Levantine Arabic

Levantine Arabic
شامي‎, šāmi
Native to	Israel (Arab communities), Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey (Hatay and Mersin), Egypt (Arish only)
Region	Levant / Greater Syria
Ethnicity	Arabs Also spoken natively by most Circassians in Jordan. Spoken as a second language by some other ethnic groups such as Armenians in Lebanon and Chechens in Jordan.[1][2]
Native speakers	38 million (2021)[3]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic South Semitic Arabic Levantine Arabic
Standard forms	Damascus Arabic
Dialects	North Levantine South Levantine
Writing system	Arabic alphabet Latin script (Arabizi) Hebrew alphabet (in Israel)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: apc – North Levantine ajp – South Levantine
Glottolog	leva1239
Linguasphere	12-AAC-eh "Syro-Palestinian"
IETF	apc ajp
North Levantine   South Levantine
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

[lang=ajp], [lang=apc] { font-family: 'Segoe UI', Tahoma; }

Levantine Arabic, also called Shami (autonym: شامي‎ šāmi, or Arabic: اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة‎, il-lahje š-šāmiyye),^[4] or simply Levantine, is a sprachbund^[5] of vernacular Arabic indigenous to Arab countries and communities within the Levant. It is spoken by the Arabs who live in present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Turkey (provinces of Mersin and Hatay), and Egypt (Arish only).^[6][7] It is also spoken by members of the Arab diaspora coming from this region, most significantly among the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian diasporas.^[8] Levantine Arabic is also used as a lingua franca by other ethnic groups within the region.

With numerous dialects and over 38 million speakers worldwide,^[3] Levantine has been described as one of the two "dominant (prestigeful) dialect centres of gravity for Spoken Arabic", together with Egyptian Arabic.^[9] Levantine and Egyptian are considered the most widely understood varieties of Arabic, and they are the most commonly taught varieties to foreign students.^[10]

In the frame of the general diglossia status of the Arab world, Levantine is used by Arabs for daily spoken use in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria while most of the written and official documents and media within these countries use Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), a form of formal Arabic which is nobody's native language and is only acquired through formal education.^[11] With about 50% of common words, Palestinian-Levantine dialect is the closest vernacular variety to MSA.^[12][13][14] Still, Levantine and MSA are drastically different and not mutually intelligible.^[15][16][17] Levantine speakers therefore often call their language Amiya,^[a] which means "slang", "dialect", or "colloquial" in MSA (العامية, al-ʿāmmiyya).^[18][19] However, with the emergence of social media, attitudes toward Levantine have improved and the amount of written Levantine has significantly increased.^[4]

Naming[]

Map of Greater Syria / the Levant.

Scholars use the term "Levantine Arabic" to describe the continuum of mutually intelligible dialects spoken across the Levant.^[20] Other terms include "Syro-Palestinian",^[6] "Eastern Arabic",^[b][21] "Syro-Lebanese" (as a broad term covering Jordan and Palestine as well),^[22] "Greater Syrian",^[23] or simply "Syrian Arabic" (in a broad meaning, referring to all the dialects of Greater Syria, which corresponds to the Levant).^[24][16] Most authors only include sedentary dialects, excluding Bedouin dialects of the Syrian Desert and the Negev, which belong to Peninsular Arabic. Mesopotamian dialects from northeast Syria are also excluded.^[22] Brustad & Zuniga note that the term "Levantine Arabic" is not indigenous and that "it is likely that many speakers would resist the grouping on the basis that the rich phonological, morphological and lexical variation within the Levant carries important social meanings and distinctions."^[25]

Indeed, Levantine speakers often call their language Amiya,^[a] which means "slang", "dialect", or "colloquial" in MSA (العامية, al-ʿāmmiyya) to when they compare their vernacular to Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic (الفصحى‎, al-fuṣḥā, meaning "the eloquent").^[c][18][19] They may also simply call their spoken language "Arabic" (عربي, ʿarabiyy).^[26] Alternatively, they may identify their language by the name of their country, for instance, Jordanian (أردني‎, Urduni),^[3] Syrian (شامي‎, Shami),^[3] or Lebanese. In Lebanon, Said Akl led a movement to recognize the "Lebanese language" as a distinct prestigious language and oppose it to Standard Arabic, which he considered a "dead language". Akl's idea was relatively successful among the Lebanese diaspora.^[27]

Classification[]

Levantine is a variety of Arabic, a Semitic language. Semitic languages belong to Afroasiatic languages. The genealogical position of Arabic within the group of the Semitic languages has long been a problem.^[28][29]

Indeed, Semitic languages were confined in a relatively small geographic area (Greater Syria, Mesopotamia and the Arabian desert) and often spoken in contiguous regions. Permanent contacts between the speakers of these languages facilitated borrowing between them. Borrowing disrupts historical processes of change and makes it difficult to reconstruct the genealogy of languages.^[30]

In the traditional classification of the Semitic languages, Arabic was in the , based on some affinities with Modern South Arabian and Geʽez.^[31]

Today, most scholars reject the South-west Semitic subgrouping because it is not supported by any innovations and because shared features with South Arabian and Ethiopian were only due to areal diffusion.^[29]

A more recent classification by Robert Hetzron (1974, 1976) classifies Arabic languages as a Central Semitic language:^[32]

John Huehnergard, Aaron D. Rubin, and other scholars suggested subsequent modifications to Hetzron's model:^[33]

However, several scholars, such as Giovanni Garbini, consider that the historical–genetic interpretation is not a satisfactory way of representing the development of the Semitic languages (contrary to Indo-European languages, which spread over a wide area and were usually isolated from each other).^[34] Edward Ullendorff even thinks it is impossible to establish any genetic hierarchy between Semitic languages.^[32] These scholars prefer a purely typological–geographical approach without any claim to a historical derivation.^[31]

For instance, in Garbini's view, the Syrian Desert was the core area of the Semitic languages where innovations came from. This region had contacts between sedentary settlements—on the desert fringe—and nomads from the desert. Some nomads joined settlements, while some settlers became isolated nomads ("Bedouinisation"). According to Garbini, this constant alternation explains how innovations spread from Syria into other areas.^[35] Isolated nomads progressively spread southwards and reached South Arabia, where the South Arabian language was spoken. They established linguistic contacts back and forth between Syria and South Arabia and their languages. That is why Garbini considers that Arabic does not belong exclusively to either the Northwest Semitic languages (Aramaic, Phoenician, Hebrew, etc.) or the South Semitic languages (Modern South Arabian, Geʽez, etc.) but that it was affected by innovations in both groups.^[36]

Today, there is still no consensus regarding the exact position of Arabic within Semitic languages. The only consensus among scholars is that Arabic varieties exhibit common features with both the South (South Arabian, Ethiopic) and the North (Canaanite, Aramaic) Semitic languages, and that it also contains unique innovations.^[36]

The position of Levantine and other Arabic vernaculars in the Arabic macrolanguage family has also been contested. According to the Arabic linguistic and intellectual tradition, Classical Arabic was the spoken language of the pre- and Early Islamic period and remained stable to today's Modern Standard Arabic. In this view, Classical Arabic is the ancestor of all other Arabic vernaculars, including Levantine, which were corrupted by contacts with other languages.^[37] However, many varieties of Arabic preserve features lost in Classical Arabic and are closer to other Semitic languages. This shows that these varieties of Arabic cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. It is therefore now considered among most Western scholars that Arabic vernaculars represent a different type of Arabic, rather than just a modified version of the Classical language,^[38] and that Classical Arabic is a sister language to other varieties of Arabic rather than their direct ancestor.^[37] In the above models, Classical Arabic and all other varieties, including Levantine, are seen as developing from an unattested common ancestor conventionally called Proto-Arabic.^[29] Versteegh calls it Ancient North Arabian to distinguish it from , the early Islamic papyri's language.^[39]

There is no consensus among scholars whether Arabic diglossia (between Classical Arabic, also called "Old Arabic" and Arabic vernaculars, also called "New Arabic" or "Neo-Arabic") was the result the result of the Islamic conquests and due to the influence of non-Arabic languages or whether is was already the natural state in 7th-century Arabia (which means that both types coexisted in the pre-Islamic period).^[37][40]

Sedentary vernaculars (also called dialects) are then traditionally classified into 5 groups according to shared features:

• Peninsular,
• Mesopotamian,
• Levantine,
• Egyptian,
• Maghrebi.^[41][42]

Levantine is most closely related to North Mesopotamian Arabic, Anatolian Arabic,^[43] and Cypriot Arabic.^[44][45]

In the pre-Islamic period, all Arabs were able to communicate easily. Today, it is for instance extremely difficult for Moroccans and Iraqis, each speaking their own variety, to understand each other. The linguistic distance between Arabic vernaculars (including Levantine) is as large as that between the Germanic languages and the Romance languages (including Romanian), if not larger.^[46] However, in practice, research by Trentman & Shiri indicates that native speakers of Arabic languages are able, thanks to previous exposure to their non-native dialects through media or personal contacts and through various strategies (contextual clues, predicting phonological differences, using knowledge of the root system to guess meaning, and recognizing affixes), to reach a high degree of mutual intelligibility in interactional situations.^[10]

Geographical distribution and varieties[]

Levantine is spoken in the fertile strip on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The degree of similarity among Levantine dialects is not necessarily determined by geographical location or political boundaries. The urban dialects of the main cities (such as Damascus, Beirut, and Jerusalem) have much more in common with each other than they do with the rural dialects of their respective countries. The sociolects of two different social or religious groups within the same country may also show more points of dissimilarity with each other than when compared with their counterparts in another country.^[24]

Although Levantine dialects have remained notably stable over the past two centuries, in cities such as Damascus and Amman, a rapid standardization of the spoken language is taking place through variant reduction (koineization) and linguistic homogenization among the various religious groups and neighborhoods. Rapid urbanization and the increasing proportion of youth^[d] constitute the common causes of dialect change.^[49][50][42]

The process of koineization within each country of the Levant makes a classification of dialects by country more relevant today.^[51][42] The ISO 639-3 standard divides Levantine into two groups: North Levantine (ISO 639-3 code: apc) and South Levantine (ISO 639-3 code: ajp).^[3] Kees Versteegh classifies Levantine (which he calls "Syro-Lebanese") into three groups: Lebanese/Central Syrian (inc. Beirut, Damascus, Druze Arabic, Cypriot Maronite), North Syrian (inc. Aleppo), and Palestinian/Jordanian.^[52] However, according to Versteegh, the distinctions between the groups are unclear and the exact boundary cannot be determined with certainty using isoglosses.^[53]

North Levantine[]

Play media

David speaking Syrian Arabic.

North Levantine extends from Turkey in the North, specifically in the coastal regions of the Adana, Hatay, and Mersin provinces,^[54] to Lebanon,^[55] passing through the Mediterranean coastal regions of Syria (the Al Ladhiqiyah and Tartus governorates) as well as the areas surrounding Aleppo and Damascus.^[3][56] In the North, the limit between Mesopotamian Arabic starts from the Turkish border near el-Rāʿi, and Sabkhat al-Jabbul is the north-eastern limit of Levantine, which includes further south al-Qaryatayn,^[57] Damascus, and the Hauran.

Dialects of North Levantine include:^[3]

• Syrian Arabic: There is an urban standard dialect based on Damascus speech. This prestige dialect is the most widely documented and described Levantine variety.^[25] A national variety of colloquial Arabic, which might be called "common Syrian Arabic" is emerging.^[58] The dialect of Aleppo is also well-known, it shows Mesopotamian (North Syrian) influence.
• Lebanese Arabic: No special prestige is attributed to the Beiruti dialect.^[59] According to Ethnologue, there are also the following dialects: North Lebanese, South Lebanese (Metuali, Shii), North-Central Lebanese (Mount Lebanon Arabic), South-Central Lebanese (Druze Arabic), Beqaa, Sunni Beiruti, Saida Sunni, Iqlim-Al-Kharrub Sunni, Jdaideh.^[3][60] There is an emerging "Standard Lebanese Arabic", which combines features of Beiruti Arabic and Jabale Arabic, the language of Mount Lebanon.^[61] Armenians in Lebanon, who account for 6% of the population, are generally bilingual in Armenian and Levantine.^[1]
• : A form of Druze Arabic spoken in Northern Israel
• Çukurova, Turkey: /Çukurovan,^[62] related to ^[63]

South Levantine[]

South Levantine is spoken in Palestine and in the western area of Jordan (in the ‘Ajlun, Al Balqa', Al Karak, Al Mafraq, 'Amman, Irbid, Jarash, and Madaba governorates).^[56] The language is also spoken in the HaTsafon district of Israel. There are about half a million speakers in the United Arab Emirates, though it is not indigenous there.^[3]

Bedouin varieties are spoken in the Negev and Sinai Peninsula, which are areas of transition to the Egyptian dialect of the Sharqia Governorate (Šarqiyyah).^[64][65] The dialect of the Egyptian city Arish in the North Sinai is classified by Linguasphere as Levantine.^[6] The major characteristics distinguishing this dialect from its surrounding Bedouin dialects are those that more generally distinguish sedentary dialects from Bedouin dialects.^[66]

Dialects of South Levantine include:^[3]

• Israel (Arab communities): Fellahi (rural), Madani (urban),
• Jordanian Arabic: There is a newly emerging urban standard dialect based on the Amman dialect.^[67][50] Other dialects include Fellahi, Madani.
• Palestinian Arabic: Fellahi (rural), Madani (urban).^[68][69] The Gaza dialect contains features that are characteristic of both urban Palestinian Arabic and Bedouin Arabic.^[70]

Speakers by country[]

In addition to the Levant, where it is indigenous, Levantine is spoken by diasporic communities from the region, especially among the Palestinian,^[69] Lebanese, and Syrian diasporas. In some countries, ethnic Arabs from the Levant have ceased to use the language. For instance, usage of Levantine Arabic varies in native and heritage speakers among the 7 million Lebanese Brazilians. There is evidence of gradual disuse in third-generation Lebanese Brazilians: 100% of first-generation Lebanese Brazilians declare being able to speak Lebanese, while only 11% of third-generation Lebanese Brazilians do so.^[71]

Because of the Syrian Civil War, there are 1.3 million Syrian refugees in Jordan^[72] and 3.6 million in Turkey.^[73]

Levantine speakers, Ethnologue (24th ed., 2021)^[3][e]

Country	Total population	North Levantine speakers (apc)	South Levantine speakers (ajp)	Total Levantine speakers (apc+ajp)	% Levantine speakers among the population
Egypt	100,388,000	173,000	N/A	173,000	0.2%
Germany	83,149,000	712,000	15,300	727,300	0.9%
Israel	8,675,000	93,700	1,430,000	1,523,700	17.6%
Jordan	10,102,000	N/A	5,560,000	5,560,000	55.0%
Kuwait	4,421,000	214,000	65,000	279,000	6.3%
Lebanon	6,825,000	6,570,000	N/A	6,570,000	96.3%
Palestine	4,981,000	14,800	4,000,000	4,014,800	80.6%
Qatar	2,832,000	561,000	380,000	941,000	33.3%
Saudi Arabia	34,269,000	500,000	415,000	915,000	2.8%
Sweden	10,099,000	220,000	11,000	231,000	2.3%
Syria	17,070,000	14,700,000	36,000	14,736,000	86.3%
Turkey	83,430,000	1,250,000	N/A	1,250,000	1.5%
United Arab Emirates	9,890,000	127,000	499,000	626,000	6.3%

History[]

In pre-Islamic antiquity, the predominant language spoken in the Levant was Western Aramaic, followed by Greek and, to a lesser extent, Latin. Arab communities existence stretched from the southern extremities of the Syrian desert to central Syria and Anti-Lebanon mountains, and Jordan and desert of Palestine and, Beqaa valley in Lebanon. This large swath of desert was inhabited by various Arabic-speaking tribes, including the Nabataeans, the Tanukhids, Salihids, Banu al-Samayda, Banu Amilah and the Ghassanids. According to Al-Jallad, the Syrian steppe is the first region where Arabic was attested, in Safaitic inscriptions, and Arabic was part of the linguistic milieu of the Levant and Mesopotamia as early as the Iron Age.^[5]

With the Muslim conquest of the Levant, the region became the new home of Arabic speakers originating from the Arabian Peninsula, so that Aramaic, also a Semitic language, which had been widely spoken until then, gradually declined and all but disappeared, nevertheless leaving substrate influences on Levantine.^[11] The language shift from Aramaic to Arabic was not a sudden switch from one language to another, but a long process over several generations, likely with an extended period of bilingualism. Some communities, such as the Samaritans, retained Aramaic well into the Muslim period, and a few small Aramaic-speaking villages had remained until the recent Syrian Civil War.^[74]

Contact with Aramaic[]

There is evidence that a peripheral variety of Aramaic with archaic phonology existed in the southern Levant and possibly northern Arabia during the late first millennium BCE. This variety retained a velar/uvular realization of *ṣ́, as evidenced by an inscription with a prayer to the deity Rqy.^[75]

The coexistence of Nabataean and Jewish Palestinian Aramaic in contracts from the Dead Sea show that Nabataeans were indeed exposed to other forms of Aramaic. The continuity of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, the emergence of Samaritan as well as Christian Palestinian Aramaic as written languages, and the eventual development of vocalization traditions make it possible to define Western Aramaic as a dialect group more clearly in the later Roman period than before.^[76]

The degree to which Aramaic survived as a vernacular in Palestine after the 8th century CE is difficult to assess. One may suppose that the modern Western Aramaic dialects still spoken in the Christian and Muslim mountain villages of Maʿlūla, Baḫʿa, and Ǧubb ʿAdīn in the Antilebanon evolved from the same linguistic matrix as the older, now extinct Western Aramaic varieties that appear in the inscriptions and manuscript traditions of late Roman Palestine.^[76]

Aramaic substrate elements in Palestinian Arabic are widely accepted and especially evident in the lexical component.^[74]

Northern Old Arabic[]

In antiquity, ancient Arabia was home to a continuum of Central Semitic languages which stretched from the southern Levant to Yemen. The isoglosses associated with Arabic are clustered at the northern end of this continuum, in the northern Hijaz and the southern Levant. This may be in part due to a lack of documentation, but it is clear that Central Arabia was home to languages quite distinct from Arabic. Thus, Arabic can be said to have emerged in the second millennium BC and spread into the peninsula, replacing its sister languages on the Central Semitic continuum.^[77]

In ancient times, the primary division between Arabic dialects was between Northern Old Arabic, spoken in the southern Levant, and Old Hijazi, spoken in the northern, and later central Hijaz. The main representatives of Northern Old Arabic were Safaitic, Hismaic, and Nabataean Arabic.^[77] Tens of thousands of graffiti in the Safaitic and Hismaic scripts cover the deserts of southern Syria and present-day Jordan. The Safaitic inscriptions sometimes exhibit the article ʾ(l), a shared areal isogloss with the Arabic substrate of the Nabataean inscriptions. Many Safaitic inscriptions exhibit all of the features typical of Arabic. The Hismaic script was used to compose two long texts in an archaic stage of Arabic before the language acquired the definite article.^[78]

Spread of Old Hijazi[]

Before the mid-sixth century, the coda of the definite article rarely exhibits assimilation to the following coronals and its onset is consistently given with an /a/ vowel. By the mid-sixth century CE in the dialect of Petra, the onset of the article and its vowel seem to have become weakened. There, the article is sometimes written as /el-/ or simply /l-/. A similar, but not identical, situation is found in the texts from the Islamic period. Unlike the pre-Islamic attestations, the coda of the article in the conquest Arabic assimilates to a following coronal consonant. The Arabic transcribed in the 1st century AH papyri represents a different strand of the Arabic language, likely related to Old Hijazi.^[79]

The Damascus Psalm Fragment, dated to the mid- to late 9th century but possibly earlier, provides a glimpse of the vernacular of at least one segment of Damascene society during that period. Its linguistic features also shed light on a pre-grammarian standard of Arabic and the dialect from which it sprung, likely Old Hijazi.^[80]

Early Modern Levantine Arabic[]

The Compendio of Lucas Caballero (1709) contains a description of spoken Damascene Arabic in the early 1700s. In some respects, the data given in this manuscript correspond to modern Damascene Arabic. For example, the allomorphic variation between -a/-e in the feminine suffix is essentially identical. In other respects, especially when it comes to insertion and deletion of vowels, it differs from the modern dialect. The presence of short vowels in /zibībih/ and /sifīnih/ point to an earlier stage of linguistic development, before elision led to the modern zbībe and sfīne, though the orthography of the manuscript is in this respect unclear.^[81]

Status and usage[]

Diglossia[]

Levantine is not recognized in any state or territory.^[82] Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine. It has "special status" in Israel under the Basic Law. French is also recognized in Lebanon. In Turkey, the only official language is Turkish. Any variation from MSA is considered a "dialect" of Arabic.^[82][83]

As in the rest of the Arab world, the linguistic situation in the Levant has been described as diglossia. Modern Standard Arabic is nobody's first acquired language. MSA is not transmitted naturally from parent to child but is learnt later on through formal instruction.^[11]

MSA is the language of literature, official documents and the written formal media in general (newspapers, instruction leaflets, school books, etc.). In spoken form, MSA is mostly used when reading from a scripted text (e.g., news bulletins). MSA is also used for prayer and sermons in the mosque or church.^[11] In Israel, Hebrew is the language used in the public sphere, except in religious and Arabic education settings.^[84]

Attitudes toward MSA are largely positive in the Arab world, even among those not proficient in the language. MSA is indeed associated with "the language of the Qur’an", and therefore revered by Muslims who form the majority of the population, including by non-Arab inhabitants such as Kurds. MSA is also associated with the "Arab heritage and civilization", eloquent expression, and a pan-Arab identity. As such, it is respected and admired by Arabs in general regardless of their religious affiliation.^[85][82] Because the French and the British emphasized spoken vernaculars when they colonized the Arab world, MSA was also seen by Arabs as an asset against colonialism and imperialism.^[86]

On the other hand, Levantine is the mother tongue of Arabic speakers in the region. It is the usual medium of communication in all domains except those described above, which require MSA.^[11] Traditionally, it was regarded as less eloquent and less expressive than MSA and, therefore, not fit as the medium of literature or any form of writing.^[85]

Levantine and MSA are so drastically different that they are mutually unintelligible. These differences are found on the levels of phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax.^[15][16][17]

Traditionally in the Arab world, colloquial varieties, such as Levantine, have been regarded as corrupt forms of MSA and thus looked upon with disdain.^[85][87] Writing in the vernacular has been a controversial issue for two reasons. First, Pan-Arab nationalists consider that this might divide the Arab people into different nations. Second, because Classical Arabic^[c] is the language of the Quran, it is believed to be pure and everlasting, and Islamic religious ideology considers vernaculars to be inferior.^[85][87] Therefore, until recently, the use of Levantine in formal settings or written form was often ideologically motivated, for instance, in opposition to Pan-Arabism.^[87][85]

However, language attitudes surrounding Arabic diglossia are progressively shifting, and the use of Levantine has become de-ideologized for most people.^[87] Recent research suggests that Levantine is now regarded in a more positive light, and its use is acknowledged in certain modes of writing. This increasing acceptance of the vernacular is partly due to its recent widespread use online, in both written and spoken forms.^[83][85]

Code-switching[]

Code-switching between Levantine, MSA, English, French (in Lebanon and among Arab Christians in Syria^[58]), and Hebrew (in Israel^[87]) is frequent among Levantine speakers. Gordon cites two Lebanese examples: "Bonjour, ya habibti, how are you?" ("Hello, my love, how are you?") and "Oui, but leish?" ("Yes, but why?").^[89]

Code-switching is not limited to normal conversations and informal settings and also happens in formal settings such as on television.^[90]

Politics and government[]

In Lebanon, not all politicians master MSA, so they have to rely on Lebanese. Many public and formal speeches and most political talk shows are in Lebanese instead of MSA.^[61]

In Israel, Member of Knesset Ahmad Tibi often adds Palestinian Arabic sentences to his Hebrew speech, but he does not give full speeches in Arabic.^[91]

Education[]

In the Levant, MSA is officially the only variety taught in schools as "Arabic," Levantine is not taught.^[11] However in practice, lessons are often taught in a mix of MSA and Levantine. For instance, the lesson can be read out in MSA and explained in Levantine.^[1]

In institutions of higher education, MSA is used as a medium of instruction in the social sciences and humanities, whereas in most universities (except in Syrian universities where only MSA is used), English or French are used in the applied and medical sciences.^[11][1]

In Israel, MSA is the only language of instruction in Arab schools. The local Palestinian dialect is excluded from schools. Hebrew is studied as a second language by all Palestinian students from the second grade on. English is studied as a foreign language from the third grade on.^[92][93] In Jewish schools, in 2012, 23,000 pupils were studying spoken Arabic in 800 elementary schools. Palestinian Arabic is a compulsory subject in Jewish elementary schools in the Northern District. Otherwise, Jewish schools teach MSA.^[94] In Jewish junior high schools, Arabic was studied by about 100,000 pupils. In Jewish high schools, by over 18,000 students. In total at all stages in 2012, 141,000 Jewish students were learning Arabic. In 2014, 2,487 Jewish students took the expanded Bagrut exam in Arabic, representing 2-3 percent of all students.^[95]

In Jordan, MSA is the language in instruction, except at the university level in teaching sciences, engineering, and medicine where English is used.^[96]

In Lebanon, about 50% of school students study in French.^[97]

In Syria, the only language of instruction is MSA, including in universities. Teachers are obliged to speak only MSA with their pupils. In practice, they only do so partly.^[58] In schools, English is mandatory for all students starting from the first grade. In seventh grade, each student has to choose a second foreign language between Russian (since 2014) and French.^{[98][99][100]}

In Turkey, article 42.9 of the Constitution prohibits languages other than Turkish being taught as a mother tongue. Therefore, almost all Arabic speakers are illiterate in Arabic unless they have learned MSA for religious purposes.^[101]

Social media[]

Research found that users in the Arab world communicate with their local language (such as Levantine) more than MSA on social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, or in the comments of online newspapers). According to this paper, depending on the platform, between 12% and 23% of all dialectal Arabic content online was written in Levantine.^[102]

Music and oral poetry[]

Play media

An interview with Lebanese singer Maya Diab; she speaks in Lebanese.

Levantine is commonly used in zajal and other forms of oral poetry.^[103][58] Zajal written in vernacular was published in Lebanese newspapers such as al-Mašriq ("The Levant", from 1898) and ad-Dabbūr ("The Hornet", from 1925). In the 1940s, five reviews in Beirut were dedicated exclusively to poetry in Lebanese.^[104]

Most songs are in a’amiya.^[18] It is estimated that 40% of all music production in the Arab world is in Lebanese.^[105][106]

Films, series, and TV shows[]

Most movies are in a’amiya.^[18]

Egypt was the most influential center of Arab media productions (films, drama, TV series, etc.) during the 20th century,^[106] but Levantine is now competing with Egyptian.^[107] Lebanese television is the oldest running Arab television and is today the largest private Arab broadcast industry.^[108] The majority of big-budget pan-Arab entertainment shows are filmed in the Lebanese dialect in the studios of Beirut. Moreover, the Syrian dialect dominates in Syrian TV series (such as Bab Al-Hara) and in the dubbing of Turkish television dramas (such as Noor), popular across all the Arab world.^[106] Since the Syrian civil war, dubbing is still done in the Syrian dialect but in Dubai by Emirati companies.^[109] Dubbing Turkish TV dramas has made the Syrian dialect understandable all over the Arab world.^[25] Today, according to one survey, Native Arabic speakers think that Levantine dialects sound the most beautiful.^[10]

The majority of Arabic satellite television networks use colloquial varieties (instead of MSA) for their programs. MSA is limited to news bulletin. This shift to vernacular started in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War and expanded to the rest of the Arab world. Despite this trend, Al Jazeera still uses MSA only, while Al Arabiya and Al-Manar use MSA or a hybrid between MSA and colloquial for talkshows.^[90]

Newspapers[]

Newspapers usually use MSA and reserve Levantine for sarcastic commentaries and caricatures.^[110] However, Levantine titles can commonly be found. The letter to the editor section can include entire paragraphs in Levantine, written by readers. Many newspapers also regularly publish personal columns in Levantine, such as خرم إبرة (xurm ʾibra, lit. '[through the] needle's eye') in the weekend edition of Al-Ayyam.^[111]

In a 2013 study, Abuhakema investigated 270 written commercial ads in two Jordanian (Al Ghad and Ad-Dustour) and two Palestinian (Al-Quds and Al-Ayyam) daily newspapers. The study concluded that MSA is still the most used variety in ads, but both MSA and Levantine are acceptable, and Levantine is increasingly used in the language of ads.^[112][113]

From 1983 to 1990, Said Akl's newspaper Lebnaan was published in Lebanese written in Latin alphabet.^[27]

Literature[]

Levantine is seldom written, except for some novels, plays, and humorous writings. Prose written in Lebanese goes back to at least 1892 when published Riwāyat aš-šābb as-sikkīr ʾay Qiṣṣat Naṣṣūr as-Sikrī ("The tale of the drunken youth, or The story of Naṣṣūr the Drunkard’"). In the 1960s, Said Akl led a movement in Lebanon to replace MSA as the national and literary language, and a handful of writers wrote in Lebanese. They also translated foreign works, such as La Fontaine's Fables, in Lebanese using Akl's alphabet.^{[114][27][104]}

In general, most comedies are written in Levantine.^[115] In Syria, plays became more common and popular in the 1980s by using Levantine instead of Classical Arabic. Saadallah Wannous, the most renowned Syrian playwright, used Syrian Arabic in his latest plays.^[116]

In novels and short stories, most authors, such as Israeli-Arabs ,  [ar], and , write the dialogues in their Levantine dialect, while the rest of the text is in MSA.^{[117][118][111][119]}

Lebanese authors Elias Khoury (especially in his recent works) and Kahlil Gibran wrote in Levantine, not only in the dialogues but also in the main narrative.^[120][121]

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince was translated in Lebanese written in Arabic script by Mūrīs (Maurice) ʿAwwād (l-Amīr iz-zġīr, 1986).^[104] It was later translated in Palestinian Arabic and published in two biscriptal editions: one written in Arabic script and Hebrew script, and another one in Arabic and Latin script.^{[122][123][124][125]}

Comic books, such as the Syrian comic strip Kūktīl, are often written in Levantine instead of MSA.^[126]

Full texts in dialect may be found in collections of short stories and anthologies of Palestinian folktales (turāṯ or heritage literature). On the other hand, Palestinian children's literature is almost exclusively written in MSA.^[111][18]

The Gospel of Mark was published in the Palestinian dialect in 1940,^[127] with the Gospel of Matthew and the Letter of James published in 1946.^[128][129] The four Gospels were translated in Lebanese using Akl's alphabet in 1996 by Gilbert Khalifé. Muris (Maurice) 'Awwad published the four Gospels in 2001 in Lebanese in Arabic script.^[27]

Phonology[]

Consonants[]

Vowels[]

Vowel length is phonemic in Levantine. Vowels often show dialectal and/or allophonic variations, that are socially, geographically, and phonologically conditioned. Diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ are found in some Lebanese dialects, they respectively correspond to long vowels /eː/ and /oː/ in other dialects.^[134]

In French borrowings, nasal vowels /ã/, /õ/, /ɛ̃/ and /ũ/ occur: ʾasãsēr ("lift"), selülēr "mobile phone".^[130]

The difference between the short vowel pairs /e/ and /i/ as well as /o/ and /u/ is not always phonemic.^[132] The vowel quality is usually /i/ and /u/ in stressed syllables.^[130]

In North Levantine:

• Stressed /i/ and /u/ merge. They usually become /i/, but might also be /u/ near emphatic consonants. Syrian and Beiruti tends to pronounce both of them as schwa [ə].^[59]
• The long vowel "ā" is pronounced similar to "ē" or even merge to "ē", when it is not near an emphatic or guttural consonant.^[59]

Vowels in word final position are shortened. As a result, more short vowels are distinguished.^[130]

Helping vowels[]

Speakers often add a short vowel, called helping vowel or epenthetic vowel, sounding like a short schwa right before a word-initial consonant cluster to break it, as in ktiːr ^ǝmniːħ "very good/well". They are not considered part of the word as such and are never stressed. This process of anaptyxis is subject to social and regional variation.^{[135][136][137]}

A helping vowel is inserted:

• Before the word, if this word starts with two consonants and is at the beginning of a sentence,
• Between two words, when a word ending in a consonant is followed by a word which starts with two consonants,
• Between two consonants in the same word, if this word ends with two consonants and either is followed by a consonant or is at the end of a sentence.^[138][139]

Stress[]

In Damascus Arabic, word stress falls on the last superheavy syllable (CVːC or CVCC). In the absence of a superheavy syllable:

• if the word is bisyllabic, stress falls on the penultimate,
• if the word contains three or more syllables and none of them is superheavy, then stress falls:
  • on the penultimate if it is heavy (CVː or CVC),
  • on the antepenult, if the penultimate is light (CV).^[135]

Socio-phonetics[]

Levantine can be sub-classified based on political boundaries (Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Jordanian) but there are also many socio-phonetic variations, based on socio-cultural classifications (urban, rural and Bedouin), on gender, or on religion (Muslim, Christian, Druze). For instance ق tends to be pronounced as /q/ by Bedouins, /ʔ/ by women and urban speakers, and as /g/ by men and rural speakers. And in urban varieties, interdentals /θ/, /ð/, and /ðʕ/ tend to merge to stops or fricatives [t] ~ [s]; [d] ~ [z]; and [dʕ] ~ [zʕ] respectively.^[140][131]

Regarding vowels, one of the most distinctive features of Levantine is word-final imāla, a process by which the vowel corresponding to ة (taa marbuuTa) is raised from [a] to [æ], [ε], [e] or even [i] in some dialects.^[141]

Orthography[]

Writing systems[]

Tabloid newspaper Lebnaan in Lebanese using the Latin alphabet proposed by Said Akl.

In the frame of the general diglossia status of the Arab world, Levantine is mainly used for daily spoken use, while most of the written and official documents and media use Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).^[18]

Therefore, until recently, Levantine was rarely written. Brustad & Zuniga report that in 1988, they did not find anything published in Levantine in Syria. However, it is now possible to see written Levantine in many public venues and on the internet.^[142] Indeed, with the emergence of social media, the amount of written Levantine (among other varieties of Arabic) has increased.^[4]

There is no standard orthography for Levantine.^[4] There has been failed attempts to Latinize Levantine, especially Lebanese. For instance, the Lebanese writer Said Akl promoted a modified Latin alphabet. Akl used this alphabet to write books and to publish a newspaper, Lebnaan.^{[143][144][27]} The Computational Approaches to Modeling Language (CAMeL) Lab, a research lab at New York University Abu Dhabi, has been developing CODA, a conventional orthography for dialectal Arabic, since 2012. CODA uses the Arabic script and is a unified framework for writing all vernacular varieties of Arabic, including Levantine. CODA is designed primarily to develop computational models of Arabic dialects.^[145][146] A Palestinian CODA was also released.^[147]

Today, written communication takes place using a variety of orthographies and writing systems, including Arabic (right-to-left script), Hebrew (right-to-left, used in Israel^{[148][111][149][150]}), Latin (Arabizi, left-to-right), and a mixture of the three. Arabizi is a non-standard romanization often used by Levantine speakers in social media and discussion forums, SMS messaging and online chat.^[151] Arabizi was initially developed because the Arabic script was not available or not easy to use on most computers and smartphones. Still its usage persisted even after Arabic software became widespread.^[87] A 2012 study found that on the Jordanian forum Mahjoob about one-third of messages were written in Levantine in the Arabic script, one-third in Arabizi, and one-third in English.^[152]

Zoabi (2012) studied alphabet choice in colloquial Arabic on Facebook. She found that Arabic script was dominant in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Libya. Latin script dominates in former French colonies: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Lebanon. In Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, and Gulf countries, both Arabic and Latin scripts are used. Israeli Druze and Bedouins preferred Hebrew script for status updates rather than Arabic or Latin. According to Zoabi, several factors affect script choice:

1. Formality: Arabic script is used for formal situations (e.g., writing status updates). However, Latin script is used for informal situations (e.g., addressing someone specific and wall posts).
2. Religion: Arabic script is strongly associated with being a Muslim, while Latin is associated with being Christian, particularly in wall posts.
3. Age: Young use Latin more. 30 years of age and older use almost exclusively the Arabic script.
4. Education: Educated people write more in Latin.
5. Script Congruence: The tendency to reply to a post in the same script is higher than switching the script.^[153][148]

According to a 2020 survey done in and around Nazareth, Arabizi "emerged" as a "‘bottom-up’ orthography" and there is now "a high degree of normativization or standardisation in Arabizi orthography." Among consonants, only five (ج ,ذ ,ض ,ظ ,ق) revealed variability in their representation in Arabizi.^[154]

The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial (middle), final, or isolated position (IMFI).^[155] Only the isolated form is shown in the tables below.

Consonants[]

Said Akl's alphabet uses non-standard characters and could not be displayed on this page, it can be found in Płonka 2006, pp. 465–466.