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Adam Benkato
University of California, Berkeley
This chapter gives an overview of contact-induced changes in the Maghrebi dialect group in North Africa. It includes both a general summary of relevant research on the topic and a selection of case studies which exemplify contact-induced changes in the areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon.
1. The Maghrebi Arabic varieties
In Arabic dialectology, Maghrebi is generally considered to be one of the main dialect groups of Arabic, denoting the dialects spoken in a region stretching from the Nile delta to Africa’s Atlantic coast – in other words, the dialects of Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, parts of western Egypt, and Malta. The main isogloss distinguishing Maghrebi dialects from non-Maghrebi dialects is the first person of the imperfect, as shown in Table 1 :
First-person imperfect ‘write’ in Maghrebi and non-Maghrebi Arabic :
- Classical Arabic ........ sing. aktub / pl. naktub
- Baghdad Arabic ........ sing. aktib / pl. nekteb
- Casablanca Arabic ... sing. nekteb / pl. neketbu
- Maltese ..................... sing. nikteb / pl. niketbu
This Maghrebi group of dialects is in turn traditionally held to consist of two subtypes : those spoken by sedentary populations in the old urban centers of North-Africa, and those spoken by nomadic populations. The former of these,
usually referred to as “pre-Hilali” (better: “first-layer”) would have originated with the earliest Arab communities established across North-Africa (~7th–8th centuries) up to the Iberian Peninsula. The latter of these, usually referred to as “Hilali” (better: “second-layer”), is held to have originated with the westward migration of a large group of nomad tribes (~11th century) out of the Arabian Peninsula and into North-Africa via Egypt. Their distribution is roughly as follows :
a) First-layer dialects exist in cities such as Tunis, Kairouan, Mahdia, Sousse, Sfax (Tunisia), Jijel, Algiers, Cherchell, Tlemcen (Algeria), Tangier, Tetuan, southern Rif villages, Rabat, Fez, Taza, so-called “northern” dialects (Morocco), Maltese, and formerly Andalusi and Sicilian dialects; most Judeo-Arabic dialects formerly spoken in parts of North-Africa are also part of this group.
b) Second-layer dialects are spoken by populations of nearly all other regions, from western Egypt, through all urban and rural parts of Libya, to the remaining urban and rural parts of Algeria and Morocco. Though some differences between these two subtypes are clear (such as [q,ʔ, k] vs. [g] for "qāf"), there have probably been varying levels of interdialectal mixture and contact since the 11th century. In many cases,
first-layer varieties of urban centers have been influenced by neighboring secondlayer ones, leading to new dialects formed on the basis of inter-dialectal contact.
It is important to note that North-Africa is becoming increasingly urbanized and so not only is the traditional sedentary/nomadic distinction anachronistic (if it was ever completely accurate), but also that intensifying dialect contact accompanying urbanization means that new ways of thinking about Maghrebi dialects are necessary. It is also possible to speak of the recent but ongoing koinéization of multiple local varieties into supralocal or even roughly national varieties— thus one can speak, in a general way, of “Libyan Arabic” or “Moroccan Arabic”.
This chapter will not deal with contact between mutually intelligible varieties of a language although this is equally important for the understanding of both the history and present of Maghrebi dialects.
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