| Chadian Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Shuwa | |
| لهجة تشادية | |
| Native to | Chad,Cameroon,Niger,Nigeria[1] |
| Ethnicity | Baggara Arabs |
| Speakers | L1: 2.6 million (2005–2023)[2] L2: 5.8 million (2013–2023)[3] Total: 8.3 million (2005–2023)[4] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Arabic alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | shu |
| Glottolog | chad1249 |
 | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Chadian Arabic (Arabic:لهجة تشادية), also known asShuwa Arabic,[a]Western Sudanic Arabic, orWest Sudanic Arabic (WSA),[5] is avariety of Arabic and thefirst language of 1.9 million people in Chad,[6] both rural and urban inhabitants. Most of its speakers live in central and southern Chad. Its range is an east-to-west oval in theSahel. Nearly all of this territory is withinChad andSudan. It is also spoken elsewhere in the vicinity ofLake Chad in the countries ofCameroon,Nigeria andNiger. Finally, it is spoken in slivers of theCentral African Republic. In addition, this language serves as alingua 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.
This language does not have a native name shared by all its speakers, beyond "Arabic". It arose as the native language of nomadic cattle herders (baggāra, Standard Arabicbaqqāraبَقَّارَة, means 'cattlemen', frombaqar[7]).
In 1913, a French colonial administrator in Chad, Henri Carbou, wrote a grammar of the local dialect of theOuaddaï highlands, a region of eastern Chad on the border with Sudan.[8] In 1920, a British colonial administrator in Nigeria,Gordon Lethem, wrote a grammar of the Borno dialect, in which he noted that the same language was spoken inKanem (in western Chad) andOuaddaï (in eastern Chad).[9] Since its publication,[10] this language has become widely cited academically as "Shuwa Arabic"; however, the term "Shuwa" was in use only amongnon-Arab people inBorno State,Nigeria. Around 2000, the term "Western Sudanic Arabic" was proposed by a specialist in the language, Jonathan Owens.[11] The geographical sense of "Sudanic" invoked by Owens is not the modern country of Sudan, but theSahel in general, a region Arabs dubbedBilad al-Sudan "the Land of the Blacks" as far back as themedieval era. In the era of British colonialism in Africa, colonial administrators too used "the Sudan" to mean the entire Sahel.
Based on population movements and shared genealogical histories, Sudanic and Egyptian varieties of Arabic have traditionally been classified into a larger Egypto-Sudanic grouping. However, alternative analysis of linguistic features supports the general independence of Sudanic Arabic varieties from Egyptian Arabic.[12]
Two clear subdialects of Western Sudanic Arabic are discernable:[13]
The majority of speakers live in southern Chad between 10 and 14 degrees north latitude. In Chad, it is the local language of the national capital,N'Djamena, and its range encompasses such other major cities asAbéché,Am Timan, andMao. It is the native language of 12% of Chadians. Chadian Arabic's associatedlingua franca[15] is widely spoken in Chad, so that Chadian Arabic and its lingua franca combined are spoken by somewhere between 40% and 60% of the Chadian population.[16][17]
In Sudan, it is spoken in the southwest, in southernKordofan and southernDarfur, but excluding the cities ofal-Ubayyid andal-Fashir.
In Nigeria, it spoken by 10% of the population ofMaiduguri, the capital ofBorno State,[18] and by residents elsewhere in Borno State. It is locally known as Shuwa Arabic. As of 2024[update], a total of 265,000 Chadian Arabic speakers are found in Nigeria.[19]
Its range in other African countries includes a sliver of the Central African Republic, the northern half of itsVakaga Prefecture, which is adjacent to Chad and Sudan; a sliver ofSouth Sudan at its border with Sudan; and the environs of Lake Chad spanning three other countries, namely part of Nigeria's (Borno State), Cameroon'sFar North Region, and in theDiffa Department of Niger'sDiffa Region. The number of speakers in Niger is estimated to be 12,900 people.
How this Arabic language arose is unknown. In 1994, Braukämper proposed that it arose in Chad starting in 1635 by the fusion of a population of Arabic speakers with a population ofFulani nomads.[20][7]
During the colonial era, a form ofpidgin Arabic known asTurku[21] was used as a lingua franca. There are still Arabic pidgins in Chad today, such asBongor Arabic, however, most of them have not been described, so it is not known if they descend from Turku.[22]
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | iiː | uuː |
| Mid | eeː | ooː |
| Open | aaː |
Notes:
It is characterized by the loss of thepharyngeals[ħ] and[ʕ], the interdental fricatives[ð],[θ] and[ðˤ], and diphthongs.[25][26] But it also has/lˤ/,/rˤ/ and/mˤ/ as extra phonemic emphatics. Some examples of minimal pairs for such emphatics are/ɡallab/ "he galloped",/ɡalˤlˤab/ "he got angry";/karra/ "he tore",/karˤrˤa/ "he dragged";/amm/ "uncle",/amˤmˤ/ "mother".[25] In addition, Nigerian Arabic has the feature of inserting an/a/ after gutturals (ʔ,h,x,q).[25]
A notable feature is the change of Standard Arabic Form V fromtafaʕʕal(a) toalfaʕʕal; for example, the wordtaʔallam(a) becomesalʔallam.The first person singular perfect tense of verbs is different from its formation in other Arabic dialects in that it does not have a finalt. Thus, the first person singular of the verbkatab iskatáb, with stress on the second syllable of the word, whereas the third-person singular iskátab, with stress on the first syllable.[25]
The following is a sample vocabulary:[27]
| Words of Arabic origin | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chadian Arabic | Meaning | Origin | |||
| أدانʔadān | ear | fromآذانʔāḏān, the plural form ofأذنʔuḏn | |||
| الميʔalmi | water | fromماءmāʔ with a frozen definite article | |||
| إيدʔīd | hand | fromيدyad | |||
| عيدʔīd | festival, celebration | fromعيدʕīd with regular change of ʕ to ʔ | |||
| جدادةjidāde | chicken (singulative) | fromدجاجةdajāja with metathesis | |||
| شدرايšadarāy | tree (singulative) | fromشجرةšajara with dissimilation | |||
| Words of foreign origin | |||||
| بعشومbaʔashōm | jackal | fromBejaba'aashoob | |||
| بيكbīk | ballpoint pen | fromFrenchbic | |||
| وتيرwatīr | car | fromFrenchvoiture | |||
{{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help)[verification needed]
Phrasebook from Wikivoyage
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