| Maghrebi Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Darija, Western Arabic North African Arabic | |
| اللهجات المغاربية | |
| Region | Maghreb |
| Ethnicity | Maghrebi Arabs, also used as asecond language by other ethnic groups in the Maghreb |
Native speakers | 88 million (2020–2022)[1] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Dialects | |
| Arabic alphabet,Latin alphabet | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Variously:arq – Algerian Arabicxaa – Andalusi Arabicmey – Hassaniya Arabicayl – Libyan Arabicmlt – Malteseary – Moroccan Arabicaao – Saharan Arabicsqr – Siculo-Arabicaeb – Tunisian Arabic |
| Glottolog | nort3191 |
Maghrebi Arabic,[a] often known asad-Dārija[b][c][2] to differentiate it fromLiterary Arabic,[3] is avernacularArabicdialect continuum spoken in theMaghreb. It includes theMoroccan,Algerian,Tunisian,Libyan,Hassaniya andSaharan Arabic dialects.
Maghrebi Arabic has a predominantlySemitic andArabic vocabulary,[4][5] although it contains a significant number ofBerber loanwords, which represent 2–3% of the vocabulary of Libyan Arabic, 8–9% of Algerian and Tunisian Arabic, and 10–15% of Moroccan Arabic.[6] Maghrebi Arabic was formerly spoken inAl-Andalus andSicily until the 17th and 13th centuries, respectively, in the extinct forms ofAndalusi Arabic andSiculo-Arabic. TheMaltese language is believed to have its source in a language spoken in MuslimSicily that ultimately originates from Tunisia, as it contains some typical Maghrebi Arabic areal characteristics.[7]
The common ancestor of Maghrebi Arabic had the same phonology asModern Standard Arabic, with a few key differences.
| Short | Long | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front | Back | |
| Close | i | u | iː | uː |
| Mid | (eː)* | (oː)* | ||
| Open | a | aː | ||
Notes: * The Arabic diphthongs/aj/ and/aw/ have mostly collapsed into/iː/ and/uː/ in most Maghrebi dialects west of Libya, unlike the phonemes/eː/ and/oː/ inMashriqi dialects. e.g. لون ('color')/lawn/ and عين ('eye')/ʕajn/ in Standard Arabic are pronounced/luːn/ and/ʕiːn/ in Maghrebi dialects (Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian), and pronounced/loːn/ and/ʕeːn/ in Libyan and Mashriqi dialects.
| Labial | Dental | Denti-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | emphatic | |||||||||
| Nasal | m⟨م⟩ | n⟨ن⟩ | ||||||||
| Stop | voiceless | t⟨ت⟩ | tˤ⟨ط⟩ | k⟨ك⟩ | q⟨ق⟩ | ʔ⟨ء⟩ | ||||
| voiced | b⟨ب⟩ | d⟨د⟩ | d͡ʒ⟨ج⟩ | |||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f⟨ف⟩ | θ⟨ث⟩ | s⟨س⟩ | sˤ⟨ص⟩ | ʃ⟨ش⟩ | x ~χ⟨خ⟩ | ħ⟨ح⟩ | h⟨ه⟩ | |
| voiced | ð⟨ذ⟩ | z⟨ز⟩ | ðˤ⟨ظ⟩,⟨ض⟩* | ɣ ~ʁ⟨غ⟩ | ʕ⟨ع⟩ | |||||
| Trill | r⟨ر⟩ | |||||||||
| Approximant | l⟨ل⟩ | j⟨ي⟩ | w⟨و⟩ | |||||||
* Classical Arabic/dˤ/ and/ðˤ/ merged with each other in all varieties of Arabic.
Maghrebi regionalisms are mostly reduced forms of Arabic phrases.
*ذَرْوَكْت (*ḏarwakt) < ذَا اَلوَقْت (ḏā al-waqt)
*أشكون (*ʔaškōn) < أَيُّ شَيْء كَوْن (*ʔēš *kōn < ʔayy šayʔ kawn)
Proto-Maghrebi had already lost allnunation and most of thei'rāb, with the exception of the adverbial accusative, which was unproductive.
An n- prefix is added to the first person singular in some verb forms, which distinguishes maghrebi Arabic from all other varieties of Arabic.
Darija,Derija orDelja (Arabic:الدارجة) means "everyday/colloquial dialect";[8] it is also rendered ased-dārija,derija ordarja. It refers to any of the varieties of colloquial Maghrebi Arabic. Although it is also common inAlgeria andTunisia to refer to the Maghrebi Arabic varieties directly as languages, similarly it is also common inEgypt andLebanon to refer to the Mashriqi Arabic varieties directly as languages. For instance, Algerian Arabic would be referred asDzayri (Algerian) and Tunisian Arabic asTounsi (Tunisian), and Egyptian Arabic would be referred asMasri (Egyptian) and Lebanese Arabic asLubnani (Lebanese).
In contrast, the colloquial dialects of more eastern Arab countries, such as Egypt, Jordan and Sudan, are usually known asal-‘āmmīya (العامية), though Egyptians may also refer to their dialects asel-logha d-darga.
Maghrebi Arabic can be divided into two lineages in North Africa. One originates from the urbanArabs and dates back to theArab Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th and 8th centuries, referred to asPre-Hilalian Arabic. The other stems from theBedouin Arabic varieties brought in by theBedouin Arab tribes ofBanu Hilal,Banu Sulaym andMa'qil in the 11th and 12th centuries, termed asHilalian Arabic.[9] The Pre-Hilalian varieties were largely bedouinized by the Hilalian migrations in the 11th century, producing hybrid varieties that combined both pre-Hilalian and Hilalian features.[10] This led to the choice of Banu Hilal's Arabic as thelingua franca of the Maghreb.[11] This variety, with influences fromBerber languages andPunic, gave rise to the modern Arabic varieties in the Maghreb spoken by the vast majority of Maghrebis.[11]
The Arabic language was spread across North Africa throughout theRashidun andUmayyad conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, during which about 150,000 Arabs settled in the Maghreb.[12][13][14] As Arab-led forces established settlements in a triangle encompassing Roman towns and cities such asTangier,Salé andWalili,Moroccan Arabic began to take form.[10]Arabization was widespread in cities where both Arabs and Berbers lived, as well as Arab centers and surrounding rural areas. Nevertheless, the Arabization process in the countryside remained gradual until the Hilalian invasions of the 11th century.[9]
Maghrebi Arabic originates from theBedouin Arabic varieties that were introduced to the Maghreb in the 11th century byBanu Hilal andBanu Sulaym, who effectively accelerated theArabization of a great part of theBerbers.[11] Sources estimate that around 1 million Arabs migrated to the Maghreb in the 11th century.[15] Their impact was profound and reshaped the demographic situation and living conditions across the Maghreb. They played a major role in spreading Bedouin Arabic to rural areas such as the countryside and steppes, and as far as the southern areas near theSahara.[9]
The varieties of Maghrebi Arabic form adialect continuum. The degree of mutual intelligibility is high between geographically adjacent dialects (such as local dialects spoken in Eastern Morocco and Western Algeria or Eastern Algeria and North Tunisia or South Tunisia and Western Libya), but lower between dialects that are further apart, e.g. between Moroccan and Tunisian Darija. Conversely, Moroccan Darija and particularly Algerian Derja cannot be easily understood by Eastern Arabic speakers (from Egypt, Sudan, Levant, Iraq, and Arabian peninsula) in general.[16]
Maghrebi Arabic continues to evolve by integrating new French or English words, notably in technical fields, or by replacing old French and Italian/Spanish ones with Modern Standard Arabic words within some circles; more educated and upper-class people who code-switch between Maghrebi Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic have more French and Italian/Spanish loanwords, especially the latter came from the time ofal-Andalus. Maghrebi dialects all usen- as thefirst-personsingularprefix onverbs, distinguishing them fromLevantine dialects and Modern Standard Arabic.
Modern Standard Arabic (Arabic:الفصحى,romanized: al-fuṣḥá) is the primary language used in the government, legislation and judiciary of countries in the Maghreb. Maghrebi Arabic is mainly aspoken andvernacular dialect, although it occasionally appears in entertainment and advertising in urban areas of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. In Algeria, where Maghrebi Arabic was taught as a separate subject under French colonization, some textbooks in the dialect exist but they are no longer officially endorsed by the Algerian authorities. Maghrebi Arabic has a mostlySemiticArabic vocabulary.[5] It containsBerber loanwords, which represent 2–3% of the vocabulary of Libyan Arabic, 8–9% of Algerian and Tunisian Arabic, and 10–15% of Moroccan Arabic.[6][17] The dialect may also possess asubstratum ofPunic.[18]
Additionally, Maghrebi Arabic has aLatin substratum, which may have been derived from theAfrican Romance that was used as an urban lingua franca during theByzantine Empire period.[19]in morphology, this substratum is considered the origin of the plural noun morphemes-əsh/-osh that are common in northern Moroccan dialects,[20] and probably the loss of gender in the second person singular of personal pronouns verbs, for example in Andalusian Arabic.[21]The lexicon contains many loanwords from Latin, e.g. Moroccan/Algerian/Tunisianشَاقُور,shāqūr, 'hatchet' fromsecūris (this could also be borrowed from Spanishsegur);[22]ببوش, 'snail' frombabōsus andفلوس, 'chick' frompullus through Berberafullus.[23]
Maghrebi Arabic speakers frequently borrow words from French (in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), Spanish (in northern Morocco and northwestern Algerian) and Italian (in Libya and Tunisia) andconjugate them according to the rules of their dialects with some exceptions (like passive voice for example). As it is not always written, there is no standard and it is free to change quickly and to pick up new vocabulary from neighboring languages. This is comparable to the evolution ofMiddle English after theNorman conquest.[citation needed]
{{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help){{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help)Links to related articles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Authority control databases: National |
|---|
