Sa`idi Arabic (Arabic: صعيدي, also known as Saidi Arabic[1]) is the variety of Arabic spoken by Sa'idis south of Cairo, Egypt to the border of Sudan.[2] It shares linguistic features both with Egyptian Arabic, as well as Sudanese Arabic. Dialects include Middle and Upper Egyptian Arabic. Speakers of Egyptian Arabic do not always understand more conservative varieties of Sa`idi Arabic.[3]
Sa'idi Arabic carries little prestige nationally though it continues to be widely spoken, including in the north by rural migrants who have partially adapted to Egyptian Arabic. For example, the Sa'idi genitive exponent is usually replaced with Egyptian bitāʕ, but the realization of /q/ as /g/ is retained. Second and third-generation Sa'idi migrants are monolingual in Egyptian Arabic, but maintain cultural and family ties to the south.
Sa'idi Consonants[4]
Notes
- ^ ISO 639-3 spelling
- ^ Versteegh, p. 163
- ^ Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- ^ Khalafallah 1969
References
- Ethnologue entry for Sa`idi Arabic
- Khalafallah, Abdelghany A. 1969. A Descriptive Grammar of Sa'i:di Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Janua Linguarum, Series Practica 32. The Hague: Mouton.
- Versteegh, Kees (2001). The Arabic Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0748614362.
External links
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