Middle East Studies Center

Language Studies

The World Languages and Literatures Department in the College of Arts and Sciences provides studies a wide variety of language study options. A Bachelor of Arts is available for Arabic and students can also minor in major languages of the region: Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew. 

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Arabic Studies student sitting on a camel in front of the pyramids at Giza, Egypt.

Arabic

Arabic is spoken in more than 30 countries and is the official language in 25 countries. As many as 422 million people around the world speak Arabic, making it the fifth most spoken language. At PSU, you can learn Arabic for real-world settings, read and write from right to left, speak Fusha (Standard Arabic) and 'Ammiyyah (Colloq...

Hebrew language

Hebrew - Modern

Modern Hebrew is a unique language in the sense that it was a dead language between the second and twentieth centuries but is currently the first language of seven million speakers. Thus, to study Hebrew is to study the greatest experiment in linguistics. Modern Hebrew is also a gateway to older languages such as Biblical Hebrew...

Persian miniature art.

Persian

Persian is spoken by over 100 million people in Iran, Afganistan, and Tajikistan as well as neighboring countries. It's one of the world's ancient languages and once the lingua franca of central Asia, so Persian is a gateway to this fascinating part of the world. The region's strategic importance and U.S.-Iranian rela...