Algerian Arabic

 

Algerian Arabic Dza:jri جزائري
Spoken in:	Algeria
Total speakers:	33,000,000 +
Language family:	Afro-Asiatic  Semitic   West Semitic    Central Semitic     South-Central Semitic      Arabic       Algerian Arabic
Writing system:	Arabic alphabet
Official status
Official language of:	none
Regulated by:	none
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	none
ISO 639-3:	(Algerian Saharan Arabic) 'aao' (Algerian Saharan Arabic)
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Algerian Arabic is the dialect or dialects of Arabic native to Algeria. In Algeria, as elsewhere, spoken Arabic differs very substantially from written Arabic; Algerian Arabic has a substantially changed vocabulary with many new words and many words from Berber, Turkish, and French, and, like all Arabic dialects, has dropped the case endings of the written language. Within Algerian Arabic itself, there are significant local variations; Jijel Arabic, in particular, is noteworthy for its pronunciation of qaf as kaf and its profusion of Berber loanwords, and certain ports' dialects show influence from Andalusi Arabic brought by refugees from al-Andalus. Algerian Arabic is part of the Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum, and fades into Moroccan Arabic and Tunisian Arabic along the respective borders.

According to the Ethnologue, there are two forms of Algerian Arabic:

Algerian Spoken Arabic: Currently spoken by an estimated 36 million people roughly (as 2005) in Algeria, and by an estimated 2 million in other countries where Algerians have emigrated. These include Belgium, France, Germany, UK, Canada, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.

Algerian Arabic vocabulary is pretty much similar throughout Algeria, although the Easterners sound closer to Tunisians while the Westerners speak an Arabic closer to that of the Moroccans.

Algerian Saharan Spoken Arabic: Spoken by an estimated 100,000 people in Algeria, predominantly along the Moroccan border with the Atlas mountains range. It is also spoken by about 10,000 people in neighbouring Niger. It is structurally different to Arabic.

The classification of both of these is Afro-Asiatic, Semitic, Central, South, Arabic.

The Berber languages (Tamazight) are also used in Algeria and nearby countries.

Phonology

List of phonemes as transliterated in this article: 24 consonants:

b

t

j

g

ḥ

ε

d

p

r

z

s

š

ṣ

ḍ

ṭ

γ

f

q

k

l

m

n

h

x

w

y

ب‎

ت‎

ج‎

g

ح‎

ع‎

د‎

p

ر‎

ﺯ‎

ﺱ‎

ش‎

ص‎

ض‎

ط‎

غ‎

ف‎

ق‎

ك‎

ل‎

م‎

ن‎

ﻫ‎

خ‎

و‎

ﻱ‎

Some pronounce the consonant q differently : g, k, or ' (hamza).

And 4 vowels:

• /a/ (as in "man") [æ]
• /e/ (as in "children")
• /i/ (as in "ski")
• /u/ (as in "flu")

Note that Algerian Arabic is particularly rich in uvular, pharyngeal, and pharyngealized ("emphatic") sounds. The emphatic sounds are generally considered to be ṣ, ḍ, and ṭ.

Algerian Arabic has a distinct pronunciation and is nearly unintelligible to some Arabic speakers from the Middle East and it's heavily influenced by Berber pronunciation, it has even been argued that it's Arabic pronounced the Berber way, or with Berber Phonemes as Algerian arabic and Algerian Berber pronouciations are very close to each other. This is the same phenomenon as the one observed in the south of France where French is pronounced with Occitan_language phonemes.

One of the most notable features of Algerian Arabic is the collapse of short vowels. Short /a/ and /i/ are deleted entirely in most positions, and short /u/ is either deleted or maintained only as rounding on an adjacent labial consonant. This can result in long strings of consonants (a feature shared with Berber and almost certainly derived from it). These clusters are never simplified; instead, consonants occurring between other consonants tend to syllabify, according to a sonorance hierarchy.

Long /a/, /i/ and /u/ are maintained as semi-long vowels, which are substituted for both short and long vowels in borrowings from Modern Standard Arabic. Long /a/, /i/ and /u/ also have many more allophones than in most other dialects; in particular, /i/ and /u/ show up as /e/ and /o/ in the vicinity of emphatic consonants (emphatic spreading occurs much less than in dialects such as Egyptian Arabic, for example).

Unlike in most other Arabic dialects (but, again, similar to Berber), non-emphatic /r/ and emphatic /rˁ/ are two entirely separate phonemes, almost never contrasting in related forms of a word. Original /q/ splits lexically into /q/ and /g/; for some words, both alternatives exist.

Grammar

Nouns and adjectives

Gender

Algierian arabic has two genders, Masculine and Feminine. masculine nouns and adjectives generally end with a consonant, while the feminine nouns generally end with an a (there are some exceptions, however). Note that most feminine nouns are in fact feminized versions of masculine nouns.

Examples:

• Ḥmar "a donkey", Ḥmara "a female donkey".
• Ṭfel "a little boy", Ṭefla "a little girl".

Pluralization

Contrary to classical arabic, Algierian arabic uses almost exclusively the broken plural for the masculine:

Gawri → Gwer "French"

Maṣri → Mṣarwa "Egyptian" [classical arabic : Maṣri → Mṣarwa].

For the feminine, the plural is obtained either by psotfixing "-at", "-wat" (regular) or through the broken plural:

Bent → Bnat "Girl"

Ṭabla → Ṭwabel "Table" [Broken plural].

Article

The article l is indeclinable and expresses definite state of a noun of any gender and number. It is also prefixed to each of that noun's modifying adjectives.

If the word starts with one of these consonants, l is assimilated and replaced by the first consonant :

t, d, r, z, s, š, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, l, n.

Examples:

rajel → rrajel "man" (assimilation)

ḥmar → leḥmar "donkey" (no assimilation)

Conjugation

Conjugation is done by adding affixes (prefixes, postfixes, both or none), these suffixes change according to the tense:

Person	Past		Present
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
1st	- t	- na	n -	n(e) - u
2nd (m)	- t	- tu	t -	t - u
2nd (f)	- ti	- tu	t - i	t - u
3rd (m)	-	- u	i/y(e) -	i/y(e) - u
3rd (f)	- t	- u	t(e) -	i/y(e) - u

• Example with the verb qtel "To kill":

Person	Past		Present
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
1st (m)	qtelt	qtelna	neqtel	neqqetlu
2nd (m)	qtelt	qteltu	teqtel	teqqetlu
2nd (f)	qtelti	qteltu	teqqetli	teqqetlu
3rd (m)	qtel	qetlu	yeqtel	yeqqetlu
3rd (f)	qetlet	qetlu	teqtel	yeqqetlu

Negation

Algerian arabic usually expresses negation in two parts, with the particle ma attached to the verb, and one or more negative words that modify the verb or one of its arguments. For example, simple verbal negation is expressed by ma before the verb and the particle c after the verb:

• « Lεebt » ("I played") → « ma lεebt c » ("I didn't play")

Other negative words (walu...etc.) are used in combination with ma to express more complex types of negation.

Verb derivation

Verb derivation is done by adding suffixes or by doubling consonants, there are two types of derivation forms : Causative, Passive.

• Causative: is obtained by doubling consonants :

xrej "to go out" → xerrej "to make to go out"

dxel "to enter" → dexxel "to make to enter, to introduce"

• Passive: This derivation is similar to berber and does not exist in classical arabic (the passive voice in classical arabic uses vowel changes and not verb derivation), it is obtained by prefixing the verb with t- / tt- / tn- / n- :

qtel "to kill" → tneqtel "to be killed"

šreb "to drink" → ttešreb "to be drunk".

Pronoun

Personal pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	ana / anaya	ḥna / ḥnaya
2nd (m)	nta / ntaya	ntuma
2nd (f)	nti / ntiyya	ntuma
3rd (m)	huwa	huma
3rd (f)	hiya	huma

Example : « Ana tani. » — "Me too."

Possessive pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	i	na
2nd	(e)k	kum
3rd (m)	u	hum
3rd (f)	ha	hum

Example : « dar-na. » — "Our house." (House-our), these possessive are frequently combined with « nteε » "of" and « dial » "property" : « dar nteε-na » — "Our house.", « dar dial-kum » ...etc.

Pronouns of the verb

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	ni	na
2nd (m)	(e)k	kum
3rd (m)	u (after a consonant) / h (after a vowel) / hu (before an indirect object pronoun)	hum
3rd (m)	ha	hum

Examples:

« šeft-ni. » — "You saw me." (You.saw-me)

« qetl-u. » — "He killed him." (He.killed-him)

« kla-h. » — "He ate it." (He.ate-it)

Demonstratives

There are three demonstratives, near-deictic ('this, these'), far-deictic ('that, those'):

• hada(ya), hadu(ma). ('this, these')
• hadak, haduk. ('that, those')

Sample text

The text below was translated from Kabyle, In. MOULIERAS (Auguste), les fourberies de si Djeh'a.

Buzelluf

Sheep Head

Waḥed nnhar, jeḥḥa med-lu baba-h frank, baš yešri buzelluf. šra-h, kla geε leḥm-u. bqa γir leεḍam, jab-u l baba-h. ki šaf-u qal-lu: "wešnu hada?" qal-lu: "buzelluf". -A ššmata, win rahum wedni-h? -Kan ṭreš. -Win rahum εini-h? -Kan εwer. -Win rah lsan-u? -Kan εeggun. -U jeldet ras-u, win rahi? -Kan ferṭas.

One day, Jehha's father gave him one cent, so that he buys a sheep head. He bought it, and ate all of it's meet. Only an empty carcass was left, he brought it to his father. Then, when he saw it he said: "what is that?" Jehha said: "a sheep head". -You vile, where are its (sheep) ears? -It was deaf. -Where are its eyes? -It was blind. -Where is its tongue? -It was dumb. -And the skin of its head, where is it? -It was bald.

See also

• Varieties of Arabic
• Maghrebi Arabic
• Moroccan Arabic
• Tunisian Arabic
• Hassaniya Arabic
• Libyan Arabic
• Languages of Algeria

External links

• Online Dictionary of Algerian Arabic

Varieties of Arabic
Pre-Muslim conquests	Ancient North Arabian† (Safaitic†, Lihyanitic†, Thamudic†, Hasaitic†) · Classical Arabic
Modern Standard Variety	Literary Arabic
Maghrebi Arabic	Moroccan Arabic · Algerian Arabic · Tunisian Arabic · Andalusian Arabic† · Libyan Arabic · Jebli Arabic · Jijel Arabic · Saharan Arabic · Hassānīya · Maltese language · Siculo-Arabic†
Levantine Arabic	Lebanese Arabic · Syrian Arabic · North Syrian Arabic · Palestinian Arabic · Cypriot Maronite Arabic
Arabian Arabic	Gulf Arabic · Bahrani Arabic · Najdi Arabic · Hejazi Arabic · Shargi Arabic · Yemeni Arabic (Hadhrami Arabic)
Iraqi Arabic	Baghdad Arabic
Egyptian Arabic	Cairene Arabic · Sa'idi Arabic
Sudanese Arabic	Sudanese Arabic · Nigerian Arabic . Chadian Arabic
Peripheries	Khuzestani Arabic · Shirvani Arabic† · Central Asian Arabic
Judeo-Arabic	Judeo-Moroccan · Judeo-Yemenite · Baghdad Arabic (Jewish)
Creoles	Nubi language · Babalia Creole Arabic · Juba Arabic

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