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[...] From a linguistic point of view, the Maghreb is a much more homogenous region than the Middle-East. In the Maghreb the Arabic dialects show the influence of only two substrata, Berber and a Late Latin Romance, the latter being spoken until the Middle Ages in some North African towns and villages. The question of whether Punic was still being spoken when the Arabs arrived in N. Africa has been a controversial one for several decades. French authors (Gsell, Gauthier and Gauthier) claim that Punic survived, chiefly in some rural areas of Tunisia. According to this hypothesis, Arabization was favoured by the fact that such populations spoke no Berber but Punic, a Semitic language like Arabic. Modern research rejects this assumption and it now seems undeniable that Punic played no role in the Arabization process of North Africa.
The Sources
[...] In comparison to the Middle East or Egypt, historical sources for N. Africa are not only scarce but also very often late, and give us little direct information concerning the Arab settlement and urban development of the region. Data about the early linguistic situation in the Maghreb are conspicuous by their absence, and in the case of the 1st centuries of Islamic Morocco we know next to nothing. Geographical sources such as al-Ya3qūbī, al-Bakrī, and al-Idrīsī occasionally give us some information concerning the settlement of Arab tribes and the languages spoken in Maghrebi towns.
The majority of the European sources (mainly in French, Spanish, English, and Portuguese) in which we can find some data concerning North African dialects, were written after the 16th century and are of very different types and value, since they include accounts of captives, narratives of travellers, as well as reports from diplomats or clerics sent to the Maghreb to rescue Christian prisoners. The most important European source is the Descrittione "Description of Africa" written in the 16th century by the maghribi (of Andalusian origin) al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Wazzānī, better known as Leo Africanus. Data contained in his book are of special relevance since its author travelled across N. Africa on various diplomatic missions and visited southern Morocco, Timbuktu, Algeria, Tunis, Libya, and Egypt. [...]
General features and Classification
There are two hallmarks shared by all Maghrebi dialects: the prefix n- for the 1 sng of the p-stem (= nǝktǝb ‘I write/will write’) and a vowel-system characterized by a tendency to elide all short vowels in open syllable.
Maghrebi dialects have sometimes been dubbed ‘colonial Arabic’, i.e. as belonging to a type which shows less variation than the dialects of the homeland. For instance,
there is only one basic variant for the 1 sng s-stem, ktabt/ ktǝbt ‘I wrote’, compared with katabt / ktabt / katabtu in the dialects of the eastern Arab World. Diachronically, they belong to the so-called Zone II type, i.e. to the territories (Mesopotamia, Egypt ... etc.) Arabicized by speakers of dialects of the Arabian Peninsula (Zone I) from where the Arab expansion began.
Maghrebi dialects are diachronically divided into two types : pre-Hilālī and Hilālī, depending on whether they go back to the first or the second wave of Arabization of N. Africap. Pre-Hilālī dialects are typologically sedentary and are found mainly in the ancient towns of the Maghreb (Tunis, Cherchell, Fes, Tetouan ... etc.) and in some rural areas, such as Jbāla in N. Morocco. All Jewish dialects, from Libya to Morocco, belong to this type. A hallmark of all pre-Hilālī dialects is the voiceless realization of *q (as q, k or a). To the pre-Hilālī group belong two extinct dialects—Siculo- and Andalusi Arabic—as well as Maltese, which is the only Arabic dialect to have become the official language of a nation state.
To the Hilālī group belong all the ‘bedouin’ dialects of the Maghreb, such as Ḥassāniyya (in Mauritania ans W. Sahara), Z3īr (in Morocco), those of Algeria, Maṛāzīg (S Tunisia), and the dialects of Libya. The most salient distinctive feature of these dialects is the voiced realization of *q as g and the preservation of the interdental fricative series of consonants (ṯ,ḏ.ḏ̣). Dialects belonging to the Hilālī group untouched by external influences are not very numerous nowadays and are mainly found in those regions where ‘sedentary’ dialects are absent, such as Mauritania or in most of Libya. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia there exists a third group, the ‘mixed dialects’, i.e. dialects of Hilālī origin, which have lost several of their characteristic features because of contact with ‘sedentary’ dialects. Population shifts, the establishment of new towns, as well as immigration, are salient factors that have caused these mixed dialects to emerge. Two examples are those found in Marrakech and Casablanca. In both cases their dialects are clearly of Hilālī origin but have lost the interdental consonants and introduced typically ‘sedentary’ features such as analytic genitive markers and prefixed verbal modifiers.
For the diachronic study of the Maghrebi dialects Maltese is an important source as terminus comparationis since the island of Malta was conquered by the Normans and annexed to the kingdom of Sicily in 1090. The question of whether Maltese goes back to the Arabic spoken by the Muslim conquerors in the year 870 or to Siculo Arabic introduced later (1048) by Sicilian immigrants is, for our purposes, irrelevant: whichever is the case, Maltese represents an archaic pre-Hilālī dialect which evolved uncontaminated by later Hilālī interferences. Furthermore, it is also the only Arabic dialect spoken in a non-diglossic linguistic environment. To a minor degree, Andalusi Arabic also serves as a terminus comparationis which can help us to explain some linguistic developments.
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The Sources
[...] In comparison to the Middle East or Egypt, historical sources for N. Africa are not only scarce but also very often late, and give us little direct information concerning the Arab settlement and urban development of the region. Data about the early linguistic situation in the Maghreb are conspicuous by their absence, and in the case of the 1st centuries of Islamic Morocco we know next to nothing. Geographical sources such as al-Ya3qūbī, al-Bakrī, and al-Idrīsī occasionally give us some information concerning the settlement of Arab tribes and the languages spoken in Maghrebi towns.
The majority of the European sources (mainly in French, Spanish, English, and Portuguese) in which we can find some data concerning North African dialects, were written after the 16th century and are of very different types and value, since they include accounts of captives, narratives of travellers, as well as reports from diplomats or clerics sent to the Maghreb to rescue Christian prisoners. The most important European source is the Descrittione "Description of Africa" written in the 16th century by the maghribi (of Andalusian origin) al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Wazzānī, better known as Leo Africanus. Data contained in his book are of special relevance since its author travelled across N. Africa on various diplomatic missions and visited southern Morocco, Timbuktu, Algeria, Tunis, Libya, and Egypt. [...]
General features and Classification
There are two hallmarks shared by all Maghrebi dialects: the prefix n- for the 1 sng of the p-stem (= nǝktǝb ‘I write/will write’) and a vowel-system characterized by a tendency to elide all short vowels in open syllable.
Maghrebi dialects have sometimes been dubbed ‘colonial Arabic’, i.e. as belonging to a type which shows less variation than the dialects of the homeland. For instance,
there is only one basic variant for the 1 sng s-stem, ktabt/ ktǝbt ‘I wrote’, compared with katabt / ktabt / katabtu in the dialects of the eastern Arab World. Diachronically, they belong to the so-called Zone II type, i.e. to the territories (Mesopotamia, Egypt ... etc.) Arabicized by speakers of dialects of the Arabian Peninsula (Zone I) from where the Arab expansion began.
Maghrebi dialects are diachronically divided into two types : pre-Hilālī and Hilālī, depending on whether they go back to the first or the second wave of Arabization of N. Africap. Pre-Hilālī dialects are typologically sedentary and are found mainly in the ancient towns of the Maghreb (Tunis, Cherchell, Fes, Tetouan ... etc.) and in some rural areas, such as Jbāla in N. Morocco. All Jewish dialects, from Libya to Morocco, belong to this type. A hallmark of all pre-Hilālī dialects is the voiceless realization of *q (as q, k or a). To the pre-Hilālī group belong two extinct dialects—Siculo- and Andalusi Arabic—as well as Maltese, which is the only Arabic dialect to have become the official language of a nation state.
To the Hilālī group belong all the ‘bedouin’ dialects of the Maghreb, such as Ḥassāniyya (in Mauritania ans W. Sahara), Z3īr (in Morocco), those of Algeria, Maṛāzīg (S Tunisia), and the dialects of Libya. The most salient distinctive feature of these dialects is the voiced realization of *q as g and the preservation of the interdental fricative series of consonants (ṯ,ḏ.ḏ̣). Dialects belonging to the Hilālī group untouched by external influences are not very numerous nowadays and are mainly found in those regions where ‘sedentary’ dialects are absent, such as Mauritania or in most of Libya. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia there exists a third group, the ‘mixed dialects’, i.e. dialects of Hilālī origin, which have lost several of their characteristic features because of contact with ‘sedentary’ dialects. Population shifts, the establishment of new towns, as well as immigration, are salient factors that have caused these mixed dialects to emerge. Two examples are those found in Marrakech and Casablanca. In both cases their dialects are clearly of Hilālī origin but have lost the interdental consonants and introduced typically ‘sedentary’ features such as analytic genitive markers and prefixed verbal modifiers.
For the diachronic study of the Maghrebi dialects Maltese is an important source as terminus comparationis since the island of Malta was conquered by the Normans and annexed to the kingdom of Sicily in 1090. The question of whether Maltese goes back to the Arabic spoken by the Muslim conquerors in the year 870 or to Siculo Arabic introduced later (1048) by Sicilian immigrants is, for our purposes, irrelevant: whichever is the case, Maltese represents an archaic pre-Hilālī dialect which evolved uncontaminated by later Hilālī interferences. Furthermore, it is also the only Arabic dialect spoken in a non-diglossic linguistic environment. To a minor degree, Andalusi Arabic also serves as a terminus comparationis which can help us to explain some linguistic developments.
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