Levantine Arabic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Levantine Arabic لهجات شامية |
||
---|---|---|
Spoken in: | Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan | |
Total speakers: | 35,000,000 | |
Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic South Central Semitic Arabic Levantine Arabic |
|
Writing system: | Arabic alphabet | |
Official status | ||
Official language in: | none | |
Regulated by: | none | |
Language codes | ||
ISO 639-1: | none | |
ISO 639-2: | – | |
ISO 639-3: | either: apc – North Levantine Arabic ajp – South Levantine Arabic |
|
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. |
Levantine Arabic (Arabic: شامي (Shami) and sometimes called Eastern Arabic) is a group of Arabic varieties spoken in the 100 km-wide eastern-Mediterranean coastal strip known as the Levant, i.e. in Syria, Israel, Palestine, western Jordan and Lebanon. This corresponds to the western wing of the Fertile Crescent, which clearly appears green on satellite photos.
To the East, in the Desert, the North Arabian Beduinic dialects are found. There is no transition to Egyptian dialects in the South due to the Sinai desert. In the North, between Aleppo and Euphrates valley, there may be a transition zone towards North Mesopotamian qeltu dialects (to be confirmed, since the Raqqah dialect in the Syrian Euphrates valley still seems to be quite close to South Iraqi and Beduinic dialects.)
It can be divided into six "mutually intelligible" sub-dialects
- Lebanese dialects (Lebanon, Nusairieh Mountains in Syria)
- Central Syrian (Damascus to Hama)
- North Syrian Arabic (Aleppo)
- Rural Palestinian (Palestine down to Bethlehem), west Jordan.
- Urban Palestinian (Hebron, Jerusalem, Haifa, Nablus, Jaffa, Nazareth, ...)
- Bedouin Palestinian dialects in the southern Margins (Palestine, Jordan)
Sub dialects can be distinguished by the following features:
- Product of /aː/
- Products of diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/
- Realizations of feminine ending -ah
- Realizations of ﻙ /k/, ﻕ /q/, and ﺝ /ʤ/.
- Conservation of interdentals ﺙ /θ/, ﺫ /ð/, and ﻅ /ðˁ/;
- Vocalism and consonnatism of the plural suffix pronouns, -kum and -kunna (your m./f.)
- The form of the plural independent pronouns, hum and hunna (they m./f.)
The table below shows how the variants are distributed.
Dialect | /aː/ | /aj/ | /aw/ | /k/ | /q/ | /ʤ/ | /θ/ | /ð/ | /ðˁ/ | -ah | -kum | -kunna | hum | hunna |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lebanese | /eː/, /oː/ in Tripoli | /ej/,/e:/ | /aw/,/o:/ | /k/ | /q/, /ʔ/ | /ʒ/, | /t/ | /d/ | /dˁ/ | -e | -kon | -kon | henne | henne |
Central Syrian | /aː/, /eː/ word-terminally | /eː/ | /oː/ | /k/ | /ʔ/ | /ʒ/ | /t/ | /d/ | /dˁ/ | -e | -kon | -kon | henne | henne |
North Syrian | /eː/ | /eː/ | /oː/ | /k/ | /ʔ/ | /ʤ/ | /t/ | /d/ | /dˁ/ | -e | -kon | -kon | henne | henne |
Rural Palestinian | /aː/ | /eː/ | /oː/ | /ʧ/ | /k/ | /ʤ/ | /θ/ | /ð/ | /ðˁ/ | -e, -a | -kem | -ken | hemme | henne |
Urban Palestinian | /aː/ | /eː/ | /oː/ | /k/ | /ʔ/ | /ʒ/ | /t/ | /d/ | /dˁ/ | -e | -kom | -kom | homme | homme |
Bedouin Palestinian | /aː/ | /eː/ | /oː/ | /ʧ/ | /ɡ/ | /ʤ/ | /θ/ | /ð/ | /ðˁ/ | -a | -kom | -ken | homme | henne |
[edit] See more
For more information, see
[edit] References
[edit] Links
|
|