be compared to irregular English verb conjugations, such as: drink, drank, drunk or sing, sang, sung. For example, ka-ta-ba means "he wrote," while ku-ti-ba corresponds to "it was written." Thus, by changing the vowels we have changed the voice of the verb. This principle corresponds to all the parts of speech.
English uses prefixing and affixing as the most popular methods of word formation. Arabic uses modeling which means creating words according to the models or patterns. Models include stable consonant and vowel components interwoven with three empty cells for tri-consonantal root. Imagine that X.Y.Z. correspond to any tri-consonantal root. The model reflecting an occupation or a profession in Arabic looks as follows: XaYYaZ. You should double the second consonant of any root and put a vowel "a" after the first and after the second consonants. If you have a root M.L.H. with the general meaning "navigation" to obtain the meaning "a sailor" or "a mariner" use the model mentioned above and you will get "mallah". The root M.L.K. has the general meaning of possession. You can obtain the meaning "an owner" using the same model, and the word will be "mallak."
The Arabs do not use the verb "to be" in the present tense. Instead, they use personal pronouns to compose a sentence. For instance, instead of "this doctor is a professional," they say "this doctor he professional." Modern Standard Arabic uses the archaic dual number for all the parts of speech, excluding particles and prepositions. For instance, "he is an intelligent student" sounds like "huwa talib thakiyy" (he student intelligent), while "both are intelligent students" sounds like "hum-a talib-ani thakiyy-ani", that differs from the plural form "hum tullab thakiyy-una" (they are intelligent students).
In each Arabic country, people speak a separate language which is often called a dialect due to political reasons. Modern Standard Arabic is a lingua franca--the commonly understood language--of the Arabic-speaking world.