Ethnic Syrians are of Semitic stock. Syria's population is 90% Muslim, 74% Sunni, and 16% other Muslim groups, including the Alawi, Shia, and Druze--and 10% Christian. There also is a small Syrian Jewish community. Arabic is the official, and most widely spoken, language.
Arabs, including some 300,000 Palestinian refugees, make up 90% of the population. Many educated Syrians also speak English or French, but English is the more widely understood. The Kurds, many of whom speak Kurdish, make up 9% of the population and live mostly in the northeast corner of Syria, though sizable Kurdish communities live in most major Syrian cities as well. Armenian and Turkic are spoken among the small Armenian and Turkoman populations.
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