Talk:Tunisian Arabic

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[edit] Relationship to Maltese

well, I need to change the second appearance of Maltese being the closest thing to Tunisian. The converse _is_ true, but Algerian, Libyan are much closer to Tunisian than Maltese. Believe me, I can wander round Algiers happily, and have done, but Valletta is tougher. Even Moroccan is probably a little closer (not in rhythm), but Al-Andalusi's comment about Kuwaiti is almost definitley correct. Yes, Maltese is easier to understand to this Tunisian second language speaker (but I can also understand Italian reasonably well) than Gulf Arabic (OK, I also understand Standard), so actually that doesn't say too much.

--Drmaik 22:27, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I am a native speaker of the Tunisian dialect (northern/coastal urban form), and Maltese is definitely not intelligible to me in any way. I also don't know a single Tunisian who would understand but a few words of Maltese. So I will edit that part if I don't have some backup information on it because it's inaccurate. OTOH, most other Arab dialects are fully understandable to a Tunisian, with the possible exception of Western Algerian and Morroccan dialects. I am not a linguistics professionnal, so I have no idea why Tunisian dialects (or Western Lybian ones for that matter), classified as Maghrebi, are often considered unintelligible with Eastern Arabic dialects. My daily experience of Levantines, Egyptians as well as Gulf people in contact with Tunisians shows the opposite. I will not change this part since there seems to be a consensus (though mainly from non Arab scholar sources or from generally accepted ideas in the Middle-East - today's Middle-Esterners having had little contact with Tunisians/Lybians and actually know little about them). But any information and correction would be welcome.--Yobaranut

On the issue of Maltese, I'm suprised you find it so hard to understand (are you talking about listening rather than reading?) I know a few Tunisians who have found it quite easy, but that sort of thing does vary and also depends on the amount of exposure. In any case, the article doesn't say they're easy to understand, just that they have a close relationship (verb conjugation, inti to men and women, where vowels go, the diphthongs of the traditional urban varieties, words like biex, xejn etc.) Also, Tunisians do tend to understand Middle Easterners, because of exposure to these varieites in the media, while the opposite isn't the case (as the reply below indicates). --Drmaik 22:21, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

After 2 deletions of the statement of the closeness of the realationship between Tunisian and Maltese, I need to comment. The article is not saying that they are mutually intelligible, but that they are closely related linguistically. In fact, a Maltese friend of mine was good at understanding it, but that would be putting my own experieince against MaxCosta's. And I've been to mass in Malta and had little difficulty following the sermon. But structurally the two are very similar: they both use qieghed for the progressive (no other Arabic dialect I am aware of does this), have the same conjugation of the verb (e.g. niktib, tiktib, jiktib are the same...) with no gender marking in the second person (again, a Tunisian distinctive). Tunisian dialects have xinhu, xejn, again distinctive. dabbar rasu means the same, negation with mhux etc is very similar. And why one pronounces barred h in taghha, taghhom becomes clear from Tunisian as well: ain and h, both mainly lost in Maltese, fuse to barred h in Tunisian. These are very close structural similarities shared with not much else. --Drmaik 15:35, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I also disagree that Maltese is closest to Tunisian (or vice versa). I think that Maltese is closer to the Levantine Arabic, particularly to Lebanese. I think that what makes Maltese and Tunisian sound similar is the fact that they're both influenced by a latin language, Italian in the Maltese case and French in the Tunisian case. Regarding the verbs, we say nikteb, tikteb, jikteb, tikteb, niktbu, tiktbu and jiktbu (with an e not an i) but it depends on the dialect. It can vary a lot from one village to another. Another thing that I have an issue with is why Maltese it's not considered to be a dialect of Arabic. It's not only because of sociolinguistic reasons but because it's not mutually intelligible and there are actually several dialects of Maltese that are all related to this language that has developed in total isolation from Arabic for almost 1000 years. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Arabic but let's get things straight. I also like Arabic and study it. One should also note that many Tunisians who are in contact with tourists in Sousse and Tunis have also learnt a little bit of Maltese and that's also a reason why many Maltese people claim that they have no problem communicating in those cities. If they had to go to some far out village where no Maltese tourists ever go, I doubt they'd say the same thing. --Saviourag 02:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I, too, was shocked to read that Maltese is considered to be "close" to Tunisian. Is English considered "closer" to Scandinavian languages than German because of the loss of most gender and case distinctions? Sharing a handful of features isn't enough, guys. I think such an assertion needs to be backed up by a cite, at the very least.

I also take issue with:

• some of the vocabulary. "My father" is not /bˁaː bˁa/ but /buː ya/
• "Some consonants are bracketed in the table above because they are not universally considered to be separate phonemes, but there is strong evidence indicating they are. There are two sources for these bracketed consonants: the pharyngealised forms are internal developments while the other three..." Who knows what consonants are being referred to here? Pharyngealized /b/? What's that? Strong evidence? Cite it, please. Cbdorsett 09:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough on the request for a cite: I think Versteegh has a toss-off comment somewhere, and I've heard at least one paper on a related subject, and read one too. It'll take me a few days to ferret.

As for the other comments, no /buː ya/ is not TA: it is suppleted by /bˁaː bˁa/, even though there's no possessive marker. When learning TA, people would laugh at /buː ya/. Err, the evidence for pharyngealised b etc. is presented. I'll check out Singer, where I think I got the example. )Added later: Indeed, below, the page numbers for the phonemic oppositions are given.) I've clarified which consonants are which; it wasn't exactly clearly written.

shnuwa and shniya. There may have been a gender difference in the past, and I know it was still taught recently, but for many (most?) speakers in Tunis, it is not there, at least not consistently. At least one person expressed surprise to me that there was meant to be a difference. Unfortunately, I know this from my own enquiries, so I can't state so on page. I think shnuwwa is more common than shniyya with 'how are you' but again, no citeable evidence. Nice to see someone else interested in the page! Drmaik 12:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

08:31, 15 January 2006 (UTC): I am a native speaker of Tunsian, and my personal experience has been that middle eastern speakers of arabic have a difficult time understanding tunisian when spoke the way it is between tunisians, although Syrians and Lebanese seem to have a better time at it than Egyptians and Gulf people. How ever north-africans can understand tunisian much better. When I speak to Libyans, Algerians and Morrocans, I basically speak the same way I do with other tunisians (No French/Arabic code switching with Libyans and they can't figure out the words with latin origins). However when I speak to middle easterners, I have to "waterdown" my tunisian to a sort of pseudo-standard arabic, and even then I sometimes can't get myself understood. I think the reason that most middle easterners understand north-africans is either that north-africans do the same I do, they (consciously or unconsciously) take into account who they are speaking to and change their speach accrodingly.

I've never known why tunisian people call the French language "sury", while this word means "syrian" in arabic. This doesn't exist in any other dialect as far as I know. --62.161.32.184 09:01, 19 August 2005 (UTC) I do not know either, however, I can propose an (very far fetched) explanation: Syria was also a french colony at one point, and since "sury" can mean "french language", but also "Syrian", maybe this is related to the use of the word. this is the only connection I can find between the word "sury" and the french language (or indeed France in general). It is known that some Tunisians were fighting (enlisted by force into the french army, actually) on the french side in Syria during the french occupation of that country. Maybe they strated the use of "sury" to mean french. However, this seems a very unlikely cause, since France occupied Tunisia long before it did Syria (by about 40 years), and that by the time of the occupation of Syria, there would already exist a word for "french" in Tunisian Arabic.

The use of the term "sury" for "French" is gradually disappearing in Tunisian. It exists mainly among old generations and rural or less educated sections of the population. "Sury" is definitely getting to mean "Syrian" and "Fransawi" is the word for French. I have no idea where the old meaning comes from, but it definitely predates French colonization of Syria, so your guess is most probably wrong. My personal guess would rather be that Levantines (who were called Shamis or Syrians) and Europeans (then called Rumis) were often thought to (physically) look alike, hence a certain confusion? That too could be a far-fetched guess though --Yobaranut 08:31, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of indicative suffix

The statement "The lack of an indicative prefix in the verbal system, resulting in no distinction between indicative and subjunctive moods." puzzles me as the subjunctive mode in Modern Standard is distinguished from the indicative by a different suffix (fatha for subjunctive, damma for indicative) but use the same imperfect prefix.

What you say is correct. The stated contrast is with other dialects which use ba-, (Middle East) ta- or ka- (Morocco) to mark the indicative. I'll try to make this clearer later in the day.--Drmaik 05:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reconsider the name

There is nothing named Tunisia Arabic. This is not true only for Tunisian Arabic but generally Arabic Dialect names, I find that most Arabic dialect names are derived from country names; this is totally wrong and it has nothing to do with linguistics. In Tunisia there are at least three major dialects, so how can you state something such as Tunisian Arabic (you have to pick one). For instance, the south dialect is closer to the Western Lybian dialect, the western dialect is closer to Eastern Algerian Dialect. Besides, The north dialect has very major differences with the southern and western dialect in pronunciation and pronouns (the qaf instead of ga for example, two pronouns for YOU: enta & enti in the south and west instead of one). So I advise the writers to reconsider the name because it did not represent the actual truth. Bestofmed 18:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC).

Thanks for addressing this issue. I've just noticed that while the article does mention the similarity at the borders, that TA is not mentioned as part of the Maghrebi dialect continuum, which by its very nature causes problem with nomenclature. However, WP:NAMING states that articles should be named after what they are most commonly called, which in this case is TA.

And I would argue there is such a thing as TA: yes, there's not an abrupt difference at the border (similar to American English and Canadian English, for example), but what about 'louage'? 'kaskrut?' The pronunciation of 'taxi'? The fact there's a tendency for the more prestige conscious in Tunisia (variable according to region) to shift to a variety more similar to that of Tunis, as opposed to Algiers or Tripoli? inti is prestigious (to a man) in Tunisia (not according to everyone, of course...), but the opposite is the case in Annaba. th is prestigious in Tunisia, t in Algeria. If you disgree about prestige, look at behaviour: people in Mahdia use th quite a lot: you won't find t-pronouncing areas in Algeria shifting to th. So there is a commonality, partially influenced by TV (esp. channel 21, I guess) of what people evaluate to be Tunisian, even if they do not choose to speak it themselves. I would argue that Tunis Arabic has some elements belonging to an Ausbausprache, and functions as such for all or most of Tunisia in the spoken domain.

Well, I've spent some time on this.... if you disagree with the latter argument, the first one about the naming practices is probably more relevant, in any case. Moreover, 'Tunisian Arabic' gets around 17,500 hits on google, and is listed as such by the Ethnologue, which is the most widely referenced source on language variety definition, whatever your opinion on its faithfulness. Drmaik 06:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)