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Northwest Arabian Arabic (also called Levantine Bedawi Arabic or Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic) is a proposed[2] subfamily of Arabic encompassing the traditional Bedouin dialects of the Sinai Peninsula, the Eastern Desert, the Negev, southern Jordan, and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia.[3]

Northwest Arabian Arabic
Native to	Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia
Native speakers	2.24 million (2015-2016)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Northwest Arabian Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	avl
Glottolog	east2690

The dialect of the Maʿāzah in the Egyptian Eastern Desert borders the dialect of the ʿAbābdah, who speak a dialect more closely related to Sudanese Arabic.[4]

In Saudi Arabia, the dialects of the eastern coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, the Hisma, and the Harrat al-Riha belong to the Northwest Arabian type, but the dialect of the Bili to the south is not closely related.[5]

Classification

The Northwest Arabian Arabic dialects display several innovations from Proto-Arabic:[2]

1. The voiced reflex of *q ([g])
2. The gaháwah syndrome: insertion of /a/ after X in (C)aXC(V) sequences where X is /h/, /ʿ/, /ḥ/, /ġ/, or /ḫ/, e.g. gahwa(h) > gaháwa(h) "coffee", baġl > baġal "mule".
3. The definite article al- and the relative pronoun alli are stressable as an integral part of the word, e.g. álwalad, áljabal. The initial /a/ is stable enough to be preserved after -ī (-iy), which is dropped: f-albēt, rāʿ-álġanam.
4. A number of typical Bedouin lexical items (gōṭar "to go", sōlaf "to tell, narrate", ṭabb "to arrive", nišad ~ nišád "to ask").
5. Absence of tanwīn and its residues.
6. Absence of final /n/ in the imperfect, 2nd person feminine singular, 2nd person masculine plural, and 3rd person masculine plural.
7. The pronominal suffix of the 2nd person masculine plural is -ku (-kuw).
8. Stressed variants -ī and -nī of the pronominal suffix in the 1st person singular.
9. Plural comm. forms haḏalla, haḏallāk, etc.
10. Initial /a/ in Forms VII, VIII, and X in the perfect, and stressed when in stressable position.
11. Initial /a/ in a number of irregular nouns (amm, aḫt, aḫwan, adēn, afám).

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Interdental		Dental/Alveolar		Palatal	Velar		Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
			plain	emph.	plain	emph.		plain	emph.
Nasal		m			n
Plosive	voiceless				t	tˤ		k	kˤ	(q)		(ʔ)
	voiced	b			d			ɡ
Affricate							d͡ʒ
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ		s	sˤ	ʃ	x			ħ	h
	voiced		ð	ðˤ	z	(zˤ)	(ʒ)	ɣ			ʕ
Trill					r	(rˤ)
Approximant					l	lˤ	j	w

• Phonemes in parentheses occur either marginally or across different dialects

• [ʒ] can be heard as an allophone of /d͡ʒ/.

• /rˤ/ is mostly heard in the Hindiy and Ṭuwara dialects

Vowels

Vowels occur in both long and short positions:[6]

	Front	Back
Close	i iː	u uː
Mid	eː	oː
Open	a aː

Vowels are recognized as allophones in the following positions:[7]

Phoneme/Sound	Allophone	Notes
i [i]	[ɪ]	in lax position
u [u]	[ʊ]	in lax position
	[o]	when preceding emphatic sounds
a [a]	[ɐ]	in lax position
	[ɑ]	when preceding or following emphatics
eː [eː]	[ɛː]	when following emphatic or back fricatives
oː [oː]	[ɔː]	when preceding velar consonants
aː [aː]	[ɑː]	in velarized environments
	[ɐː]	when following pharyngeal consonants
	[ɛː ~ æː]	in neutral position in the Tarabin dialect

Imala

Some of the western dialects of Northwest Arabian Arabic (Central Sinai and Negev in particular) are characterized by an Imala of Old Arabic word-final *-ā(ʾ) in certain patterns of nouns and adjectives. Emphatics seem to block the shift:[8]

Pattern	Examples[8]
*qitāʾ, *qutāʾ	štiy “rainy season” ḥḏiy “footwear” dʿiy “cursing” ndiy “call” zniy “adultery” ġniy “song” ʿšiy “evening prayer” dliy “pails (pl.)” mliy “full (pl.)” rwiy “well-watered (pl.)” miy “water”
*qitā, *qutā	lḥiy “beards” griy “hospitality” hdiy “right guidance” hniy “here”
*qitlā(ʾ), *qutlā(ʾ)	yimniy “right side” yisriy “left side” sifliy “nether millstone” ʿilyiy “upper milstone” miʿziy “goats” ḥimmiy “fever” ḥinniy “henna” juwwiy “inside” ḥiffiy “barefoot (pl.)” mūsiy “Moses” ʿīsiy “Jesus”
*qatlāʾ feminine adjective	sawdíy “black” ṭaršíy “deaf” tarjíy “sloping downwards (ground)” šahabíy “grey, light blue” ḥawwíy “salt-and-pepper, black with white spots (animal)” zargíy “blue” ʿawjíy “crooked” šadfíy “left-handed, left” ḥawlíy “cross-eyed” safʿíy “black-eared (goat)”

Dialects, accents, and varieties

There are several differences between the western and eastern branches of Northwest Arabian Arabic:[2]

1. In the eastern branch, the b- imperfect does not occur in plain colloquial, while in the entire western branch it is in regular use.
2. The western branch makes use of an analytic genitive, šuġl, šuġlah, šuġlīn, šuġlāt as genitive markers.
3. The western branch dialects have vowel harmony in the performative of the active imperfect of Form I, whereas in the eastern branch the vowel is mainly generalized /a/.
4. In the dialects of the eastern branch and southern Sinai, the reflexes of *aw and *ay are well-established monophthongs /ō/ and /ē/, usually after back consonants and emphatics as well. In most dialects of the western branch, *aw and *ay have been partially monophthongized, but the new monophthongs fluctuate with long phonemes /ō/ ~ /ū/, /ē/ ~/ī/.
5. The eastern branch dialects tend to (but not strictly) drop the initial /a/ in gaháwah forms: ghawa ~ gaháwa, nḫala, etc. In Sinai and Negev, the /a/ of the initial syllable is preserved.
6. The imperfect of the I-w verbs in the western branch are of the type yawṣal, yōṣal, whereas in the eastern branch they are of the type yāṣal.
7. 3rd person singular feminine object suffix: -ha/-hiy in Negev, -ha everywhere else.
8. 3rd person singular masculine object suffix: C-ah in the eastern branch, phonetically conditioned C-ih/-ah in the western branch, C-u(h) in southern Sinai.
9. 1st person plural common subject pronoun: ḥinna, iḥna in the eastern branch; iḥna, aḥna in the western branch.
10. In the eastern branch and parts of Sinai, -a is the main reflex of -ā(ʾ) in neutral environments. In Negev and the eastern part of the northern Sinai littoral, it is -iy, in back environments -a.

Characteristics

The following are some archaic features retained from Proto-Arabic:[2]

1. Gender distinction in the 2nd and 3rd person plural pronouns, pronominal suffixes, and finite verbal forms.
2. Productivity of Form IV (aC₁C₂aC₃, yiC₁C₂iC₃).
3. The initial /a/ in the definite article al- and the relative pronoun alli.
4. Frequent and productive use of diminutives (glayyil "a little", ḫbayz "bread").
5. Absence of affricated variants of /g/ (< */q/) and /k/.
6. The use of the locative preposition fi (fiy).
7. The invariable pronominal suffix -ki of the 2nd person feminine singular.

See also

• Varieties of Arabic
• Peninsular Arabic

References

Sources

• Gordon, Raymond G.. Jr., ed. (2005), "Bedawi Arabic", Ethnologue: Languages of the World (15th ed.), Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics
• Haim Blanc. 1970. "The Arabic Dialect of the Negev Bedouins," Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 4/7:112-150.
• Rudolf E. de Jong. 2000. A Grammar of the Bedouin Dialects of the Northern Sinai Littoral: Bridging the Linguistic Gap between the Eastern and Western Arab World. Leiden: Brill.
• Judith Rosenhouse. 1984. The Bedouin Arabic Dialects: General Problems and Close Analysis of North Israel Bedouin Dialects. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

На других языках

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- [en] Northwest Arabian Arabic

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[ru] Бедуинский диалект восточного Египта и Леванта

Бедуинский диалект восточного Египта и Леванта, бедави (араб. اللهجة البدوية‎, англ. Bedawi, Levantine Bedawi Arabic) — одна из аравийских разновидностей арабского языка, на которой говорят бедуины на полуострове Синай, в Иордании, Израиле, секторе Газа, западном берегу реки Иордан и Сирии .

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