Variety of the Arabic language From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Northwest Arabian Arabic (also called Levantine Bedawi Arabic or Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic) is a proposed[2] subfamily of Arabic encompassing the traditional Bedouin dialects of the Sinai Peninsula, the Negev, Gaza Strip, southern Jordan, and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia.[2]
Northwest Arabian Arabic | |
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Levantine Bedawi Arabic Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic | |
Native to | Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia |
Native speakers | 3.0 million (2021–2023)[1] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
Arabic alphabet | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | avl |
Glottolog | east2690 |
The dialect of the Maʿāzah in the Egyptian Eastern Desert borders the dialect of the ʿAbābdah, who speak a dialect more closely related to Sudanese Arabic.[3] Research is needed to establish whether the Maʿāzah dialect is the southwestern extremity of Northwest Arabian on the Egyptian mainland.[3]
In Saudi Arabia, the dialects of the eastern coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, the Hisma, and the Harrat al-Riha belong to the Northwest Arabian type, but the dialect of the Bili to the south is not closely related.[4]
The Northwest Arabian Arabic dialects display several innovations from Proto-Arabic:[2]
Northwest Arabian Arabic can be divided into a western branch spoken in Sinai and the Negev, and an eastern branch spoken to the east of the Wadi Araba.[2] Several dialects of the eastern branch, such as that of the Zalabiah and Zawaidih of Wadi Ramm,[5] and that of the Bdul,[6] have been argued to be closely related to the western branch.
Western branch | Eastern branch | |
---|---|---|
b- imperfect | in regular use | does not occur in plain colloquial |
analytic genitive | šuġl, šuġlah, šuġlīn, šuġlāt as genitive markers | |
Form I imperfect performative | vowel harmony | generalized /a/ |
reflexes of *aw and *ay | partially monophthongized; monophthongs fluctuate with long phonemes /ō/ ~ /ū/, /ē/ ~/ī/. | well-established monophthongs /ō/ and /ē/ |
gahawa syndrome | gaháwa only | ghawa ~ gaháwa |
I-w imperfect | yawṣal ~ yōṣal | yāṣal |
3FSG object suffix | -ha/-hiy in Negev | -ha |
3MSG object suffix | phonetically conditioned C-ih/-ah, C-u(h) in southern Sinai | C-ah |
1CPL subject pronoun | iḥna, aḥna | ḥinna, iḥna |
reflex of -ā(ʾ) in neutral environments | -iy | -a |
Vowels occur in both long and short positions:[7]
Vowels are recognized as allophones in the following positions:[8]
Phoneme/Sound | Allophone | Notes |
---|---|---|
i [i] | [ɪ] | in lax position |
u [u] | [ʊ] | in lax position |
[o] | when preceding emphatic sounds | |
a [a] | [ɐ] | in lax position |
[ɑ] | when preceding or following emphatics | |
eː [eː] | [ɛː] | when following emphatic or back fricatives |
oː [oː] | [ɔː] | when preceding velar consonants |
aː [aː] | [ɑː] | in velarized environments |
[ɐː] | when following pharyngeal consonants | |
[ɛː ~ æː] | in neutral position in the Tarabin dialect |
Some varieties of Negev Arabic are characterized by word-internal imala of *-ā- to /ē/ in patterns where /i/ historically occurred in an adjacent syllable. It does not occur when one of the adjacent consonants is emphatic or a back consonant. Some of the patterns where it is found include the following:[9]
Similar raising is found in the Bdul dialect of Jordan: minǣsif “mansaf (pl.)”, hǣḏi “this (f.)”, ḏ̣aygǣt “narrow (pl.)”, iblǣdna “our land”.[6]
Some of the western dialects of Northwest Arabian Arabic (Central Sinai and Negev in particular) are characterized by an Imala of Old Arabic word-final *-ā(ʾ) to /iy/ in certain patterns of nouns and adjectives. Emphatics seem to block the shift. The following examples are from Negev Arabic:[10]
In the dialects of southern Sinai, word-final imala typically results in /iʾ/. Some examples are íštiʾ “winter”, ǧiʾ “he came”, ḏiʾ “this, these”, tižibhiʾ “you get it”, ifṭarniʾ “we had breakfast”. In some, but not all groups, /a/ in a previous syllable blocks this imala. Like the dialects of central Sinai and Negev, the imala of feminine adjectives of color and defect on the pattern CaCCāʾ results in stressed /íy/: sōdíy “black; bad”.[3]
The following are some archaic features retained from Proto-Arabic:[2]
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