Lebanese Arabic

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Lebanese or Lebanese Arabic is the variety of Arabic spoken in Lebanon. Lebanese Arabic is one of the Levantine varieties of Arabic. Lebanese dialect shares 80%^[  ] of its vocabulary with Syrian Arabic, and about 75%^[  ] with Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic dialects (today mainly living in Gaza, West Bank, Israel, and refugee camps in several countries including Lebanon and Jordan). French, Turkic, English and Persian loanwords make less than 20%.^[  ]

Differences from Classical Arabic

Lebanese Arabic shares many featural similarities with other modern varieties of Arabic.

• Syntax: has become simpler, losing both mood and case markings.
• Number: verbal agreement regarding number and gender is required for all subjects, whether already mentioned or not.
• Gender: plural inanimate nouns are treated as feminine.
• Vocabulary: The vocabulary has been driven by large borrowings from other languages, such as Phoenician, Aramaic, Greek, French, and Turkish.

Other Influences

French also had a great influence on Lebanese Arabic, as the educated class tend to mix French during conversation.

Examples

• The following example demonstrates two differences between Standard Arabic and Spoken Lebanese: Coffee (قهوة), pronounced /qahwa/ in Standard Arabic, is pronounced /ahwea/ in Lebanese Arabic. The letter qaaf is not pronounced, and the letter taa marbuta becomes a softer /e/ sound.
• As a general rule of thumb, the qaaf is dropped from the words in which it appears, and is replaced instead with the hamza or glottal stop, e.g., /daqiqa/ (minute) becomes /da-ee-aa/. This is a feature shared with most dialects of Egyptian Arabic.
• The exception for this general rule is the Druze of Lebanon who, like the Druze of Syria and Israel, have retained the letter qaaf in the centre of direct neighbours who have substituted the qaaf for the aaf (example: "Heart" is /qalb/ in Arabic, becomes /aleb/ or /alb/ in Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian.
• Unlike most other Arabic dialects, Lebanese has retained the classical diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, which were monophthongised into /e/ and /o/ elsewhere. This has changed over time, and today the /e/ has replaced the /ai/, /a/ and /i/ in everyday conversation, and the /o/ has replaced the /au/ and /u/. In singing, the /au/ and /ai/ are maintained for artistic values.

Spelling reform

Lebanese Arabic is rarely written, except in novels where a dialect is implied or in some types of poetry that do not use classical Arabic at all. Formal publications in Lebanon, such as newspapers, are typically written in Modern Standard Arabic. While Arabic script is usually employed, informal usage such as online chat may mix and match Latin letter transliterations. Saïd Akl proposed the use of the Latin alphabet but did not gain wide acceptance. Whereas some works, such as Romeo and Juliet and Plato's Dialogues have been transliterated using such systems, they have not gained widespread acceptance. Yet, now, most Arabic web users, when short of an Arabic keyboard, transliterate the Arabic words in the Latin alphabet in a pattern almost identical to the Said Akl alphabet, the only difference being the use of numbers to point at the Arabic letters not found in the Latin alphabet.

References

This article includes a   , related reading or   , but its sources remain unclear because it lacks   . Please    this article by introducing more precise citations   . (July 2009)

• Spoken Lebanese. Maksoud N. Feghali, Appalachian State University. Parkway Publishers, 1999 (ISBN 1-887905-14-6)
• Michel T. Feghali, Syntaxe des parlers arabes actuels du Liban, Geuthner, Paris, 1928.
• Elie Kallas, 'Atabi Lebnaaniyyi. Un livello soglia per l'apprendimento del neoarabo libanese, Cafoscarina, Venice, 1995.
• Angela Daiana Langone, Btesem ente lebneni. Commedia in dialetto libanese di Yahya Jaber, Università degli Studi La Sapienza, Rome, 2004.
• Jérome Lentin, "Classification et typologie des dialectes du Bilad al-Sham", in Matériaux Arabes et Sudarabiques n. 6, 1994, 11-43.
• Plonka Arkadiusz, L’idée de langue libanaise d’après Sa‘īd ‘Aql, Paris, Geuthner, 2004, ISBN 2-7053-3739-3
• Plonka Arkadiusz, "Le nationalisme linguistique au Liban autour de Sa‘īd ‘Aql et l’idée de langue libanaise dans la revue «Lebnaan» en nouvel alphabet", Arabica, 53 (4), 2006, 423-471.

External links

• Online Material for Learning Lebanese Arabic
• North Levantine Spoken Arabic at Ethnologue
• Lebanese alphabet by Omniglot