Maghrebi Arabic dialect spoken by Mauritanians and Sahrawi
Hassaniya
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Native to
| Southwestern
Algeria
, Northwestern
Mali
,
Mauritania
, southern
Morocco
, Northern
Niger
,
Western Sahara
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Ethnicity
| Arabs
Arab-Berbers
(
Sahrawis
;
Beidane
)
Haratins
Nemadis
Imraguen
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Speakers
| 5.2 million (2014?2021)
[1]
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Dialects
|
|
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| Arabic alphabet
,
Latin alphabet
(in
Senegal
)
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Official language in
|
Mali
[2]
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Recognised minority
language in
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ISO 639-3
| mey
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Glottolog
| hass1238
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Current distribution of the Hassaniya language.
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Hassaniya Arabic
(
Arabic
:
??????
,
romanized
:
?ass?n?ya
; also known as
Hassaniyya
,
Klem El Bithan
,
Hassani
,
Hassaniya
, and
Maure
) is a
variety
of
Maghrebi Arabic
spoken by
Mauritanian
Arabs and the
Sahrawi people
. It was spoken by the
Beni ?ass?n
Bedouin
tribes of
Yemeni
origin who extended their authority over most of
Mauritania
and
Morocco
's southeastern and
Western Sahara
between the 15th and 17th centuries. Hassaniya Arabic was the language spoken in the pre-modern region around
Chinguetti
.
The language has completely replaced the
Berber languages
that were originally spoken in this region. Although clearly a western dialect, Hass?n?ya is relatively distant from other Maghrebi variants of Arabic. Its geographical location exposed it to influence from
Zenaga-Berber
and
Wolof
. There are several dialects of Hassaniya, which differ primarily phonetically. There are still traces of
South Arabian
in Hassaniya Arabic spoken between
Rio de Oro
and
Timbuktu
, according to G. S. Colin.
[4]
Today, Hassaniya Arabic is spoken in
Algeria
,
Morocco
,
Mauritania
,
Guinea-Bissau
,
Mali
,
Niger
,
Senegal
and the
Western Sahara
.
Phonology
[
edit
]
The phonological system of Hass?n?ya exhibits both very innovative and very conservative features. All phonemes of
Classical Arabic
are represented in the dialect, but there are also many new phonemes. As in other
Bedouin dialects
, Classical /q/ corresponds mostly to dialectal
/?/
;
/d?/
and
/ð?/
have merged into
/ð?/
; and the
interdentals
/θ/
and
/ð/
have been preserved. The letter ?
/d??/
is realised as
/?/
.
However, there is sometimes a double correspondence of a classical sound and its dialectal counterpart. Thus, classical
/q/
is represented by
/?/
in
/?bað?/
'to take' but by
/q/
in
/mqass/
'scissors'. Similarly,
/d?/
becomes
/ð?/
in
/ð??ħk/
'laugh (noun)', but
/d?/
in
/mr??d?/
'to be sick'. Some consonant roots even have a double appearance:
/θaqiːl/
'heavy (mentally)' vs.
/θ?iːl/
'heavy (materially)'. Some of the "classicizing" forms are easily explained as recent loans from the literary language (such as
/qaː.nuːn/
'law') or from sedentary dialects in case of concepts pertaining to the sedentary way of life (such as
/mqass/
'scissors' above). For others, there is no obvious explanation (like
/mr??d?/
'to be sick'). Etymological
/ð?/
appears constantly as
/ð?/
, never as
/d?/
.
Nevertheless, the phonemic status of
/q/
and
/d?/
as well as
/?/
and
/ð?/
appears very stable, unlike in many other Arabic varieties. Somewhat similarly, classical
/?/
has in most contexts disappeared or turned into
/w/
or
/j/
(
/ahl/
'family' instead of
/?ahl/
,
/wak.kad/
'insist' instead of
/?ak.kad/
and
/jaː.m?s/
'yesterday' instead of
/?ams/
). In some literary terms, however, it is clearly preserved:
/m?t.?al.lam/
'suffering (participle)' (classical
/mu.ta.?al.lim/
).
Consonants
[
edit
]
Hass?n?ya has innovated many consonants by the spread of the distinction
emphatic/non-emphatic
. In addition to the above-mentioned,
/r?/
and
/l?/
have a clear phonemic status and
/b?
f?
??
m?
n?/
more marginally so. One additional emphatic phoneme
/z?/
is acquired from the neighbouring
Zenaga Berber language
along with a whole palatal series
/c
?
?/
from
Niger?Congo languages
of the south. At least some speakers make the distinction /p/?/b/ through borrowings from
French
(and
Spanish
in Western Sahara). All in all, the number of consonant phonemes in Hass?n?ya is 31, or 43 counting the marginal cases.
On the phonetic level, the classical consonants
/f/
and
/θ/
are usually realised as voiced
[v]
(hereafter marked
/v/
) and
[θ?]
. The latter is still, however, pronounced differently from
/ð/
, the distinction probably being in the amount of air blown out (Cohen 1963: 13?14). In geminated and word-final positions both phonemes are voiceless, for some speakers /θ/ apparently in all positions. The uvular fricative
/?/
is likewise realised voiceless in a geminated position, although not fricative but plosive:
[qː]
. In other positions, etymological
/?/
seems to be in free variation with
/q/
(etymological
/q/
, however varies only with
/?/
).
Vowels
[
edit
]
Vowel phonemes come in two series: long and short. The long vowels are the same as in
Classical Arabic
/aː
iː
uː/
, and the short ones extend this by one:
/a
i
u
?/
. The classical diphthongs
/aj/
and
/aw/
may be realised in many different ways, the most usual variants being
[eː?]
and
[oː?]
, respectively. Still, realisations like
[aj]
and
[aw]
as well as
[eː]
and
[oː]
are possible, although less common.
As in most Maghrebi Arabic dialects, etymological short vowels are generally dropped in
open syllables
(except for the feminine noun ending
/-a/
<
/-ah/
):
*/tak.tu.biː/
>
/t?.ktbi/
'you (f. sg.) write',
*/ka.ta.ba/
>
*/ka.tab/
>
/kt?b/
'he wrote'. In the remaining closed syllables dialectal /a/ generally corresponds to classical
/a/
, while classical
/i/
and
/u/
have merged into
/?/
. Remarkably, however, morphological
/j/
is represented by
[i]
and
/w/
by
[u]
in a word-initial pre-consonantal position:
/u.??ft/
'I stood up' (root
w-g-f
; cf.
/kt?bt/
'I wrote', root
k-t-b
),
/i.na?.?az/
'he descends' (subject prefix
i-
; cf.
/j?.kt?b/
'he writes', subject prefix
j?-
). In some contexts this initial vowel even gets lengthened, which clearly demonstrates its phonological status of a vowel:
/uː?.vu/
'they stood up'. In addition, short vowels
/a
i/
in open syllables are found in Berber loanwords, such as
/a.raː.?aː?/
'man',
/i.vuː.kaːn/
'calves of 1 to 2 years of age', and
/u/
in passive formation:
/u.?aː.b?l/
'he was met' (cf.
/?aː.b?l/
'he met').
Code-switching
[
edit
]
Many educated Hassaniya Arabic speakers also practice
code-switching
. In Western Sahara it is common for code-switching to occur between Hassaniya Arabic,
Modern Standard Arabic
, and
Spanish
, as
Spain
had
previously controlled this region
; in the rest of Hassaniya-speaking lands, French is the additional language spoken.
Orthography
[
edit
]
Hassaniya Arabic is normally written with an
Arabic script
. However, in
Senegal
, the government has adopted the use of the
Latin script
to write the language, as established by Decree 2005?980 of October 21, 2005.
[5]
Speakers distribution
[
edit
]
According to
Ethnologue
, there are approximately three million Hassaniya speakers, distributed as follows:
- Mauritania
: 2,770,000 (2006)
- Western Sahara
and the southern area of
Morocco
, known as the
Tekna
zone
: 200,000+ (1995)
- Mali
: 175,800 ? 210,000 (2000)
- Senegal
: 162,000 (2015)
- Algeria
: 150,000 (1985)
- Libya
: 40,000 (1985)
- Niger
: 10,000 (1998)
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- Cohen, David; el Chennafi, Mohammed (1963).
Le dialecte arabe
?ass?n?ya
de Mauritanie (parler de la G?bla)
. Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck.
ISBN
2-252-00150-X
.
- "Hassaniya, the Arabic of Mauritania", Al-Any, Riyadh S. / In:
Linguistics
; vol. 52 (1969), pag. 15 / 1969
- "Hassaniya, the Arabic of Mauritania", Al-Any, Riyadh S. / In:
Studies in linguistics
; vol. 19 (1968), afl. 1 (mrt), pag. 19 / 1968
- "Hassaniya Arabic (Mali) : Poetic and Ethnographic Texts", Heath, Jeffrey; Kaye, Alan S. / In:
Journal of Near Eastern studies
; vol. 65 (2006), afl. 3, pag. 218 (1) / 2006
- Hassaniya Arabic (Mali) : poetic and ethnographic texts
, Heath, Jeffrey / Harrassowitz / 2003
- Hassaniya Arabic (Mali) ? English ? French dictionary
, Heath, Jeffrey / Harrassowitz / 2004
- Taine-Cheikh, Catherine. 2006. ?ass?niya Arabic. In Kees Versteegh (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, 240?250. Leiden: E.~J.~Brill.
External links
[
edit
]
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