Palestinian Arabic

The Palestinian Arab is an independent Arabic dialect , of the features common to both the pie-Arab as well as with the Syrian - Lebanese divides. With the last two dialects mentioned, it belongs to Levantine Arabic .

It has in common with Egyptian-Arabic, for example, the negation of the verb through the circumposition (ma-) ...- š, with Syriac the future tense particle bidd-. The comparative particle 'how' is zayy in Egyptian , while miṯl in Syrian prefers. Consonant clusters are broken up according to the Syrian model by inserting an auxiliary vowel in front of the second consonant, calculated from the back (KvKK), and not from the front, as is common in Egyptian (KKvK). As in the whole of Syria, the word accent is on the sequence -vKK or -v: K that follows the end of the word, an emphasis on the short middle syllable in KvK-'Kv-Kv or Kv: - 'Kv-Kv, as is common in Egyptian not possible. Overall, the common features with Syrian clearly predominate, so that Palestinian, Lebanese and Syriac are viewed as a common dialect area.

íši 'something; Thing'

The most striking distinguishing feature of Palestinian is the use of the word íši for 'something; Thing, thing '. In this form it is in standard Arabicشيء šayʾ trailing word pretty much restricted to the area of Palestine .

Phonology

Palestinian has the three short vowels a , i , u and the five long vowels ā, ē, ī, ō, ū . In contrast to Lebanese and Syriac, the clearly different articulation of the short vowels i and u is striking. The centralized marble vowel ə <i, u , which is common there, is only found in geographical proximity to Syria and Lebanon . Common Palestinian is the monophthongization of the diphthongs ay and aw , to ē and ō , so bēt < bayt 'house' and nōm < nawm 'sleep'.

The highly Arabic ج Ǧ [IPA ʤ] is usually as high as Arab voiced palato-alveolar affricate Ǧ (IPA [⁠ dʒ ⁠] articulated). Only in the northern Palestine can be found for the widespread in Lebanon and Syria voiced sibilant ž (IPA [⁠ ʒ ⁠] ). In the far south, in the Gaza Strip , the typical Egyptian pronunciation g for this sound appears.

The historical-sociological tripartite division of the Palestinian dialect area is remarkable . While in German dialectology we can differentiate the dialects according to geographical aspects, in Arabic and particularly pronounced in Palestinian-Arabic the essential dividing line between the main dialects runs along historical-sociological criteria: urban population, rural population and Bedouins. Accordingly, we speak of urban, rural and Bedouin Palestinian. The most noticeable differentiator between these three dialect types is the treatment of oldق q ( [⁠ q ⁠] ). The townspeople indicate the glottal plosive ' ( [⁠ ʔ ⁠] ), which is also spoken in English before each beginning with a vowel syllables, but not written. The farmers indicate k , in the northernmost part of Palestine also easily shifted back Ḳ (IPA [⁠ K ⁠] ). The Bedouins finally articulate for the throughout the Arab world typical Bedouin- g or back shifted g ( [⁠ ɢ ⁠] ). The Arabic wordقلب qalb 'heart' is pronounced as follows:

urban: ʾalb
rural: calf
Bedouin: galb

In Bäuerlichen not only old was q to forward k moved but at the same time old k forward to č (IPA [⁠ ʧ ⁠] ) (this is called linguistically from a "push chain"). The urban has preserved old k , which is why it is called high Arabic, for exampleكلب calf 'dog'

urban: calf
rural: čalb

There are other significant differences between the two largest dialect groups, urban and rural (Bedouin has only a marginal meaning):

The old interdental ث T ( [⁠ thetav ⁠] ),ذ [⁠ ð ⁠] andظ([ ð ~ ]) have been moved to the plosives t , d and ḍ in urban Arabic , while rural Arabic has preserved the interdental. For example is called

ṯalǧ / talǧ (rural / urban) 'snow'
ḏahab / dahab (rural / urban) 'gold'
ẓarab / ḍarab (rural / urban) 'he struck'

The townspeople have trouble speaking interdentals, and therefore difficulties with loanwords from Standard Arabic, which only later penetrated their dialect. In this case you substitute the corresponding sibilants, for example high Arabic becomesظsubstituted by ẓ ([ z ~ ]):

ẓ may 'envelope'.

The preservation of the feminine plural forms of verbs and personal pronouns in rural Arabic is particularly ancient, while in urban Arabic the masculine forms stand for this, for example

hinne ṭabáḫⁱn (rural) opposite humme ṭábaḫu (urban), 'they (the women) cooked'.

Typically urban is the use of the suffused personal pronoun of the 3rd person masculine -o:

bēto 'his house'.

The rural dialects mostly use -u , in Central Palestine also -a or -e , that is

bētu or bēta or bēte 'his house'.

Finally, in the rural dialects, the frequent replacement of the short vowel u by i is also striking :

umm (urban) opposite imm (rural) 'mother'
kull (urban) opposite čill (rural) 'everything'
buktub (urban) opposite bičtib (rural) 'he writes'

Since probably no other Arab society has been mixed up as much by war and displacement as the Palestinian one, the terms urban and rural are now only to be understood as an indication of where the ancestors of the respective speakers came from, whether from the country or from the city. In addition, the urban dialect is the prestige dialect and the rural dialect is considered crude, just as rural . Anyone who has a professional career strives to adapt their language to urban customs outside of their family and relatives. It does this essentially by avoiding the č , which is particularly tell-tale. To speak a “correct” k instead of a č does not seem to cause much effort, especially since the k < q is part of the rural phoneme inventory. The tongue of a peasant speaker almost falls off when he tries to speak old q as ʾ . So he leaves it at the k , just trying to articulate it a little further back so that it comes closer to the high Arabic q , which also has prestige. In the end, however, it usually comes down to the fact that in the modern everyday language of an original rural speaker, old q and k often coincide in k . Where the rural structures are still in order, peasant Arabic is very lively and by no means a fancy or rare dialect, perhaps it even has more speakers than urban Palestinian. Urban has always been spoken in Jerusalem , Hebron , Nablus , Haifa , Akko , Jaffa , Safed , Tiberias , Ramle , Lydda and others. a. Today, for example, urban language is also used in the original farming village of Ramallah , but this has nothing to do with the fact that this market town has now become a city, but is explained by the mass of refugees who came to Ramallah from Lydda and Ramle in 1948 and their urban ones Brought dialect.

morphology

The syllable structure is very reminiscent of Aramaic, which was spoken in Palestine before the penetration of Arabic in the 7th century: short vowels in unstressed open syllables that go back to old i and u are omitted. If this results in a consonant cluster of three consecutive consonants, this cluster can be exploded from behind by inserting an auxiliary vowel in front of the second consonant, which has the same quality as the failed vowel. This often gives the impression of a vowel jump

bín-zi-lu > bínzlu > bínⁱzlu ‚they get off‚

and the verb paradigm is inconsistent and more difficult to learn than, for example, in classical Arabic.

As in many other Arabic dialects, the past tense of the verb is formed with the b prefix, while the old past tense is used to express the subjunctive:

bilbis “he attracts” - biddo ( -u , -a , -e ) yilbis “he wants / will attract”.

The 1st Ps. Sg. Of the past tense is always formed with a :

bašrab 'I drink'
bidd (i) ašrab 'I want / will drink'
biddi arūḥ / anām / ašūf 'I want to / will go / sleep / see'

Verbs that originally had Hamza as the first radical are formed in the past tense with a long ō , for example:

bōkul (urban) or bōčil (peasant) 'he eats'

The following is a paradigm of the strong verb:

Perfect:

ṭábaḫ 'he cooked'
ṭáb (a) ḫat 'she cooked'
ṭabáḫt 'you (mask.) cooked'
ṭabáḫṭi 'you (fem.) cooked'
tabáḫt 'I cooked'
ṭábaḫu 'they cooked'
ṭabáḫⁱn 'they (fem .; only peasant) cooked'
ṭabáḫtu 'you cooked'
ṭabáḫtin 'you (fem .; only peasant) cooked'
ṭabáḫna 'we cooked'

Past tense:

búṭbuḫ 'he cooks'
btúṭbuḫ 'she cooks'
btúṭbuḫ 'you (mask.) cook'
btúṭᵘbḫi 'you (fem.) cook'
báṭbuḫ 'I cook'
búṭᵘbḫu 'they cook'
buṭbúḫⁱn 'they (fem .; only peasant) cook'
btúṭᵘbḫu 'you cook'
btuṭbúḫⁱn 'you (fem .; only peasant) cook'
mnúṭbuḫ (rural bnúṭbux) 'we cook'

The personal pronouns are usually (the suffixed forms in brackets):

hū (-o / u / a / e) 'he' (3rd m. Sg.)
hī (-ha) 'she' (3rd f. Sg.)
inte (-ak) 'you' (2nd m. Sg.)
inti (-ik / -ič) 'you' (2nd f. Sg.)
ana (-i) 'I' (1st c. Sg.)
humme (-hum) 'she' (3rd m. pl.)
hinne (-hin) 'she' (3rd f. Pl .; only rural, urban uses the masculine form)
intu (-ku / kum) 'you' (2nd m. pl.)
intin (-čin) 'you' (2nd f. pl .; only rural, urban uses the masculine form)
iḥna (-na) 'we' (1st c. Sg.)

The genitive exponent is usually tabaʿ , in southern Palestine there is also Egyptian btāʿ or tāʿ :

il-bēt tabaʿi 'my house' (literally: 'the house that is mine')

Lexemes

Below is a small selection of structural words that are used in many regional Palestinian dialect variants:

hāda (rural emphatic : hāḏ̣a ) 'this'
hōn (rural emphatic : ḥān ) 'here'
hēk (rural hēč or hēḏ ) 'so'
halʾēt , hallaʾ , issa (rural halkēt ) 'now'
ēmta (rural waktēš ) 'when'
mīn 'who'
šū , ššū , ēš 'what?'
wēn 'where, where'
illi relative pronouns
ʾAddēš (rural kaddēš ) 'how much'
fī 'there is'
fišš 'there is not'
kīf , kēf (rural čīf , čēf ) 'how?'
zayy 'like'
bass ' only; but; as soon as; enough!'
barḍo (Egyptian) 'also, still'
lēš 'why'
wāḥad 'one'. This form of the numerical word 'one' with a short a in the final syllable, like íši, is also quite characteristic of Palestinian Arabic. It is also used attributively in the sense of 'only': zalame wāḥad 'one man'. The feminine form is waḥ (a) de

The centuries-long Ottoman occupation has enriched Palestinian with numerous Turkish foreign words, such as:

duġri 'straight ahead'
ōḍa 'room'
Kundara 'shoes'
bōya 'shoe polish'
titin 'tobacco'
taṭli 'jam'
ǧumruk 'customs'
zangīl 'rich'
ṣōbba 'heater'
kurbāǧ 'whip'
krēk 'shovel'

as well as numerous job titles that are formed by adding the Turkish suffix -ǧi , such as kundarǧi "shoemaker", or particularly pretty banšarǧi "tire patcher " (<English puncture )

Due to the coexistence with or occupation by Israel, some loanwords from New Hebrew have found their way into the dialect in recent times :

maḫsūm also pronounced maḥsūm 'road block '

ramzōn 'traffic light ' by ramsor

bilifōn 'mobile phone' from Pelefon (name of a mobile network provider)

bēgala ' savory biscuits ' also based on a brand name

mastik 'chewing gum'

naqnīq 'sausage'

maḥfēr 'excavator'

literature

Leonhard Bauer : The Palestinian Arabic. The dialects of the townspeople and the fellahs. Grammar, Exercises and Chrestomathy. 4th edition. JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1926 (photomechanical reprint of the 4th edition: Leipzig 1970.).

Leonhard Bauer, Anton Spitaler: German-Arabic dictionary of the colloquial language in Palestine and Lebanon . 2nd Edition. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1957, ISBN 978-3-447-00131-1 .

Olivier Durand: Grammatica Di Arabo Palestinese. Il Dialetto Di Gerusalemme . Rome 1996.

Moïn Halloun , Ulrich Seeger: Textbook of Palestinian-Arabic . tape 1 . deux mondes, Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 978-3-932662-04-1 , pp. 205 .

Moïn Halloun, Ulrich Seeger: Textbook of Palestinian-Arabic . 1st edition. tape 2 . Katholic University Bethlehem, 2006, ISBN 978-965-91610-2-7 , pp. 224 .

Omar Othman: Yalla Nihki Arabi - A course in Colloquial Arabic for beginners . Al-Quds University, 2004 (Center for Jerusalem Studies).

Ulrich Seeger, Tahsin 'Alawnih: The Arabic dialect of the villages around Ramallah: Part I: Texts, Part II: Glossary . 1st edition. Harrassowitz, 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-05836-0 , pp. 765 .

Hans Schmidt, Paul Kahle, Jirius Jusif: Folk tales from Palestine, collected from the farmers of Bīr Zēt . 2 volumes. Göttingen (1918-1930).

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