Fact · Languages and accents
A 2016 Interspeech paper says that Modern Standard Arabic is the official language of spoken and written Arabic media, while colloquial Arabic is the set of regional spoken varieties.
Checked against its source on October 17, 2026
In the source's own words
“Modern standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language of spoken and written Arabic media”
Colloquialising Modern Standard Arabic Text for Improved Speech Recognition, Sarah Al-Shareef and Thomas Hain, Interspeech 2016, 2016, Abstract.
Open the original (DOI 10.21437/Interspeech.2016-788)- What it measures
- The paper contrasts this formal variety with Colloquial Arabic, the regional dialects used in everyday conversation. The paper also notes that colloquial Arabic has fewer standardized written resources, which makes recognizing it harder.
- What it does not show
- A description of how the paper frames the two varieties. It does not give a precise boundary between MSA and colloquial speech, which varies by speaker and situation.