| Cilician Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Turkey |
| Arabic alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (covered byapc) |
| Glottolog | cili1234 |
| IETF | apc-TR |
Cilician Arabic,Cilicia-Antioch Arabic,Çukurova Arabic, orÇukurovan is aLevantine dialect spoken in Turkey in the geo-cultural area ofCilicia, the coastal region of the TurkishEastern Mediterranean fromHatay toMersin andAdana.[1][2]
Cilician Arabic speakers in Turkey come from four different religious groups:Sunni Muslims,Alawites,Christians (includingGreek Orthodox andCatholics), andJews. It is difficult to know the number speakers. Due to pressures againstminority languages, younger generations of the Arabic-speaking communities increasingly use Turkish as their mother tongue. In 1971, 36% of the population in Hatay was Arabic-speaking. In 1996, Grimes estimated 500,000 speakers of North Levantine Arabic in Turkey.[3]
In 2011, according to Procházka there were 70,000 Çukurova Arabic speakers in theAdana andMersin provinces and people under 30 years old had completely switched to Turkish.[4] In 2011, Werner estimated 200,000 Antiochia Arabic speakers inHatay.[5] According to Ethnologue, the language is "threatened" in Turkey.[6] Çukurova Arabic is in danger of becomingextinct in a few decades.[4]
