| Turku Arabic | |
| States: | Chad |
| Familycolor: | Creole |
| Fam1: | Arabic-based creole |
| Ancestor: | Bimbashi Arabic |
| Glotto: | turk1244 |
Turku Arabic or simply just Turku is an extinct variant of Bimbashi Arabic that served as a lingua franca in Chad. It's the ancestor to Bongor Arabic[1] and potentially other Arabic pidgins spoken in Chad today, but since they have not been described, it is unclear whether they are direct descendants of Turku.[2]
Turku emerged as a regional variant of Bimbashi Arabic when Bimbashi-speaking enslaved soldiers were forced to relocate from Sudan to Chad after the abolition of slavery in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1979. The primary lexifier of Turku is Sudanese Arabic, and it's also heavily influenced by Sango and Sara-Bagirmi languages, from which most of its loanwords originate. Although not much is known about Turku, a dictionary and a phrasebook were published in 1926.[3]
Turku had at least 2 tense/aspect markers: gahed (a continuous aspect particle) and bi- (a future tense particle). Similar particles are also found in Juba Arabic and Nubi.[4]
| Turku | Origin | English |
|---|---|---|
| adinbang | From Bagirmi ádim mbàŋ | eunuch |
| gao | From Sar gáw | hunter |
| ngari | From Mbay ngàrì | manioc |
| kay | From Sango kâî | paddle |
| itenan | From French lieutenant | lieutenant |
| pfil | elephant | |