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Varieties of Arabic

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The Arabic language is a Semitic language with many varieties. This entry looks at spoken varieties of Arabic, distinguishing them from Standard Arabic and from each other. These are the Arabic languages and dialects that native speakers learn at home, rather than at school. Arabic is a diglossic language.

Contents

Overview

In pre-Islamic times, Arabic had noticeable dialect distinctions - in particular between Qahtanite, Adnan, and Himyar. In modern times, the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world differ radically from the Literary Arabic and from each other. For some of these, the question of "language" versus "dialect" can be highly politicized; to avoid that, the neutral term "variety" will be used here.

General varieties

The main division between varieties of spoken Arabic is between the Maghrebi (North Africa) varieties (characterized by a first person singular in n-) and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary varieties and the much more conservative Bedouin varieties. "Peripheral" varieties located in countries where Arabic is not a dominant language (e.g., Turkey, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Chad, and Nigeria) are particularly divergent in some respects, especially vocabulary, being less influenced by classical Arabic; however, historically they fall within the same dialect classifications as better-known varieties. In some areas, different religious communities spoke slightly different varieties - thus in Baghdad the Christians and Jews spoke a qeltu-variety while the Muslims spoke a gilit-variety. (Both words mean "I said". For further discussion, see Judæo-Arabic languages.)

Maltese, though descended from Arabic, is considered by its speakers to be a separate language and is in fact written with Latin letters. Probably the most divergent of non-creole Arabic varieties is Cypriot Maronite Arabic, a nearly extinct variety heavily influenced by Greek. Speakers of some of these varieties are unable to converse with speakers of another variety of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners (including Egyptians) can generally understand one another, they often have difficulties understanding North Africans (excluding Egyptians) (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Egyptian films and other media.)

One factor in the differentiation of the varieties is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine and Egyptian fiih, and Maghrebi kayen all mean "there is", and come from Arabic yakuun, fiihi, kaa'in respectively.

The spoken varieties of Arabic have occasionally been written, usually in the Arabic alphabet. Notably, many plays and poems, as well as a few other works (even translations of Plato) exist in Lebanese Arabic and Egyptian Arabic; books of poetry, at least, exist for most varieties. In Algeria, colloquial Maghreb Arabic was taught as a separate subject under French colonization, and some textbooks exist. Mizrahi Jews throughout the Arab world translated parts of their liturgy into Arabic of varying levels of colloquialness, and wrote them, as well as letters and accounts and occasionally stories, in the Hebrew alphabet. The Latin alphabet was advocated for Lebanese Arabic by Said Aql, whose supporters published several books in his transcription. Earlier, in 1994, Abdelaziz Pasha Fahmi, a member of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Egypt proposed the replacement of the Arabic alphabet with the Latin alphabet. His proposal was discussed in two sessions in the communion but was rejected, and was faced with strong opposition in cultural circles.

Arabic-based pidgins, with a small largely Arabic vocabulary lacking most Arabic morphological features, are or have been widespread along the southern edge of the Sahara; the medieval geographer al-Bakri records a text in one (in a place probably corresponding to modern Mauritania) in the 11th century. In some areas, especially around the southern Sudan, these have creolized; see the list below. The resulting creoles are not mutually comprehensible with other Arabic varieties.

Classification of varieties

Classification of varieties, with some info from Versteegh [link]:

Pre-Islamic or pre-Arab Expansion

Post-Islamic or post-Arab Expansion

Western varieties:

Central varieties:

Northern varieties: Southern varieties: Creoles: Country-based dialects:

Sedentary vs. Bedouin

A basic dialectal distinction that cuts across the entire geography of the Arabic-speaking world is between sedentary and Bedouin varieties. Across the Levant and North Africa (i.e. the areas of post-Islamic settlement), this is mostly reflected as an urban (sedentary) vs. rural (Bedouin) split, but the situation is more complicated in Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula. The distinction stems from the settlement patterns in the wake of the Arab conquests. As regions were conquered, army camps were set up that eventually grew into cities, and settlement of the rural areas by Bedouins gradually followed thereafter.

The most obvious phonetic difference between the two dialect groups is the pronunciation of the letter ق qaaf, which is voiced in the Bedouin dialects (usually /g/, but sometimes a palatalized variation /ʤ/ or /ʒ/), but voiceless in the sedentary dialects (/q/ or /ʔ/). The other major phonetic difference is that the Bedouin dialects preserve the Classical Arabic (CA) interdentals /θ/ ث and /ð/ ذ, and merge the CA emphatic sounds /dˤ/ ض and /ðˤ/ ظ into /ðˤ/ rather than sedentary /dˤ/.

However, the most significant differences are in syntax. The sedentary dialects, in particular, share a number of common innovations from CA. This has led to the suggestion, first articulated by Charles Ferguson, that a simplified koine developed in the army staging camps in Iraq, from where the remaining parts of the modern Arab world were conquered.

In general, the Bedouin dialects are more conservative than the sedentary dialects, and the Bedouin dialects within the Arabic peninsula are even more conservative than those elsewhere. Within the sedentary dialects, the western varieties (particularly, Moroccan Arabic) are less conservative than the eastern varieties.

Morphological and syntactic variation

All dialects, sedentary and Bedouin, share the following innovations from Classical Arabic (CA):

*In CA, there was no number agreement between subject and verb when the subject was third-person and the subject followed the verb.
  • Loss of case distinctions.
  • Loss of original mood distinctions other than the indicative and imperative (i.e. subjunctive, jussive, energetic I, energetic II).
    • *The dialects differ in how exactly the new indicative was developed from the old forms. The sedentary dialects adopted the old subjunctive forms (feminine /ī/, masculine plural /ū/), while many of the Bedouin dialects adopted the old indicative forms (feminine /īna/, masculine plural /ūna/).
    *The sedentary dialects developed new mood distinctions; see below.
  • Loss of dual marking everywhere except on nouns.
    • *A frozen dual persists as the regular plural marking of a small number of words that normally come in pairs (e.g. eyes, hands, parents).
    *In addition, a productive dual marking on nouns exists in most dialects. (Tunisian and Moroccan Arabic are exceptions.) This dual marking differs syntactically from the frozen dual in that it cannot take possessive suffixes. In addition, it differs morphologically from the frozen dual in various dialects, such as Levantine Arabic.
    *The productive dual differs from CA in that its use is optional and factitive, whereas the use of the CA dual was mandatory even in cases of implicitly dual reference.
    *The CA dual was marked not only on nouns by also on verbs, adjectives, pronouns and demonstratives.
  • Development of an analytic genitive construction to rival the constructed genitive.
    • *Compare the similar development of shel in Modern Hebrew.
    *The Bedouin dialects make the least use of the analytic genitive. Moroccan Arabic makes the most use of it, to the extent that the constructed genitive is no longer productive, and used only in certain relatively frozen constructions.
  • The indirect object, marked in CA by the preposition /la-/ followed by an enclitic pronoun, has become fused onto the end of the verb.
  • The relative pronoun is no longer inflected. (In CA, it took gender, number and case endings.)
  • Pronominal clitics ending in a short vowel moved the vowel before the consonant.
    • *Hence, second singular /-ak/ and /-ik/ rather than /-ka/ and /-ki/; third singular masculine /-uh/ rather than /-hu/.
    *Similarly, the feminine plural verbal marker /-na/ became /-an/.
    *Because of the absolute prohibition in all Arabic dialects against having two vowels in hiatus, the above changes occurred only when a consonant preceded the ending. When a vowel preceded, the forms either remained as-is or lost the final vowel, becoming /-k/, /-ki/, /-h/ and /-n/, respectively. Combined with other phonetic changes, this resulted in multiple forms for each clitic (up to three), depending on the phonetic environment.
    *The verbal markers /-tu/ (first singular) and /-ta/ (second singular masculine) both became /-t/, while second singular feminine /-ti/ remained.
    *The forms given here were the original forms, and have often suffered various changes in the modern dialects.
    *All of these changes were triggered by the loss of final short vowels (see below).
  • Various simplifications have occurred in the range of variation in verbal paradigms.
    • *Third-weak verbs with radical /w/ and radical /y/ have merged in the form I perfect tense. (They had already merged in CA, except in form I.)
    *Form I perfect faʕula verbs have disappeared, often merging with faʕila.
    *Doubled verbs now have the same endings as third-weak verbs.
    *Some endings of third-weak verbs have been replaced by those of the strong verbs (or vice-versa, in some dialects).
    All dialects except some Bedouin dialects of the Arabian peninsula share the following innovations from CA:

    *New passives have often been developed by co-opting the original reflexive formations in CA, particularly verb forms V, VI and VII. (In CA these were derivational, not inflectional, as neither their existence nor exact meaning could be depended upon; however, they have often been incorporated into the inflectional system, especially in more innovative sedentary dialects.)
    *Hassaniya Arabic contains a newly developed inflected passive that looks somewhat like the old CA passive.
  • Loss of the indefinite /n/ suffix (tanwiin) on nouns.
    • *When this marker still appears, it is variously /an/, /in/, or /en/.
    *In some Bedouin dialects it still marks indefiniteness on any noun, although this is optional and often used only in oral poetry.
    *In other dialects it marks indefiniteness on post-modified nouns (by adjectives or relative clauses).
    *All Arabic dialects preserve a form of the CA adverbial accusative /an/ suffix, which was originally a tanwiin marker.
  • Loss of verb form IV, the causative.
    • *Verb form II sometimes gives causatives, but it is not productive.
  • Uniform use of /i/ in imperfect verbal prefixes.
    • *CA had /u/ before form II, III and IV active, and before all passives, and /a/ elsewhere.
    *Some Bedouin dialects in the Arabian peninsula have uniform /a/.
    *Najdi Arabic has /a/ when the following vowel is /i/, and /i/ when the following vowel is /a/.
    All sedentary dialects share the following additional innovations:

    *The indicative is marked by a prefix, while the subjunctive lacks this.
    *The prefix is /b/ or /bi/ in Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic, but /ka/ or /ta/ in Moroccan Arabic.
    *Tunisian Arabic lacks an indicative prefix, and therefore does not have this distinction, along with Maltese and at least some varieties of Algerian and Libyan Arabic.
  • Loss of /h/ in the third-person masculine enclitic pronoun, when attached to a word ending in a consonant.
    • *The form is usually /u/ or /o/ in sedentary dialects, but /ah/ or /ih/ in Bedouin dialects.
    *After a vowel, the bare form /h/ is used, but in many sedentary dialects the /h/ is lost here as well. In Egyptian Arabic, for example, this pronoun is marked in this case only by lengthening of the final vowel and concomitant stress shift onto it.
    In addition, the following innovations are characteristic of many or most sedentary dialects:

    *In combination with the fusion of the indirect object and the development of new mood markers, this results in verbal complexes that are approaching agglutinative languages in their complexity.
    *An example from Egyptian Arabic is
    :*/ma-bi-t-gib-u-ha-lnā-ʃ/
    :*[negation]-[indicative]-[2nd.person.subject]-bring-[plural.subject]-her-to.us-[negation]
    :*"You (plural) aren't bringing her to us."
    *(NOTE: Versteegh glosses /bi/ as continuous.)
  • In Egyptian, Tunisian and Moroccan Arabic, the distinction between active and passive participles has disappeared except in form I and in some Classical borrowings.
    • *These dialects tend to use form V and VI active participles as the passive participles of forms II and III.
    Other notable innovations:

    * The triliteral type encompasses traditional form I verbs (strong: /ktʔ/ "write"; geminate: /ʃəmm/ "smell"; hollow: /biʕ/ "sell", /gul/ "say", /xaf/ "fear"; weak /ʃri/ "buy", /ħbu/ "crawl", /bda/ "begin"; irregular: /kul/-/kla/ "eat", /ddi/ "take away", /ʒi/ "come").
    * The quadriliteral type encompasses strong [CA form II, quadriliteral form I]: /sˤrˤfəq/ "slap", /hrrəs/ "break", /hrnən/ "speak nasally"; hollow-2 [CA form III, non-CA]: /ʕayən/ "wait", /gufəl/ "inflate", /mixəl/ "eat" (slang); hollow-3 [CA form VIII, IX]: /xtˤarˤ/ "choose", /ħmarˤ/ "redden"; weak [CA form II weak, quadriliteral form I weak]: /wrri/ "show", /sˤqsˤi/ "inquire"; hollow-2-weak [CA form III weak, non-CA weak]: /sali/ "end", /ruli/ "roll", /tiri/ "shoot"; irregular: /sˤifətˤ/-/sˤafətˤ/ "send".
    * There are also a certain number of quinquiliteral or longer verbs, of various sorts, e.g. weak: /pidˤali/ "pedal", /blˤani/ "scheme, plan", /fanti/ "dodge, fake"; remnant CA form X: /stəʕməl/ "use", /stahəl/ "deserve"; diminutive: /t-birˤʒəz/ "act bourgeois", /t-biznəs/ "deal in drugs".
    * Note that those types corresponding to CA forms VIII and X are rare and completely unproductive, while some of the non-CA types are productive. At one point, form IX significantly increased its productivity over CA, and there are perhaps 50-100 of these verbs currently, mostly stative but not necessarily referring to colors or bodily defects. However, this type is no longer very productive.
    * Due to the merging of short /a/ and /i/, most of these types show no stem difference between perfect and imperfect, which is probably why the languages has incorporated new types so easily.
  • Egyptian Arabic, probably under the influence of Coptic, puts the demonstrative pronoun after the noun (/al-X da/ "this X" instead of CA /hāðā l-X/) and leaves interrogative pronouns in situ rather than fronting them, as in other dialects.

    • Phonetic variation

    * Depending on the exact phonetic environment, this either caused reduction of two vowels into a single long vowel or diphthong (when between two vowels), insertion of a homorganic glide /j/ or /w/ (when between two vowels, the first of which was short or long /i/ or /u/ and the second not the same), lengthening of a preceding short vowel (between a short vowel and a following non-vowel), or simple deletion (elsewhere). This resulted initially in a large number of complicated morphophonemic variations in verb paradigms.
    * In CA and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), /ʔ/ is still pronounced.
    * However, because this change had already happened in Meccan Arabic at the time the Koran was written, it is reflected in the orthography of written Arabic, where a diacritic known as hamza is inserted either above an alif, waaw or yaa, or "on the line" (between characters); or in certain cases, a diacritic alif maadda ("lengthened alif") is inserted over an alif. (As a result, proper spelling of words involving /ʔ/ is probably the most difficult issues in Arabic orthography. Furthermore, actual usage is inconsistent in many circumstances.)
    * Modern dialects have smoothed out the morphophonemic variations, typically by deleting the associated verbs or moving them into another paradigm (for example, /qaraʔ/ "read" becomes /qara/, a third-weak verb).
    * /ʔ/ has reappeared medially in various words due to borrowing from CA. (In addition, /q/ has become /ʔ/ in many dialects, although the two are marginally distinguishable in Egyptian Arabic, since words beginning with original /ʔ/ can elide this sound, whereas words beginning with original /q/ cannot.)
    * Original final short vowels are mostly deleted.
    * Many Levantine Arabic dialects merge /i/ and /u/ into a phonemic /ə/ except when directly followed by a single consonant; this sound may appear allophonically as /i/ or /u/ in certain phonetic environments.
    * Maghreb dialects merge /a/ and /i/ into /ə/, which is deleted when unstressed. Tunisian maintains this distinction, but deletes these vowels in non-final open syllables.
    * Moroccan Arabic, under the strong influence of Berber, goes even further. Short /u/ is converted to labialization of an adjacent velar, or is merged with /ə/. This schwa then deletes everywhere except in certain words ending /-CCəC/.
    :* The result is that there is no more distinction between short and long vowels; borrowings from CA have "long" vowels (now pronounced half-long) uniformly substituted for original short and long vowels.
    :* This also results in consonant clusters of great length, which are (more or less) syllabified according to a sonority hierarchy. (In practice, it is very difficult to tell where, if anywhere, there are syllabic peaks in long consonant clusters in a phrase such as /xsˤsˤk tktbi/ "you (fem.) must write".)
    * In Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic, short /i/ and /u/ (and merged /ə/, when it exists) are elided in various circumstances in unstressed syllables (typically, in open syllables; for example, in Egyptian Arabic, this occurs only in the middle vowel of a VCVCV sequence, ignoring word boundaries). In these dialects, however, clusters of three consonants are almost never permitted (absolutely never, in Egyptian Arabic). If such a cluster would occur, it is broken up through the insertion of a /ə/ -- between the second and third consonants in Egyptian Arabic, and between the first and second in Levantine Arabic.
    * Original final long vowels are shortened in all dialects.
    * In Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic, unstressed long vowels are shortened.
    * Egyptian Arabic also cannot tolerate long vowels followed by two consonants, and shorten them. (Such an occurrence was rare in CA, but often occurs in modern dialects as a result of elision of a short vowel.)
    * Adjacent to an emphatic consonant and to /q/ (but not usually to other sounds derived from this, such as /g/ or /ʔ/), a back variant [ɑ] occurs; elsewhere, a strongly fronted variant [æ] is used.
    * There is a tendency for emphatic consonants to cause non-adjacent low vowels to be backed, as well; this is known as emphasis spreading. The domain of emphasis spreading is potentially unbounded; in Egyptian Arabic, the entire word is usually affected, although in Levantine Arabic and some other varieties, it is blocked by an /i/ or /j/ (and sometimes /ʃ/).
    * The two allophones are in the process of splitting phonemically in some dialects, as [ɑ] occurs in some words (particularly foreign borrowings) even in the absence of any emphatic consonants anywhere in the word. (Some linguists have postulated additional emphatic phonemes in an attempt to handle these circumstances; in the extreme case, this requires assuming that every phoneme occurs doubled, in emphatic and non-emphatic varieties. Some have attempted to make the vowel allophones autonomous and eliminate the emphatic consonants as phonemes. Others have asserted that emphasis is actually a property of syllables or whole words rather than of individual vowels or consonants. None of these proposals seems particularly tenable, however, given the variable and unpredictable nature of emphasis spreading.)
    * CA /r/ is also in the process of splitting into emphatic and non-emphatic varieties, with the former causing emphasis spreading, just like other emphatic consonants. Originally, non-emphatic [r] occurred before /i/ or between /i/ and a following consonant, while emphatic [rˤ] occurred elsewhere.
    :* To a large extent, Eastern Arabic dialects reflect this, while the situation is rather more complicated in Egyptian Arabic. (The allophonic distribution still exists to a large extent, although not in any predictable fashion; nor is one or the other variety used consistently in different words derived from the same root. Furthermore, although derivational suffixes (in particular, relational /-i/ and /-iyya/) affect a preceding /r/ in the expected fashion, inflectional suffixes do not.)
    :* In Moroccan Arabic, short /a/ and /i/ have merged, obscuring the original distribution. In this dialect, the two varieties have completely split into separate phonemes, with one or the other used consistently across all words derived from a particular root except in a few situations.
    * In Moroccan Arabic, the allophonic effect of emphatic consonants is more pronounced than elsewhere.
    :* Full /a/ is affected as above, but /i/ and /u/ are also affected, and are lowered to [e] and [o], respectively.
    :* In some varieties, such as in Marrakesh, the effects are even more extreme (and complex), where both high-mid and low-mid allophones exist ([e] and [ɛ], [o] and [ɔ]), in addition to front-rounded allophones of original /u/ ([y], [ø], [œ]), all depending on adjacent phonemes.
    :* On the other hand, emphasis spreading in Moroccan Arabic is less pronounced than elsewhere; usually it only spreads to the nearest full vowel on either side, although with some additional complications.
    * Emphasis spreading also pharyngealizes consonants between the source consonant and affected vowels, although the effects are much less noticeable than for vowels, since the rise of emphasis spreading is associated with a concomitant decrease in the amount of pharyngealization of emphatic consonants.
    :* Interestingly, emphasis spreading does not affect the affrication of non-emphatic /t/ in Moroccan Arabic, with the result that these two phonemes are always distinguishable regardless of the nearly presence of other emphatic phonemes.
    * Certain other consonants, depending on the dialect, also cause backing of adjacent sounds, although the effect is typically weaker than full emphasis spreading and usually has no effect on more distant vowels.
    :* The uvular consonants /x/ and /ɑ/ often cause partial backing of adjacent /a/ (and lowering of /u/ and /i/ in Moroccan Arabic). For Egyptian Arabic and Moroccan Arabic, the effect is sometimes described as half as powerful as an emphatic consonant, as a vowel with uvular consonants on both sides is affected similarly to having an emphatic consonant on one side.
    :* Interestingly, the pharyngeal consonants /ħ/ and /ʕ/ cause no emphasis spreading and may have little or no effect on adjacent vowels. In Egyptian Arabic, for example, an /a/ adjacent to either sound is a fully front [æ]. In other dialects, /ʕ/ is more likely to have an effect than /ħ/.
    :* In some Gulf Arabic dialects, /w/ and/or /l/ causes backing.
    :* In all dialects, the word الله /alˤlˤāh/ Allāh has backed [ɑ]'s and strongly pharyngealized /l/.
    * Most commonly, it falls on the last syllable containing a long vowel, or a short vowel followed by two consonants; but never farther from the end than the third-to-last syllable. This maintains the presumed stress pattern in CA (although there is some disagreement over whether stress could move farther back than the third-to-last syllable), and is also used in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).
    :* In CA and MSA, stress cannot occur on a final long vowel; however, this does not result in different stress patterns on any words, because CA final long vowels are shortened in all modern dialects, and any current final long vowels are secondary developments from words containing a long vowel followed by a consonant.
    * In Egyptian Arabic, the rule is similar, but stress falls on the second-to-last syllable in words of the form ...VCCVCV, as in /makˈtaba/.
    * In Maghreb Arabic (excluding Maltese), stress is final in words of the (original) form CaCaC, after which the first /a/ is elided. Hence جَبَل "mountain" (MSA /ˈʤabal/) becomes /ˈʒbəl/.
    * In Moroccan Arabic, phonetic stress is often not recognizable.

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