Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian (), is a variety of Arabic spoken in Tunisia. "Tunisian" or Derja (; meaning "common or everyday dialect") to distinguish it from Modern Standard Arabic, the official language of Tunisia. Tunisian Arabic is mostly similar to eastern Algerian Arabic and western Libyan Arabic.
As part of the Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum, Tunisian merges into Algerian Arabic and Libyan Arabic at the borders of the country. Like other Maghrebi dialects, it has a vocabulary that is predominantly Semitic and Arabic with a Berber, Latin substratum. Tunisian Arabic contains Berber loanwords which represent 8% to 9% of its vocabulary. However, Tunisian has also loanwords from French, Turkish, Within some circles, Tunisian Arabic has thereby integrated new French and English words, notably in technical fields, or has replaced old French and Italian loans with standard Arabic words. which is a separate language that descended from Tunisian and Siculo-Arabic. Maltese and Tunisian Arabic have about 30 to 40 per cent spoken mutual intelligibility.
Classification
Tunisian Arabic is one of the Arabic languages within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. but is usually considered in its koiné form to be a mostly Hilalian variety of Maghrebi Arabic because it was affected by the immigration of Banu Hilal in the 11th century, as were the other Maghrebi varieties. However, the languages progressively lost their function as main languages of Tunisia since the 12th century BC, and their usage became restricted mainly to the western regions of the country until their disappearance or evolution into other languages. The migrants brought with them their culture and language that progressively spread from Tunisia's coastal areas to the rest of the coastal areas of Northwest Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean islands. From the eighth century BC, most of Tunisia's inhabitants spoke the Punic language, a variant of the Phoenician language influenced by the local Numidian language. Also during this period and up to the third century BC, the Tifinagh alphabet developed from the Phoenician alphabet.
After the arrival of Romans, following the fall of Carthage in 146 BC, the coastal population spoke mainly Punic, but that influence decreased away from the coast. From Roman period until the Arab conquest, Latin, Greek and Numidian further influenced the language, called Neo-Punic to differentiate it from its older version. Punic probably survived the Arabic conquest of the Maghreb: the geographer al-Bakri described in the 11th century people speaking a language that was not Berber, Latin or Coptic in rural Ifriqiya, a region where spoken Punic survived well past its written use. However, it may be that the existence of Punic facilitated the spread of Arabic in the region, as Punic and Arabic are both Semitic languages and share many common roots.
Middle Ages
Classical Arabic began to be installed as a governmental and administrative language in Tunisia that was called then Ifriqiya from its older name Africa during the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in 673. The people of several urban cities were progressively influenced by Arabic. By the 11th century, through contact of local languages such as African Romance or Berber with Classical Arabic, some urban dialects appeared in the main coastal cities of Tunisia. The dialects were slightly and characteristically influenced by several common Berber structures and vocabulary like negation because Tamazight was the language of contact for citizens of that period. The new dialects were also significantly influenced by other historical languages.
Many Tunisian and Maghrebi words, like ("octopus"), have a Latin etymology. The dialects were later called Pre-Hilalian Arabic dialects and were used along Classical Arabic for communication in Tunisia. Also, Siculo-Arabic was spoken in several islands near Tunisia like Sicily, Pantelleria, and Malta and entered into contact with the Tunisian pre-hilalian dialects. Consequently, it ameliorated the divergence in grammar and structures of all the concerned dialects from Classical Arabic. However, they brought some of the characteristics of their local Arabic dialects as well.
However, some dialects avoided the Hilalian influence: Judeo-Tunisian Arabic, a vernacular spoken by Tunisian Jews and known for the conservation of foreign phonemes in loanwords and slightly influenced by Hebrew phonology, Sfax dialect and Tunisian urban woman dialect.
By the 15th century, after the Reconquista and subsequent decline of the formerly Arabic-speaking al-Andalus, many Andalusians immigrated to the Tunisian main coastal cities. These migrants brought some of the characteristics of Andalusian Arabic to the sedentary urban dialects spoken in Tunisia. Among others, it led to the reuse of the voiceless uvular stop [q] instead of the nomadic Hilalian voiced velar stop [ɡ] and to speech simplification in Tunisian, which further differentiated the language from Classical Arabic.
Ottoman period
During the 17th to the 19th centuries, Tunisia came under Spanish, then Ottoman rule and hosted Morisco then Italian immigrants from 1609. That made Tunisian, Spanish, Italian, Mediterranean Lingua Franca, and Turkish languages connected. Tunisian acquired several new loanwords from Italian, Spanish, and Turkish In 1893, a first linguistic study was completed by the German linguist Hans Stumme. That began a still ongoing research trend on Tunisian Arabic. The unintelligibility of Tunisian to Middle Eastern Arabic speakers was worsened.]]
thumbnail|Tunisian leader [[Habib Bourguiba usually delivered his speeches in Tunisian even for religious celebrations]]
However, the same period was characterized by the rise of interest toward Tunisian Arabic. Indeed, this period was the beginning of the spread of the formal use of Tunisian Arabic as by Taht Essour. The profusion is from many factors including the length of time the country was inhabited, its long history as a migration land and the profusion of cultures that have inhabited it, and the geographical length and diversification of the country, divided between mountain, forest, plain, coastal, island and desert areas.
That is why Tunisian leader Habib Bourguiba began a trial of Arabization and Tunisification of Tunisia and spread free basic education for all Tunisians. That contributed to the progressive and partial minimisation of code-switching from European languages in Tunisian and the use of code-switching from Standard Arabic.
By then, Tunisian Arabic reached nationwide usage and became composed of six slightly different but fully mutually intelligible dialects: Tunis dialect, considered the reference Tunisian dialect; Sahil dialect; Sfax dialect; southwestern dialect; southeastern dialect and northwestern dialect. Older dialects became less commonly used and began disappearing. and Tunisia became the most linguistically homogeneous state of the Maghreb. However, Berber dialects, Libyan and Algerian Arabic as well as several Tunisian dialects like the traditional urban woman dialect, Judeo-Tunisian Arabic or even several Tunisian structures like lā noun+š, also practically disappeared from Tunisia.
The period after Tunisian independence was also marked by the spread of Tunisian Arabic usage in literature and education. In fact, Tunisian Arabic was taught by the Peace Corps from 1966 until 1993 including the publicly available Tunisian Arabic Corpus Others, more traditional, were also made about the phonology, the morphology, the pragmatic and the semantics of Tunisian. Now, it is taught by many institutions like the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (in Paris with Tunisian Arabic courses since 1916) and the Institut Bourguiba des Langues Vivantes (in Tunis with Tunisian Arabic courses since 1990). or in French high schools as an optional language. In fact, 1878 students sat for the Tunisian Arabic examination in the 1999 French Baccalauréat.
Nowadays, the linguistic classification of Tunisian Arabic causes controversies between interested people. The problem is caused because of the Arabic dialect continuum. Some linguists, such as Michel Quitout and Keith Walters, consider it an independent language, However, this version was closed after a week of work because of an internet poll that has concluded that 53% of the users of the website were against using Tunisian Arabic in the website.
In 2013, Kélemti initiative was founded by Hager Ben Ammar, Scolibris, Arabesques Publishing House, and Valérie Vacchiani to promote and encourage the creation and publication of written resources about and in Tunisian Arabic.
In 2014, a version of the Tunisian Constitution of 2014 was published in Tunisian Arabic by the Tunisian Association of Constitutional Law.
In 2016 and after two years of work, the Derja Association has been launched by Ramzi Cherif and Mourad Ghachem in order to standardize and regulate Tunisian, to define a standard set of orthographic rules and vocabularies for it, to promote its use in daily life, literature and science, and to get an official recognition for it as a language in Tunisia and abroad. The Derja Association also offers an annual prize, the Abdelaziz Aroui Prize, for the best work written in Tunisian Arabic.
Since the 2011 revolution, there have been many novels published in Tunisian Arabic. The first such novel was Taoufik Ben Brik's Kelb ben Kelb (2013); several prominent novels have been written by Anis Ezzine and Faten Fazaâ (the first woman to publish a novel in Tunisian Arabic). Although often criticized by literary critics,
Distinctive features
Tunisian Arabic is a variety of Arabic and as such shares many features with other modern varieties, especially the Maghrebi varieties of Arabic. Some of its distinctive features (compared to other Arabic dialects) are listed here.
- A conservative consonantal phonology (due to Berber substrates The interdental fricatives are lost in the dialect of Mahdia, the Jewish dialect of Tunis, and the Jewish dialect of Soussa.
- The lack of an indicative prefix in the verbal system, resulting in no distinction between indicative and subjunctive moods.
- The distinctive usage of future tense by using the prefixes or or + verb that is nearly equivalent to "will" + verb. It is obtained by prefixing the verb with , , or and the choice of one of the four prefixes depends on the used verb (ex: "to drink" → "to be drunk").
- Tunisian Arabic is an SVO language and it is most of the time a Null-subject language. In fact, the subject is only written in order to avoid meaning ambiguity. a phenomenon that was further strengthened by the influence of Turkish on Tunisian in the 17th century. ]]
The Arabic dialects of Tunisia belong to either pre-Hilalian or Hilalian dialectal families.
Nowadays and due to dialect leveling, the main dialect varieties of Tunisian Arabic are Northwestern Tunisian (also spoken in Northeastern Algeria), southwestern Tunisian, Tunis dialect, Sahel dialect, Sfax dialect and southeastern Tunisian.
Additionally, Tunis,
Other dialects have substituted them respectively by /iː/ and /uː/ and dropped the short /a/ between the first and second consonant of the word.
It is also known by the substitution of short /u/ by short /i/, when it comes in the beginning of the word or just after the first consonant.
Sfax dialect is also known for its profusion of diminutives. Furthermore, it is known for the substitution of [ʒ] by [z] when it comes at the beginning of a word and when that word contains [s] or [z] in its middle or end.
Southwestern
The southwestern dialect is known for a different conjugation of verbs ending with ā in the third person of plural. In fact, people who are speaking this variety of Tunisian Arabic do not add the regular ū suffix after the vowel ā but used to drop the ā and then add the ū. As such, the use of Tunisian Arabic is mainly restricted to spoken domains. as its written and cultural use began in the 17th century
Society
From the 1990s, Tunisians began to write in Tunisian Arabic when communicating on the Internet, especially on social networking sites, and in text messages. This trend accelerated during the 2011 street protests that brought down the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in which text messaging and social networking played a major role. In Christianity, the use of Tunisian Arabic is significant beginning with a 1903 New Testament translation.
In 2013 and subsequent years, Tunisian author and linguist Mohamed Bacha published very popular textbooks and references to learn Tunisian Arabic and explore Tunisian culture, aimed to international readers who are fluent in English : Tunisian Arabic in 24 lessons, Tunisian Arabic in 30 lessons, Tunisian Arabic - English dictionary, Tunisian folklore: folktales, songs, proverbs, This unique book contains a selection of Tunisia's oral literature and culture : folktales, proverbs, popular songs. In the latter book, the author Mohamed Bacha adapted into written form (through transliteration) and translated into English some of the most representative oral folklore of Tunisia, while keeping its authenticity and unique cultural flavor. In addition to multilingual editions of oral folktales: Jabra and the lion, in Tunisian Arabic, English, French. Eternal Classic Songs of Tunisia (Tunisian, English, French)
Literature
Before Tunisian independence, there was a large body of folk tales and folk poems in Tunisian Arabic. It was mainly an oral tradition, told by wandering storytellers and bards at marketplaces and festivals. The most important of these folktales are il-Jāzya il-hlālīya () and ḥkāyat ummī sīsī w il-ðīb (). A few years after independence, the more popular ones were recorded for ERTT broadcast, in Tunisian Arabic by Abdelaziz El Aroui, or translated mainly to French and standard Arabic by other authors. and the work of Karen McNeil of 2014.
As for novels and short stories, most authors who fluently know Tunisian Arabic prefer to write in Standard Arabic or in French. But since the initiative of the Taht Essour and particularly Ali Douagi to use Tunisian Arabic in transcribing dialogues in novels and writing some newspapers, the dialogues in the Standard Arabic Tunisian novels or romans became written in Tunisian Arabic using the Arabic script.
However, since the early 1990s, Hedi Balegh initiated a new trend in Tunisian literature. and to make collections of Tunisian idioms and proverbs in 1994 using Arabic script. Some authors, particularly Tahar Fazaa (mainly in Tšanšīnāt Tūnsīya ()) and Taoufik Ben Brik (mainly when writing Kalb Bin Kalb () and Kawāzākī ()) followed him and used Tunisian Arabic in order to write novels, plays and books in Tunisian Arabic.
As for plays in Tunisian Arabic, the first ones were made by the Tunisian-Egyptian Company just after World War I. They faced several objections. That resulted in the creation of notable plays in Tunisian Arabic following the trends of world literature between 1965 and 2005. Since Taoufik Ben Brik's Kalb Bin Kalb () in 2013, Tunisian Arabic novels have been written by Faten Fazaâ, Anis Ezzine, Amira Charfeddine, and Youssef Chahed. Translation of Tunisian and world literature into Tunisian Arabic have been done by Dhia Bousselmi and Majd Mastoura.
Music
The oldest lyrics found written in Tunisian, dates back to the 17th century, by Abu el-Hassan el-Karray, who died in 1693 in the medina quarter of Sfax and wrote a poem in Tunisian Arabic during his youth:
The effective beginning of Tunisian Arabic written songs came in the early 19th century, when Tunisian Jews in the Beylik of Tunis began writing songs in Tunisian Arabic about love, betrayal and other libertine subjects. The current strengthened at the beginning of the 20th century and affected the Tunisian ma'luf and folklore.
This tendency was promoted by the creation of Radio Tunis in 1938 and the creation of Établissement de la radiodiffusion-télévision tunisienne in 1966, which allowed many musicians to better disseminate their works and helped spread the use of Tunisian Arabic in songs. This kind of music was promoted by the National Troupe of the Popular Arts, created in 1962. Later adaptation and promotion of popular songs, especially by Ahmed Hamza and later Kacem Kefi, further developed Tunisian music.
Tunisian Arabic became the main variety used in writing lyrics of songs in Tunisia and even the main technical words in music have their synonyms in Tunisian Arabic. This mainly consisted of rap and was not successful in the beginning because of the lack of media coverage.
In 2014, the first opera songs in Tunisian Arabic had appeared. They were the ones of Yosra Zekri that were written by Emna Rmilli and composed by Jalloul Ayed. published Eternal Classic Songs of Tunisia and were done in Tunisian Arabic. Some of them achieved relative success outside Tunisia, such as La Goulette (ḥalq il-wād (), 1996), Halfaouine: Child of the Terraces (ʿaṣfūr il-sṭaḥ (), 1990), and The Ambassadors (il-sufaṛā (), 1975).
Tunisian Arabic is now widely used for all television and radio programs, with the exception of news, religious programs and historical dramas. As well, foreign Television series begun to be translated to Tunisian Arabic in 2016. The first translation of foreign television series was entitled Qlūb il-rummān () and was developed by Nessma TV from the Turkish television series Kaderimin Yazıldığı Gün.
Some Tunisian Arabic works acquired some honors in the broader Arab world like the ASBU Festival First Prize in 2015. and the Festival of Arab Media Creation Prize in 2008.
Moreover, since the 1990s, mass media advertisements increasingly use Tunisian Arabic, and many advertising boards have their slogans and the original or alternative company name written in Tunisian. like kull šay b- il-makšūf () that was directed by Hedi Saidi and Hechmi Bouaziz and led by Ali Douagi and that was issued quite regularly from 23 April 1937 to 22 October 1959.
The first known use of Arabic script for Tunisian was recorded in the 17th century, when Sheykh Karray wrote several poems in Tunisian Arabic for mystic purposes.]]
Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft Umschrift
In 1845, the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft or DMG, a German scientific association dedicated to the studies and the languages of the orient, was formed in Leipzig. Soon, the organization developed a transcription system for Arabic in Latin script. Its system was a phonemic transcription of Arabic written with an extended Latin alphabet and macrons for long vowels.
The first linguistic study about Tunisian to be completed was of German linguist Hans Stumme, who, from 1893 to 1896, transcribed Tunisian Arabic with the DMG transcription. In addition, from 1897 to 1935, a series of linguistic works were conducted by several French members of the DMG, like William Marçais, Philippe Marçais, David Cohen and Alfred Nicolas. These works included corpuses, such as, à, è, ù and ì, for short and accentuated vowels. Lucienne Saada and others,
Additional scripts
- Phonetic Transcription:
Even if the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft transcription was abundantly used in early linguistic researches about Tunisian, The purpose of the trials was to have a simpler and more intuitive Latin Script Writing system than DMG or to try to solve the lack of interconvertibility between scripts as the transcription of Tunisian with the German DMG method was phonetic and not syntactic. Its principle was to use French consonant and vowel digraphs and phonology to transcribe non-Latin sounds. The layout was successful because it did not involve additional Latin letters and could be transcribed efficiently. It was used in the later linguistic works of Joseph Jourdan about Tunisian Arabic until 1956. Moreover, it is still presently used in French books to transcribe Tunisian Arabic. Nowadays, it is used principally on social networks and mobile phones. After 2011, more interest was given to Tunisian Arabizi and in 2013, a concise grammar book about Tunisian, written with Tunisian Arabizi, was issued. In 2016, Tunisian Arabizi has been recognized by Ethnologue as an official informal script for writing Tunisian. However, this chat alphabet is not standardized and is seen as informal as the Arabic sounds are transcribed as numbers and letters at the same time. The use of digits as numerals and letters at the same time made transcribing Tunisian difficult to users and did not linguistically solve the matters that were faced by the Practical Transcription.
Although they are popular, both methods have problems such as the possibility of ambiguity between digraphs, the absolute certainty of getting a rate of graphs per phoneme that is significantly superior to 1 and of getting independent consonants having the same transliteration as the digraphs,
thumbnail|100 px|Logo of [[Peace Corps]]
Separately, another Latin script transcription method was created by Patrick L. Inglefield and his team of linguists from Peace Corps Tunisia and Indiana University in 1970.
- Syntactic Transliteration:
After years of works on a phonetic transliteration of Tunisian, linguists decided that the transliteration should be mainly syntactic. Buckwalter transcription was created in order to avoid the effect of phoneme simplification of spoken Modern Standard Arabic on the morphological analysis of the language. In 2004, Tunisian linguist Mohamed Maamouri proposed to use the same transliteration for Arabic dialects and mainly Tunisian. This idea was later developed by Nizar Habash and Mona Diab in 2012 into CODA-based Buckwalter transliteration that eliminates phonological simplification in the Arabic dialects through doing comparisons between dialectal structures and their Modern Standard Arabic equivalents.
In 2013, a complete work about the regulations of the use of the Buckwalter transliteration for Tunisian was issued by Ines Zribi and her team from the University of Sfax. In fact, a morphological analysis method and a conventional orthography for Tunisian Arabic using this method were posted by 2014.
However, the method is currently used for computer operations only Furthermore, p does not correspond to /p/ but to ﺓ. Even the modified version of Buckwalter transliteration that was proposed by Nizar Habash et al. in 2007 and that substitute ASCII non-alphanumeric graphs by additional Latin letters did not solve the other problems of the original Buckwalter transliteration. Other loans from French include برتمان buṛtmān (flat), and بياسة byāsa (coin). vapur meaning "steamboat"
|-
| bakū || || package || Italian:plaza
|-
| dakūrdū || || okay || Italian: d'accordo
|-
| fišta || || holiday || Latin: festa
|-
| kaṛṛūsa || || carriage || Italian: carrozza
|-
| kayyās || || roadway || Spanish: calles
|-
| kūjīna || || kitchen || Italian: cucina
|-
| kusksī || || couscous || Berber: seksu
|-
| kalsīta || || sock || Italian: calzetta
|-
| qaṭṭūs || || cat || Latin: σταφυλῖνος ἄγριος (stafylīnos ā́grios)
|}
Those words are not to be confused with the actual use of French words or sentences in everyday speech by Tunisians (codeswitching), which is common in everyday language and business environments. However, many French words are used within Tunisian Arabic discourse, without being adapted to Tunisian phonology, apart from the French r , which is often replaced, especially by men, with . For example, many Tunisians, when asking "How are you?" will use the French "ça va?" instead of, and in addition to the Tunisian لاباس (lebes) . It is difficult in this case to establish whether it is an example of using French or borrowing. For example, the French word apartement became برتمان buṛtmān and the Italian word pacco became باكو bakū.
Shift in meanings
The greatest number of differences between Tunisian and standard Arabic is not due to the influences from other languages but to a shift in meaning of several Arabic roots. For example, means "serve" in Standard Arabic but "work" in Tunisian Arabic; meanwhile, means "work" in Standard Arabic but has a broader meaning of "do" in Tunisian Arabic; and in Tunisian Arabic means "go" rather than "walk" as in Standard Arabic. and that is exactly what happened in Tunisia.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Tunisian Arabic !! Construction !! Standard Arabic !! English
|-
| škūn || āš + kūn || || who
|-
| šnūwa (masc.)<br />šnīya (fem.) <br /> āš || āš + n + (h)ūwa <br /> āš + n + (h)īya <br /> āš || || what
|-
| waqtāš || waqt + āš || || when
|-
| lwāš || l- + āš || || for what reason
|-
| ʿlāš || ʿlā + āš || || why
|-
| kīfāš || kīf + āš || || how
|-
| qaddāš || qadd + āš || || how much
|-
| mnāš || min + āš || || from what
|-
| fāš || fī + āš || || in what, what
|-
| wīn || w + ayn || || where
|}
Some of the question words can be merged with other structures such as the prepositions and object pronouns. For example, "who are you" becomes شكونك إنت škūnik intī or simply شكونك škūnik and "how much is this" becomes بقدّاش b-qaddāš.
Another example of word fusion in Tunisian is the formation of numerals between 11 and 19, which are pronounced as one word, composed of the name of the digit obtained by subtracting 10 to the number and the suffix طاش ṭāš derived from the standard Arabic word عَشَرَ /ʕaʃara/, those numbers are in order: احداش aḥdāš, اثناش θṇāš, ثلطّاش θlaṭṭāš, أربعطاش aṛbaʿṭāš, خمسطاش xmasṭāš, سطّاش sitṭāš, سبعطاش sbaʿṭāš, ثمنطاش θmanṭāš and تسعطاش tsaʿṭāš.
Pattern and root-based creation of new words
In Tunisian Arabic, as in other Semitic languages, the creation of new words is based on a root and pattern system, also known as the Semitic root. That means that new words can be created through the association of a root that is composed most of the time of three letters that have a meaning with a rhythm or pattern that informs about the position of the object in the fact.
However, there are some more specific characteristics related to Tunisian Arabic like the phenomenon of metathesis. It occurs when the unconjugated verb or unsuffixed noun begins with CCVC, where C is an ungeminated consonant and V is a short vowel. When a suffix is added to this kind of noun or when the verb is conjugated, the first vowel changes of position and the verb or noun begins with CVCC. (the /g/ deriving from an originally Arabic [q]), and a specific species of date is always (the /g/ deriving from an originally Semitic [q] - e.g. Aramaic: /diqla/: date tree). Sometimes, substituting [g] by [q] can change the meaning of a word.
Furthermore, Tunisian Arabic merged with .
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|+Consonant phonemes of Tunisian Arabic
! colspan="2" rowspan="2" |
! colspan="2" | Labial
! colspan="2" | Interdental
! colspan="2" | Dental/Alveolar
! rowspan="2" | Palatal
! rowspan="2" | Velar
! rowspan="2" | Uvular
! rowspan="2" | Pharyngeal
! rowspan="2" | Glottal
|- style="font-size: 80%;"
! plain
! emphatic
! plain
! emphatic
! plain
! emphatic
|-
! colspan="2" style="text-align: left;" | Nasal
| m
| () ṃ
|
|
| n
| () ṇ
|
|
|
|
|
|-
! rowspan="2" style="text-align: left;" | stop
! style="text-align: left; font-size: 80%;" | voiceless
| p
|
|
|
| t
| ṭ
|
| k
| q
|
| ()
|-
! style="text-align: left; font-size: 80%;" | voiced
| b
| () ḅ
|
|
| d
|
|
| g
|
|
|
|-
! rowspan="2" style="text-align: left;" | Affricate
! style="text-align: left; font-size: 80%;" | voiceless
|
|
|
|
| () ts
|
| () tš
|
|
|
|
|-
! style="text-align: left; font-size: 80%;" |voiced
|
|
|
|
| () dz
|
|
|
|
|
|
|-
! rowspan="2" style="text-align: left;" | Fricative
! style="text-align: left; font-size: 80%;" | voiceless
| f
|
| þ
|
| s
| ṣ
| š
|
| x
| ḥ
| h
|-
! style="text-align: left; font-size: 80%;" | voiced
| v
|
| ð
| ḍ
| z
| () ẓ
| j
|
| ġ
| ʿ
|
|-
! colspan="2" style="text-align: left;" | Trill
|
|
|
|
| r
| ṛ
|
|
|
|
|
|-
! colspan="2" style="text-align: left;" | Approximant
|
|
|
|
| l
| ḷ
| y
| w
|
|
|
|}
Phonetic notes:
- The emphatic consonants /mˤ, nˤ, bˤ, zˤ/ rarely occur, and most of them are found in words of non-Arabic etymology.
- The glottal stop /ʔ/ is usually dropped but tends to occur in the learned register, in loans from Standard Arabic, often in ' (verbal noun) forms at the onset of the word but also in other words like "environment" and "he asks", though many (mainly less educated) speakers substitute for in the latter word.
Syllables and pronunciation simplification
Tunisian Arabic has a very different syllable structure from Standard Arabic like all other Northwest African varieties. This phenomenon is known as pronunciation simplification and has four rules:
- [iː] and [ɪ], at the end of a word, are pronounced [i]. Also, [uː] and [u] are pronounced [u]. [aː], [ɛː], [a] and [æ] are pronounced [æ]. For example, yībdā is practically pronounced as
- If a word finishes with a vowel and the next word begins with a short vowel, the short vowel and the space between the two words are not pronounced (Elision). The phenomenon is seen clearly when Arabic texts are compared to their Latin phonemic transliteration in several works. Furthermore, Tunisian Arabic styles and tenses hold several figurative meanings. For example, the use of past tense can mean that the situation is uncontrollable. and the use of demonstrative can have figurative meanings like underestimation. Moreover, the name of some parts of the body can be used in several expressions to get figurative meanings. That is entitled the embodiment.
International influences
Several Tunisian words were used in the lyrics of some famous Arabic songs and poems like ʿaslāma of Majda Al Roumi. Furthermore, some famous Arabic singers were acknowledged for singing several old Tunisian Arabic songs like Hussain Al Jassmi and Dina Hayek. Tunisian Arabic influenced several Berber dialects by transferring to them several Arabic or Tunisian structures and words. It was as well the origin of Maltese and some of its words like Brīk and frīkasāy were inspired by French as loanwords. The Il-Ṭalyānī Tunisian Arabic word meaning "the Italian" () was used as a title of a novel in standard Arabic which received the Booker Prize for Arabic literature in 2015. Also, several prestigious television series from other Arabic countries like the Lebanese Cello Series involved a character talking in Tunisian Arabic.
See also
- Mediterranean Lingua Franca
- African Romance
- Varieties of Arabic
- Maghrebi Arabic
- Maltese language
- Libyan Arabic
- Algerian Arabic
- Moroccan Arabic
- Berber languages
- Punic language
- Phoenician language
Notes and references
External links
- Tunisian Arabic Arabizi Dictionary
- McNeil Tunisian Arabic Corpus
- Tunisian Arabic VICAV Dictionary
- Tunisian Arabic Swadesh list (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)