Bedouin Arabic

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.

Features

• Voiced pronunciation of ar, 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. 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 ar, for example: ar.
• Distinguishing masculine and feminine plural pronouns ar and ar.
• Internal passive verb forms, such as ar (passive voice of ar). In sedentary dialects, prefixes such as ar (ar) and ar (ar) are used.

Eastern Bedouin features

• Verbal suffix ar 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:

• Najdi Arabic, spoken in Arabia, the Syrian Desert, and Upper Mesopotamia. As defined by Ingham, this dialect group includes bedouin dialects across a wide area from Najran to the south, Syria to the North, Hejaz, and Eastern Arabia.
• Shawi Arabic, spoken by sheep-rearing tribes living between the Tigris and the Euphrates, but also in northern Jordan, Palestine, western Syria, and Lebanon.
• 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.
• Gulf Arabic, spoken by sedentary 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, the variety of Arabic spoken in Nigeria, Chad, and Sudan.

References

References

1. (21 December 2011). "The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook".
2. Magidow, Alexander. (December 2021). "The Old and the New: Considerations in Arabic Historical Dialectology". Languages.
3. Palva, Heikki. (2011-05-30). "Dialects: Classification". Brill.
4. (1994). "Najdi Arabic : central Arabian". J. Benjamins Pub. Co.
5. (2016-01-01). "Šāwi Arabic". Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online Edition.
6. (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.
7. (September 2021). "Towards a Dialect History of the Baggara Belt". Languages.