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Anatolian Arabic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anatolian Arabic
لهجات عربية أناضولية
Native toTurkey
EthnicityMhallami
Native speakers
520,000 (2014)[1]
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3None (mis)
Glottologanat1256
ELPSiirti Arabic
Map of Anatolian Arabic speaking provinces in Turkey as of 1965 census

Anatolian Arabic encompasses several qeltu varieties of Arabic spoken in the Turkish provinces of Mardin, Siirt, Batman, Diyarbakır, and Muş, a subset of North Mesopotamian Arabic.[2] Since most Jews and Christians have left the area, the vast majority of remaining speakers are Sunni Muslims and the bulk live in the Mardin area. Most speakers also know Turkish and many, especially those from mixed Kurdish-Arab villages, speak Kurdish. Especially in isolated areas, the language has been significantly influenced by Turkish, Kurdish, and historically Turoyo (the latter in the western dialect area).[3]

The Mardin dialect is mutually intelligible with the Moslawi dialect of Iraq. However, the peripheral varieties in the Siirt, Muş, and Batman provinces near Lake Van are quite divergent.

Mesopotamian Arabic is spoken to the west by about 100,000 people in Sanliurfa Province, while North Levantine Arabic has over a million speakers in the Adana, Hatay, and Mersin provinces.[citation needed] Anatolian Arabic is not mutually intelligible with the Urfa dialect.[3]

Phonology

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Consonants

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Labial Interdental Dental/Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
plain emph. plain emph.
Nasal m n
Stop/
Affricate
voiceless p t t͡ʃ k q ʔ
voiced b d d͡ʒ ɡ
Fricative voiceless f θ s ʃ x ħ h
voiced v* ð ðˤ z ʒ* ɣ ʕ
Trill r
Approximant l ɫ j w
  • *-Sounds /v, ʒ/ only occur in the Mardin dialect.

Vowels

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Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid ə
Open a
  • /i, u/ may also be lowered as [ɪ, ʊ] when preceding a back (velar, uvular, pharyngeal, glottal) consonant.[3]

References

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  1. ^ Anatolian Arabic at Ethnologue (23rd ed., 2020) Closed access icon
  2. ^ "Anatolian Arabic". Academia.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-28.
  3. ^ a b c Procházka, Stephan (2018). "The Arabic dialects of eastern Anatolia". The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 978-3-11-042168-2.

Further reading

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