Bedouin Arabic

Bedouin Arabic
Bedouin Arabic
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Bedouin Arabic; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Last updated April 04, 2024

Bedouin Arabic^[1] refers to a typological group of Arabic dialects historically linked to Bedouin tribes, that has spread among both nomadic and sedentary groups across the Arab World. The group of dialects originate from Arabian tribes in Najd and the Hejaz that have spread since the 10th century until modern day. Bedouin dialects vary by region and tribe, but they typically share a set of features which distinguish them from sedentary-type dialects in each region.

Background

The similarities between Bedouin dialects are due to their historical contact with one another, due to rapid population movements that quickly erase linguistic diversity.^[2]

Features

Voiced pronunciation of Qāf as /g/, in contrast to voiceless pronunciations, such as /q/ in many sedentary dialects, or /ʔ/ in Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic, and the Maltese language. This is the only innovation that can be said to unite all Bedouin dialects.^[3]^[2] In most cases, this voiced pronunciation is a Voiced velar plosive, but it is sometimes affricated in some Eastern Bedouin dialects to /d͡z/ in Najd, or to /d͡ʒ/ in Eastern Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Shawi dialects.
Preserving interdental consonants Ṯāʾ /θ/, Ḏāl /ð/, and Ẓāʾ /ðˤ/. Like in most other dialects, Ḍād and Ẓāʾ have merged, so Ḍād is also pronounced as /ðˤ/. Many sedentary dialects preserve them as well, while many pronounce them as /t/, /d/, and /dˤ/, respectively. In some sedentary dialects in Egypt and the Levant, interdental consonants in loans from Standard Arabic are often pronounced as /s/, /z/, and /zˤ/.
Preserving nunation as suffix -in, for example: bintin zēnah.
Distinguishing masculine and feminine plural pronouns -hum and -hun.
Internal passive verb forms, such as kutib (passive voice of katab). In sedentary dialects, prefixes such as in- (inkatab) and it- (itkatab) are used.

Eastern Bedouin features

Verbal suffix -ūn to mark plural subjects.
Palatalization of /g/ (qāf) and /k/ occurring before front vowels, with two realizations:
- /g/ → /d͡ʒ/ and /k/ → /tʃ/ in Gulf, Mesopotamian, and Shawi dialects.
- /g/ → /d͡z/ and /k/ → /ts/ in the Najdi dialect group.

Examples

Eastern dialects:

Bedouin dialects in Najd, spoken in Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Desert, and Upper Mesopotamia.
Shawi Arabic, spoken by sheep-rearing tribes living between the Tigris and the Euphrates, but also in northern Jordan, Palestine, western Syria, and Lebanon.^[4]
Northwest Arabian Arabic, a variety of Arabic spoken by Bedouins mostly in northwestern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan, southern Israel, and eastern Egypt.
Omani bedouin dialects.^[5]
Bedouin dialects of the GCC region, spoken by sedentary bedouin (former bedouin) populations on the Persian Gulf coast, many of whom descend from Bedouin tribes.
The Gelet dialects of Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken in the majority of Iraq.

Western dialects:

Hilalian dialects, a group of Maghrebi dialects that include most bedouin dialects in the Maghreb.
Hassaniya Arabic, the variety of Arabic originally spoken by the Beni Hassān Bedouin tribes.
Libyan Arabic or Sulaimitian Arabic, a variety of Arabic spoken in Libya and neighboring countries.
Saharan Arabic, a variety of Arabic spoken in Algeria.
Chadian Arabic,^[6] the variety of Arabic spoken in Nigeria, Chad, and Sudan.

Related Research Articles

Arabic is a Central Semitic language of the Semitic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā or simply al-fuṣḥā (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ).

Hassaniya Arabic is a variety of Maghrebi Arabic spoken by Mauritanian Arabs and the Sahrawi people. It was spoken by the Beni Ḥassān Bedouin tribes of Yemeni origin who extended their authority over most of Mauritania and Morocco's southeastern and Western Sahara between the 15th and 17th centuries. Hassaniya Arabic was the language spoken in the pre-modern region around Chinguetti.

Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of varieties of Arabic spoken in Yemen and southwestern Saudi Arabia. It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, having many classical features not found across most of the Arabic-speaking world.

Levantine Arabic, also called Shami, is an Arabic variety spoken in the Levant, namely in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and southern Turkey. With over 54 million speakers, Levantine is, alongside Egyptian, one of the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic comprehensible all over the Arab world.

While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in phonology, the contemporary spoken Arabic language is more properly described as a continuum of varieties. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions. MSA is used in writing in formal print media and orally in newscasts, speeches and formal declarations of numerous types.

Gulf Arabic is a variety of the Arabic language spoken in Eastern Arabia around the coasts of the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, southern Iraq, eastern Saudi Arabia, northern Oman, and by some Iranian Arabs.

Mesopotamian Arabic or Iraqi Arabic is a group of varieties of Arabic spoken in the Mesopotamian basin of Iraq, as well as in Syria, Kuwait, southeastern Turkey, Iran, and Iraqi diaspora communities.

Hejazi Arabic or Hijazi Arabic (HA), also known as West Arabian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken in the Hejaz region, one by the urban population, originally spoken mainly in the cities of Jeddah, Mecca, Medina and partially in Ta'if and another dialect by the urbanized rural and bedouin populations. However, the term most often applies to the urban variety which is discussed in this article.

Baghdad Jewish Arabic or autonymhaki mal yihud or el-haki malna is the variety of Arabic spoken by the Jews of Baghdad and other towns of Lower Mesopotamia in Iraq. This dialect differs from the North Mesopotamian Arabic spoken by Jews in Upper Mesopotamian cities such as Mosul and Anah. Baghdadi and Northern Mesopotamian are subvarieties of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic.

The Arabic language family is divided into several categories which are: Old Arabic, the literary varieties, and the modern vernaculars.

Kuwaiti is a Gulf Arabic dialect spoken in Kuwait. Kuwaiti Arabic shares many phonetic features unique to Gulf dialects spoken in the Arabian Peninsula. Due to Kuwait's soap opera industry, knowledge of Kuwaiti Arabic has spread throughout the Arabic-speaking world and become recognizable even to people in countries such as Tunisia and Jordan.

Chadian Arabic, also known as Shuwa Arabic, Western Sudanic Arabic, or West Sudanic Arabic (WSA), is a variety of Arabic and the first language of 1.6 million people, both town dwellers and nomadic cattle herders. Most of its speakers live in central and southern Chad. Its range is an east-to-west oval in the Sahel. Nearly all of this territory is within Chad and Sudan. It is also spoken elsewhere in the vicinity of Lake Chad in the countries of Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. Finally, it is spoken in slivers of the Central African Republic. In addition, this language serves as a lingua franca in much of the region. In most of its range, it is one of several local languages and often not among the major ones.

Northwest Arabian Arabic is a proposed 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.

Varieties of Arabic are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian Peninsula. There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to geographical distance and some that are mutually unintelligible. Many aspects of the variability attested to in these modern variants can be found in the ancient Arabic dialects in the peninsula. Likewise, many of the features that characterize the various modern variants can be attributed to the original settler dialects as well as local native languages and dialects. Some organizations, such as SIL International, consider these approximately 30 different varieties to be separate languages, while others, such as the Library of Congress, consider them all to be dialects of Arabic.

Jordanian Arabic is a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Arabic spoken by the population of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Peninsular Arabic are the varieties of Arabic spoken throughout the Arabian Peninsula. This includes the countries of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Southern Iran, Southern Iraq and Jordan.

Palestinian Arabic is a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by most Palestinians in Palestine, Israel and in the Palestinian diaspora.

This article is about the phonology of Levantine Arabic also known as Shāmi Arabic, and its sub-dialects.

Gilit Mesopotamian Arabic, also known as Iraqi Arabic, Mesopotamian Gelet Arabic, or simply Mesopotamian Arabic is one of the two main varieties of Mesopotamian Arabic, together with North Mesopotamian Arabic.

Shawi or Šāwi Arabic is the Arabic dialect of the sheep-rearing Bedouins of Syro-Mesopotamia. The term Šāwi typically refers to the tribes living between the Tigris and the Euphrates, but many tribes are also found elsewhere, such as northern Jordan, Palestine, western Syria, and Lebanon. The dialect of the Arabs of Urfa also belongs to the Šāwi-Bedouin group.

References

↑ Weninger, Stefan, ed. (21 December 2011). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. doi:10.1515/9783110251586. ISBN 978-3-11-018613-0.
1 2 Magidow, Alexander (December 2021). "The Old and the New: Considerations in Arabic Historical Dialectology". Languages. 6 (4): 163. doi: 10.3390/languages6040163 . ISSN 2226-471X.
↑ Palva, Heikki (2011-05-30), "Dialects: Classification", Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Brill, doi:10.1163/1570-6699_eall_eall_com_0087 , retrieved 2023-01-01
↑ Younes, Igor; Herin, Bruno (2016-01-01). "Šāwi Arabic". Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online Edition.
↑ Webster, Roger (1991). "Notes on the Dialect and Way of Life of the Āl Wahība Bedouin of Oman". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 54 (3): 473–485. ISSN 0041-977X.
↑ Manfredi, Stefano; Roset, Caroline (September 2021). "Towards a Dialect History of the Baggara Belt". Languages. 6 (3): 146. doi: 10.3390/languages6030146 . hdl: 11245.1/9d3da5f3-7f63-4424-a557-8ce609adb526 . ISSN 2226-471X.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Weninger, Stefan, ed. (21 December 2011). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. doi:10.1515/9783110251586. ISBN 978-3-11-018613-0.

[:0-2] 1 2 Magidow, Alexander (December 2021). "The Old and the New: Considerations in Arabic Historical Dialectology". Languages. 6 (4): 163. doi: 10.3390/languages6040163 . ISSN 2226-471X.

[3] Palva, Heikki (2011-05-30), "Dialects: Classification", Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Brill, doi:10.1163/1570-6699_eall_eall_com_0087 , retrieved 2023-01-01

[4] Younes, Igor; Herin, Bruno (2016-01-01). "Šāwi Arabic". Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online Edition.

[5] Webster, Roger (1991). "Notes on the Dialect and Way of Life of the Āl Wahība Bedouin of Oman". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 54 (3): 473–485. ISSN 0041-977X.

[6] Manfredi, Stefano; Roset, Caroline (September 2021). "Towards a Dialect History of the Baggara Belt". Languages. 6 (3): 146. doi: 10.3390/languages6030146 . hdl: 11245.1/9d3da5f3-7f63-4424-a557-8ce609adb526 . ISSN 2226-471X.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]