Tunisian Arabic

Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian, is a set of dialects of Maghrebi Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It is known among its over 11 million speakers , "Tunisian" or "everyday language" to distinguish it from Modern Standard Arabic, the official language of Tunisia. Tunisian Arabic is mostly similar to eastern Algerian Arabic and western Libyan Arabic.
As part of a dialect continuum, Tunisian merges into Algerian Arabic and Libyan Arabic at the borders of the country. Tunisian Arabic's morphology, syntax, pronunciation, and vocabulary are considerably different from Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Like other Maghrebi dialects, it has a vocabulary that is mostly Arabic with a significant Berber, Latin and possibly Neo-Punic substratum. However, Tunisian has also many loanwords from French, Turkish, Italian and the languages of Spain.
Tunisian Arabic is mostly intelligible to speakers of other Maghrebi dialects but is hard to understand or is unintelligible for speakers of Middle Eastern Arabic. Multilingualism within Tunisia and in the Tunisian diaspora makes it common for Tunisians to code-switch, mixing Tunisian with French, English, Standard Arabic or other languages in daily speech. Within some circles, Tunisian Arabic has thereby integrated new French and English words, notably in technical fields, or replaced old French and Italian loans with standard Arabic words.
However, code-switching between Tunisian Arabic and modern standard Arabic is mainly done by more educated and upper-class people and has not negatively affected the use of more recent French and English loanwords in Tunisian.
Moreover, Tunisian Arabic is closely related to Maltese, which is a separate language that descended from Tunisian and Siculo-Arabic. Maltese and Tunisian Arabic have about 30 to 40 per cent spoken mutual intelligibility.
Classification.
Tunisian Arabic is one of the Arabic languages within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It is a variety of Maghrebi Arabic like Moroccan and Algerian Arabic, which are mostly unintelligible to Modern Standard or Mashriqi Arabic speakers. It has a considerable number of pre-hilalian dialects but is usually considered in its koiné form to be a mostly Hilalian variety of Maghrebi Arabic because it was affected by the immigration of Banu Hilal in the 11th century, as were the other Maghrebi varieties.
As a part of the Arabic dialect continuum, it is reported that Tunisian Arabic is partly mutually intelligible with Algerian Arabic, Libyan Arabic, Moroccan, and Maltese. However, it is slightly intelligible or even not intelligible with Egyptian, Levantine, Mesopotamian, or Gulf Arabic.
History.
Beginnings of the language.
Linguistic situation of Ancient Tunisia.
During classical antiquity, Tunisia's population spoke Berber languages related to the Numidian language. However, the languages progressively lost their function as main languages of Tunisia since the 12th century BC, and their usage became restricted mainly to the western regions of the country until their disappearance or evolution into other languages.
Indeed, migrants from Phoenicia settled Tunisia during the 12th to the 2nd century BC, founded ancient Carthage and progressively mixed with the local population. The migrants brought with them their culture and language that progressively spread from Tunisia's coastal areas to the rest of the coastal areas of Northwest Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean islands. From the eighth century BC, most of Tunisia's inhabitants spoke the Punic language, a variant of the Phoenician language influenced by the local Numidian language. Also, already at that time, in the regions near to Punic settlements, the Berber that was used evolved considerably. In the urban centers such as Dougga, Bulla Regia, Thuburnica or Chemtou, Berber lost its Maghrebi phonology but kept the essential of its vocabulary. The word "Africa", which gave its name to the continent, possibly is derived from the name of the Berber tribe of the Afri that was one of the first to enter in contact with Carthage. Also during this period and up to the third century BC, the Tifinagh alphabet developed from the Phoenician alphabet.
After the arrival of Romans, following the fall of Carthage in 146 BC, the coastal population spoke mainly Punic, but that influence decreased away from the coast. From Roman period until the Arab conquest, Latin, Greek and Numidian further influenced the language, called Neo-Punic to differentiate it from its older version. This also progressively gave birth to African Romance, a Latin dialect, influenced by Tunisia's other languages and used along with them. Also, as it was the case for the other dialects, Punic probably survived the Arabic conquest of the Maghreb: the geographer al-Bakri described in the 11th century people speaking a language that was not Berber, Latin or Coptic in rural Ifriqiya, a region where spoken Punic survived well past its written use. However, it may be that the existence of Punic facilitated the spread of Arabic in the region, as Punic and Arabic are both Semitic languages and share many common roots.
Middle Ages.
Classical Arabic began to be installed as a governmental and administrative language in Tunisia that was called then "Ifriqiya" from its older name "Africa" during the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in 673. The people of several urban cities were progressively influenced by Arabic. By the 11th century, through contact of local languages such as African Romance or Berber with Classical Arabic, some urban dialects appeared in the main coastal cities of Tunisia. The dialects were slightly and characteristically influenced by several common Berber structures and vocabulary like negation because Tamazight was the language of contact for citizens of that period. The new dialects were also significantly influenced by other historical languages.
Many Tunisian and Maghrebi words, like ("octopus"), have a Latin etymology. The dialects were later called Pre-Hilalian Arabic dialects and were used along Classical Arabic for communication in Tunisia. Also, Siculo-Arabic was spoken in several islands near Tunisia like Sicily, Pantelleria, and Malta and entered into contact with the Tunisian pre-hilalian dialects. Consequently, it ameliorated the divergence in grammar and structures of all the concerned dialects from Classical Arabic.
By the mid-11th century, the Banu Hilal immigrated to rural northern and central Tunisia and Banu Sulaym immigrated to southern Tunisia. The immigrants played a major role in spreading the use of Tunisian Arabic in an important part of the country. However, they brought some of the characteristics of their local Arabic dialects as well. In fact, central and western Tunisian Arabic speakers began using the voiced velar stop [ɡ] instead of the voiceless uvular stop [q] in words such as "he said". Main linguists working about Hilalian dialects like Veronika Ritt-Benmimoum and Martine Vanhove supposed that even the replacement of the diphthongs /aw/ and /aj/ respectively by /uː/ and /iː/ vowels was a Hilalian influence. Furthermore, the phonologies brought to the new towns speaking Tunisian Arabic are those of the immigrants and not Tunisian phonology. The Sulaym even spread a new dialect in southern Tunisia, Libyan Arabic.
However, some dialects avoided the Hilalian influence: Judeo-Tunisian Arabic, a vernacular spoken by Tunisian Jews and known for the conservation of foreign phonemes in loanwords and slightly influenced by Hebrew phonology, Sfax dialect and Tunisian urban woman dialect.
By the 15th century, after the Reconquista and subsequent decline of the formerly Arabic-speaking al-Andalus, many Andalusians immigrated to the Tunisian main coastal cities. These migrants brought some of the characteristics of Andalusian Arabic to the sedentary urban dialects spoken in Tunisia. Among others, it led to the reuse of the voiceless uvular stop [q] instead of the nomadic Hilalian voiced velar stop [ɡ] and to speech simplification in Tunisian, which further differentiated the language from Classical Arabic. Furthermore, the changes were recognized by the Hafsid scholar ibn Khaldun in his "Muqaddimah" in 1377. He said that language contact between classical Arabic and local languages caused the creation of many Arabic varieties very distinct from formal Arabic.
Ottoman period.
During the 17th to the 19th centuries, Tunisia came under Spanish, then Ottoman rule and hosted Morisco then Italian immigrants from 1609. That made Tunisian, Spanish, Italian, Mediterranean Lingua Franca, and Turkish languages connected. Tunisian acquired several new loanwords from Italian, Spanish, and Turkish and even some structures like the suffix added to several nouns to mean professions like , ... During the mid-19th century, Tunisian Arabic was studied by several European scientists. In 1893, a first linguistic study was completed by the German linguist Hans Stumme. That began a still ongoing research trend on Tunisian Arabic.
Modern history.
During the French protectorate of Tunisia, the country encountered the Standard French language. That affected Tunisian considerably, as new loanwords, meanings and structures were drawn from French. The unintelligibility of Tunisian to Middle Eastern Arabic speakers was worsened.
However, the same period was characterized by the rise of interest toward Tunisian Arabic. Indeed, this period was the beginning of the spread of the formal use of Tunisian Arabic as by Taht Essour. Also, more research about Tunisian was produced, mainly by French and German linguists. Tunisian Arabic became even taught in French high schools, as an optional language.
By the Tunisian independence in 1956, Tunisian Arabic was spoken only in coastal Tunisia while the other regions spoke Algerian Arabic, Libyan Arabic or several Berber dialects. The profusion is from many factors including the length of time the country was inhabited, its long history as a migration land and the profusion of cultures that have inhabited it, and the geographical length and diversification of the country, divided between mountain, forest, plain, coastal, island and desert areas.
That is why Tunisian leader Habib Bourguiba began a trial of Arabization and Tunisification of Tunisia and spread free basic education for all Tunisians. That contributed to the progressive and partial minimisation of code-switching from European languages in Tunisian and the use of code-switching from Standard Arabic. Furthermore, the creation of the Établissement de la radiodiffusion-télévision tunisienne in 1966 and the nationwide spread of television with the contact of dialects led to a dialect leveling by the 1980s.
By then, Tunisian Arabic reached nationwide usage and became composed of six slightly different but fully mutually intelligible dialects: Tunis dialect, considered the reference Tunisian dialect; Sahil dialect; Sfax dialect; southwestern dialect; southeastern dialect and northwestern dialect. Older dialects became less commonly used and began disappearing. Consequently, Tunisian became the main prestigious language of communication and interaction within the Tunisian community and Tunisia became the most linguistically homogeneous state of the Maghreb. However, Berber dialects, Libyan and Algerian Arabic as well as several Tunisian dialects like the traditional urban woman dialect, Judeo-Tunisian Arabic or even several Tunisian structures like "lā" noun"+š", also practically disappeared from Tunisia.
The period after Tunisian independence was also marked by the spread of Tunisian Arabic usage in literature and education. In fact, Tunisian Arabic was taught by the Peace Corps from 1966 until 1993 and more researches on it were made. Some which used new methods like computing operations and the automated creation of several speech recognition-based and Internet-based corpora, including the publicly available Tunisian Arabic Corpus Others, more traditional, were also made about the phonology, the morphology, the pragmatic and the semantics of Tunisian. The language has also been used to write several novels since the 1990s and even a Swadesh list in 2012. Now, it is taught by many institutions like the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (in Paris with Tunisian Arabic courses since 1916) and the Institut Bourguiba des Langues Vivantes (in Tunis with Tunisian Arabic courses since 1990). or in French high schools as an optional language. In fact, 1878 students sat for the Tunisian Arabic examination in the 1999 French Baccalauréat. Nowadays, the tendency in France is to implement Maghrebi Arabic, mainly Tunisian Arabic, in basic education.
But, those were not the only trials of Tunisian Arabic in education. A project to teach basic education for the elderly people using Tunisian Arabic was proposed in 1977 by Tunisian linguist Mohamed Maamouri. It aimed to ameliorate the quality and intelligibility of basic courses for elderly people who could not understand Standard Arabic as they did not learn it. However, the project was not implemented.
Nowadays, the linguistic classification of Tunisian Arabic causes controversies between interested people. The problem is caused because of the Arabic dialect continuum. Some linguists, such as Michel Quitout and Keith Walters, consider it an independent language, and some others, such as Enam El-Wer, consider it a divergent dialect of Arabic that is still dependent of Arabic morphology and structures.
Moreover, its political recognition is still limited as it is only recognized in France as a minority language part of Maghrebi Arabic according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of May 1999. However, even the charter was not agreed on by the Constitutional Council of France because its conflicts with the Article 2 of the French Constitution of 1958. Also, no official recognition or standardization in Tunisia was provided for Tunisian Arabic until 2011 although the efforts of Tunisian professors Salah Guermadi and Hedi Balegh to prove that Tunisian is a language.
After the Tunisian revolution of 2011 when Tunisian Arabic was the mainly used language of communication, the supporters of the recognition of Tunisian as a language were encouraged to work again about the issue.
In 2011, the Tunisian Ministry of Youth and Sports has launched a version of its official website in Tunisian Arabic. However, this version was closed after a week of work because of an internet pool that has concluded that 53% of the users of the website were against using Tunisian Arabic in the website.
In 2013, Kélemti initiative was founded by Hager Ben Ammar, Scolibris, Arabesques Publishing House, and Valérie Vacchiani to promote and encourage the creation and publication of written resources about and in Tunisian Arabic.
In 2014, a version of the Tunisian Constitution of 2014 was published in Tunisian Arabic by the Tunisian Association of Constitutional Law.
In 2016 and after two years of work, the Derja Association has been launched by Ramzi Cherif and Mourad Ghachem in order to standardize and regulate Tunisian, to define a standard set of orthographic rules and vocabularies for it, to promote its use in daily life, literature and science, and to get an official recognition for it as a language in Tunisia and abroad. The Derja Association also offers an annual prize, the Abdelaziz Aroui Prize, for the best work written in Tunisian Arabic.
Since the 2011 revolution, there have been many novels published in Tunisian Arabic. The first such novel was Taoufik Ben Brik's "Kelb ben Kelb" (2013); several prominent novels have been written by Anis Ezzine and Faten Fazaâ (the first woman to publish a novel in Tunisian Arabic). Although often criticized by literary critics, the Tunisian Arabic novels have been commercially successful: the first printing of Faten Fazaâ's third novel sold out in less than a month.
Distinctive features.
Tunisian Arabic is a variety of Arabic and as such shares many features with other modern varieties, especially the Maghrebi varieties of Arabic. Some of its distinctive features (compared to other Arabic dialects) are listed here.
Dialects.
The Arabic dialects of Tunisia belong to either pre-Hilalian or Hilalian dialectal families.
Before 1980, The pre-Hilalian group included old ("Baldī") Urban dialects of Tunis, Kairouan, Sfax, Sousse, Nabeul and its region Cap Bon, Bizerte, old Village dialects (Sahel dialects), and the Judeo-Tunisian. The Hilalian set includes the Sulaym dialects in the south and the Eastern Hilal dialects in central Tunisia. The latter were also spoken in the Constantinois (eastern Algeria).
Nowadays and due to dialect leveling, the main dialect varieties of Tunisian Arabic are Northwestern Tunisian (also spoken in Northeastern Algeria), southwestern Tunisian, Tunis dialect, Sahel dialect, Sfax dialect and southeastern Tunisian. All of these varieties are Hilalian excepting the Sfax one.
Tunis, Sahel and Sfax dialects (considered sedentary dialects) use the voiceless uvular stop in words such as قال "he said" while southeastern, northwestern and southwestern varieties (considered nomadic dialects) substitute it by the voiced velar stop as in . Moreover, only Tunis, Sfax and Sahel dialects use Tunisian phonology.
Indeed, northwestern and southwestern Tunisians speak Tunisian with Algerian Arabic phonology, which tends to simplify short vowels as short schwas while southeastern Tunisian speak Tunisian with the Libyan Arabic phonology.
Additionally, Tunis, Sfax and the urban Sahel dialects are known for not marking the second person gender. Hence, the otherwise feminine is used to address both men and women, and no feminine marking is used in verbs ("inti mšīt"). Northwestern, southeastern and southwestern varieties maintain the gender distinction found in Classical Arabic ( "inta mšīt", "inti mšītī").
Furthermore, Tunis, Sfax and Sahel varieties conjugate CCā verbs like mšā and klā in feminine third person and in past tense as CCāt. For example, "hiya mšāt". However, Northwestern, southeastern and southwestern varieties conjugate them in feminine third person and in past tense as CCat For example, "hiya mšat".
Finally, each of the six dialects have specific vocabulary and patterns.
Tunis.
As the prestige variety of media, the Tunis dialect is considered the standard form of Tunisian Arabic and is the variety described in pedagogical and reference materials about "Tunisian" Arabic. It is spoken on the Northern East of Tunisia around Tunis, Cap Bon and Bizerte. However, it has a characteristic not shared with some of the other Tunisian Arabic dialects. It distinguishes the three short vowels and tends to pronounce [æ] as [ɛ] and the āš suffix, used in the end of question words, as an [ɛ:h].
Sahel.
The Sahel dialect is known for the use of the singular first person "ānī" instead of "ānā". It is also known for the pronunciation of "wā" as [wɑː] and the pronunciation "ū" and "ī" as respectively [oː] and [eː] when it is a substitution of the common Classical Arabic diphthongs /aw/ and /aj/. For example, "jwāb" is pronounced as [ʒwɑːb] and "lūn" is pronounced as [lɔːn]. Furthermore, when "ā" is at the end of the indefinite or "il-" definite word, this final "ā" is pronounced as [iː]. For example, "smā" is pronounced as [smiː]. Moreover, If a word begins with a consonant cluster starting with /θ/ or /ð/, these sounds are pronounced respectively as [t] and [d]. For example, /θlaːθa/ is pronounced as [tlɛːθæ]. As well, the Sahil dialect is known for using "miš" instead of "mūš" to mean the negation of future predicted action. Similarly, the conjugation of "miš" as a modal verb uses "mišnī" instead of "mānīš", "mišk" instead of "mākš", "miššū" instead of "mūš" and "mēhūš", "mišhā" instead of "māhīš", "mišnā" instead of "mānāš", "miškum" instead of "mākumš" and "mišhum" instead of "māhumš".
The Sahel dialect is also known by the fact that female speakers tend to pronounce q as [kˤ].
Sfax.
The Sfax dialect is known mostly for its conservation of the Arabic diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ and of the short /a/ between two consonants and its use of wḥīd instead of wḥūd to mean the plural of someone.
Other dialects have substituted them respectively by /iː/ and /uː/ and dropped the short /a/ between the first and second consonant of the word.
It is also known by the substitution of short /u/ by short /i/, when it comes in the beginning of the word or just after the first consonant. For example, /χubz/ is pronounced as [χibz].
It is also known for the use of specific words, like "baṛmaqnī" meaning window. Furthermore, it is known for the substitution of [ʒ] by [z] when it comes in the beginning of a word and when that word contains [s] or [z] in its middle or end. For example, /ʒazzaːrˤ/ is pronounced as [zæzzɑːrˤ] and /ʒarʒiːs/ is pronounced as [zærzi:s].
Unlike other Tunisian dialects, Sfax dialect does not simplify the last long vowel at the end of a word. It is also known for some specific verbs like "aṛā" (to see) and the use of the demonstrative articles "hākūma" for those and "hāka" (m.) and "hākī" (f.) for that respectively instead of "hāðūkum" and "hāðāka" (m.) and "hāðākī" (f.) determinants. Finally, the conjugation of "mūš" as a modal verb uses "māhūwāš" instead of "māhūš", "māhīyāš" instead of "māhīš", "māḥnāš" instead of "mānāš" and "māhūmāš" instead of "māhumš".
Sfax dialect is also known for its profusion of diminutives. For example, 
Northwestern.
The northwestern dialect is known by pronouncing r as [rˤ] when it is written before an ā or ū. Furthermore, it is known for the substitution of [ʒ] by [z] when it comes at the beginning of a word and when that word contains [s] or [z] in its middle or end. Also, it is known for the pronunciation of ū and ī respectively as [o:] and [e:] when they are in an emphatic or uvular environment. As well, northwestern dialect is known for using "miš" that is pronounced as [məʃ] instead of "mānīš" to mean the negation of future predicted action. Similarly, the conjugation of "miš" as a modal verb uses "mišnī" instead of "mānīš", "mišk" instead of "mākš", "miššū" instead of "mūš" and "māhūš", "mišhā" instead of "māhīš", "mišnā" instead of "mānāš", "miškum" instead of "mākumš" and "mišhum" instead of "māhumš". Moreover, northwestern dialect is known for the use of "naḥnā" instead of "aḥnā" as a plural second person personal pronoun and the southern area of this Tunisian dialect like El Kef is known for the use of "nāy" or "nāya" instead of "ānā" (meaning I) excepting Kairouan that is known for using 