Becoming interested in Arabic

[linguoboy]

Do you have situations then, where the word variation from one dialect to another can be traced to two different case forms in MSA for the root word? For example, the word for noun X in dialect A comes from the MSA nominative form, while in dialect B, it comes from the MSA accusative form?

Not really. Classical Arabic (remember, dialects do not descend from MSA; they've evolved in parallel) inflections are really simple and regular: -u for nominative, -i for genitive, and -a for accusative.

Adverbs were frequently formed from the indefinite accusative form, which ends in -an. As a result, this was generalised to an adverbial ending in modern dialects. (Compare -s for English or -t in North Germanic.) So you might have cases where a Classical Arabic accusative form gets retained as an adverb in one dialect whereas another has only a noun or adjective descending from the nominative (though this is arguable, given the lack of phonological traces), but I don't know any examples offhand.

Have dialects developed auxiliary verbs then to help distinguish TAM/TPAM? Or do they tend to use verbal phrases instead?

It depends on the dialect. Many actually have verbal prefixes derived from auxiliary verbs via grammaticalisation. Levantine Arabic, for isntance, uses either an auxiliary meaning "to want" or a prefix derived from a verb meaning "to go" (e.g. ra7-ruu7 "I'm gonna go").

[eskandar]

- Jordanian: I know the least about Jordanian, but I understand there are also significant divergences. I understand that some of this revolves around the pronunciation of ق/q as "g" (like in much of the Gulf, parts of North Africa and many Bedouin dialects) or a glottal stop (like in much of the Levant), but there are other differences.

Something interesting about the varied pronunciation of ق in Jordan is that, unlike in most other dialects, the difference is gendered rather than being about rural/urban or regional divides. Jordanian men tend to pronounce it as 'g' whereas women pronounce it as a glottal stop.

[voron]

That's a cool example, Eskandar, I didn't know about it!

One example of a word in a dialect that originates from a case different than nominative are numbers which are multiples of 10:
In MSA
20 - عشرون
30 - ثلاثون
etc

In Levantine and Egyptian dialects (and probably all of them?..)
20 - عشرين
30 - ثلاثين
etc

This would be a genitive/accusative case in MSA, if I remember my Arabic cases correctly.

[mōdgethanc]

I'm surprised there's no case declension at all in any dialect!

I'm not - it's very common for languages to lose declensions and move towards a more analytical kind of grammar over time. English went from being quite heavily inflected to having barely any case marking over the last 1000 years. Also Hebrew doesn't have them and it's an extremely old language. Arabic is in some ways more conservative than Hebrew despite being younger.

Like linguoboy said, the case inflections (i'rab) are /a, i, u/ for nominative, genitive and accusative when definite, and /an, in, un/ when indefinite. In MSA, short vowels are not pronounced at the end of words unless in very formal settings (like reciting the Qur'an). Because of this, these case endings become irrelevant. I wouldn't be surprised if even at the time of Classical Arabic, these endings were not used in spoken language.

The exception is that the /an/ ending is still pronounced with (I believe) adverbs, and it is still shown in writing by putting an alif at the end of the word. This is kind of a fossilization, I guess.

(It's been many years since I studied Arabic so this info may be slightly off but it should be more or less true. Also I don't know shit about the grammar of dialects.)

[voron]

Have dialects developed auxiliary verbs then to help distinguish TAM/TPAM? Or do they tend to use verbal phrases instead?

Besides what linguoboy said, here are examples of a progressive aspect in Levantine and Egyptian.

Levantine:
I talk - بحكي
I am talking - عم بحكي
The particle عم is used

Egyptian:
I talk -بحكي
I am talking, I keep talking - عمّال بحكي
The particle عمّال is used, and the modality is different than in Levantine. It's not just "to be talking" but rather "to keep talking, to talk incessantly".

I may be wrong but I think both these particles come from the verb عمل (which means "to work" in MSA and "to do" in dialects).

Besides these constructs, both Levantine and Egyptian allow expressing progressive aspect with a participle:
انا رايح - I am going

The difference between the عم construction and the participle is subtle in Levantine, and AFAIK one is preferred over another depending on the semantics of the verb.

Just this little aspect of dialects shows that they are not that simple at all compared to MSA -- they may be simpler in inflectional morphology, but more difficult in syntax and phonology.

[voron]

The difference between the عم construction and the participle is subtle in Levantine, and AFAIK one is preferred over another depending on the semantics of the verb.

And here's what Cowell's Syrian grammar says about (a subcase of) it:


Link to the grammar:
https://archive.org/details/AReferenceG ... bic_201704

Doesn't sound simple to me at all. MSA is easier in this respect.

[vijayjohn]

It's Modern Standard Arabic that has really complicated grammar that even native speakers of Arabic struggle with. The non-standard spoken varieties (Lebanese, Moroccan, etc.) are much simpler.

I think you're confusing "grammar" here with "inflectional morphology".

I think there are other differences between MSA and the spoken varieties besides just the inflectional morphology (I'm not even sure the morphology is that big of a difference), although I'll concede that I may have been wrong to call the spoken varieties simpler.

[linguoboy]

It's Modern Standard Arabic that has really complicated grammar that even native speakers of Arabic struggle with. The non-standard spoken varieties (Lebanese, Moroccan, etc.) are much simpler.

I think you're confusing "grammar" here with "inflectional morphology".

I think there are other differences between MSA and the spoken varieties besides just the inflectional morphology

Nobody said otherwise.

I think it's pretty uncontroversial to say that the modern Arabic dialects have less inflectional morphology than MSA or Classical, in the same way that it's uncontroversial to the same the same of modern Romance varieties vis-à-vis Classical Latin. But I also think it's misleading to say that as a result of this their grammar is "simpler", in the same way that I think most linguists would reject that claim if applied to Romance. (As an aside, the time depth is also roughly the same, with Old Arabic beginning to fracture into local varieties as a result of the Islamic Conquest at roughly the same time that Vulgar Latin was becoming Old French, Old Occitan, Old Catalan, Old Spanish, etc.).

[n8an]

Something interesting about the varied pronunciation of ق in Jordan is that, unlike in most other dialects, the difference is gendered rather than being about rural/urban or regional divides. Jordanian men tend to pronounce it as 'g' whereas women pronounce it as a glottal stop.

Very interesting!

Besides these constructs, both Levantine and Egyptian allow expressing progressive aspect with a participle:
انا رايح - I am going

The difference between the عم construction and the participle is subtle in Levantine, and AFAIK one is preferred over another depending on the semantics of the verb.

I'm far from an expert in Egyptian so I could be totally wrong here, but one impression that I've had is that Egyptian uses the participle more frequently and the progressive less frequently - at least compared to Lebanese.

At the same time - and probably because of the above - I actually wasn't sure that Egyptian even had a progressive marker (like عم in Lebanese) for quite some time. Again, I could be totally wrong, but does Egyptian also have قاعد along with عمل for this purpose?

[voron]

I'm far from an expert in Egyptian so I could be totally wrong here, but one impression that I've had is that Egyptian uses the participle more frequently and the progressive less frequently - at least compared to Lebanese.

Yes, that's my impression too.

Again, I could be totally wrong, but does Egyptian also have قاعد along with عمل for this purpose?

It does. Here's what livingarabic.com says about it:

قعَد، يقعُد، قُعاد / قَعَدان
to keep doing (فعل مضارع بدون ب = s.th.) (This is similar to عمّال, but In contrast this suggest more like one is just sitting and doing it, like just sitting and talking and talking) (preverb)
[pronunciation: ق = ء]

Examples
السُخُونِيَّة قَعَدِت تِرُوح وِتِيجي [E] the fever kept coming and going;
قاعد + مستنى (he) continued waiting;
قاعد يِتْكَلِّم [E] he just kept right on talking;
الناس قَعَدوا يْنادوا عَ التَكْسي [E] the people kept calling for the taxi;
قَعَد يِشْتِكي لي [E] he kept complaining to me;
الحكومة تقعد تغيّر أسماء الشوارع والناس ماتعرفش [E] the Government just kept on changing the names of the streets and the people didn't know
كُنّـا حنقعد نِدعي للحكومة : كنا حنستمرّ في الدعاء [E] we would have kept on calling for the government;

It's interesting how the description mentions that in comparison to عمّال it's more like literally sitting, but hardly any of the examples involve actual sitting.

Apparently, Levantine also uses it to express continuity, in combination with عم.

قعد is often combined with a continuous form, especially in the participle. This should not be understood as meaning literally sitting:

قاعدين عم يقصفو المدن
2aa3diin 3am yə2Səfu lmədon (S)
They’re bombarding the cities [= sitting and bombarding]

قاعد عم احكي مع حيط انا
2aa3ed 3am 2a7ki ma3 7eeT 2ana (P)
It’s like I’m talking to a brick wall [= I’m sitting talking to…]

http://teammaha.com/2019/06/%d9%82%d8%b9%d8%af-sit/

[dEhiN]

what is TAM/TPAM?

T = Tense
P = Person
A = Aspect
M = Mood

There is also voice, but I don't think I've ever seen voice used in an abbreviation describing the categories of verb conjugation.

Have you thought any more about which dialect(s) you'd like to learn?

Not too much; I'm finding this thread fascinating, but I think my initial desire may have been more of a wanderlust. I think I'm leaning more toward Egypt or another Levantine dialect. I have a co-worker who's from Egypt, so I could maybe practice with him.

Classical Arabic (remember, dialects do not descend from MSA; they've evolved in parallel)

I didn't know that, which influenced my questions. I guess it makes sense though, it definitely is more likely a standard written and spoken form (or several standard spoken forms) would develop in tandem versus the latter descending from the former. I suppose that would probably be the same in Tamil, although since the Sri Lankan Tamil spoken varieties are generally considered pretty similar to Written Tamil and the Indian Tamil spoken varieties are more divergent, I thought the spoken varieties descended from the written form.

Something interesting about the varied pronunciation of ق in Jordan is that, unlike in most other dialects, the difference is gendered rather than being about rural/urban or regional divides. Jordanian men tend to pronounce it as 'g' whereas women pronounce it as a glottal stop.

Do you know why or how this developed? If this gender division more or less holds true across regions, I find that very fascinating! I could see there being an initial gender divide on the pronunciation, but I would have also figured regional variations would have created further division. Though I guess the regional variations are probably along other lines or phenomena, while this pronunciation difference has held, which then makes me think it must've developed earlier on in the Jordanian dialect.

I'm not - it's very common for languages to lose declensions and move towards a more analytical kind of grammar over time. English went from being quite heavily inflected to having barely any case marking over the last 1000 years. Also Hebrew doesn't have them and it's an extremely old language. Arabic is in some ways more conservative than Hebrew despite being younger.

Based on the knowledge that both MSA and the spoken dialects derived from Classical Arabic, then I'm not surprised either. When I wrote that, I believed that it basically went Classical Arabic > MSA > spoken dialects, and that the time between MSA and the dialects wasn't that great, hence the surprise that the cases would've fallen out of use fairly quickly.

Besides what linguoboy said, here are examples of a progressive aspect in Levantine and Egyptian.

Levantine:
I talk - بحكي
I am talking - عم بحكي
The particle عم is used

Egyptian:
I talk -بحكي
I am talking, I keep talking - عمّال بحكي
The particle عمّال is used, and the modality is different than in Levantine. It's not just "to be talking" but rather "to keep talking, to talk incessantly".

I may be wrong but I think both these particles come from the verb عمل (which means "to work" in MSA and "to do" in dialects).

That's really fascinating for me - the idea that in Egyptian, the progressive aspect took on a repetitive connotation. It also makes sense I think that the particles came from a verb meaning "to work/do".

Just this little aspect of dialects shows that they are not that simple at all compared to MSA -- they may be simpler in inflectional morphology, but more difficult in syntax and phonology.

I think that's generally true though, isn't it, of inflectional versus analytical languages? Languages that lost their inflections over time would have had to become stricter in syntax to account for that loss.

[mōdgethanc]

Based on the knowledge that both MSA and the spoken dialects derived from Classical Arabic, then I'm not surprised either. When I wrote that, I believed that it basically went Classical Arabic > MSA > spoken dialects, and that the time between MSA and the dialects wasn't that great, hence the surprise that the cases would've fallen out of use fairly quickly.

Nope, Arabic dialects are very old. About as old as Romance languages, I bet. A language can't be spoken over an area as big as the Arab world without breaking up into daughter languages over that length of time.

Also, "MSA" isn't really a thing to Arabs anyway; they see it as the same language as Classical Arabic. Which it is. It's just a different style of it.

I think that's generally true though, isn't it, of inflectional versus analytical languages? Languages that lost their inflections over time would have had to become stricter in syntax to account for that loss.

Yes. Loss of complexity in one area means having to gain more in another. I strongly believe that there really isn't such a thing as a "more complex" language and they all tend to become about equally complex over time.

[linguoboy]

Classical Arabic (remember, dialects do not descend from MSA; they've evolved in parallel)

I didn't know that, which influenced my questions. I guess it makes sense though, it definitely is more likely a standard written and spoken form (or several standard spoken forms) would develop in tandem versus the latter descending from the former. I suppose that would probably be the same in Tamil, although since the Sri Lankan Tamil spoken varieties are generally considered pretty similar to Written Tamil and the Indian Tamil spoken varieties are more divergent, I thought the spoken varieties descended from the written form.

It's really similar to the developments you see with other great civilisations. Just imagine if most of Europe kept using Church Latin instead of adopting modern Romance vernaculars (which descend not directly from Classical Latin, but from contemporaneous Vulgar Latin dialects) or if China had never switched to Standard Mandarin.

I assume there was dialectal diversity among the tribes which colonised the Middle East and North Africa during the Arabic expansion but I don't know much about what it looked like and how it influenced the development of various local forms of speech. Obviously--as with Romance--sub- and adstrate influences (and superstrates in places like Turkey and Malta) have played a huge role.