Lebanese Arabic
| Lebanese Arabic (lubnani) | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Lebanon | |
| speaker | about 15 million | |
| Linguistic classification |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
ar (Arabic) |
|
| ISO 639 -2 |
ara (Arabic) |
|
| Locale / IETF | ||
The Lebanese-Arab is an Arabic dialect , the common features with both the Palestine as well as with the Syrian divides. All three dialects belong to Levantine Arabic .
Similar to Egyptian Arabic , the Lebanese dialect has a large media presence in the Arab world , as Beirut is the second most important center of the Arab entertainment industry after Cairo .
pronunciation
Vowels
Like all Arabic dialects, Lebanese is initially characterized by the omission of the short vowels in the final and the resulting simplification of the inflection. In addition, there are other pronunciation differences from Standard Arabic .
- Frequent omission of unstressed short vowels and abandonment of the high Arabic syllable structure, according to which two consecutive consonants in the wording and three-way consonances are impossible. Example: Slaimān Suleiman ; btiktbu you write .
- Preference for the short vowel i : Short u (in a large number of words) and sometimes short a are transformed into i . Furthermore, i sometimes appears as an auxiliary vowel to facilitate pronunciation. Example: kull> kill everything ; ḫubz> ḫibiz bread ; naḥnu> niḥna we .
- Conversely, before emphatic consonants, sometimes development from i to u . Ex .: qiṣṣa> ʾuṣṣa story ; niṣf> nuṣṣ half .
- A very closed pronunciation is used for the light variant of ā , known from Standard Arabic (almost e as in See ). Example: ṯānī [θæːni]> tāni [teːni] second .
- Pronunciation of the feminine ending Tāʾ marbūṭa , except after certain consonants, as e (or even i ). Example: ǧarīda> žarīde newspaper ; maḥabba> maḥabbe love .
- The diphthongs ai and au are traditionally - in contrast to almost all other dialects - still preserved as such. Most speakers today, however, only speak them in open syllables as diphthongs, while they are contracted to ē or ō in closed syllables . E.g .: yōm day , but: yaumēn two days .
Consonants
When pronouncing the consonants, a distinction must be made between so-called book words and everyday vocabulary. The pronunciation of the former corresponds to the situation in standard Arabic, albeit with some simplifications. The following rules, however, apply to everyday words; H. the vast majority of the vocabulary.
- No tooth or lispel sounds: ṯ (voiceless th in English thing ), ḏ (voiced th in English this ) and ẓ (emphatic counterpart to ḏ ) are shifted to t , d and ḍ respectively . Ex: ṯalāṯa> tlāte three ; hāḏā> haida this one ; ẓ clock> uhir noon .
- Soft pronunciation of ǧ ( dsch in jungle ) as French j as in journal , denoted by ž in the romanization . E.g . : ǧāmiʿa> žāmʿa University . (Lebanese also adopt this softening effect when pronouncing Standard Arabic.)
- Simplification of q (a very deep, dark k-sound) to hamza , i.e. H. simple vocal paragraph in such dt. ab'ändern . Ex .: qalb> ʾalb heart ; ḥaqīqa> ḥaʾīʾa truth .
- In return, hamza is omitted or is replaced by y in those cases where it arises in standard Arabic during word formation and does not belong to the root. E.g .: masāʾ> masa evening ; ǧarāʾid> žarāyid newspapers .
- Simplification of doubled consonants before consonant endings. E.g .: kill everything , but: kilna we all . (In many other dialects, in the same case, the doubling is retained and inserted before the ending i , e.g. Egyptian kullina .)
Emphasis
With regard to the word accent, Lebanese is conservative. It has completely retained the stress rules of classical Arabic. This means that the stress is on the third from last syllable , unless neither of the last two syllables is long (i.e. long vowel or closed): mádrase school . Other dialects show strong deviations here. (For example, Egyptian, which shifts the stress to the penultimate syllable: madrása .)
grammar
The grammar of the Arabic dialects in the eastern Mediterranean area is relatively uniform. Many of the following properties are therefore not unique to Lebanese.
- Formation of a present tense with the prefix b- (or m- in the 1st person plural): bifham I understand , minšūf we see .
- The form without prefix expresses the subjunctive . Its 1st person singular corresponds to the simple stem: rūḥ that I go . (In other dialects mostly: arūḥ .)
- Formation of a future tense with the particle raḥ + subjunctive: raḥ šūf I will see .
- Negation of the verb by introducing mā . No double negative as in Egyptian.
- Frequent use of the feminine plural also for persons: niḥna libnānīye we are Lebanese instead of: niḥna libnānīyīn.
- Use of - here only apparently - feminine pronominal forms: hinne she (pl.) , Ktābkun your book , ktābun her book .
- The distinction between the prepositions bi (“durch, mit”) and fī (“in”) has been abandoned. Only bi is used as a preposition, while fī forms the corresponding pronominal adverbs .
vocabulary
A certain number of words have emerged from the languages spoken before Arabization, v. a. the Aramaic , preserved in Lebanese. How large the proportion of these words is in comparison to those of Arabic origin is difficult to say, since both Aramaic and Arabic are Semitic languages that have similar roots. In addition, the question of which of the two languages was more strongly influenced by today's Lebanese is a political issue. However, the dialect does not have such a wealth of vocabulary that, conversely, many High Arabic words have no equivalent. The number of Turkish words is slightly larger than in the standard language, but overall rather low.
The Lebanese dialect is heavily interspersed with foreign words from Western languages, especially English and French . Many of the Arabic neologisms , which have largely replaced Western terms in standard language, have not been able to establish themselves in Lebanese. This also applies to most of the other Arabic dialects. Typically Lebanese is also the frequent use of French or English words, where a genuine Arabic equivalent would actually be available, or the interference of entire word groups. For example, the most common greeting is “ bon jour ”, the most common farewell is “ bye bye ”, and as a thank you you say “ merci ”, “ thank you ” or “ šukran ”.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Francisco del Río Sánchez: Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic . In: Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala & Wilfred GE Watson (Eds.): Archaism and Innovation in the Semitic Languages. Selected papers . Oriens Academic, Cordoba 2013, pp. 129-137 .