Levantine Arabic (العربية شامي) is spoken in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Western Jordan and Egypt.
It contains about 70% Arabic vocabulary, the majority of vocabulary after Arabic comes from Aramaic.
There's also been influence from the Ottoman period by Turkish, and recently French and English.
The Levantine dialects are classified like this:
- Northern Levantine
There are two main dialects, classified into subdialects.
Syrian is the largest spoken of the two dialects, but Lebanese, however is the most famous.
- Syrian (Damascene, Alawite & Aleppan)
- Lebanese (Northern, Mountainous & Southern)
Southern Levantine
Spoken in Palestine, Egypt and West Jordan.
Egyptian is the biggest and most famous. Jordanian shares a lot of features with Palestinian, and they're almost identical (more than Syrian and Lebanese)
- Palestinian (Gazan, Hebronian (El Khalieli) & Southern)
- Egyptian (Cairene, Upper & Lower)
- Jordanian (Western (including Amman) )
There are 3 additional letters, which are used to write foreign loanwords with:
چ (g)
پ (p)
ڤ (v)
Egyptian Arabic however, uses ج when writing a foreign word that contains G because their jiem is pronounced as a G.
OK enjoy. I'll work out a lesson soon.