Also, children say xōš to each other when declaring that they're "boycotting" each other (never understood how that sense developed, as it's the opposite of its original meaning). There's even a verb corresponding to that sense xāwaš/txāwaš (sounds very childish to me).
zēn is understood but never used, it's associated with Bedouin or peninsular dialects.
xōš is not used like in Iraqi, but appears in the expression "xōš bōš" which means "to be on really good terms with someone".
For 'carpet' it's different: səžžāde, and there's also an extremely old-fashioned form səddāže.
The other words delete the /a/ like BJA: mnīħ, ṭħīn. But the most distinctive dialectal word for 'good' is kayyis (other dialects: kwayyes, a diminutive). But these days speakers use kayyis more jokingly.
...As far as I know, that construction doesn't otherwise survive in the dialect. But technically ʔadaʔʔ can also be a superlative (in which case it would've been in the construct state & the following noun would've been in the genitive); this does survive productively in the vernacular.
There's an expression in Levantine Arabic ʔalʕan w ʔadaʔʔ raʔabe = "way worse" (I don't know how the 2nd part came to mean this).
ʔadaʔʔ is an elative. If it's a comparative (as I guess it is), then raʔabe might be a dialectal fossil of what is called in CA grammar tamyīz (it'd be in the accusative)
Haha, my Nabataean Arabic isn't so good either so I would probably fall back to something Aramaic like 𐢇𐢂 𐢑𐢌 𐢘𐢞𐢞 𐢑𐢊𐢒 𐢗𐢒 𐢃𐢝𐢛 𐢙𐢑𐢌
It would've been quite the memorable event if you had ordered shawarma in Nabataean Arabic though. How would a Nabataean speaker have said it?
Right, I'm also reminded by the use of „Stadtstaat“ (city-state) in German to refer to Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen. German Wiktionary considers Hongkong a „former Stadtstaat“ which doesn't seem to be sharp either, seeing that it still has special status within China and even issues separate passports.
It creates some confusion with the other use of the term which refers to a sovereign country like Singapore though, and it doesn't help that many people worldwide think Dubai is a city-state in the Singaporean sense and don't know it's part of the UAE.
Interesting! Makes sense that it'd be often seen in either wellwishes or curses, because that's the kind of phrase which'd be passed down between generations "as is".
The first one is creative 😅. Can't think of a Levantine counterpart. The other two would be yəbʕat-lo ʕəlle,
tənkəsir/tənšall ʔīd-o.
Very cool. All of these would be said with the imperfect in Levantine. But is it only in fixed expressions in the Gulf or is it productive? For example, can you say:
بعث الله الخير
(or whatever the verb for "to send" is)?
Sorry, Classical is raḥima...
This Iraqi expression preserves the use of the "perfect" verb for "may such-and-such happen":
Iraqi: raħm͜ aḷḷa wāldēk "may God have mercy on your parents"
Classical: raħama ḷḷāhu wālidayka
Levantine: ʔaḷḷa yərħam, with the imperfect verb
It's a cool word, lovely to see it in the Iraqi qəltu dialects. Thanks for sharing! Sadly, in my region some parents instruct their kids to say žāže, the Damascus form, although imālah is very old. Like, kids acquire the local dialectal form but their parents intervene & tell them "don't say that".
translation of a fable by عادل محمود ويزاني
A few years ago, I translated some of Aesop’s Fables into Lebanese Arabic 🇱🇧
Sometimes I translated a version as-is; other times, I built a new version from the various translations on fablesofaesop.com. It was fun!
There were 5 or 6 in total that I’ll be sharing here.
1- The Old Man and Death:
I'm more partial to the idea that Levantine hinne, -hun, -kun are from Aramaic. First they are all over the place, so more consistent with a population-wide adaptation. And some dialects have hinnin/hinnun which are almost literally the Aramaic forms. The *nt assimilation is much more marginal.
Curiously, these Cilicia/Latakia dialects also have bitt. But I think it's also found in Iraq and begs the question as Mark suggested of why the pronouns don't necessarily have it if it's an Aramaic influence.
wasn't aware of these forms, so they are not registered on his atlas.
I also think this is a weak case to be made for an Aramaic substrate. Assimilation of *nt > tt seems too banal. Maybe the fact that it affects the pronouns makes that possibility a bit more likely, but it's still far from certain.
Pronouns in the Sunni Arabic dialect of Mersin (Procházka). The author says the 2nd-person pronouns itte, itti, ittu are not attested in Syria, but in fact they are the stereotype of the Sunni dialect of Latakia, so I think they must exist or have existed in that dialect. It's just that Behnstedt...
For 'just now', «issa halla(q)» works for the younger generations, even though synchronically «issa» on its own no longer means «now» for us.
Yes exactly, I know it from my mother but my generation doesn't use it and may not even know it 😢 (it's not something that I ever use normally either, unlike my mom)
Btw, do you use this root with the same sense as in the Iraqi examples in Bahrain? In Levantine, all three examples would typically use √ħṭṭ instead.
Wonder if it contrasts with xāl ('uncle') as a superheavy syllable xāll. Also, it's even weirder as it looks as if it came from √XLL, while the root is √XLY (etymologically √XLW).
Maybe they copied the geminate from pattern II. Wonder if inherited geminate participles are formed like that.
...it's only because I know Antioch/Aleppo etc. preserve ǧ (it was possibly also preserved in the coast along Latakia, I'll have to go to the recording of the old woman from my village to check) that I suppose other dialects cannot have undergone it like already 10 centuries ago, but who knows.
Very cool parallel, thanks. My mind treats retention of the *i in diǧāǧ as something that would be „old as F“ while the deaffrication ǧ > ž as something „recent“ even though there is no reason to assume the former didn't last longer in some dialects or the latter didn't happen earlier. Maybe...
...can confuse a Lebanese person who mainly communicates with other Lebanese and watches Lebanese or non-Arabic content.
Wonder if it's because the JBA variant is ášlon with the stressed initial vowel. It might make it seem like ”the full phrase“ ('what color?').
Most Lebanese should be familiar with šlōn ('how?') via Damascene Ar, which has the same etymology as ášlon of course. But I can imagine even that...
Wonder how Lebanese ended up with džēže ('hen') instead of Latakian žēže.
Was the deaffrication old enough that it happened before short vowel deletion?! (diǧāǧeh > dižēže > džēže)
Or can you have a stable initial /dd͡ʒ/ for some time? (diǧāǧeh > dǧēǧe /dd͡ʒeːd͡ʒeː/ > džēže)
(For what it's worth, the mainstream Syrian Ar form is [ˈgǣtto].)
I suspect it's more than just the spelling. I notice this in other loans which Wiktionary's phonemic transcriptions note without a geminate in the source lang.
I heard the FR recordings on the W page, at least one is very difficult for me to parse as a non-geminate:
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:LL...
