Arabic-based pidgins and creoles explained

There have been a number of Arabic-based pidgins and creoles throughout history, including a number of new ones emerging today. These may be broadly divided into pidgins and creoles, which share a common ancestry, and incipient immigrant pidgins. Additionally, Maridi Arabic may have been an 11th-century pidgin.

Arabic creoles and pidgins

The Arabic creoles and pidgins are:

• Bimbashi Arabic, a colonial-era pidgin of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the ancestor of the other Sudanic pidgins and creoles.
• Turku Arabic, a pidgin of colonial Chad
• Juba Arabic, spoken in South Sudan
• Nubi language, spoken in Uganda and Kenya
• Bongor Arabic, which could be a descendant of Turku Arabic, spoken in and around the town of Bongor, Chad.
  • There may be other Turku-like Arabic pidgins in Chad today, but they have not been described.

Immigrant pidgins in the Arabian Peninsula

In the modern era, pidgin Arabic is most notably used by the large number of migrants to Arab countries. Examples include:

• Gulf Pidgin Arabic, used by mostly immigrant laborers in the Arabian Peninsula (and not necessarily a single language variety).^[1]
• Jordanian Bengali Pidgin Arabic, used by Bengali immigrants in Jordan.
• Pidgin Madam, used by Sinhalese domestic workers in Lebanon.^[2]
• Romanian Pidgin Arabic, spoken by Romanian oil-field workers in Iraq from the 1970s to the 1990s.^[3]

Due to the nature of pidgins, this list is likely incomplete. New pidgins may continue to develop and emerge due to language contact in the Arab world.

Para-Arabic

Para-Arabic, also known as Pseudo-Arabic, is a descendant of the Arabic language that is no longer fully classified as Arabic. This is a mixed language that undergoes a process of code mixing or code switching where Arabic vocabulary and grammar or lexicon are mixed with other languages.

• Arabic-Javanese of Klego, the form of code mixing that has become the lingua franca in Klego, a village in the city of Pekalongan, Indonesia, is a mixture of Arabic vocabulary with the influence of extensive Javanese grammar and lexicon, used by Arabs and Javanese people there.^{[4] [5]}
• Condet dialect, a dialect of Betawi language with a more pronounced influence of Arabic vocabulary than other dialects, as well as a slight influence of Malay language.^{[6] [7]} Arabic-Malay script (Jawi) was also quite often used by the indigenous people of Condet in East Jakarta, especially during the Dutch colonial era.^[8]

Nubi language can also be considered a Para-Arabic language because its vocabulary is not entirely derived from Arabic but has absorbed a lot of Bantu languages. But it is excluded, because its lexicon is 90% derived from Arabic.^[9]

See also

• Varieties of Arabic

Sources

• Book: Tosco . Mauro . Manfredi . Stefani . Owens . Jonathan . The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics . 2013 . Oxford University Press . 9780199764136 . Pidgins and Creoles.
• Manfredi, Stefano and Mauro Tosco (eds.) 2014. Arabic-based Pidgins and Creoles. Special Issue of the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 29:2

Notes and References

1. Bakir . Murtadha . Notes on the verbal system of Gulf Pidgin Arabic . 2010 . 201 - 228 . 14 January 2024. JBE Platform.
2. Fida Bizri, 2005. Le Pidgin Madam: Un nouveau pidgin arabe, La Linguistique 41, p. 54–66
3. Avram . Andrei . 2010-01-01 . An Outline of Romanian Pidgin Arabic . Journal of Language Contact . en . 3 . 1 . 20–38 . 10.1163/000000010792317884 . 1877-4091. free .
4. Kontribusi Konvensi Bahasa Arab - Jawa Terhadap Harmonisasi Sosial. Institut Agama Islam Negeri Kudus. Edukasia: Jurnal Penelitian Pendidikan Islam. id. 2016. Muhandis. Azzuhri. 11. 1. Kudus, Indonesia. 10.21043/edukasia.v11i1.807. free.
5. Interaksi Masyarakat Keturunan Arab Dengan Masyarakat Setempat di Pekalongan. MA NU Banat Kudus. International Journal of Indonesian Society and Culture. id. 2013. Dian. Kinasih. 5. 1. Kudus, Indonesia. 10.15294/komunitas.v5i1.2372. free.
6. Hubungan Bahasa Melayu dengan Bahasa Betawi di Wilayah Condet. University of Indonesia. Program Studi Indonesia, Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya. id. 2015. Khairina. Diar. Jakarta, Indonesia.
7. Analisis Makna dan Tatanan Gramatikal Bahasa Arab Pada Masyarakat Condet. Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia. Konferensi Linguistik Tahunan Atma Jaya. id. 2021. Husin. Rizka. Andini. Jakarta, Indonesia. 2828-5034.
8. Tsanā'iyyah al-lughah fī mujtama' condet ('arab-betawi) dirāsah 'ilm al-lughah al-ijtimā'i. UIN Syarif Hidayatullah. Fakultas Adab dan Humaniora. ar. 2016. Ahmad. Rifai. Jakarta, Indonesia.
9. Ineke Wellens. The Nubi Language of Uganda: An Arabic Creole in Africa. BRILL, 2005