Sainte Catherine

Arabic (العربية al-ʿarabīyyah or عربي/عربى ʿarabī) is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century CE. This includes both the literary language (Modern Standard Arabic or Literary Arabic, used in most written documents as well as in formal spoken occasions, such as lectures and radio broadcasts) and the spoken Arabic varieties, spoken in a wide arc of territory stretching across the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, most closely related to Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic and Phoenician. Written Arabic is distinct from and more conservative than all of the spoken varieties, and the two exist in a state known as diglossia, used side-by-side for different societal functions.

Some of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, and the varieties as a whole constitute a sociolinguistic language. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political and/or ethnic reasons. If considered multiple languages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, it counts more than 300 million first language speakers (according to some estimates, as high as 340 million), more than that of any other Semitic language. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would most likely be Egyptian Arabic, with more than 50 million native speakers — still greater than any other Semitic language.

Saint Catherine's Monastery (Greek: Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης Monì tìs Agìas Ekaterìnis), commonly known as Santa Katarina lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai in the city of Saint Catherine in Egypt's South Sinai Governorate. The monastery is Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the UNESCO report (60100 ha / Ref: 954), this monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world together with the Monastery of Saint Anthony, situated across the Red Sea in the desert south of Cairo, which also lays claim to that title. In the area around the monastery, a small town has grown, with hotels and swimming pools, called Saint Katherine City.