Lebanese Arabic Explained

Lebanese Arabic
Nativename:اللهجة اللبنانية
Pronunciation:pronounced as /ˈʕaɾabe ləbˈneːne/
States:Lebanon
Speakers: million
Date:2022
Ref:[1]
Familycolor:Afroasiatic
Fam2:Semitic
Fam3:West Semitic
Fam4:Central Semitic
Fam5:Arabic
Fam6:Levantine Arabic
Fam7:North Levantine
Listclass:hlist
Dia1:Beqaa Arabic
Dia2:Iqlim-Al-Kharrub Sunni Arabic
Dia3:Jdaideh Arabic
Dia4:North-Central Lebanese Arabic
Dia5:North Lebanese Arabic
Dia6:Saida Sunni Arabic
Dia7:South-Central Lebanese Arabic
Dia8:South Lebanese Arabic
Dia9:Sunni Beiruti Arabic
Script:Arabic alphabet
Arabic chat alphabet
Iso3comment:(covered by apc)
Iso3:none
Isoexception:dialect
Ietf:ar-LB
Glotto:stan1323
Glottorefname:Standard Lebanese Arabic
Notice:IPA
Map:Lebanese Arabic Map.png

Lebanese Arabic (Arabic: عَرَبِيّ لُبْنَانِيّ ; autonym: pronounced as /ˈʕaɾabe ləbˈneːne/), or simply Lebanese (Arabic: لُبْنَانِيّ ; autonym: pronounced as /ləbˈneːne/), is a variety of North Levantine Arabic, indigenous to and primarily spoken in Lebanon, with significant linguistic influences borrowed from other Middle Eastern and European languages and is in some ways unique from other varieties of Arabic. Due to multilingualism and pervasive diglossia among Lebanese people (a majority of the Lebanese people are bilingual or trilingual), it is not uncommon for Lebanese people to code-switch between or mix Lebanese Arabic, French, and English in their daily speech. It is also spoken among the Lebanese diaspora.

Lebanese Arabic is a descendant of the Arabic dialects introduced to the Levant and other Arabic dialects that were already spoken in other parts of the Levant in the 7th century AD, which gradually supplanted various indigenous Northwest Semitic languages to become the regional lingua franca. As a result of this prolonged process of language shift, Lebanese Arabic possesses a significant Aramaic substratum, along with later non-Semitic adstrate influences from Ottoman Turkish, French, and English. As a variety of Levantine Arabic, Lebanese Arabic is most closely related to Syrian Arabic and shares many innovations with Palestinian and Jordanian Arabic.

Differences from Standard Arabic

Lebanese Arabic shares many features with other modern varieties of Arabic. Lebanese Arabic, like many other spoken Levantine Arabic varieties, has a syllable structure very different from that of Modern Standard Arabic. While Standard Arabic can have only one consonant at the beginning of a syllable, after which a vowel must follow, Lebanese Arabic commonly has two consonants in the onset.

Examples

Contentions regarding descent from Arabic

Lebanese literary figure Said Akl led a movement to recognize the "Lebanese language" as a distinct prestigious language and oppose it to Standard Arabic, which he considered a "dead language". Akl's idea was relatively successful among the Lebanese diaspora.

Several non-linguist commentators, most notably the statistician and essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, have said that the Lebanese vernacular is not in fact a variety of Arabic at all, but rather a separate Central Semitic language descended from older languages including Aramaic; those who espouse this viewpoint suggest that a large percentage of its vocabulary consists of Arabic loanwords, and that this compounds with the use of the Arabic alphabet to disguise the language's true nature.[5] Taleb has recommended that the language be called Northwestern Levantine or neo-Canaanite.[6] [7] [8] However, this classification is at odds with the comparative method of historical linguistics; the lexicon of Lebanese, including basic lexicon, exhibits sound changes and other features that are unique to the Arabic branch of the Semitic language family,[9] making it difficult to categorize it under any other branch, and observations of its morphology also suggest a substantial Arabic makeup.[10] However, this is disputable as Arabic and Aramaic share many cognates, so only words proper to the Arabic language and cognates with Arabic-specific sound changes can certainly only be from Arabic. It is plausible that many words used in Lebanese Arabic today may have been influenced by their respective Aramaic and Canaanite cognates.[5]

Historian and linguist Ahmad Al-Jallad has argued that modern dialects are not descendants of Classical Arabic, forms of Arabic existing before the formation of Classical Arabic being the historical foundation for the various dialects. Thus he states that, "most of the familiar modern dialects (i.e. Rabat, Cairo, Damascus, etc.) are sedimentary structures, containing layers of Arabics that must be teased out on a case-by-case basis." In essence, the linguistic consensus is that Lebanese too is a variety of Arabic.[11] [12]

Phonology

Consonants

Lebanese Arabic consonants
LabialAlveolarPalatalVelarUvularPharyngealGlottal
plainemphatic
Nasalpronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/
Stopvoiceless(pronounced as /link/) pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/) pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/)pronounced as /link/
voicedpronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ (pronounced as /link/)
Fricativevoicelesspronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/
voiced(pronounced as /link/) pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/
Tap/trillpronounced as /link/
Approximantpronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/

Vowels and diphthongs

Comparison

This table shows the correspondence between general Lebanese Arabic vowel phonemes and their counterpart realizations in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and other Levantine Arabic varieties.

Lebanese Arabic MSA Southern Central Northern
pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /[e]/ or pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /[u]/ pronounced as /[o]/ or pronounced as /[ʊ]/ pronounced as /[o]/
pronounced as //a// pronounced as /[a]/ pronounced as /[e]/
pronounced as //ɛː// pronounced as /[aː]/ pronounced as /[æː]/ pronounced as /[eː]/
pronounced as //ɔː// pronounced as /[ɑː]/ pronounced as /[oː]/
pronounced as //eː// pronounced as /[aː]/ pronounced as /[a]/ pronounced as /[e]/
pronounced as //iː// pronounced as /[iː]/
pronounced as //i//~pronounced as //e// pronounced as /[iː]/ pronounced as /[i]/
pronounced as //u// pronounced as /[uː]/
pronounced as //eɪ//~pronounced as //eː// pronounced as /[aj]/ pronounced as /[eː]/
pronounced as //oʊ//~pronounced as //oː// pronounced as /[aw]/ pronounced as /[oː]/
After back consonants this is pronounced pronounced as /link/ in Lebanese Arabic, Central and Northern Levantine varieties, and as pronounced as /link/ in Southern Levantine varieties.[14]

Regional varieties

Although there is a modern Lebanese Arabic dialect mutually understood by Lebanese people,[15] there are regionally distinct variations with, at times, unique pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.[16]

Widely used regional varieties include:

Even in the medieval era, the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi wrote that: "They say that in the Lebanon district there are spoken seventy dialects, and no one people understands the language of the other, except through an interpreter."[17]

Writing system

Lebanese Arabic is rarely written, except in novels where a dialect is implied or in some types of poetry that do not use classical Arabic at all. Lebanese Arabic is also utilized in many Lebanese songs, theatrical pieces, local television and radio productions, and very prominently in zajal.

Formal publications in Lebanon, such as newspapers, are typically written in Modern Standard Arabic, French, or English.

While Arabic script is usually employed, informal usage such as online chat may mix and match Latin letter transliterations. The Lebanese poet Said Akl proposed the use of the Latin alphabet but did not gain wide acceptance. Whereas some works, such as Romeo and Juliet and Plato's Dialogues have been transliterated using such systems, they have not gained widespread acceptance. Yet, now, most Arabic web users, when short of an Arabic keyboard, transliterate the Lebanese Arabic words in the Latin alphabet in a pattern similar to the Said Akl alphabet, the only difference being the use of digits to render the Arabic letters with no obvious equivalent in the Latin alphabet.

There is still today no generally accepted agreement on how to use the Latin alphabet to transliterate Lebanese Arabic words. However, Lebanese people are now using Latin numbers while communicating online to make up for sounds not directly associable to Latin letters. This is especially popular over text messages and apps such as WhatsApp.Examples:

In 2010, The Lebanese Language Institute released a Lebanese Arabic keyboard layout and made it easier to write Lebanese Arabic in a Latin script, using unicode-compatible symbols to substitute for missing sounds.[18]

Said Akl's orthography

Said Akl, the poet, philosopher, writer, playwright and language reformer, designed an alphabet for the Lebanese language using the Latin alphabet in addition to a few newly designed letters and some accented Latin letters to suit the Lebanese phonology in the following pattern:

Letter Corresponding
phoneme(s)
More
common
Latin
equivalents
Notes
a pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ a
aa pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ aa, å
c pronounced as /link/ sh, ch, š
pronounced as /link/ 2, ’ The actual diacritic is a diagonal stroke crossing the bottom left of the letter
g pronounced as /link/ gh
i pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ Represents pronounced as /link/ word-finally
ii pronounced as /link/
j pronounced as /link/
k pronounced as /link/ kh, 5
q pronounced as /link/ k
u pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ Represents pronounced as /link/ word-finally
uu pronounced as /link/
x pronounced as /link/ 7, ḥ, h, H
y pronounced as /link/
ý pronounced as /link/ 3, 9, ‘ The actual diacritic is a horizontal stroke going from the top of the upper-left spoke of the letter towards the top-center of the letter-space
ƶ pronounced as ///pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as ///
Roger Makhlouf largely uses Akl's alphabet in his Lebanese-English Lexicon.[19]

See also

Bibliography

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: Arabic, North Levantine Spoken . Ethnologue . 2018-08-08 . en.
  2. Web site: Languages. Come To Lebanon. 2018-12-09.
  3. Web site: Coptic Lexical Influence on Egyptian Arabic . Bishai . Wilson B. . 1964-01-01 . JSTOR . 2022-12-18.
  4. News: You may think you're speaking Lebanese, but some of your words are really Syriac. 2008-11-25. The Daily Star Newspaper - Lebanon. 2018-06-22.
  5. Web site: No, Lebanese is not a "dialect of" Arabic . Taleb . Nassim Nicholas . Nassim Nicholas Taleb . 2018-01-02 . East Med Project: History, Philology, and Genetics . 2018-12-10 .
  6. Web site: Lebanese Language - MARONITE HERITAGE.
  7. Web site: Phoenicia: The Lebanese Language: What is the difference between the Arabic Language and the Lebanese language?. phoenicia.org.
  8. Web site: Lebanese Language Institute » History. www.lebaneselanguage.org.
  9. Web site: Jabal al-Lughat: Taleb unintentionally proves Lebanese comes from Arabic. Lameen. Souag. 4 January 2018.
  10. Web site: Jabal al-Lughat: Why "Levantine" is Arabic, not Aramaic: Part 2. Lameen. Souag. 9 September 2014.
  11. Brustad, Kristen; Zuniga, Emilie (6 March 2019). "Chapter 16: Levantine Arabic". In Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na'ama (eds.). The Semitic languages (2nd ed.). London & New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 403–432. . . .
  12. Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na'ama (eds.). The Semitic languages (2nd ed.). London & New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 3–6. . .
  13. Book: Khattab. Ghada. Phonetic Cues to Gemination in Lebanese Arabic. Al-Tamimi. Jalal. Newcastle University. 2009.
  14. Abdul-Karim, K. 1979. Aspects of the Phonology of Lebanese Arabic. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Doctoral Dissertation.
  15. Web site: Lebanese Language - MARONITE HERITAGE. www.maronite-heritage.com. 2018-12-09.
  16. Makki, Elrabih Massoud. 1983. The Lebanese dialect of Arabic: Southern Region. (Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University; 155pp.)
  17. Book: Le Strange, Guy. Guy Le Strange. 1890. Palestine Under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500. London. Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. 78. 1004386 .
  18. Lebanese Language Institute: Lebanese Latin Letters The Lebanese Latin Letters
  19. Book: Makhlouf, Roger . Lebanese-English Lexicon . 2018 . 978-1-7180-8620-3.