Among the various identifying characteristics of ethnic groups, such as ancestry, religion, and territory, language is often considered the most prominent. This entry focuses on the extent to which Arabic itself serves as a unifying identity symbol, and then looks at the significance of language variation for some of the minority ethnic groups within the Arab world. Such groups may relate to language in a variety of ways, and distinctions based on language do not always correlate with those based on other criteria.

Before the movement of the Arabs out of Arabia and across the Levan…