Arabic dialects

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Spread of the Arabic dialects

The Arabic dialects have developed from ancient Arabic varieties that have diversified in ancient times . The Arab national grammarians , especially the Persian Sibawayhi , handed down numerous regional, colloquial deviations from classical Arabic .

Grammar and phonology

The main characteristic of all dialects of the New Arabic type is the loss of all inflected vowels and the nunation . With the noun this means the complete loss of the case inflection. As a result, the word order in the sentence can no longer be handled as flexibly as in Old Arabic and is subject to fixed rules in order to be able to distinguish the subject of a sentence from the object . In the verb, the distinction between modes -  indicative , subjunctive and apocopy  - is lost, for which the dialects had to make do with new formations. Some dialects, especially those that have survived in isolation on the edge of the Arabic-speaking area, still have traces of inflection .

There are also other phenomena that are common to most Arabic dialects, including

  • Coincidence of once separate phonemes ظ ḏ̣ [IPA ð ~ ] andض ḍ [IPA d ~ ] in most dialects. But this is not done consistently, with some words both sounds coincide, with others not. In Syrian and Egyptian Arabic , bothظ in ظَلم / "Doing wrong" as well as that ض in ضاع / “To get lost” as pronounced in standard Arabic.
  • The actual Hamza [ ʔ ] has lost much of its phonemic status and is usually only consistently spoken in terms of the wording. In the interior of the word it is usually omitted after consonants (exception is e.g .:يسأل/ yisʾal / “he asks”), while after a long vowel it can become y (e.g. nāyim instead of nāʾim for “sleeping”) and after a short vowel it often lengthened (see example above; an exception is again)سأل/ hall / "he asked"). However, it is used in some dialectsق/ q pronounced like Hamza (e.g. ʾalb instead of qalb for "heart"), also inside the word.
  • Short vowels in unstressed syllables of the type Kv (consonant + short vowel), in particular i and u, are often elidated in New Arabic dialects according to the Aramaic model. The resulting clusters of consonants are broken up by auxiliary vowels.
  • In many dialects the opposition between i and u is further weakened than it was in classical Arabic anyway. Sometimes they also collapse into a phoneme.
  • Widely used in a number of words is usually i instead of the classic a : inta instead of anta “you”, (n) iḥna instead of naḥnu “we”, il- instead of al- for the article, min or mīn instead of one “who?” Etc. .
  • The prefix vowel of the imperfect is only in rare cases such as in classical Arabic on a : yuktub instead yaktub-u "(that) he writes," tinzil instead tanzil-u "(that) it descends."
  • The inner passive fuʿila / yufʿalu is only detectable in trace elements in some unusual Bedouin dialects . As a rule, New Arabic uses the VII tribe infaʿala to express passive voice .
  • Only one row of numbers to count both genera .
  • No more dual forms in verbs and personal pronouns. Only in the noun is the dual still alive.
  • Reinvention of a genitive exponent in numerous dialects to express belonging or ownership other than through the status constructus , such as il-bēt tabaʿi "my house". Further genitive exponents in different dialects: iddi, ḥagg, ḥāl, māl, mtāʿ, bitāʿ, šīt, ḏēl, dial etc.
  • No use of the classic future tense particles sawfa , instead rāḥ, ta-, māš, bā- or the like.
  • Replacement of the question word ما mā “what?” with aأيّ شيء هو ayyu šayʾin (huwa) derived form, such as B. ēš, (š) šū, šinu, wiš (š), ešnuwwe etc.
  • No denial of the perfect tense longerلم lam (+ apocopy).

Frequent deviations from classical Arabic

Some phenomena that appear in many, but by no means all, Arabic dialects:

  • Monophthongization the diphthongs ay and aw, to ē and ō ie <BET bayt "House" and NOM <nawm "sleep".
  • Sound shift of the interdental ث ṯ [IPA θ ],ذ ḏ [IPA ð ] andظ ḏ̣ [IPA ðˁ ], often to the plosives t , d and ḍ . Most of the Bedouin dialects and the Palestinian peasant dialects are examples of the preservation of the interdental.
  • Replacement of ف f throughث ṯ [IPA θ ]. The ṯimm, ṯumm, timm, tumm for high Arabic , which is used in many dialects today, still reminds us of thisفم fam-un .
  • Pronunciation of ج ǧ [IPA ʤ ] as ž [IPA ʒ ], as it is familiar today from large parts of Lebanon and Syria .
  • Pronunciation of ق q as k , as it is known today from peasant Palestinian .
  • Replacement of ك k throughش š [IPA ʃ ], which still occurs today in some regions of Yemen with the suffix of the 2nd Ps. Sg. It is more likely that the affriction of the k to č [IPA ʧ ] is meant, as it is known among small cattle nomads and among Palestinian farmers.
  • Confusion of sounds ظ ḏ̣ [IPA ðˁ ] andض ḍ [IPA dˁ ].
  • Imāla , d. H. Elevation from long ā to ǟ or even ē in a certain consonant environment, as it is common today from numerous Arabic dialects.
  • Different prefix vowels in some or all persons in the past tense of certain verbs, for example niʿlam-u instead of classically correct naʿlam-u "we know".
  • Replacement of verbs of the morpheme type faʿila by fiʿila , i.e. with a retrograde adjustment of the vowel.
  • For many verbs, regional variants of the middle vowel in the perfect perfect, for example faʿila instead of faʿala or faʿula and vice versa.
  • Different treatment of grammatical gender for numerous nouns, for example the wordطريق / ṭarīq  / 'way', which was treated as masculine in some tribes and feminine in others.
  • Different demonstrative pronouns in different stems, for exampleذلك ḏālika andذاك ḏāka for "that one".
  • Failure of Hamza ءʾ [ ʔ ] inside the word, for example al-mara instead of al-marʾa for “the woman” or rās-un instead of raʾs-un for “head”.

Historical and linguistic development

Today's Arabic dialects are the linguistic result of the spread of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries. These conquests influenced the entire history of the Arabs , their social conditions and their mentality. The Arabic language also went through a fundamental change during this period. It spread from its home region, the Arabian Peninsula , west to the Atlantic , east to Central Asia , north to what is now Turkey and south to Zanzibar . Isolated from one another by huge distances and exposed to the influence of strong substrate languages that are closely related - e.g. B. the Aramaic  - the new Arabic dialects developed. The new Arabic language type is closer to Aramaic within the Semitic language family than the old Arabic language type, which in turn had a greater affinity for Akkadian . The split between the synthetically structured classical Arabic, which owes its prestige not least to the Koran , and the Arabic dialects, which have an analytical language structure, is also based on the contact with Greek and Persian- speaking peoples at the time and leads to a real diglossia .

In pre-Islamic Arabia and until the beginning of Mohammed's ministry , the majority of Arabs lived in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world. In search of grazing grounds, they traversed the Arabian Peninsula and engaged in endless tribal feuds. This may explain the fact that the Arabic used at that time was linguistically closer to the archaic Akkadian, which was already extinct in the first century AD , than to the Canaanite or Aramaic . Due to the almost complete absence of external influences and the continuation of the original way of life, the archaic structure of Arabic was retained. Various dialects were spoken at that time, apparently divided into an eastern group around the Persian Gulf and a western group with the dialects of the Hejaz . In addition to these tribal dialects, a poetic, cross-tribal Arabic developed during this period, which is preserved in the poems of the Mu'allaqat .

The spread of Islam after the death of Muhammad led to a radical linguistic upheaval. The language boundary between the eastern and western dialects was blurred as the different tribes camped together on their conquests, and new dialects emerged. The contact of the Arabs with foreign peoples, who often cultivated an urban culture, also played a decisive role. An increasing proportion of the population began to speak a faulty Arabic - not only in pronunciation, but also in syntax . The languages ​​of the peoples subjugated by the Arabs (e.g. Middle Persian in the earlier Sassanid Empire or Middle Greek in Eastern Stream ) had lost their inflection system in the course of history . As a result of these linguistic contacts, the declension and conjugation endings were omitted . Examples are the nunation of nouns or the verbal forms of the apocopy , and the pronunciation of pausal forms has been adapted to the contextual forms . Difficulties in word formation were circumvented by numerous circumscribing phrases.

Over 1,000 years of language development have led to a variety of dialects, some of which are incomprehensible to one another. The understanding within the Arab world is made possible that based on the classical Arabic written language as a common construction and roof language is used. The difference between high-level and colloquial language is enormous, just imagine, for example, that in Italy today Latin is still used as the high-level and media language, while Italian dialects are otherwise used in dealing with one another. The centuries-old, difficult to overcome gap between high and colloquial language is largely based on the principle of ʿArabīya laid down by Arabic philologists . This doctrine states that the language codified in the Koran and the classical works of literature is considered immutable and is the only one that is permitted to be written down. At least in theory, the influence of the spoken dialects on the written language is inadmissible. Up until Napoleon's Egyptian campaign at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, there was an almost complete dichotomy between written and spoken Arabic. A thin layer of learned men used standard language in writing to express the needs of traditional Arabic culture, while the vast majority of the population, including all women, were illiterate .

As a rule, New Arabic is not written, but is reserved for oral communication. Because the standard and written language is taught in schools from the first to the last grade in all Arab countries, two Arabs from Morocco and Iraq , for example, manage to communicate not only in writing but also orally, namely by communicating Reflect on their school Arabic and try to work their way up on the linguistic level towards the written language until they reach a level where they understand each other. The condition that two forms of one and the same language that are far apart in time serve as colloquial and high-level language is known as diglossia .

Malta occupies a special position in the Arabic-speaking area , whose Arabic dialect is close to the Maghreb dialects, but has developed so far away from Arabic that some linguists attribute Maltese a special position not within Arabic, but alongside Arabic. The Maltese use a written language derived from their colloquial language, which is written in a modified Latin script.

Standard Arabic as the umbrella language is mostly missing in the Arabic language islands, such as Cyprus , Turkey , Central Asia and parts of Black Africa .

Sociological division

The main dialect border in the Arabic-speaking area does not run along geographical boundaries, but according to historical-sociological criteria: nomad dialect and resident dialect. The main distinguishing feature is the realization of the oldق q [IPA q ]: The residents always realize the sound unvoiced as etwa , k or q , Bedouins always voiced, for example as g or shifted to the soft palate as g̣ [IPA ɢ ], or as ǧ [IPA ʤ ], which ( former) camel nomads even in certain positions as ǵ [IPA ʣ ].

The resident dialects are further divided into urban and rural dialects. Typical characteristics of a city dialect are the pronunciation ofق q as Hamza ʾ and the shift of the interdental to plosives, i.e. ṯ> t, ḏ> d, ḏ̣> ḍ . This dialect type is spoken in Cairo , Jerusalem , Beirut , Damascus and many other cities in the Arab world, but not, for example, in Baghdad or Tripoli , as their population is originally of Bedouin origin. This means that the Bedouin dialect type can also be spoken in cities and in the countryside. Urban Arabic can also be found in rural areas, especially in the Maghreb. The only thing that has not yet been discovered is Bedouin speaking urban. The terms are therefore of a historical-sociological nature and do not reflect the current actual living conditions.

Geographical classification

Apart from this basic sociological classification, the Arabic dialects can be geographically classified as follows:

An overview of the distribution area of ​​Arabic with approximate numbers of speakers can be found in the list of states with indigenous native-speaking Arab populations .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bengt Knutsson: Studies in the Text and Language of Three Syriac-Arabic Versions of the Book of Judicum, with Special Reference to the Middle Arabic Elements . Brill, 1974. Partial online view
  2. ^ A b Joshua Blau : The Renaissance of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic: Parallels and Differences in the Revival of Two Semitic Languages. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1981. p. 7.