Nabataean Arabic

Nabataean Arabic
Region	Northwestern Arabian Peninsula and the southern Levant
Era	4th century BCE to 1st century CE
Language family	Afroasiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Arabic Northern Old Arabic Nabataean Arabic
Writing system	Nabataean
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	None

Nabataean Arabic was the dialect of Arabic spoken by the Nabataeans in antiquity. In the 1st century AD, the Nabataeans wrote their inscriptions, such as the legal texts carved on the façades of the monumental tombs at Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ, ancient Ḥegrā, in the Aramaic language. It is probable, however, that some or all of them, possibly in varying proportion depending on the region of the Nabataean Kingdom where they lived, spoke Arabic.^[1]

Phonology

Consonants

^1 These consonants were probably voiceless, in contrast with Old Higazi, where they may have been voiced^[2] It is clear that in southern Syria the two sounds had not merged and that they remained voiceless. The evidence from Nessana, on the other hand, suggests that both reflexes were voiced, and that they had possibly merged to [ɮˁ].^[3]

^2 There is evidence that [tsʼ] had deaffricated and pharyngealized to [sˁ].^[3]

Vowels

In contrast with Old Higazi and Classical Arabic, Nabataean Arabic may have undergone the shift [e] < *[i] and [o] < *[u], as evidenced by the numerous Greek transcriptions of Arabic from the area. This may have occurred in Safaitic as well, making it a possible Northern Old Arabic isogloss.

Grammar

Proto-Arabic

Proto-Arabic nouns could take one of the five above declensions in their basic, unbound form.

Notes

The definite article spread areally among the Central Semitic languages and it would seem that Proto-Arabic lacked any overt marking of definiteness.

Nabataean Arabic

The ʿEn ʿAvdat inscription in the Nabataean script dating to no later than 150 shows that final [n] had been deleted in undetermined triptotes, and that the final short vowels of the determined state were intact. The reconstructed text of the inscription is as follows:^[4]

1. pa-yapʿal lā pedā wa lā ʾaṯara
2. pa-kon honā yabġe-nā ʾal-mawto lā ʾabġā-h
3. pa-kon honā ʾarād gorḥo lā yorde-nā^[5]

• "And he acts neither for benefit nor favour and if death claims us let me not be claimed. And if an affliction occurs let it not afflict us".^[6]

Notes

The Old Arabic of the Nabataean inscriptions exhibits almost exclusively the form ʾl- of the definite article. Unlike the Classical Arabic article, the Old Arabic ʾl almost never exhibits the assimilation of the coda to the coronals.

References

External links