Arabic in the City (Routledge Arabic Linguistics)

ARABIC IN THE CITY Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the ﬁrs...

Author: Catherine Mille

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ARABIC IN THE CITY

Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the ﬁrst examination of the interplay between urbanization, language variation and language change in ﬁfteen major Arab cities. The Arab world presents very different types and degrees of urbanization, from well established old capital-cities such as Cairo to new emerging capital-cities such as Amman or Nouakchott, these in turn embedded in different types of national construction. It is these urban settings which raise questions concerning the dynamics of homogenization/differentiation and the processes of standardization due to the coexistence of competing linguistic models. Topics investigated include: • • • • • • •

History of settlement The linguistic impact of migration The emergence of new urban vernaculars Dialect convergence and divergence Code-switching, youth language and new urban culture Arabic in the diaspora Arabic among non-Arab groups.

Containing a broad selection of case studies from across the Arab world and featuring contributions from leading urban sociolinguistics and dialectologists, this book presents a fresh approach to our understanding of the interaction between language, society and space. As such, the book will appeal to the linguist as well as to the social scientist in general. Catherine Miller is Senior Research Fellow at the French Council of Research (CNRS), IREMAM, Aix en Provence, France. Enam Al-Wer is Senior Teaching Fellow in Linguistics, University of Essex, UK. Dominique Caubet is Professor of Maghrebi Arabic, Head of the CREAM-LACNAD, National Institute of Languages and Oriental Civilizations (INALCO), France. Janet C. E. Watson is Professor of Arabic and Linguistics, University of Salford, UK. Contributors: Munira Al-Azraqi; Alassane Dia; Mohamed Embarki; Marie-Aimée Germanos; Atiqa Hachimi; Hanadi Ismail; Jonathan Owens; Christophe Pereira; Sherin Rizk; Catherine Taine-Cheikh; Aline Tauzin; Ángeles Vicente and Karima Ziamari.

ROUTLEDGE ARABIC LINGUISTICS SERIES General Editor: Clive Holes (University of Oxford) Editors: El-Sa’id Badawi (American University in Cairo) Adrian Gully (University of Exeter) Yasir Suleiman (University of Edinburgh) Keith Walters (University of Texas) The Routledge Arabic Linguistics Series publishes high quality, academically rigorous research on Arabic linguistics to two main readerships: non-Arabist general linguists with an interest in Arabic, and students and researchers already in the field of Arabic language and linguistics. Both synchronic and diachronic studies of Arabic are welcome which aid our understanding of the historical evolution and the present state of Arabic, whether dialectal or standard. Works written from a sociolinguistic (e.g. language variation), socio-historical (e.g. language history), sociological (e.g. language planning), or psycholinguistic (e.g. language acquisition) perspective are welcome, as are studies of Arabic stylistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. Descriptive dialectological works also fall within the scope of the Series, as do works which focus on the evolution of mediaeval Arabic linguistic thought. Proposals or scripts for the Series will be welcomed by the General Editor. PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BY CURZON 1. MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PRAGMATICS Sunni legal theorists’ model of textual communication Mohamed Mohamed Yunis Ali 2. JEWISH AND MUSLIM DIALECTS OF MOROCCAN ARABIC Jeffrey Heath 3. LANGUAGE CONTACT AND LANGUAGE CONFLICT IN ARABIC Variations on a sociolinguistic theme Edited by Aleya Rouchdy PUBLISHED BY ROUTLEDGE 4. STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE ARABIC VERB Maher Bahloul 5. ARABIC IN THE CITY Issues in dialect contact and language variation Edited by Catherine Miller, Enam Al-Wer, Dominique Caubet and Janet C. E. Watson

ARABIC IN THE CITY Issues in dialect contact and language variation

Edited by Catherine Miller, Enam Al-Wer, Dominique Caubet and Janet C. E. Watson

First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Editorial selection and matter; Catherine Miller, Enam Al-Wer, Dominique Caubet and Janet Watson; individual chapters the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arabic in the city : issues in dialect contact and language variation / edited by Catherine Miller . . . [et al.] p. cm. — (Routledge Arabic linguistics series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN13: 978-0-415-77311-9 (hardback) ISBN10: 0-415-77311-3 (hardback) ISBN13: 978-0-203-93336-7 (ebook) ISBN10: 0-203-93336-2 (ebook) 1. Arabic language—Dialects. 2. Arabic language—Variation. 3. Urban dialects—Arab countries. 4. Arabic language—Social aspects. 5. Languages in contact—Arab countries. I. Miller, Catherine, 1955– PJ6709.A78 2008 492.7′7—dc22 2007027019 ISBN 0-203-93336-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-77311-3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-93336-2 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-77311-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-93336-7 (ebk)

CONTENTS

vii viii xi xiii xiv

List of maps List of tables and ﬁgures List of contributors Acknowledgements Notes on the transliteration 1

Arabic urban vernaculars: development and change

1

CATHERINE MILLER

PART I

Migration, urbanization and language change 2

The (r)urbanization of Mauritania: historical context and contemporary developments

33

35

CATHERINE TAINE-CHEIKH

3

The formation of the dialect of Amman: from chaos to order

55

ENAM AL-WER

4

Urbanization and dialect change: the Arabic dialect of Tripoli (Libya)

77

CHRISTOPHE PEREIRA

5

Becoming Casablancan: Fessis in Casablanca as a case study

97

ATIQA HACHIMI

6

Two cases of Moroccan Arabic in the diaspora ÁNGELES VICENTE

v

123

CONTENTS

PART II

Urban vernaculars: convergence and divergence 7

Greetings in Beirut: social distribution and attitudes towards different formulae

145

147

MARIE-AIMÉE GERMANOS

8

Linguistic leveling in SanÄani Arabic as reﬂected in a popular radio serial

166

JANET C. E. WATSON

9

The urban and suburban modes: patterns of linguistic variation and change in Damascus

188

HANADI ISMAIL

10 Segmental and prosodic aspects of Ksar el Kebir’s neo-urban variety

213

MOHAMED EMBARKI

11 The use of kaÌkaÌah/kaskasah and alternative means among educated urban Saudi speakers

230

MUNIRA AL-AZRAQI

PART III

Multilingualism, codeswitching and new urban cultures

247

12 Close encounters of a different kind: two types of insertion in Nigerian Arabic codeswitching

249

JONATHAN OWENS

13 Development and linguistic change in Moroccan Arabic-French codeswitching

275

KARIMA ZIAMARI

14 The language of Cairo’s young university students

291

SHERIN RIZK

15 Rap and rappers in Nouakchott (Mauritania)

309

ALINE TAUZIN

16 Uses and attitudes towards Hassaniyya among Nouakchott’s Negro-Mauritanian population

325

ALASSANE DIA

345

Index vi

LIST OF MAPS

1.1 2.1 3.1 4.1 5.1 6.1 7.1 8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2 11.1

Cities investigated Nouakchott (Mauritania) Jordan Tripoli (Libya) Casablanca (Morocco) Zaragoza and Ceuta Beirut Yemen San¡a Damascus Dialect map of Syria The map of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia showing locations of the ﬁve cities of the study 16.1 Map of Mauritania showing main southern cities

vii

3 36 57 79 99 126 149 168 172 191 200 234 327

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND SPECTOGRAMS

Tables 1.1 1.2 3.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6

Number of urban inhabitants plus urbanization rate by Arab country from 1900 to 2005 Population growth of 1st, 2nd and 3rd cities of each Arab country from 1860 to 2005 Examples of the patterns found in the second generation Social proﬁle of informants The linguistic variables Frequency of use of Casablancan [r] by Fessi women The variable (qal) by speakers Second person singular in Fessi and Casablancan dialects Frequency of use of gender distinction in 2nd person singular among Fessis Conjugation of kla-verb in prestigious Ceutí sociolect Conjugation of kla-verb in the conservative Ceutí sociolect Conjugation of kla-verb in Zaragoza Arabic Percentage of bonjour in East and West Beirut Percentage of mar}aba by age groups Percentage of hi by age groups Distribution of the speakers by age, gender, and life-mode Percentage use of (h) according to the preceding environment Percentage use of (h) according to age groups Percentage use of (h) according to neighborhood Distribution of (r) by phonetic environment Continuation in same language between speaker’s turns Lexical insertions Marking of deﬁniteness on nouns: deﬁnite, indeﬁnite, incorrect hana possessor hana possessor, SA versus monolingual only idAfa possessor viii

24 25 65 105 106 107 108 110 111 133 133 137 156 157 157 191 201 201 202 205 252 252 259 260 261 262

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND SPECTOGRAMS

12.7 12.8 12.9

Adjectives Monolingual norm tracking Monolingual versus English insertions in CS texts, type/token ratios for deﬁnite/indeﬁnite nouns 12.10 Correspondence between some SA and NA phonemes 12.11 Total SA words, per CS text 14.1 Use and attitudes towards YL among 40 students 16.1 Classiﬁcation of the languages of Mauritania, French included, from the most spoken to the least spoken 16.2 Other national language spoken besides native language

262 263 264 266 267 303

329 331

Figures 2.1 4.1 5.1 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 10.1 10.2 10.3 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6

Population of Nouakchott from 1962 to 2005 Lexical evolution of TA Casablanca’s population growth from 1897 to 2003 Percentage use of (h) by gender in Shaghoor Percentage use of (h) in Dummar by gender Use of (h) by gender and age groups in Shaghoor and Dummar Gender distribution of (r) in both communities Distribution of (r) by neighborhood Distribution of (r) by age groups Distribution of (r) by age groups in both communities Distribution of (r) by age groups (Y, M, O) and gender in each neighborhood (S, D) Evolution of the a1/a2 mean ratio according to the schooling level in both areas Word duration among 4 groups Evolution of the mean articulation rate by age among the 4 groups Growth of education sector in Saudi Arabia in number of schools Difference between regions in using /k/, colloquial form and other means Percentage of using /k/, colloquial form and other means by informants of Riyadh Percentage of using /k/, colloquial form and other means by informants of Dammam Percentage of using /k/, colloquial form and other means by informants of Buraidah Percentage of using /k/, colloquial form and other means by informants of Abha ix

44 89 101 203 203 203 206 206 206 207 207 221 223 225 232 236 236 237 237 238

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND SPECTOGRAMS

11.7 Percentage of using /k/, colloquial form and other means by informants of Skaka 14.1 Standard/Non-standard in written and oral forms

238 292

Spectrograms 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9

guYn “cotton” ﬁrn “oven” bisbAs “chili” mubargaY “lumpy” za}Awug “spicy dip” dagCg “ﬂour” zabAdC “yoghurt” γa∫∫A∫∫ Cn “cheats” rAgid “sleeping”

178 178 179 180 180 181 182 183 184

x

CONTRIBUTORS

Munira Al-Azraqi, Department of Foreign Languages, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. Enam Al-Wer, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom. Alassane Dia, French Department, University of the Manouba, Tunis. Mohamed Embarki, PRAXILING UMR 5267, CNRS, University of Montpellier III, Montpellier, France. Marie-Aimée Germanos, UFR Orient Monde Arabe, University Paris III, Paris, France. Atiqa Hachimi, Department of African and Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. Hanadi Ismail, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom. Catherine Miller, Institut de Recherche sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (IREMAM-CNRS), University of Aix en Provence, France. Jonathan Owens, University of Maryland CASL, USA and University of Bayreuth, Germany. Christophe Pereira, CREAM-LACNAD, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris, France. Sherin Rizk, French Department, University of Helwan, Cairo, Egypt. Catherine Taine-Cheikh, CNRS-LACITO UMR 7177, Villejuif, France. Aline Tauzin, FRE 2788 CNRS/University of Paris 7, Paris, France. Ángeles Vicente, Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo (IEIOP), University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain. xi

CONTRIBUTORS

Janet C. E. Watson, School of Languages, University of Salford, United Kingdom. Karima Ziamari, University of Fez, Morocco/CREAM-LACNAD, Paris, France.

xii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is the result of long-term contacts and extensive collaboration between various researchers through an informal network which aims to foster research on Arabic urban dialectology and sociolinguistics. Funding was provided by the European Scientiﬁc Foundation, the French National Council for Research (CNRS), IREMAM, (Institut de Recherche et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman) and the University of Aix en Provence helped organize a Scientiﬁc Preliminary Workshop in October 2004. Arabic urban sociolinguistics is still a relatively new ﬁeld and our aim in this book is therefore to collect and present different theoretical and methodological trends. Due to constraints of space and time, we could not accommodate all the authors we would have wished, and the chapters presented here have been selected after several readings and reviews. We are aware that much remains to be done, but we hope that this volume lays a foundation for future research. A number of scholars have provided help at various stages of this project. David Britain, Louis-Jean Calvet, Clive Holes, Pierre Larcher, Jerôme Lentin, Leila Messaoudi, Gunvor Mejdell, Jonathan Owens, Samia Sambar, Yasir Suleiman and Kees Versteegh participated actively in the discussions during the workshops and provided us with important scientiﬁc insights. In Aix en Provence, thanks are due to Françoise Gyllepsie and Majid Arrif, who were actively involved in the translation and formatting of the papers. We are also extremely grateful to Phil Brew from the University of Essex for translating some papers from French into English; to Peter Behnstedt, who redesigned one of his linquistic maps from Syria, which appears in Chapter 9, his cooperation and prompt response are much appreciated; and, to Florence Troin for drawing the maps.

xiii

NOTES ON THE TRANSLITERATION

The transliteration of the Arabic sounds is the following: emphatics: /x/ (= K), /\/ = (L), /y/ (= M), /z/ (= N), /t/, /l· /, /w/, /â/, /à/ pharyngeals: /]/ (= C) and /¡/ (= O) glottal: /™/ (= 7) velars: /x/ (= D) and /γ/ ( P) interdentals = /θ/ (A) , /o/ (F) , /2/ (N). The sibilant (J) is transcribed as /ʃ/ following the IPA system in most chapters but as /k/ following the Arabic dialectal tradition in a few other chapters. The glide ([) is either transcribed as /j/ following the IPA system in some chapters but as /y/ following the Arabic dialectal tradition in most chapters. Long vowels are phonologically transcribed as /a/, /b/, /c/, /d/, /e/ and phonetically as [a:], [e:], [i:], [o:], [u:], etc.

xiv

ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS

1 ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS Development and change Catherine Miller

1.1 Introduction Cities are “par essence” places of contact and heterogeneity; and since the 1960s have been the locus of research on language variation and change. Most of the recent comprehensive publications on dialect contact and language variation in the urban environment focus on the Western world, i.e. on countries where the process of urbanization of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was closely linked to the process of industrialization (e.g. Auer et al. 2005; Chambers et al. 2002; Kerswill 2005). Urban sociolinguistics, and particularly variationist sociolinguistics, attempts to develop rules, models and typologies; it has turned out to be a rather challenging task due to the number and types of factors and data that need to be investigated (Owens 2005a). The link between social and linguistic processes is particularly complex. The same phenomenon (for example, migration and settlement in a given city) can produce very different linguistic outcomes depending on the historical and social settings. To what extent do the rules observed in industrialized and post-industrialized Western cities, and the socioeconomic categories developed in these countries, apply to other parts of the world? Like any other social science, urban sociolinguistics balances universalism and localism, generalization and particularism. In this respect, investigating non-Western urban settings might help to identify both universal trends and more speciﬁc local issues. The Arabic-speaking world covers a wide and heterogeneous geographical area and includes very different types of urban settings, national constructions, social organizations and language situations, in addition to the spread of the Arabic-speaking diaspora in many parts of the world. Historically, Arab countries had experienced very different rates of urbanization. However, urbanization has been one of the important socioeconomic changes of the second part of the twentieth century. Predominantly rural in the mid-twentieth century, the population of most Arab countries is now 1

CATHERINE MILLER

predominantly urban (see Appendix: Table 1.1). This urban expansion cooccurred with a high demographic growth, and arose in a particular political context: the creation or the consolidation of post-colonial states leading to internal as well as external competitions and conﬂicts in an increasingly globalized world. Little is known about the linguistic outcomes of this massive urbanization process, although hundreds of historical and urban studies have focused on the urbanization of the Middle East (Bonine et al. 1994). For a number of cities, we ﬁnd relatively old dialect descriptions, which usually fail to account for variation and change. For others, we have more focused variationist studies, restricted to a small number of phonological variables. Although valuable data have been collected for over a century, this data is often not easily accessible.1 The absence of a synthesizing perspective does not facilitate cross-cultural comparison on the correlation between social changes and language changes. The desire to foster dialogue between researchers from different countries and scientiﬁc traditions was at the heart of a collective project that led to the organization of an international workshop on Arabic urban vernaculars in Aix en Provence in October 2004.2 From the very beginning, it was clear that the challenge of reaching a more analytic and synthetic perspective based on commonly recognized ﬁrm grounds had still a long way to go before its realization. By offering a panorama of Arabic linguistic urbanization, this book represents an initial step in this process.3 It gathers ﬁfteen case studies on eighteen cities from ten countries (see Map 1.1). The selected cities are mainly capital cities, which have undergone different types and degrees of urbanization: old cities (Cairo and Damascus); emerging cities (Amman or Nouakchott); expanding cities (Casablanca, Riyadh, San¡a and Tripoli); cities that went through civil war (Beirut); a few provincial towns (Ksar el Kebir and Meknes in Morocco; Damman, Buraidah, Abha and Skaka in Saudi Arabia); and, cities in which Arabic speakers are a political or demographic minority (Ceuta, Maiduguri, Zaragoza). The book encompasses various methodological and theoretical approaches, some more linked to Arabic dialectology, some more linked to variationist sociolinguistics and some to anthropological linguistics. The chapters present cases of dialect contact and language variation, analyzed at various linguistic levels going from an overall perspective, to phonetics and acoustic analyses. Most chapters discuss the impact of internal migration on both individual speech and on the evolution of urban vernaculars (dialect convergence or divergence); a few chapters focus on other aspects of urbanization, more linked to the spread of education, modernization and globalization. Beyond the diversity of the data, which partly reﬂects the past and present human and cultural diversity of these cities, some strong trends emerge that will be highlighted in the present chapter. This chapter discusses some key aspects of Arabic urban linguistics.4 It analyzes the status attributed to urban vernaculars by traditional Arab gram2

Map 1.1 Cities investigated

ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS

3

CATHERINE MILLER

marians and Western dialectologists vis à vis other dialectal categories (see Section 1.2). It then summarizes the main socio-economic characteristics of twentieth-century urbanization trends in the Middle East and the various linguistic impacts of this population renewal (see Section 1.3). It discusses the status of urban vernacular Arabic versus national vernacular and points to the problematic use of the concepts of standardization, prestige and norms in the Arabic setting (see Section 1.4). Finally it presents the issue of multilingualism and new urban cultures in the globalized cities (see Section 1.5). Because we subscribe to the view that language change needs to be explained on the basis of a multiplicity of factors (internal, external and extra-linguistic), particular attention will be given to extra-linguistic phenomena which play an important role in the social construct of the Middle Eastern cities. Urban dynamics cannot be isolated from their wider national or regional political context and from the ideological conﬂicts that arise in such contexts.

1.2 Classiﬁcation of Arabic urban vernaculars: stereotypes and facts Before looking at the contemporary settings, it is important to recall how the Arabic linguistic tradition, in both the Arab and Western world, has conceived the linguistic categories, which have shaped, consciously or not, our perception of the language situation. The issue of dialect categorization is closely connected to the theorization of the origin(s) of the Arabic vernaculars, a topic which has been widely discussed over the past ﬁfty years. Only brief reference will be made here to the rural/bedouin/urban distinction, which continues to be a key and controversial classiﬁcation of Arabic linguistics. 1.2.1 Traditional dialect categorizations Arabic urban vernaculars are considered to have played a crucial role in the history of Arabic. Following the early Arab-Muslim conquest of the seventh-eighth centuries (ad), a number of garrison towns became the ﬁrst Arabized centers outside the Arabian Peninsula (Donner 1981; Versteegh 1997). Because Arab speakers were in contact with local non-Arab population, the Arabic vernaculars that developed in these cities came progressively to be considered as more “corrupt” than the more “pure” bedouin vernaculars of the Arabic Peninsula. The distinction between the “conservative” Arab bedouin speech and the “corrupted” urban speech is epitomized in fourteenth century Ibn Khaldoun’s Muqaddima but can be traced back to some of the early Arab grammarians such as Ibn Jinni in the tenth century (Larcher 2006; Owens 2005b; Versteegh 1997). According to the tradition, the ﬁrst Arab grammarians were called upon by the rulers to “protect” the 4

ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS

pure Arabic language from foreign inﬂuence (Versteegh 1997: 3). They started to pinpoint the “faults” (la}n) of the urban speakers and are said to have relied on isolated bedouin speakers to ﬁx the grammatical rules of Classical Arabic. This topos of the purity of the bedouin language and its close relationship to Classical Arabic has survived until now in both Arab societies and the meta-linguistic discourses. The typological division between sedentary (}a|arC) and bedouin (badawC) dialects, and within the sedentary, between urban (madanC) and rural (qarawC or fellA}C) dialects inherited from Ibn Khaldoun was taken over by the early European dialectologists and is still in use today (Palva 2006). The linguistic basis of the urban/rural/bedouin typology led to many controversies, i.e. few features distinguish all bedouin dialects from all sedentary dialects (Holes 1996; Ingham 1982). But the structural similarities recorded between dialects separated sometimes by huge geographical distances indicate that these dialectal classiﬁcations are not completely unfounded (Palva 2006; Rosenhouse 2006). An important analytical tool of Arabic dialectology has been the concept of koine/koineization, inherited from the Hellenic linguistic tradition. It was used to explain the origin and the nature of the early urban vernaculars which developed in the garrison towns.5 The concepts of koine and koineization has also been applied to many urban and non-urban Arabic dialects in transitional zones or in areas that had experienced successive waves of settlement (Palva 1982). By using the term koine, linguists accredited the postulate that various Arabic vernaculars share a systemic unity between themselves and with Classical Arabic. They tended to minimize the inﬂuence of non-Arabic languages in the historical and contemporary development of Arabic vernaculars. But because the term koine has been dominantly used in reference to Arabic urban vernaculars, it reinforces the idea that urban vernaculars are more mixed than other, particularly bedouin, vernaculars, even if some postulates have since been criticized by a number of linguists (i.e. the possible unity of pre-Islamic Arabic vernaculars, the supposed conservatism of bedouin dialects, the genealogical link between Classical Arabic and modern Arabic vernaculars, etc.).6 In contemporary studies, the term koine refers to a shared variety (see below for Morocco). This traditional dialect classiﬁcation/representation had important repercussions for contemporary settings, both linguistically and symbolically. 1.2.2 Sociolinguistic implications of the urban/bedouin dichotomy Linguistically, the categories of bedouin, rural and urban dialects are still used by most linguists on the basis of the presence/absence of a set of features rather than by reference to a geographical region or lifestyle. Categorizing a dialect X as a bedouin/bedouinized dialect does not mean that the speakers pursue a nomadic bedouin way of life but that they display in 5

CATHERINE MILLER

their speech a number of features associated with bedouin dialects. This categorization implies that some varieties spoken in urban environments will be nevertheless categorized as “bedouin–bedouinized”, “rural” or, more often, “mixed”. The implication is that “origin” (i.e. genealogy) is considered a more important criterion of categorization than “geographic location”. At this stage, it is interesting to point out that these linguistic representations echo some of the local identity discourses. Reference to “origin”, “lineage” and “family” is a corner-stone of self-afﬁliation discourses, particularly but not exclusively, among groups claiming an Arab tribal origin. Many urban dwellers categorize themselves by referring to a tribal– regional–family afﬁliation, rather than a contemporary place of residence.7 The continuing use of the terms rural or bedouin varieties or bedouinized koine in urban contexts can be diversely interpreted. One interpretation is that these terms refer to ﬁxed categories and participate in the orientalist and essentialist vision of Arab societies. Another interpretation is that the use of these terms shows that there is no discontinuity between the city and the bedouin/rural hinterlands, and that urbanization does not necessarily radically transform patterns of afﬁliation and identiﬁcation, or language use. Taking into account the theory of ethnic boundaries (Barth 1969), it is evident that the term “bedouin” may refer to very different and changing entities, the important thing being its social meanings and uses in the given society. In this respect, these categories might act as badges of identity and might be just as relevant as more “modern” categories such as social or professional classes. The traditional dialect categorization has proved useful in identifying the various historical linguistic layers found within a city as well as in understanding the origin of communal/religious variants/varieties found in many cities. In North Africa, in particular, historical dialectology has distinguished non-Hilali from Hilali dialects and within non-Hilali, Andalusi from Jbala, etc. (Aguadé et al. 1998). In Iraq, a distinction has been drawn between sedentary q¢ltu dialects and bedouin g¢l¢t dialects (Jastrow 2006). An important correlate is that urban variants/varieties that appear at ﬁrst sight to have religious or communal or sectarian afﬁliations (i.e. Jewish or Christian versus Muslim, or Sunni versus Shi¡i) were found to reﬂect successive patterns of settlements and a division between former sedentary and former bedouin groups (Blanc 1964; Holes 1987, 1995b). To sum up, the population of the old urban centers spoke a sedentary vernacular, irrespective of its religious afﬁliation (qeltu dialect in Mesopotamia, non-Hilali and often Andalusi dialect in North Africa). With the progressive settlement of former bedouin groups, a process of koineization occurred which led to the emergence of mixed urbanized bedouinized vernaculars spoken mainly by Muslim groups (particularly males), while the old city vernaculars were kept by non-Muslim communities and women.

6

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Two important sociolinguistic implications can be deduced from these historical processes. First, it is not possible to generalize the linear developmental model proposed by linguists such as Cadora (1992), which postulates a linear evolution from bedouin dialects to rural dialects to urban dialects, given that many Arabic urban vernaculars went through a later bedouinization process, which continued throughout the twentieth century (Abu Haidar 2006). Second, the maintenance over centuries of some “old urban features” attested in pre-Hilali and q¢ltu urban dialects, in spite of huge population movements and koineization processes, indicates that dialect contact induced by migration does not automatically lead to a general process of leveling and koineization and the emergence of a single vernacular that eradicates all previous varieties. Social, communal or spatial segregation can foster the preservation of different varieties (Siegel 1993). This means that the three-generation pattern endorsed by many sociolinguists (such as Calvet (1994) for the French school, Trudgill (1986) and Kerswill (2005) for the British school (see also Chapter 3, this volume) must be investigated very carefully. 1.2.3 The ambivalent image of the city Symbolically, the perception of Arabic urban vernaculars as “mixed” or “corrupted” forms of speech might affect their contemporary status and seems to ﬁt with the ambivalent perception of the city that prevails in many Arab countries. The ambivalent symbolic status of the city is an universal topos, that has come and gone since antiquity according to the historical– political context and the dominant ideological discourse of the time. At some periods, cities are seen as essentially places of cosmopolitanism and corruption as opposed to the rural simplicity and honesty. At other periods, cities are epitomized as places of civilization, reﬁnement, dynamism and modernity as opposed to the backward rural areas. In Arabic, the Arabic root }|r has given ta}a||ur “urbanization” and }a|Ara “civilization”, suggesting that both processes were seen as constitutive to each other. But the modern urban way of life, particularly when associated with Westernization, is also the focus of social and religious criticism. It must be remembered here, that, starting from the fourteenth century, the major Middle Eastern cities developed in a context of political domination, i.e. the urban ruling elite of most countries was of foreign origin (Mamluk, Ottoman, Circassian, Moghol, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) and the cities attracted merchants, mercenaries, workers, etc. from various places (Dakhlia 2004; Raymond 1993). From the mid-nineteenth century up to the ﬁrst decades of the twentieth century, under colonial or protectorates rules, many cities had very important non-Muslim European communities and in some cities like Algiers the local Muslim population was a minority (Boucherit 2002).

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When independence took place, urbanization led to an important population renewal in a context of Arab nationalism where the notions of Arab identity, Arab authenticity, purity of origin (§asAla) were some of the cornerstones of a new political discourse, supported by an educational policy in favor of Arabization. The arrival of many provincial migrants and the departure of members of foreign as well as Jewish communities fostered the emergence of new urban practices and cultures. Depending on the city and the national and regional context, the outcome of this population renewal led to different dynamics.

1.3 Urbanization and migration 1.3.1 The growth of the capital cities One of the major characteristics of the urbanization trend in the Arab world in the second part of the twentieth century is the decisive role of internal migration on urban growth, with the notable exception of the Gulf countries, Iraq and Libya, where the oil industries attracted an important regional and international migration. Another exception is Amman (see Chapter 3), which since its creation has accepted many refugees from neighboring countries (Palestinians and more recently Iraqis). This internal migration took place at differing speeds and rates depending on the country. In countries such as Egypt or Syria (see Appendix: Table 1.2) with a pre-1900 high rate of urbanization, internal migration was particularly important up to the 1970s and started to slow down in the 1980s, while it increased considerably since the 1970s in countries with previous low levels of urbanization such as Mauritania, Libya, Jordan and Yemen. Internal migration appeared at ﬁrst to be directed towards the capital cities or the economically dominant centers. Since the mid 1970s, urbanization has spread to many regional and secondary urban centers as well as former villages (Denis 2007; GEOPOLIS8; Kharouﬁ 1995). However, every Arab country has one major city which stands far above all the others in terms of demographic growth and economic wealth, and acts as the dominant national pole. This is usually the capital city, except in the case of Morocco where Casablanca surpasses Rabat and acts as the economic capital of the country. This domination has sometimes occurred to the detriment of former important regional cities (cf. Cairo versus Alexandria; Damascus versus Aleppo; Casablanca versus Rabat, Salé, Fez; San¡a versus Aden; Amman versus Irbid, etc., see Appendix: Table 1.2). At the spatial level, the growth in urbanization has witnessed the expansion of urban suburbs, going from upper- and middle-class districts to unplanned or “informal” settlements or “bidonvilles”. While the ﬁrst type of suburbs has not attracted too much attention, the unplanned suburbs, with sometimes more than 50 percent of the total city population, are often stigma-

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tized in dominant public discourses as places of urban poverty, instability and unstructured rurality that “threaten” the former urban balance and culture.9 Although this negative perception has been qualiﬁed by many social studies, it remains a strong urban meta-narrative, which questions the migrants’ ability to integrate within the city. Often expressed in terms of traditional opposition between urbanity and rurality, or even “rurbanity”, it sometimes tends to focus on speciﬁc ethno-regional groups such as the Shi¡i living in Eastern Beirut (Harb el Kak 2006), or the Upper Egyptians living in the suburbs of greater Cairo (Miller 2005). At a sociolinguistic level, this growth in urbanization raises the following questions: 1.

2.

3.

What is the inﬂuence of internal migration upon the development of urban vernaculars and what kind of dialect contact, dialect accommodation or dialect shift has taken place? To what extent does urbanization lead to the emergence of established (or focused) urban vernaculars which could be considered as urban standards? What are the main factors in the variations and changes that have been recorded? What is the regional–national diffusion of the capital’s vernacular, if it exists? How does it interact with other urban regional vernaculars? 1.3.2 Impact of migration upon the development of Arabic urban vernaculars

The contemporary linguistic impact of migration has been unevenly studied. In the period 1950–70, structuralist and functionalist linguistics dominated Arabic dialect descriptions, giving little place to the study of variation. From the 1960s, more attention has been given to contact between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and the dialects than to contact between the various regional/national vernaculars (see Section 1.4). In the early 1980s, a number of variationist studies focused on dialect contact in the urban context, particularly in Jordan–Palestine (Abdel Jawad 1986) and Bahrain (Holes 1987). The development of dialectal studies in the 1980s and the publication of a number of dialect atlases contributed indirectly to the emergence of Arabic urban sociolinguistics, since dialect contact cannot be properly studied without sufﬁcient knowledge of the linguistic features in contact! Different models and approaches have been developed in the Maghreb and the Mashreq. Generally speaking, francophone studies on North African cities have favored a historical–dialectal approach and have focused on the formation of urban koines. The best-studied examples are found in Morocco (see below). Most studies on Middle Eastern cities have followed a variationist approach and have investigated variation based on age, sex, social class and education with a recent shift to ethno-methodology (focus on context of 9

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interaction and variation seen as a social practice). Finally, political factors (Arab pan-nationalism) have impeded the development of both dialectal and sociolinguistic studies. In most Arab countries, studies on Arabic vernaculars are not yet considered legitimate topics of research and are not supported by the local institutions. Civil wars and political instability have sometimes reinforced this trend. It is therefore not surprising that data are seriously lacking for countries such as Algeria or Lebanon. 1.3.2.1 North Africa In North Africa, urban dialectology has drawn a distinction between cities whose vernaculars are considered to be a bedouin-based koine (Oran, Marrakech, Casablanca, Constantine, etc.) and those characterized as former pre-Hilali or Andalusi dialects (Algiers, Fez, Rabat, Salé, Tunis, Tlemcen, Tangiers, Tetouan, Tripoli, etc.). For the former group, we have very little information concerning the impact of recent migration. The latter groups has attracted most attention, particularly in Morocco, where linguists have developed a further categorization of the urban dialects into vieux parlers citadins (old city vernaculars spoken by the original urban dwellers) and nouveaux parlers urbains (neo-urban vernaculars spoken by the new urban dwellers) for cities such as Rabat, Salé or Fez (Messaoudi 2003). The neourban vernaculars described as koines inﬂuenced by the “rural-bedouin features” brought by the immigrants, are said to have spread at the expense of the old city vernaculars. The neo-urban koine is becoming the public inter-group language while the old-city vernacular is increasingly restricted to close family relationships, is mainly spoken by old women and is in a process of attrition following the departure of some old urban communities, particularly the Jewish (Aguadé et al. 1998; Cohen 1973, 1981; Dendane 2002; El-Himer 2001; Jabeur 1996; Messaoudi 2001; Trabelsi 1988). The decline of the old urban vernaculars corresponds to the decline of the aristocratic culture and lifestyle symbolized by the Medina, (often abandoned by rich families who moved to new high-class suburbs) and coincides with the decline of an old urban elite (often from Andalusi origin) and the emergence of a new lifestyle and a new urban middle class of provincial origin (cf. the b¢ldi/barrAni dichotomy of Tunis). In all the big urban centers (Casablanca, Algiers, Tunis, Oran, Constantine, Rabat, Salé, Nouakchott, etc.), the expanding urban koines exhibit various degrees of mixing with the surrounding bedouin/rural dialects. This is certainly the reason why the citadin versus urbain paradigm became so prevalent in the North African urban social sciences (Naciri and Raymond 1997). Each city, however, represents a speciﬁc case; below are some examples developed in this book. Nouakchott in Mauritania represents the atypical case of a “new city without a new vernacular” and Taine-Cheikh’s chapter questions the passage from bedouinity to urbanity. Nouakchott was built ex-nihilo in 1957 10

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and its development coincided with the building of the nation-state. For centuries, the Moorish society was characterized by its bedouin and nomadic way of life. The pre-modern urban centers were mainly caravan cities that, in contrast to the rest of North Africa, did not develop any speciﬁc urban dialects. In spite of, or maybe as a result of, the strict social hierarchy of Moorish society, the Hassaniyya bedouin vernacular remained remarkably homogenous and knew very little dialect divergence. Therefore urbanization did not lead to a process of koineization or leveling but rather to increasing contact with MSA or with French, and to a certain amount of lexical renewal and borrowing. Language mixing, which was perceived negatively in the conservative Moorish society, is now spreading either through the use of a classicized colloquial variety or increasing lexical borrowings with French/English and African languages (see Chapter 16). Tripoli (Libya) is another capital that developed in a dominant bedouin environment. Pereira, in Chapter 4, carefully describes the linguistic features of the present-day urban koine. He recalls the long history of the city, which saw numerous population changes and points to the tremendous urbanization that followed the oil revolution in the 1960s. The oldest descriptions of Tripoli Arabic show that at the end of the nineteenth century this vernacular was already a koine, mixing bedouin and pre-Hilali features at all linguistic levels. A pre-Hilali dialect was spoken by the important Jewish community of Tripoli at the end of the nineteenth century. With the departure of this community, the old city dialect has totally disappeared. Compared to these older dialect descriptions, Pereira’s data indicate that certain bedouin features are reinforced (verbal gender distinction, dual nominal forms, synthetic genitive constructions, lexis). In the case of Tripoli, the absence of a strong local Tripolitan elite and the regime’s discourse emphasizing the values of the bedouin ethics accompanied the development of this bedouinized urban koine and the total disappearance of the former urban culture. It seems, however, that very recently a new interest toward the old Tripoli culture has been emerging. In Chapter 5, Hachimi explores contact between an old urban variety (Fessi) and a new urban variety in Casablanca (Morocco). Casablanca developed in the early twentieth century under French colonial rule and attracted a large rural population. Its vernacular is described as a koine that includes many rural/bedouin features taken from the neighboring Chaouia group. Today, Casablanca Arabic is considered to represent the national Moroccan koine, and has attained a certain degree of focusing and stabilization. It has as yet been little studied and we do not know the degree of homogeneization/ differenciation. Hachimi studies the process of accommodation among women of Fessi origin (from the city of Fez) living in Casablanca. Following Eckert’s theory of variation as social practices and not as structures, Hachimi shows that the degree of accommodation varies according to linguistic features, to context of interaction and to the personal attitudes of the 11

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speakers. Degree of leveling/accommodation is not directly linked to time of migration. An important insight is the symbolic value attributed to each speciﬁc feature. A number of Fessi women want to sound “normal”, “modern”, “harsh” and “popular” by using some Casablanca features (and dropping Fessi features viewed as too particular and aristocratic), but refrain from using others considered as too “rural”. Hachimi’s focus on the social meaning of variation highlights the ﬂuidity of individual practices and self-identiﬁcation. Concerning the old versus neo-urban vernaculars in North Africa, a number of issues deserve more investigation. One is the possible convergence between the different neo-urban koines at the national level. This question remains open for Algeria, due to lack of comparative studies between Oran and Algiers. In the case of Morocco, and due to the attested prestige of Casablanca Arabic, it is not yet clear if what authors such as Messaoudi call the neo-urban vernacular of Rabat, Salé or Fez are local urban koines or if they tend to reproduce the Casablanca koine. Messaoudi (2001, 2003) considers the Rabat neo-urban vernacular to be characterized by the dominance of rural/bedouin features coming from the surrounding tribes, particularly the Zaer, while in Casablanca, the rural/bedouin features are mostly associated with the neighboring Chaouia group. The issue of dialect convergence in the diaspora context is discussed by Vicente (Chapter 6), who is working on the Moroccan communities of two Spanish cities, Ceuta and Zaragoza. Previous studies on Moroccan diaspora in Europe (France, the Netherlands) indicate that Moroccan migrants continue to speak speciﬁc local varieties rather than the Moroccan koine. It is well known that migrant groups are often linguistically conservative compared to speakers in their region of origin. Vicente shows that this situation does not apply in Zaragoza, due to the fact that the Moroccan migration is a very recent phenomenon. Migrants (mainly young males) come from different areas and speak the Moroccan koine between themselves. As a Spanish enclave within North Africa, Ceuta constitutes a special case. Due to its proximity to Morocco, the speech of the Arab minority is more inﬂuenced by the regional linguistic changes. As in other Moroccan cities, Vicente detects the disappearance of a number of pre-Hilali features (preserved only by old women) and their replacement by koine-like features. However, she notes that some pre-Hilali features associated with the local prestigious Tetouan dialect are maintained. The Moroccan situation appears therefore rather complex with a number of regional urban koines, whose interconnection awaits further investigation. Another question concerns the possible territorialization of the urban variants. Some authors have attempted to map the territorial distribution of the old versus neo-urban varieties within the city and believe there to be a close correlation between types of urban varieties and types of urban districts (cf. El-Himer 2001 for Salé).10 However, this mapping fails to take into 12

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account social and stylistic variation and has not yet been investigated in a quantitative approach. The territorialization might rather be conceived in a more symbolic perspective, i.e. following what sociologists have labeled “imagined territories” (Tarrius 2000), i.e. the symbolic association between speech and place. Embarki, in Chapter 10, adopts the concept of territorialization and investigates the realization of some phonetic parameters (duration of vowels, syllables and words) among two groups of young Moroccan students born and bred in the town of Ksar el Kebir, in northwest Morocco. One group lives in the old center and the other in the new suburb. Relying on the quantitative analysis of phonetic data, Embarki concludes that there is indeed a difference between the speakers of the new and the old districts. While the girls of the old districts tend to maintain the phonetic parameters of the old city vernacular, the boys of the old districts and the boys and girls of the new districts tend to use the phonetic parameters of the neo-urban vernacular. Embarki’s study seems to indicate that in Ksar el Kebir, as in other Moroccan cities, the neo-urban vernacular is expanding at the expense of the old one, with change spreading from the suburb to the urban center. It might be noted here that realization of duration in the suburbs is closer to that of MSA than to that of the old city vernacular. Here again, more data on Casablanca Arabic are needed in order to compare the various urban koines and the possible inﬂuence of MSA. Another issue is the genderization of the distinction between old versus the neo-urban vernacular archetypes. Women are said to be the main users of old city vernaculars (both retainers or acquirers), while men are said to favor new urban features. Therefore, old city vernaculars are typically perceived as sophisticated and more feminine (Boucherit and Lentin 1989; Cohen 1973; Miller 2004), while the new urban koine is perceived as more virile and tough. This “toughness” is often associated with the ruralization/ bedouinization of the city. This genderization is not speciﬁc to North Africa and can be found also in the Mashreq, where urban vernaculars tend to be considered more feminine than rural/bedouin vernaculars (Abdel Jawad 1986; Sawaie 1994). This gender distinction typically concerns a limited number of phonological features (such as reﬂexes of (q), reﬂexes of (r), +/− emphatization and velarization, backing/fronting vowels) as well as a few morpho-lexical features (use of diminutives) and lexicon. Genderization of speech, however, appears to be evolving. Hachimi indicates that a relative degree of “toughness” is considered a positive sign of modernization by some FessiCasablanca young women, a ﬁnding that ﬁnds some echoes in studies on code-switching, youth language and new urban music (see Part III). To conclude this brief overview of dialect contact induced by internal migration in North African cities, it appears that the long historical process of ruralization–bedouinization of the former old North African city dialects have accelerated during the second part of the twentieth century, leading to the weakening of the previous Andalusian aristocratic medina culture. 13

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However, the koineization/homogeneization process has not yet been completed at either city or country levels. Dialectal variety that might lose visibility in the daily life can be maintained through artistic practices, patrimonialization, symbolic memories, etc. As Hachimi shows, dialect variation carries strong but ﬂuid social meanings, and we need to investigate to what extent the neo-urban varieties symbolize a new urban life style. Urbanization in North Africa has other linguistic aspects. One is the increasing contact with other languages (Berber, French, English, Spanish) and the development of new language practices (see Part III). 1.3.2.2 Mashreq In the Mashreq, the linguistic impact of migration varies widely due to the very different types of urbanization that coexist. The best known historical cases of dialect change due to migration have been investigated in areas where Bedouin groups became dominant: Lower Iraq (Baghdad), following the settlements of North Arabian tribal groups between the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries and their political dominance in the twentieth century (Blanc 1964); Bahrain in the twentieth century, following the settlement and political domination in the eighteenth century of the Sunni tribal groups over the local urban Ba]arna Shi¡i group (Holes 1987). In Baghdad, the settlement of numerous Shi¡i southern migrants in Baghdad’s suburb is said to have reinforced the bedouinization of Baghdadi Arabic in the second part of the twentieth century (Abu Haidar 2006). In Bahrain, two varieties coexist, together with a public koine, close to the Sunni bedouin speech (Holes 2006a). Apart from Bahrain and Iraq, Jordan–Palestine is one of the few regions where dialect contact induced by migration/urbanization has been dealt with in some detail (Sawaie 2006). The area had witnessed considerable population movements. Urbanization brought urban (Palestinian) and rural/ bedouin (both Palestinian and Jordanian) vernaculars into contact, leading to a complex pattern of variation related to gender, ethnicity and religion as well as contextual uses. Among the different trends that have been recorded, we note that women tend to dominantly keep /adopt urban (Palestinian) variants, while men are said either to shift to some MSA phonological variants (Amara 2005) or maintain (particularly in the case of Jordanian speakers) their phonological rural/bedouin variants (Abdel Jawad 1986; Sawaie 1994). Christians (both men and women) are also said to use more urban variants (Amara 2005 for Bethlehem) and rural phonological variants appear less resistant than bedouin variants. Al-Wer investigates the recent linguistic history of Amman, the Jordanian capital created in 1923. She recalls the successive waves of settlement which brought ﬁrst an urban elite from neighboring Palestinian–Syrian cities and then a far larger rural Palestinian population in addition to the local Jordanian population. She shows how progressive “Jordanization” of public 14

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political life led to a crucial redeﬁnition of the social meanings of localized linguistic features. While urban Palestinian features tended to dominate in the ﬁrst decades, the rural/bedouin Jordanian features became progressively associated with political inﬂuence and a Jordanian identity. Therefore urban Palestinian men also tend now to use some Jordanian dialect features in public. Her study examines the realization of a number of phonological and morpho-phonological features by a group of speakers (from Palestinian and Jordanian origin) living in western Amman and describes the gradual changes that occurred over three generations. She indicates that in the third generation, the mixture and variability recorded in the second generation is considerably reduced and that focusing (i.e. stabilization and regulation) is taking place. Young Ammanis of both origin share numerous new fudged forms with a clear gender distinction with regards to the realization of (q). However, by correlating linguistic variation with social activities rather than preconstructed groups, Al-Wer highlights the ﬂuidity of gender-related variation. The linguistic focusing is corollary to a sense of identiﬁcation with the locality (Amman). Therefore, a kind of standardized koine Ammani vernacular is expected to stabilize and to represent the local identity, in spite of the continuous inﬂux of foreign migrants. Al-Wer suggests that the formation of the Ammani koine is closely connected to the formation of a Jordanian national entity, which partly contrasts with and partly interacts with the Palestinian identity. The situation of Beirut, an older urban center, appears quite different to that of Amman (Germanos, Chapter 7). The Arabic variety(ies) of Beirut had been little studied (Naim 2006), apart from phonological studies which have focused on gender, religion (Christian/Muslim) and territorial distribution (Eastern/Western Beirut). Between 1975 and 1990, the civil war changed the demographic balance of the city and divided it along clear religiouscommunal lines. Even since the ofﬁcial reuniﬁcation of the city at the end of the civil war, communal division remains extremely clear-cut. The southern suburb of Beirut (known as Da]yeh) hosts a large and growing number of southern Shi¡i migrants. The presence of a public neutral koine is not clearly attested, although authors such as Srage consider that the young Beiruti generation uses a “constituted urban dialect” very similar to the one used by the inhabitants of Achraﬁeh, a Beirut Christian area. Germanos describes the uses and attitudes of Beiruti speakers towards greeting formulae and indicates that use varies according to age, sex, place and religious afﬁliation. While some formulae are considered “neutral” by the speakers, others are closely associated with a speciﬁc group. Due to the sectorization of the city, the social distribution is reﬂected in a territorial division. Some districts, such as Haret Hreik in the southern suburbs, form distinct linguistic territories as far as the use of greetings is concerned. Greetings are a type of linguistic formulae that have important religious signiﬁcance in the Muslim world (Elzeini 2006); in most Arab countries, 15

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Christians and Muslims do not use the same greetings. Therefore, greetings alone cannot be used to prove the absence/presence of a common koine shared by all speakers and Germanos concludes with caution that “the hypothesis of the existence of a koine needs to be explored, with further identiﬁcation of its linguistic features, if it exists”. The present sociolinguistic situation of Beirut and the absence of a well established urban koine might be representative of the political and communal tensions that prevail in this small but very heterogeneous country. San¡a (Yemen) is another capital city of a previously divided country. San¡a has witnessed tremendous population growth over the last few decades, attracting migrants from all provinces. According to Watson (see Chapter 8), this urbanization has led to a limited degree of linguistic leveling, a fact agreed upon by other authors (Freeman 2006). Until 1962, Yemen was a feudal country with very limited centrality; since 1962, the country has witnessed numerous disputes and local wars. Tribal/local afﬁliation is still very strong and urbanization has not diminished the sense of belonging to an original locality. Male migrants, in particular, are said to keep their own vernaculars and speak a kind of koine in public, but a koine that has not leveled the various vernaculars. Watson analyzes the language of a popular radio series, which arouses contradictory statements among its listeners. Some people consider it to reﬂect “pure old San¡ani Arabic” while others consider it to be either Yemeni, but not San¡ani, or Classical Arabic. She shows that the actors born in San¡a from non-San¡ani families have a good command of San¡ani Arabic at the morphological and lexical level but that they lack some of the low-level phonological features such as glottalization in pause. The future will see whether glottalization in San¡ani progresses or, whether, as a result of dialect contact, glottalization weakens. Due to its speciﬁc history and rich dialect diversity, Yemen deserves far more sociolinguistic studies in order to evaluate the relationship between the different cities and the type of leveling recorded in them (cf. Vanhove 2002). In the old established capital cities of Damascus and Cairo, the stabilization of the urban koine is considered to have occurred at an earlier period, probably the second part of the nineteenth century (Lentin 2006; Woidich 1994). Both countries have experienced a fairly high level of urbanization during the nineteenth century. Since that time, successive waves of migration have not seriously affected the development of the capital dialect and both Damascus Arabic and Cairo Arabic act as national standards. However, although both vernaculars are among the best studied dialects of the Arab world, few studies have focused on dialect contact and the process of accommodation. Miller (2005) studied processes of accommodation among the ﬁrst generation of Upper Egyptian migrants in Cairo and showed the ambivalence of language uses and attitudes. Lentin (1981) indicated that regional, communal, neighborhood variants are very frequent in Damascus, but also very ﬂuid. Other sociolinguistic studies on Cairo and Damascus 16

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have highlighted variation relating to education, gender, social class and neighborhood rather than to origin (Daher 1999, Haeri 1996, Royal 1985). Following this trend, Ismail, in Chapter 9, investigates variation and change in two Damascus neighborhoods, Shagoor an inner-city quarter and Dummar, a high-class suburb and asks whether different neighborhoods and lifestyles induce different patterns of change. Ismail compares the realization of two phonological variables in the two neighborhoods. The presence/absence of (h) in sufﬁx position is a long-standing variable of Syrian dialectology. Examining the sources, Ismail postulates that the h-zero form appeared ﬁrst in the coastal cities before spreading to inland dialects such as Damascus and Aleppo, while the nearby rural areas remained h-full (a process that ﬁts with the “urban hierarchy model” of linguistic diffusion). Her data conﬁrm that the h-zero form is the favored form of both districts. The variable (r) appears to be a change in progress that originated in the suburbs and spread to the inner city and is particularly used by members of the younger generation. Ismail’s data strongly ﬁt with the ﬁndings of variationist sociolinguistics that old variants (stable variation) are no longer territorialized and cannot be associated with an age group, while new variants (change in progress) are more closely associated with speciﬁc urban territories and age groups (Eckert 2000: 136). The Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf witnessed considerable urbanization following the oil boom of the 1970s. In the Gulf States, this urbanization has reinforced long-standing contact with non-Arabic languages such as Hindi/Urdu, English, as well as with various Arabic dialects spoken by the native population or by the Arab expatriates (Holes 2006b). This has led to the formation of a Gulf Arabic Pidgin used between the Gulf speakers and the Asian migrants and to various degrees of leveling between the local dialects, even if the bedouin/sedentary distinction is still very noticeable. AlAzraqi, in Chapter 11, investigates the leveling of one phonological feature in ﬁve Saudi cities. The selected feature is kakkakah/kaskasah, i.e. the realization of 2nd feminine singular pronoun sufﬁx as either [∫] or [s], a well-known feature also attested in a number of other dialects of the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Azraqi compares the realization of this variable among educated speakers of both sexes and various ages. Her study shows that this feature seems to recede, at least in formal context, and particularly among male speakers, and is replaced by a koine form /k/.Women appear to avoid the use of the 2nd feminine pronoun sufﬁx and develop alternative syntactic means. The use of the koine feature varies from one city to another: greatest use of /k/ is recorded in Riyadh, the lowest in Buraidah. Al-Azraqi analyzes the spread of the koine form as a result of both pan-dialectal inﬂuence and MSA inﬂuence linked to urbanization and education. The results of Al-Azraqi can be contrasted with other studies such as Alessa (2006) on Nejdi speakers in Jeddah, which shows a signiﬁcantly higher rate of occurrence of affricated /k/ in the sufﬁx form. 17

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To conclude this preliminary panorama on migration-induced dialect contact in urban environments, we can state that although the sociolinguistic situation of each city does not entirely mirror the state of the social and political relationship between the different urban dwellers, it does provide some cues about it, particularly concerning the rise of new social groups within the city and the country. In this respect, the processes of reallocation, (a variant previously associated with a speciﬁc dialect becomes a social variant in the urban context) require additional comparative studies. The current focus on contextual and stylistic variation will certainly help provide a better understanding of the process of social interaction and power negotiation between the various groups. For the time being, it appears that the use of a common public variety which reﬂects adhesion to a common urban identity is far from being attested in all the cities surveyed. An important question is the potential role of these urban vernaculars as regional/national standards and their relationship with MSA.

1.4 Urbanization and standardization A long-standing issue has been the possible role of urban vernaculars (and particularly that of the capital city) as the supra-local standard at the regional or national levels, and the status of urban vernaculars vis à vis MSA. In the 1950–60s, following the independence and the rise of pan-Arab nationalism, many observers and national actors believed that the local vernaculars, both rural and urban, would converge towards MSA thanks to the mass media and mass education. Most studies were thus dedicated either to descriptions of intermediate varieties emerging from this convergence (arabe median in French, Educated Spoken Arabic in English) or to the variationist analysis of age, gender and social variation induced by the MSAdialect contact, with the postulate that MSA variants represented the “prestigious standard features”.11 A number of voices (Abdel Jawad 1987; Al-Wer 1997; Daher 1999; Ferguson 1997; Gibson 2002; Haeri 1996; Ibrahim 1986; Palva 1982) rejected this unilateral vision of change and discussed the ambivalence of the concept of “prestige” in Arabic. They pointed to the fact that MSA was restricted to certain domains of use (the ofﬁcial public sphere) and was more a male than a female phenomenon, due to division of work and presence in the public sphere. Moreover, convergence towards MSA was mainly recorded at the lexical level (increasing use of MSA words in certain semantic domains), while in all other linguistic levels, variation between MSA and dialect features would be better analyzed as stylistic variation or instances of code-switching rather than an indication of change in progress. Other studies indicated that a number of changes in progress in the various vernaculars had little to do with MSA, including when these changes were initiated among educated speakers, particularly women (AlWer 2002; Haeri 1996). The debate is far from closed. Many authors con18

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sider that de facto MSA contributes in the processes of koineization and standardization of urban vernaculars, while others stress the opposite and show that current changes in progress have little to do with MSA. Among the arguments of authors who have defended the vitality/prestige of urban vernaculars is the idea that, in a number of countries, the urban vernacular of the capital city is de facto acting as the national standard and has more inﬂuence on the other local vernaculars than MSA. This representation is in accordance with the Prague School’s functionalist conception of standard, which considers the presence of a standard language a major correlate of an essentially urban culture. However, it might be noted that the terms urban and national standards are often used in the Arab context without much elaboration concerning the actors and modalities of the process of standardization. Standardization involves a process of more or less conscious, and planned regulation of the language that includes codiﬁcation of its form in standardized grammars and dictionaries, functional extension, expansion of the range of social uses and acceptance of the norms both ofﬁcially and on part of the population at large (Haugen 1966; Pedersen 2005). In Europe, the standard variety and standardization are closely associated with the construction of the nation-state, the emergence of a bourgeois culture and the modernization of society. In a number of European countries, for instance, the national standard vernacular developed from one regional urban dialect that became progressively a supra-local vernacular (cf. standard Italian based on the dialect of Tuscany/Florence). But the transformation from a local vernacular to a national standard language was a long process involving the progressive institutionalization of the vernacular and its adoption by the urban bourgeoisie (the Bildungsbürgertum of Germany, England and Scandinavia) as well as the abandonment of the previous literary language (cf. Latin in the case of the Romance languages). The current situation of the Arab world appears rather different. As is well known, the desire for modernization expressed by the nineteenth century na}|a and conducted by Arab intellectuals and nationalists led to the adoption of a “modernized” form of Classical Arabic as the ofﬁcial national standard of most Arab countries rather than a national/local vernacular. Most discussions about the concept of standard/standardization have concerned the status/norms and stabilization of MSA (Mejdell 2006). However, a certain degree of codiﬁcation and functional extension of the main Arabic vernaculars has occurred, but without ofﬁcial acceptance and institutionalization and often with denial. Focusing (i.e. stabilization and agreement on delineable norms) occurred as a result of speaker practice, i.e. native speakers have clear intuitions about the acceptability of a given utterance and speakers practice converge around certain norms (Walters 2003). Many vernaculars have been described and codiﬁed in grammars and dictionaries by foreign as well as local linguists. Urban vernaculars are more and more 19

CATHERINE MILLER

used in ofﬁcial spoken contexts as well as in writing (novels, plays, advertising, internet, SMS, etc.). But the reality of language practice is not recognized through ofﬁcial standardization and institutionalization. The ofﬁcial standard language remains MSA and not the national/urban vernaculars. In this respect, the increasing use of mixed styles (MSA-vernaculars) may appear to be a non-institutional, non-guided tentative move towards the expansion/diffusion and future standardization of the vernaculars. For the time being, the conceptualization of an urban standard as a national standard remains a hypothetical construct for many Arab countries. One issue to be resolved is which social group, life-style, cultural model is associated with the “standard” urban vernacular (when it exists), and how far the urban vernacular is recognized as a symbol of national expression by the overall society. Does the urban standard really correspond to the dialect variety spoken by the professional and educated classes of the capital city as is so often claimed? What is the convergence/similarity between the koineization process and the standardization process? What is the inﬂuence of MSA within these processes? Can we consider there to be a nationallybased educated spoken Arabic which de facto functions as the national standard? In some countries, the emergence of a “standard” vernacular goes along with the adoption of a number of non-national pan-dialectal features (cf. the inﬂuence of Egyptian/Levantine features in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula). Another issue concerns the actors in the possible standardization of the urban/national vernacular. Do members of the urban elites play the same role as the urban European bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century, since many members of these urban elite received an education in English or French? Instead of looking for one national vernacular standard, should we postulate the coexistence of numerous varieties and ways of speaking according to context, interlocutors and self-image?

1.5 Multilingualism, globalization and new urban culture Apart from increasing dialect contact through migration and increasing contact with MSA through education and media, urbanization in the Arab world means increasing contact with non-Arabic languages, and opening up to globalization through the use of new technologies, circulation of new cultural models, social mobility and social contestation. Contact with non-Arabic languages implies a wide range of situations that will not be discussed here, including: •

Arabic as a minority language in dominantly non-Arab countries such as the old established Arab communities of Iran, Turkey, sub-Saharan Africa, Cyprus, or the more recent Arab diaspora of Europe and America. 20

ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS

• •

Non-Arab groups living in contact with a dominant Arab environment including the Berbers in North Africa, the Kurds, Armenians, Nubians, etc. in the Mashreq. Contact with European languages such as French, English or Spanish which have been the ofﬁcial colonial language and still play an important role at the national/ofﬁcial level.

All these types of contact have led to types of language shift, language mixing, borrowing and code-switching. Contrary to the monolingual ideology that prevailed in the Arab countries, language diversity is a historical characteristic of most important Arab cities (Aguadé et al. 1998; Dakhlia 2004; Doss and Miller 1997). Depending on the particular historical and political context, this diversity has been differently accepted and conceptualized. The dominance of Arab pan-nationalism after independence and a context of post-colonial conﬂicts have contributed to a description in terms of language conﬂict, language domination, etc. The Arabization policies followed by most Arab states have led to a monolithic/monolingual perception of the relationship between the nation-state and the language and have fueled the linguistic claims of the non-Arab “minorities”. Important is the fact that a shift started to take place during the last decade of the twentieth century in many Arab countries, with progressive opening towards, and recognition of, language diversity, including code-switching and mixing associated with urban cultures. Code-switching is increasingly present in the language practices of the young urban population, in both the written and oral form. It is both a sign of informality and of ability to move across and play within the languages and the culture. Many instances of code-switching are found in new written practices such as chat on the internet, e-mails, SMS, as well as in new urban musical practices such as rap. More often than not, code-switching goes with a trend towards lexical creativity in the dialect. This “fashionable” use of code-switching occurs mainly between Arabic and European languages and functions as a badge of identity for youth belonging to the upper- and middle-class strata. From the available literature, code-switching appears to be socially more widespread in North African cities than in the Mashreq, where it remains an upper-class practice. In North Africa, code-switching is associated with urbanization, modernization, youth lifestyle and “fun”, functioning as a subversive humor device (Caubet 2002). Code-switching between Arabic and local languages (Berber, Kurdish, etc.) has not yet been described in detail, although local languages increasingly play a role in urban musical genres. Studies on code-switching in the Arab world have followed the general theoretical trends of code-switching studies, with many works focusing on linguistic rules and constraints. Owens, in Chapter 12, examines code-switching between Nigerian Arabic (NA), English, Hausa and Classical Arabic (CA) among Nigerian Arabic 21

CATHERINE MILLER

speakers in the city of Maiduguri. Arabic speakers in Nigeria form an old rural community. In Maiduguri, they represent about 10 percent of the total population of the city and are multilingual. Owens’ chapter studies instances of code-switching in ﬁve syntactic environments and demonstrates that English and CA insertions in a NA matrix follow various rules. Owens explores structural, psycholinguistic and areal factors to explain the differences in treatment. Code-switching practices among Maiduguri Arab speakers are not conﬁned to youth speakers, but distinguishes urban from rural use. Ziamari, in Chapter 13, studies French-Moroccan Arabic (MA) codeswitching within the speech of young educated students from two professional schools of Meknes. She shows that compared to previous studies on French-MA code-switching, the morpho-syntactic rules of code-switching tend to become increasingly ﬂuid and she points to numerous innovations. Girls seem to be more innovative at the structural levels, while boys appear more innovative at the lexical level. Code-switching is accompanied by lexical creation and semantic shift in both French and Arabic and therefore plays a cryptic and identity function for this age group. Youth urban linguistic and cultural practices have become an active ﬁeld of urban sociolinguistics in the Western world. Youth, more particularly teenagers, are considered to be the most active initiators of language change (Eckert 2000). In Europe, particularly France, youth language is associated with the suburbs and with a wider process of social contestation (Caubet et al. 2004). In the Western world, the “youth/teenager” category is a well established social fact. Studies on youth language are more developed in North Africa than in the Mashreq. In North Africa, youth languages or youth ways of speaking are correlated to a wider social and cultural phenomenon, and involve criticism of Arabism and a narrow deﬁnition of national identity; an opening up towards different cultures considered to be parts of the national heritage; and a claim for more social, political and cultural freedom. The presence of youth language characterized by codeswitching and lexical creation goes together with the valorization of dArija (Moroccan Arabic), the growth of new urban music inspired by rap, rock, fusion, world music, etc. and a more general aspiration toward democratization (Caubet 2006). Rizq, in Chapter 14, describes the emergence of the “youth” category in Cairo (Egypt). She shows how the terms “youth”, “youth language”, “youth songs” became generalized in the mid-1990s in the Egyptian media and analyzes the interaction between public discourses, the cultural scene (movies) and the language practices of young students. Rizq presents a number of lexical and syntactic constructions recorded in the speech of young educated students. She shows that most features associated with youth language are in fact already present in Cairene dialectal Arabic and that “youth” ways of speaking are mainly a systematization of these discursive devices. One of the questions raised by Rizq’s chapter is the relevance of “youth” category in 22

ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS

Egyptian society. How far is the perception of “youth”, acting as a distinctive group, an importation from western models or a local social reality? This question is important because in most Middle Eastern societies the young age group is demographically dominant and their language use may inﬂuence the overall society. But unlike Western societies, “youth” in the Arab world has had little public visibility and freedom. Moreover, family structure and hierarchy is still very strong and the nuclear family does not represent the dominant model even in old urban centers such as Cairo. Within Western sociolinguistic models, the nuclear family is believed to favor the acceleration of change and the inﬂuence of the youngsters (Auer et al. 2005). In this respect, Middle Eastern cities and societies may have reached a watershed. Gobalization, access to the internet and television modify the self-image of the younger generation as well as their cultural and linguistic practices. However, this age group is caught between contradictory models and may oscillate between tradition and change. One domain, so far rather neglected in Arabic sociolinguistics (with the exception of Rai music in North Africa) is the social function and linguistic characteristics of new urban music. Here again, Middle Eastern cities are at the junction of numerous trends between Western oriented musical genres, oriental music, the revival of traditional local genres, and African music and types of fusion. Urban music and songs accompany the social transformation of the society. Tauzin’s chapter describes the anthropological and linguistic aspects of rap music in Nouakchott. Rap is a new musical genre mainly performed by young people living in the popular suburbs. Rap singers are members of the low-status class known as Haratins. Rap performances contest the social order and reﬂect a radical social and cultural rupture. Rap songs mix Hassaniyya, African languages, French and, sometimes, English, each language having a different function. What is fascinating is the recycling of traditional Hassaniyya oral poetry devices as well as the important religious tone, a phenomenon encountered in other countries such as Senegal. Mixing different musical inﬂuences, rap is a perfect example of a growing trend towards globalization. The dominant social order is also at the heart of Dia’s chapter investigating the language attitudes and uses of Afro-Mauritanian young people living in Nouakchott. These young people speak Hassaniyya as a lingua franca, together with Wolof, Fulfulde and French. They have an ambivalent relationship with Hassaniyya, due to the existing political and racial tensions between the Moorish population and the African groups. It seems therefore that they refuse to shift exclusively to Hassaniyya and that they favor codeswitching. Dia’s contribution adds to our knowledge of the complex role of Arabic lingua francas in sub-Saharan Africa and multilingual cities such as Ndjamena in Chad and Khartoum in Sudan (Jullien de Pommerol 1997; Miller and Abu Manga 1992). 23

CATHERINE MILLER

References to African roots and cultures, sometimes via Black American models (rap and hip hop) seem to be expanding to other countries such as Morocco or Egypt. In these two countries, acknowledgement of an African heritage is advanced by young musicians and artists who want to free themselves from an “oriental” domination.

1.6 Conclusion The description of Arabic vernaculars has evolved tremendously in the last few decades, moving from the description of homogeneous and ﬁxed diasystems to include attention to social interactions. In this respect, Arabic urban linguistics has followed the general trends of sociolinguistics with a shift from structures to meanings, from developmental perspectives to a contextual and interactionist approach. Many domains remain to be investigated. At the structural level, there is a paucity of studies dealing with syntax. There is also need for an anthropological-oriented approach concerning the role of family structure, the place and role of the individual versus the group, the evolution of gender status and women’s access to the public sphere (Sadiqi 2003), the issue of standardization, the conﬂicting representation of urbanity and modernity, and the trend toward globalization. Arab cities constitute an extremely important ﬁeld of investigation not only for urban sociolinguistics but also for general linguistics because of crucial questions such as the conﬂictual representation of language and modernity and the relation between language, power and identity.

Appendix Table 1.1 Number of urban inhabitants plus urbanization rate by Arab country from 1900 to 2005 1900

1950

1980

2005

Number of urban inhabitants Algeria Morocco Tunisia Mauritania Libya Total Maghreb Egypt Syria Jordan Lebanon Palestine Yemen Bahraïn UAE

425,911 281,500 223,000 55,000 985,411 2,307,720 372,426 155,667 84,800 44,000 47,000

1,472,680 2,217,072 901,893

1900 1950 1980 2005 Rate of urbanization

7 ,157,235 7,350,074 3,121,984 306,081 192,667 1,953,726 4,784,312 19,889,100

19,920,679 9.1 16,322,432 8.0 5,865,969 11.7 915,503 5,010,175 8.0 48,034,758 8.7

8,087,484 24,249,826 1,174,680 4,018,863 149,582 1,407,815 354,000 1,853,756 197,843 729,985 320,768 960,145 65,871 269,307 44,000 784,061

48,226,544 11,194,537 3,850,060 3,553,920 2,617,480 5,500,367 570,255 3,819,000

24

22.8 39.4 26.8 15.3 1.8 69.1

16.5 25.3 26.3 20.5 20.9

39.3 38.1 49.3 20.0 63.9 41.1

59.9 53.8 58.4 32.9 85.7 58.4

39.6 33.2 29.9 37.6 19.2 7.5 59.6 8.8

59.8 46.3 54.9 60.6 56.0 9.5 79.6 30.6

70.0 60.9 74.3 60.8 74.6 27.8 80.2 73.7

ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS

Table 1.1 (continued) 1900

1950

1980

2005

1900 1950 1980 2005

Number of urban inhabitants

Rate of urbanization

Saudi Arabia 193,000 420,479 4,685,397 18,420,111 12.8 Sudan (North) 139,000 516,692 2,848,543 10,283,321 5.6 Total Middle East 3,343,613 11,331,399 41,807,698 108,035,595 17.5

12.1 7.9 27.4

50.4 19.8 45.0

79.5 36.1 60.3

Total Arab world

25.1

43.7

59.7

4,329,024 16,115,711 61,696,798 156,070,353 14.5

Note: Urbanization is accounted for cities > 10,000 inhabitants Source: GEOPOLIS

Table 1.2 Population growth of 1st, 2nd and 3rd cities of each Arab country from 1860 to 2005 City

Country

1860

1920

Algiers Oran Constantine

Algeria Algeria Algeria

62,174 28,330 38,365

203,927 135,070 61,172

422,100 253,282 88,514

1,646,360 532,763 374,634

3,360,788 754,023 480,278

Casablanca Rabat Fez

Morocco Morocco Morocco

700 40,000 88,000

102,000 55,000 71,000

700,559 200,763 177,578

2,136,088 782,035 420,232

3,569,988 1,670,618 983,751

Tunis Sfax Sousse

Tunisia Tunisia Tunisia

145,000 3,000 8,000

227,837 37,149 37,994

601,695 75,237 80,999

1,062,486 317,328 156,224

1,926,788 485,294 340,731

Nouakchott Nouadhibou Zouerat

Mauritania Mauritania Mauritania

— — —

— — —

4,812 685 —

184,139 29,165 19,834

628,814 77,901 36,385

Tripoli Benghazi Misrata

Libya Libya Libya

40,000 15,000 —

70,000 36,000 14,000

105,741 55,989 29,950

771,928 348,445 87,335

1,595,490 638,050 274,064

Riyadh Jeddah Damman

Saudi Saudi Saudi

— 30,000 —

23,664 25,000 —

97,892 49,898 —

1,054,529 848,290 430,475

4,241,543 2,868,269 1,616,266

Damascus Aleppo Homs

Syria Syria Syria

48,000 125,000 20,000

167,152 154,383 53,360

340,616 379,193 124,232

1,233,389 938,154 328,594

2,799,352 1,688,558 774,567

San¡a Ta¡iz Aden

Yemen Yemen Yemen

— — 20,000

23,000 — 56,500

85,000 25,000 118,768

256,819 86,739 289,040

1,790,275 623,317 601,079

Cairo Alexandria Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra

Egypt Egypt Egypt

277,438 184,447 25,000

961,648 456,672 41,464

2,578,284 1,025,943 126,265

7,732,819 2,409,472 364,475

12,617,647 3,340,353 559,709

25

1950

1980

2005

CATHERINE MILLER

Table 1.2 (continued) City

Country

1860

1920

1950

1980

2005

Amman Irbid Aqaba

Jordan Jordan Jordan

— — —

— — —

89,860 19,947 2,186

747,481 120,093 27,926

257,0596 388,094 81,533

Beirut Tripoli Saida

Lebanon Lebanon Lebanon

— — —

128,529 4,0449 12,000

211,000 100,000 20,000

1,030,474 441,170 120,630

2,153,176 558,519 207,366

Baghdad Mossul Basrah

Iraq Iraq Iraq

250,000 60,000 30,000

627,885 144,925 114,914

2,832,044 490,162 372,019

6,252,189 1,940,672 1,552,537

Source: GEOPOLIS

Notes 1 The publication of the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (EALL, 4 volumes, 2006–8), ﬁlls a very important gap. It includes 14 lemma on speciﬁc Arabic urban vernaculars (Amman, Baghdad, Beirut, Bahrain, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Khartoum, Kuweit, San¡a, Tripoli, Tunis) as well as numerous lemma on national vernaculars. The lemma describe “stable diasystems” and do not account for variation, but they include historical data and valuable bibliographies. 2 The complete report of the conference, including a summary of the contributions can be consulted in the ESF website at http://www.esf.org/ﬁleadmin/be_user/ research_areas/social_sciences/documents/Arabic_Urban_Vernaculars.pdf 3 By focusing on Arabic urban vernaculars, this book complements previous collective publications dealing with contact in Arabic (Owens 2000; Rouchdy 2002), as well as many individual papers published in journals or proceedings. A preliminary “state of the art” study of variation and change in urban vernaculars can be found in Miller (2004). 4 For lack of space, bibliographical references have been kept to the minimum. For Section 1.2, readers looking for more references are advised to consult the EALL. For Section 1.3, the references already mentioned by the contributors of this book have not been repeated and can be found in each relevant chapter. 5 The urban koine hypothesis led to huge controversies and has involved numerous eminent linguists such as Blau, Cohen, Corriente, Ferguson, Fück, Levin, Versteegh, etc. For a brief bibliography see Abboud-Haggar (2006) and Miller (2006). 6 Those issues have been discussed since the beginning of Western Arabic linguistics. For some recent references cf. Holes 1995a, 1996; Owens 2005b; Versteegh 1997. 7 Studies on communal/tribal afﬁliation in several Middle Eastern cities have shown that tribal afﬁliation is very much instrumentalized in the urban context (Eickelman 2002; Seurat 1985). In the Gulf, Holes (2005) considers that the Bedouin/sedentary distinction still survives in the collective memory. See also Shryock (1997) for the genealogical imagination of Jordanian nationalism. 8 The GEOPOLIS data-base established by Eric Denis and François Moriconi (CNRS-Paris) records the demographic growth from 1860 up to date of all Arab

26

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cities that surpass 10,000 inhabitants in 2005. Thanks to Eric Denis for giving me access to these statistics. 9 The stigmatization of the popular suburbs and their identiﬁcation through derogatory terms which associate spatial and social categorizations (such as “slums”, “ghettos”, etc.) is also a universal paradigm (Depaule 2006). 10 El-Himer distinguishes three varieties: old urban vernacular ( parler citadin) located in the Medina, neo-urban vernacular ( parler urbain) located in the close peripheries of the medina and what he calls parlers à aspect ruraux, i.e. vernaculars with rural features located in the outskirts. Each variety is identiﬁed by a set of isoglosses and appears as a kind of prototypical construction. 11 The issue of diglossia, contact and variation between MSA and dialects constitutes the dominant focus of Arabic linguistics and will not be dealt with here. For recent comprehensive reviews of the question see Mejdell (2006), BoussofaraOmar (2006) and numerous issues of the series Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics.

References Abboud-Haggar, S. (2006) “Dialect genesis”, EALL, Vol. 1, 613–622. Abdel Jawad, H. R. (1986) “The emergence of an urban dialect in the Jordanian urban centres”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61, 53–63. Abdel Jawad, H. R. (1987) “Cross dialectal variation in Arabic: competing prestigious forms”, Language in Society 16: 3, 359–368. Abu Haidar, F. (2006) “Bedouinization”, in EALL, Vol. 1, 289–274. Aguadé, J., Cressier, P. and Vicente, A. (eds) (1998) Peuplement et arabisation au Maghreb occidental, Madrid-Zaragoza: Casa de Velazquez- Universidad de Zaragoza. Alessa, A. (2006) “When Najd meets Hijaz: dialect contact in Jeddah”, a paper presented at the 7th International Conference of AIDA, Vienna (Austria), 6–9 September 2006. Al-Wer, E. (1997) “Arabic between reality and ideology”, International Journal of Applied Linguistics 7: 2, 51–65. Al-Wer, E. (2002) “Education as a speaker variable”, in A. Rouchdy (ed.), pp. 41– 53. Amara, M. (2005) “Language, migration and urbanization: the case of Bethlehem”, Linguistics 43: 5, 883–902. Auer, P., Hinskens, F. and Kerswill, P. (eds) (2005) Dialect Change, Convergence and Divergence in European Languages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barth, F. (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, Boston, MA: Little Brown and Co. Blanc, H. (1964) Communal Dialects in Baghdad, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bonine, M., Elhers, E., Krafft, T. and Stober, G. (1994) The Middle Eastern City and Islamic Urbanism: An Annotated Bibliography of Western Literature, Bonn: Ferd. Dümmlers Verlag. Boucherit, A. (2002) L’arabe parlé à Alger: aspects sociolinguistiques et énonciatifs, Paris-Louvain, Peeters. Boucherit, A. and Lentin, J. (1989) “Les dialectes féminins dans le monde arabe: des dialectes minoritaires et leur évolution”, in E. Koskas and D. Leeman (eds) Genre et Langage, Paris: Linx 21, pp. 17–37.

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Boussofara-Omar, N. (2006) “Diglossia”, EALL, Vol. 1, 629–636. Bulot, T., Bauvois, C. and Blanchet, P. (eds) Sociolinguistique urbaine: variations linguistiques, images urbaines et sociales, Rennes: Presses de l’Université de Rennes. Cadora, F. (1992) Bedouin, Village and Urban Arabic: An Ecolinguistic Study, Leiden: Brill. Calvet, L. J. (1994) Les voix de la ville, Paris: Payot. Caubet, D. (2002) “Jeux de langues: humor and codeswitching in the Maghreb”, in A. Rouchdy (ed.), pp. 233–255. Caubet, D. (2006) “The emergence of a new ‘movida’ in Morocco? The use of darija in artistic creation at the beginning of the 3rd Millenium”, a paper presented at the 7th International Conference of AIDA, Vienna (Austria), 6–9 September 2006. Caubet, D., Billiez, J., Bulot, T., Léglise, I. and Miller, C. (eds) (2004) Parlers jeunes, ici et là-bas: pratiques et représentations, Paris: L’Harmattan. Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P. and Schilling-Estes, N. (eds) (2002) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Cohen, D. (1973) “Variantes, variétés dialectales et contacts linguistiques en domaine arabe”, Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique (Paris) 68, 215–248. Cohen, D. (1981) “Remarques historiques et sociolinguistiques sur les parlers des juifs maghrébins”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 30, 91–106. Daher, J. (1999) “Gender in linguistic variation: the variable (q) in Damascus”, Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XI, 183–206. Dakhlia, J. (ed.) (2004) Trames de langues:usages et métissages linguistiques dans l’histoire du Maghreb, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Dendane, Z. (2002) “Aspects of women’s speech in Tlemcen”, Cahiers de Linguistique et didactique. Nouvelle Série 1/2: 38–46 (Oran). Denis, E. (2007) “Des villes introuvables”, in E. Denis (ed.) Villes et urbanisation des provinces égyptiennes, Paris: Karthala-Cedej, pp. 9–30. Depaule, J. C. (ed.) (2006) Les mots de la stigmatisation urbaine, Paris: Editions UNESCO/MSH. Donner, F. (1981) The Early Islamic Conquests, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Doss, M. and Miller, C. (eds) (1997) Les langues en Egypte, in Egypte Monde Arabe 27–28, Cairo: Cedej. EALL (2006–8) Encyclopedia of Arabic Languages and Linguistics, 4 volumes, edited by K. Versteegh, M. Eid, A. Elgibali, M. Woidich and A. Zaborski, Leiden: Brill. Eckert, P. (2000) Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Eickelman, D. F. (2002) The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach, 4th edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. El-Himer, M. (2001) “Identité urbaine de la population de Salé”, in T. Bulot et al. (eds), pp. 99–116. Elzeini, N. (2006) “Greetings”, EALL, Vol. 2, 202–207. Ferguson, C. ([1987] 1997) “Standardization as a form of language spread”, in K. Belnap and N. Haeri (eds) Structural Studies in Arabic Linguistics: Charles A. Ferguson’s Papers 1954–1994, Leiden: Brill, pp. 69–80. Freeman, A. (2006) “Why there is no koine in San’aa, Yemen”, Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVI, 68–82.

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Gibson, M. (2002) “Dialect levelling in Tunisian Arabic: towards a new spoken standard”, in A. Rouchdy (ed.), pp. 24–40. Haeri, N. (1996) The Sociolinguistic Market of Cairo: Gender, Class and Education, London and New York: Kegan Paul International. Harb el Kak, M. (2006) “La Dahiye de Beyrouth”, in J. C. Depaule (ed.), pp. 199– 224. Haugen, E. (1966) “Dialect, language, nation”, American Anthropologist 68, 922–935. Holes, C. (1987) Language Variation and Change in a Modernising Arab State: The Case of Bahrain, London: Kegan Paul International. Holes, C. (1995a) Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions and Varieties, London: Longman. Holes, C. (1995b) “Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East”, BSOAS 58: 2, 270–287. Holes, C. (1996) “The Arabic dialects of south eastern Arabia in a socio-historical perspective”, Zeischrift für Arabische Linguistik, pp. 36–50. Holes, C. (2005) “Dialect and national identity: The cultural politics of selfrepresentation in Bahrain musalsalaat”, in P. Dresch and J. Piscatori (eds) Monarchies and Nations: Globalization and Identity in the Arab States of the Gulf, Reading: I. B. Tauris, pp. 52–72. Holes, C. (2006a) “Bahraini Arabic”, EALL, Vol. 1, 241–255. Holes, C. (2006b) “Gulf States”, EALL, Vol. 2, 210–216. Ibrahim, M. (1986) “Standard and prestige language: a problem in Arabic sociolinguistics”, Anthropological Linguistics 28, 115–126. Ingham, B. (1982) North East Arabian Dialects, London: Kegan Paul International. Jabeur, M. (1996) “Women, social change and linguistic variation in the urban dialect of Tunis”, in C. Holes (ed.) Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of AIDA held at Cambridge 10–14 September 1995, Cambridge : University Publications Centre, pp. 85–94. Jastrow, O. (2006) “Iraq”, EALL, Vol. 2, 414–424. Jullien de Pommerol, P. (1997) L’arabe tchadien:l’émergence d’une langue véhiculaire, Paris: Karthala. Kerswill, P. (2005) “Migration and language”, in U. Ammon, K. Mattheier and P. Trudgill (eds) Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Vol. 2, Berlin, de Guyter. Kharouﬁ, M. (1995) “Urbanisation et recherche dans le monde arabe”, MOST Documents no. 11, (http://www.unesco.org/most/kharouﬁ.htm, accessed January 2007.) Larcher, P. (2006) “Sociolinguistique et histoire de l’arabe selon la muqaddima d’ibn Khaldûn (VIII/XIV siècle)”, in P. G. Borbone, A. Mengozzi and M. Tosco (eds) Loquentes Linguis: Studi linguistici e orientali in onore di F. A. Pennacchietti, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 431–441. Lentin, J. (1981) “Remarques sociolinguistiques sur l’arabe parlé à Damas”, unpublished thesis, Paris: Université Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle. Lentin, J. (2006) “Damascus Arabic”, EALL, Vol. 1, 546–555. Mejdell, G. (2006) Mixed Styles in Spoken Arabic in Egypt, Leiden: Brill. Messaoudi, L. (2001) “Urbanisation linguistique et dynamique langagières dans la ville de Rabat”, in T. Bulot et al. (eds), pp. 87–98. Messaoudi, L. (2003) Etudes sociolinguistiques, Kenitra: Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines.

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Miller, C. (2004) “Variation and changes in Arabic urban vernaculars”, in M. Haak, K. Versteegh and R. Dejong (eds) Approaches to Arabic Dialects: Collection of Articles Presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, Amsterdam: Brill, pp. 177–206. Miller, C. (2005) “Between accommodation and resistance: Upper Egyptians migrants in Cairo”, Linguistics 43: 5, 903–956. Miller, C. (2006) “Dialect koine”, EALL, Vol. 1, 593–597. Miller, C. and A.-A. Abu Manga (1992) Language Change and National Integration, Rural Migrants in Khartoum, Reading-Khartoum: Garnett-Khartoum University Press. Naciri, M. and Raymond, A. (eds) (1997) Sciences sociales et phénomènes urbains dans le monde arabe, Casablanca: Fondation du Roi Abdul-Aziz Al Saoud. Naim, S. (2006) “Beirut Arabic”, EALL, Vol. 1, 275–286. Owens, J. (ed.) (2000) Arabic as a Minority Language, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Owens, J. (2005a) “Introduction”, Linguistics 43–5 (Special Issue: Language, Migration and the City: Corpus-based Approaches), 871–882. Owens, J. (2005b) “Pre-diaspora Arabic: dialects, statistics and historical reconstruction”, Diachronica 22: 2, 271–308. Palva, H. (1982) “Patterns of koinezation in modern colloquial Arabic”, Acta Orientalia XLIII, 13–32. Palva, H. (2006) “Dialect classiﬁcation”, EALL, Vol. 1, 604–613. Pedersen, I. (2005) “Process of standardisation in Scandinavia”, in P. Auer et al., pp. 171–195. Raymond, A. (1993) Le Caire, Paris: Fayard. Rosenhouse, J. (2006) “Bedouin Arabic”, EALL, Vol. 1, 259–269. Rouchdy, A. (ed.) (2002) Language Contact and Language Conﬂict in Arabic, New York: Routledge-Curzon. Royal, A. M. (1985) “Male/female pharyngealization patterns in Cairo Arabic, a sociolinguistic study of two neighborhoods”, Texas Linguistic Forum 27. Sadiqi, F. (2003) Women, Gender and Language in Morocco, Leiden: E. J. Brill. Sawaie, M. (1994) Linguistic Variation and Speakers Attitudes, Damas: Al Jaffar & Al Jabi Publisher. Sawaie, M. (2006) “Jordan”, EALL, Vol. 2, 498–505. Seurat, M. (1985) “Le quartier de Bâb Tebbâne à Tripoli (Liban): etude d’une ‘assabiyya urbaine”, in Mouvements communautaires et espaces urbains au Mashreq, Beyrouth: Cermoc, pp. 45–86. Shryock, A. (1997) Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Siegel, J. (1993) “Dialect contact and koineization: review article”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 99, 105–122. Tarrius, A. (2000) Les nouveaux cosmopolitismes: mobilités, identités, territoires, La Tour d’Aigle: Edition de l’Aube. Trudgill, P. (1986) Dialects in Contact, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Trabelsi, C. (1988) “Les usages linguistiques des femmes de Tunis”, unpublished thesis, Paris, Université de Paris III. Vanhove, M. (2002) “Processus de koïnisation dans le dialecte arabe de Yaﬁ (Yemen)”, in A. Youssi, F. Benjelloun, M. Dahbi and Z. Iraqui-Sinaceur (eds) Aspects of the Dialects of Arabic Today, Rabat: AMAPATRIL, pp. 151–159.

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Versteegh, K. (1997) The Arabic Language, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Woidich, M. (1994) “Cairo Arabic and the Egyptian dialects”, in D. Caubet and M. Vanhove (eds) Actes des premières journées internationales de dialectologie arabe, Paris: Inalco, pp. 493–510. Walters, K. (2003) “Fergie’s prescience: the changing nature of diglossia in Tunisia”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 163: 77–110.

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THE (R)URBANIZATION OF MAURITANIA

Part I MIGRATION, URBANIZATION AND LANGUAGE CHANGE

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CATHERINE TAINE-CHEIKH

34

THE (R)URBANIZATION OF MAURITANIA

2 THE (R)URBANIZATION OF MAURITANIA Historical context and contemporary developments Catherine Taine-Cheikh

2.1 Introduction The population of Nouakchott numbers around 745,000 inhabitants, and accounts for approximately one quarter of Mauritania’s total population. It is the capital city of one of the multi-ethnic countries of the Sahelo-Saharan region, and was created almost ex-nihilo in 1957, three years before the independence of Mauritania. Its growth is symptomatic of the recent transformation of the Mauritanian way of life, which particularly affected the demographically dominant Moorish ethnic group (the BC1An). This Arabicspeaking population, which was still 95 percent nomadic at the dawn of the twentieth century, is now 80 percent sedentary. Thus the urbanization of Mauritania is almost contemporaneous with the birth of a multi-lingual nation, the establishment of a modern state and the entry of Africa into the global world. To understand the sociolinguistic impact of these recent changes, I shall brieﬂy describe pre-modern Moorish society and examine the historical factors that may account for its impressive linguistic and cultural homogeneity. I shall then discuss the relevance of the notion of urbanity and urban spaces in the pre-modern and modern Mauritanian context and highlight some of the most recent sociolinguistic changes. The (r)urbanization of Mauritania raises the issue of the relationship between bedouinity and urbanity in the Arabic speaking world. It also involves the questions of diversity versus homogeneity, mixing versus boundaries, deviance versus norm, and humor versus state-control.

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CATHERINE TAINE-CHEIKH

Map 2.1 Nouakchott (Mauritania)

36

THE (R)URBANIZATION OF MAURITANIA

2.2 Bedouinity and linguistic homogeneity in the Moorish context With around three million people (three quarters of whom live within Mauritania’s borders), the Moorish ethnic group represents a small community inside the Arabic-speaking world. Its linguistic homogeneity may therefore seem normal, but it must be noted that the Moorish territory covers almost two million square kilometers. Low population density and nomadism, the traditional Moorish way of life, seem to go along with a certain linguistic conservatism, as attested in other nomadic Arab societies (Ingham 1979: 25). But a number of other historical and social factors might also account for the quite remarkable homogeneity of the Moorish Hassaniyya dialect (}assAniyya). 2.2.1 A slow and gradual process of arabization For millennia, the West African Sahelo-Saharan region has been a contact zone between black populations of sedentary farmers and white populations of nomadic herdsmen. Despite the proximity of the Atlantic, no signiﬁcant contribution came from the coastal environment and thus there were no important differences between West and Central Sahara. The Berber population was, for a long time, common to both regions. Traditional Arabic sources mention the presence of Zenete groups (Tuareg) in Central Sahara and of Zenaga (also known as oanhaja) in West Sahara. Despite a number of common features, each group seems to have developed independently and had its own speciﬁc vernacular. Until the beginning of the fourteenth century, contacts with Arabs remained limited. The islamization that began in the ninth century went further in the eleven century under the inﬂuence of the Almoravid movement. But in this case – quite exceptional in the history of the region – the expansionist movement started from the Berber Sahara and spread to the northern regions, some of which were already arabized. The arabization of West Sahara was an indirect consequence of the arrival in North Africa of the Bane Sulaym, Bane Ma¡qil and Bane Hilal Arab nomads. The Bane massan who gave their name to the Arabic dialect of Mauritania (}assAniyya or klAm }assAn), are a branch of the Bane Ma¡qil which was to begin its slow migration to the south at the end of the thirteenth century leaving signiﬁcant traces in Morocco. Travelers’ reports dating from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries portray a relatively peaceful coexistence between the Berbers and the Arabs, with some cases of interpenetration. No further population inﬂux followed that of the Bane massan, and the history of the past ﬁve centuries is one of internecine ﬁghting, intertribal conﬂicts and alliances and tribal reconstruction. It resulted in the almost total extinction of the Zenaga language (probably at some time during the nineteenth century, although there is no reliable information on this) 37

CATHERINE TAINE-CHEIKH

and the virtual disappearance of the Berber identity (no one claims to be of oanhaja descent any more). Linguistically speaking, a dialect quite closely related to that spoken by the Bane massan had prevailed. It has of course evolved since the fourteenth century, under the inﬂuence of the Berber substrate, but the interesting question is how this evolution has failed to lead to greater internal divergences within such a large geographical area. The “conservative” Hassaniyya dialect shows features common to most Arabic Bedouin dialects (/g/ realization of the qAf; preservation of interdentals; maintenance of synthetic constructions; imperfective without verbal preﬁx; simple negation, etc.) as well as features peculiar to North African dialects (ﬁrst person of the imperfective sg. with n- -; a tendency to reorganize the syllabic structure by dropping the short vowel when in non-ﬁnal open syllable; the opposition /z/-/z/, etc.). But Hassaniyya also has its own speciﬁc features such as the use of the particles lAhi to express the future; bChälli “because” or kCv ¢lli “as if”; a passive form in u- and elative forms in a- for the quadriliteral roots and the derived verbs; the creation of a factitive in s- for certain derived verbs in st- (cf. Taine-Cheikh 1991). Whatever the origin of these speciﬁc features (whether calques of Zenaga substrates, parallel innovations or original Hassaniyya creations), it is important to note that they are found among all Hassaniyya speakers. This implies a social and cultural setting which favors both the maintenance of the whole linguistic system and the propagation of punctual change. Beyond the geographical isolation factor mentioned above, several points are worth examining in attempting to explain this linguistic uniformity. 2.2.2 Social cohesion and cultural identity The natural environment and the material culture have undergone very few modiﬁcations since the arrival of the Bane massan. Many Zenaga words, referring to local cultural practices have been integrated into Hassaniyya, without disrupting the system. The same continuity seems to apply at the social level. The Moorish society had (and still has) a very strong social hierarchy, with the aristocrats at the top and the slaves at the bottom, while the }WAYCn (freed slaves and others) would have a superior status to the dependents, even if the former were generally “black” and the latter “white.” This major opposition was supplemented by two castes: the musicianssingers (the griots iggAw¢n) and the craftsmen-blacksmiths. The oanhaja society may well have been organized along very similar lines, with the exception of the tributary category (known as aZnAgä) which clearly dates from after the arrival of the Bane massan. The distinction between warriors (}assAn or, more prestigious, ∞Wab) and marabouts or learned (zwAyä) establishes a secondary hierarchy within the aristocracy which also follows the arrival of Arab Bedouins. 38

THE (R)URBANIZATION OF MAURITANIA

These hierarchical relationships could have led to a fracturing of the dialect and a limited acquisition of the masters’ idiom, particularly in the case of black slaves (and griots, often but not always of former southern “black” origin). It has to be stated however that the nomadic social unit, the camp, included all classes of society, in particular aristocrats, slaves and blacksmiths (as well as griots in the case of the most prestigious warrior tribes). Even if the }WAYCn were relatively independent (and often more sedentary), their villages fall, both economically and politically, within the tribal sphere of inﬂuence. The grouping in sub-groups, groups, and tribes was (and still is) based on (frequently revised) genealogies linked to common ancestors. This could well have brought about linguistic diversiﬁcation, but uniformity has prevailed, within as well as between tribes.1 Tribal entities, sometimes spread across the whole territory, have continually split and recomposed, but have always maintained numerous neighborhood relationships, including the exchange of women in accordance with the rule of female hypergamy.2 The rule of competitive equality that holds between the “aristocrats” within a group may also have contributed to the limitation of innovations, for surely one gives up a little of one’s own independence if one adopts gratuitously someone else’s speech patterns.3 Culturally speaking, the total religious unity of the Moorish Sahara (based on the trilogy – Malekism, Ash¡arism, (theological theory) and confraternity) is remarkable, and is paralleled by the uniﬁed corpus taught by the zwAyä. The klAm }assAn was adopted by everyone at the oral level (as klAm ¢lBC1An) due to its prestige, not only as the language of the victorious warriors – the one in which the griots sang their praises – but because, in the eyes of the literate, it beneﬁted from the great privilege of being a “pathway to classical Arabic” (the formula is from a seventeenth century Moorish sage), i.e. to the language of the Quran. Furthermore, the vitality of popular poetry (γnä and thäydCn), with its quite complex quantitative metric, might have contributed to the development of the expressive capacities of Hassaniyya, incidentally providing a means to spread innovations. It has certainly contributed at least to its recognition as a much appreciated means of oral communication. Finally, one can note that Moorish society in general and the literate in particular – the “ideology professionals” to quote Ould Cheikh (1985) – tend to adopt a negative attitude toward change. This is a fairly common attitude among migrant or peripheral communities as well as among newly converted ones: in the absence of an inherited legitimacy, they often adopt strong normative attitudes. The Moorish people, in their aspiration toward arabness, sought to distance themselves from their southern neighbors (cf. the “Whites/Blacks” opposition of BC1An/SEdAn in Taine-Cheikh 1989). For all these reasons, the zwAyä may have monitored innovations and strongly 39

CATHERINE TAINE-CHEIKH

stigmatized any deviance that might be seen to dilute the “arabness” of the dialect, which was essential to Moorish identity. The linguistic dynamic observed in Hassaniyya seems to correspond broadly to the idea of “acceptable” change.4 The tendency (particularity frequent among the }WAYCn though not solely conﬁned to them) to confuse hamza and ∞ayn or emphatic and non-emphatic consonants (s ~ X, t ~ Y, O ~ 1 ), is often stigmatized by the zwAyä (cf. the realization of YWAb “earth, ground” among the }WaYCn of the southwest).5 All in all, it appears that in spite of its geographical spread and social divisions, Moorish Bedouin society was able to maintain its linguistic homogeneity through time and space. Moreover, no linguistic distinction was prevailing between city-dwellers and Bedouin groups in pre-modern Moorish society.

2.2.3 Nomadism and caravan cities in pre-colonial era The mountains (especially the 1haW plateau of Tichit) were the site of an important sedentary settlement during the Neolithic era but, when considering the desert city of the pre-colonial era, it is the image of kXaW (or gXaW) that comes to mind. A certain continuity between the two types of settlement is possible, since the agricultural workers of the oasis (the }WAYCn) may partly be the descendants of an ancient population which inhabited the Sahara even before the arrival of the Berbers. The meaning of qXar/qX¢W as “market town” and “small fortiﬁed town” is considered as speciﬁcally Saharan according to Maghrebi Arabic dictionaries (Beaussier 1958: 807; Colin 1993: 1578). It differs from the classical meaning of qaXr “palace”. The Moorish region, beyond Tombouctou in Mali, encompassed around twenty kXEW (with not much more than a few hundreds inhabitants each), which can be divided into two groups. The ﬁrst kXEW were established between the twelfth and ﬁfteenth centuries (Oualata, Tichit, Ouadane and Chinguetti). While Oualata, located at the border of Mauritania and Mali is rather speciﬁc, the other three kXEW share many similarities with the cities of the second group, founded between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (Atar, Tidjikja, Akreyjit, Rachid and Kasr el-Barka). These were cities of dry stone construction, located in the mountainous regions of Adrar and Tagant, and associated with palm groves, and had little in common with the southern villages (Rosso, Boghe, Kaedi, Selibaby, etc.) inhabited by the ähl l¢-}yEt (the sedentary Hal Pulaaren, Soninkes and Wolofs). They depended on the caravan trade and in most cases were founded by zwAyä tribes. Indeed, marabouts not only had control over the economic activities related to the trans-Saharan trade, but they also undertook the intellectual work associated with the teaching and training provided in the ma}A1¢W.6 40

THE (R)URBANIZATION OF MAURITANIA

The prosperity of the various caravan cities often rose and fell over time, due either to shifting trade routes or to economic and political conﬂicts. Internal rivalries often forced part of the population to emigrate and several cities were established in the wake of such internecine struggles (cf. Tidjikja founded by a faction of the Idaw¡ali – the “Blacks” – following their expulsion from Chinguetti). In the cities, tribal intermixing was very limited. Generally, no more than two or three tribes lived in the same city and often in separate districts. (cf. the names of districts in Oualata). Even Mosques – the only public meeting places – were subject to a certain form of tribal appropriation, for the designation of the imam was in the power of a particular tribe.7 The kXEW, devoid of public places and markets, appear generally as a juxtaposition of houses, completely closed in on themselves, set along winding sand-covered streets. The main function of the ancient cities was to protect the produce of the oasis and the merchandise of the trans-Saharan trade. The surrounding walls made the surveillance of the houses easier when the whole household resumed their nomadic lifestyle with their herd. For most of the kXEW’s zwAyä were only seasonally sedentary. While Oualata developed an urban culture (mural decorations, a more sophisticated cuisine, pottery, craft objects made of particular types of wood, feminine embroidery, etc.), this is not really true of the other kXEW which seemed to have served essentially the storehouse function. The ancient cities then present a rather chaotic and fragmented picture due to their having been essentially conglomerates of family units – independent and interdependent at the same time.8 From a sociological, economic and cultural point of view, there was no distinction between the city dweller and the nomad. Beyond a certain economic role, the zAwi of the kXAW remained culturally a Bedouin and socially a nomad. The issue is more complex for the agricultural workers of the palm groves. Their integration within the Moorish world was probably more indirect (Bonte 1998) and led, from a linguistic point of view, to two phenomena: 1 2

The presence of speciﬁc lexical ﬁelds (especially relating to palm cultivation and architecture). The persistence, almost until the twentieth century, of Azayri speakers.

We know very little about Azayr, which was apparently a variety of Soninke mixed with Berber. It may have been either a vernacular Soninke (it was spoken among the Maxna group which seems to have originated in the south) or a survival of an ancient vernacular language spoken at the time of commercial relations with the Ghana empire. In any case, these linguistic particularities did not have much affect on the unity of Hassaniyya. In the ancient cities, the Azayr language may have suffered the fate of Zenaga in the southwest,9 whose role was to resist the Arabic vernacular as best it could 41

CATHERINE TAINE-CHEIKH

and ﬁnally to disappear after a transitory period of bilingualism, leaving no more than a few traces in the form of loanwords. Such a phenomenon is certainly not unique but may well be characteristic of a part (often Bedouin?) of the Arab world (Miller 1996).

2.3 (R)urbanization and “modernity” Did the caravan cities contribute to the creation of an urban space? The answer is highly dependent on the deﬁnition of “urban”. If we follow the Khaldunian paradigm with regard to the distinction between nomadic and sedentary peoples and if bedouinity is equated with the ∞aXabiyya and the nomadic lifestyle, then it appears that urbanity was not only absent from the ancient cities but is still largely in its infancy even in a city like Nouakchott (Ould Cheikh 2006). If, on the other hand, the city is considered as “a problem and not as an object deﬁned a priori” (Louiset 2001: 232), with the idea that different modes of urbanity co-exist and that not all of them involve a discontinuity between urban and rural (or sedentary and nomadic) peoples, then the answer becomes probably positive both for modern and for ancient cities. If the points of view of anthropologists and geographers tend to diverge, where does the linguist stand? And indeed the dialectologist, who knows the usefulness of certain classiﬁcations (the reality of the distinction between Bedouin and sedentary dialects, or even the sub-categorization into rural versus urban dialects) but who also knows that there is no automatic correspondence between the spoken variety and the current lifestyle?10 The prevailing feeling concerning the old Moorish cities is that they lacked the linguistic speciﬁcity that characterized many North African cities like Fes, Tlemcen and Djidjelli (the famous North African pre-Hilali city dialects). This of course is due to their completely different history of both arabization and urbanization. Until the middle of the twentieth century then, Mauritania was characterized by a relatively undifferentiated variety of spoken Arabic (Hassaniyya) with few regional, social or communal variants. But the changes that have occurred during the most recent decades of Mauritanian history have had important consequences for the sociolinguistic situation of the country, and particularly for the capital, Nouakchott. This is the very epitome of a modern city, and was originally a relatively controlled space dominated by power and public administration. Soon though its status as a city-state led to its transformation into a sprawling city, with rampant development (a kind of octopus-town sucking in all the resources as well as all the poverty of the country). 2.3.1 Urban spaces and city politics In Mauritania, the ﬁrst proto-state entities were the four emirates (Trarza in the southwest, Brakna in the center south, Adrar in the north and Tagant 42

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in the center). Offshoots of warlike tribes (and, in three cases out of four, of tribes of Arab origin), the emirates had only an indirect link with the traditional cities described above. It is only in 1902, with the beginning of French colonization, that cities and villages in Mauritania experienced a real blossoming, due to the physical presence of an embryonic administration. 2.3.1.1 Cities with two centers The administrative presence is materialized, in both ancient and modern cities, by the existence of a distinct district, often named ¢l-LädCdä (lit. “the new one”).11 Most of the ancient cities, being located in relatively inaccessible places, did not undergo signiﬁcant development (with the rare exception of a city like Atar, where the French army settled in the 1950s). The new towns, on the other hand, experienced signiﬁcant growth, even when their creation was due to a purely administrative decision. The creation of the capital Nouakchott followed the model of Boutilimit, Kiffa or Aleg, each being a city built from scratch in order to satisfy the political or administrative needs of the central power.12 In the case of Nouakchott, the ﬁrst stone was formally laid, as recently as 1957, by Mokhtar Ould Daddah, already acting as the future president for the nascent Republic during a ceremony in the presence of representatives of the colonial power. The location was chosen for various reasons, including its proximity to the ocean (to beneﬁt from the sea breeze) and its latitude (far enough north of the Senegal River to give Moorish people the impression of being on their own territory). During the colonial period, it had been the site of a small village (or kXaW, similar in style to the ancient cities) but in 1950 this was almost entirely destroyed by an exceptional ﬂood of the Senegal River. It was then rebuilt on slightly higher ground, to a grid plan, but remained for a long time very far from the city center of Nouakchott. After extended negotiations and a succession of development plans (for details, cf. Pitte 1977), Nouakchott eventually took the dual form characteristic of African neo-colonial towns. A wide avenue traversed the city from east to west, from the mosque, on the road to the Ksar, to the hospital, on the road leading to the ocean, each half fulﬁlling one of the two functions of the town. The different administrative buildings, the presidential palace, the embassies, and the general headquarters of the notables are located in the north of the town: the kapitA/kabbitAl. The popular neighborhoods with the big market occupy the south: the mädCnä (as in Dakar) – or rather the mädCnas because each block, each mädCnä, sports an identifying letter (mädinä R, mädinä L, . . .). Everything contributes to set each half of the town in contrast to the other: the size of the plots and of the houses, the width of the streets and the existence or absence of tarmac surfaces. The contrast appears even in the ofﬁcial names given to the streets. For the up market districts and streets, the most prestigious names from world history were 43

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chosen (according to the criteria of the time): Gamel Abdel Nasser, Kennedy, De Gaulle, Bourguiba, Gandhi, Lumumba, etc. For the others, in the mädinä, names were drawn from Mauritania’s own history, or from that of the subregion: Nasser Eddine, Hennoune O. Bouceif, Samori Touré, etc. However, with a few rare exceptions (such as Gamel Abdel Nasser Avenue and, more recently, Kennedy Avenue and De Gaulle Avenue), these names went unused and are now forgotten. 2.3.1.2 Tarmac roads, 4 × 4’s and donkey carts If the notion of a town center exists today in Nouakchott, then it corresponds to the urban space occupied in the 1960s, but the town subsequently underwent very rapid exponential growth that the state could never have anticipated, or even follow. The ﬁrst unexpected inﬂux of people, at the end of the 1960s, corresponds to the mass settlement of nomads that several years of drought had reduced to extreme poverty. But the end of the drought cycle, several years later, did not reverse the trend: the city state of Nouakchott continues inexorably to attract more and more people, seeking their share of power, employment, medical care or education for their children. The following ﬁgures (from Ould Cheikh, 2006, source: ONS) give an idea of the extraordinary demographic boom seen in Nouakchott over the past forty-ﬁve years. Year

1962

1972

1975

1977

1988

2005

Population

5,807

55,000

130,000

134,704

590,532

743,511

Figure 2.1 Population of Nouakchott from 1962 to 2005

The expansion of the town (whose population grew fourfold between 1974 and 1990) mainly followed the major road axes spreading out from the capital (the Rosso Road to the south, the road known as the “Hope Road” to the east and the Atar Road to the north). Four new districts (El Mina literally “the seaport”, Arafat, Riyad – originally Wya1 “graves, cemetery” – and Dar Naim) were created in 1989, supplementing the ﬁve muqAYa∞At already existing (Teyaret, Ksar, Tevragh Zeina, Toujounine and Sebkha). “Star formation” developments along the tarmac roads have transformed some crossroads into new town centers. Recent plans mention KaWaffEW MadWCd 13 as Nouakchott’s center, at the junction of the North, East, and South Roads: a center displaced from the prosperous neighborhoods of Tevragh Zeina. The ofﬁcial policy has always been to try to curb as much as possible the arrival of internal migrants, but despite this Nouakchott has continued to 44

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grow, whether through the selling of the land (including the theoretically preserved areas), the legalization of informal settlements (gaZWa)14 or frequent resignations in the face of the perpetual renewal of shanty towns or “shanty encampments” (kebbe).15 Thus the relationship between planners and politicians on the one hand and inhabitants on the other is often rather fraught. Popular unofﬁcial place names humorously reﬂect these conﬂicts. They either pun on the way the land was appropriated or make fun of the life style of the local inhabitants. Among the many popular place names are: • • • •

• • • •

MgayZCWa “the little squatted”. KäLL ¢l-}Ak¢m “(under) the Prefect’s nose”, a district which was originally a shanty town located just in front of the Prefect’s ofﬁces. Säbx¢t ÄwlAd NAX¢r, referring to the tribe of the 1980–84 Finance Minister who is supposed to have shamelessly favored his kinsmen in the distribution of plots of lands. The Aouzou strip (fr. “la bande d’Aouzou”), a district with well situated plots theoretically reserved for green spaces, which after much competition ended up in the hands of the military. It is an allusion in French to the Aouzou territory, a contested area between Libya and Chad. Las Palmas, one the rich new neighborhoods established in the 1990s, where the inhabitants are seen as wheeler-dealers accustomed to the casino of the Canary Islands. Mälla} m¢n }äyt-ak! “make your meal salty [with salt] of your wall!” a popular district where the walls are seriously damaged by the capillary action of the underground water. Bäll w-äL}aW! “wet it and dig!” – a desperate attempt to build house foundations in dune areas. Nättäg Lämbä! “dig up the skins!” – a necessary preliminary operation for any installation in this district, which adjoins the l-BaYwAW “slaughter houses”.

These ironic place names (toponyms), which express the local discontent towards the ruling urban elite, reﬂect a rupture in social relationships compared to the Bedouin traditions (Taine-Cheikh 1998). 2.3.2 Arabization of the town’s walls The creation of Nouakchott coincided with the withdrawal of the former colonial power. When Mauritania became independent in 1960, Arabic was recognized as the new state’s national language and French (the former colonial language) as its ofﬁcial language. The newly independent Mauritania aimed to give Arabic the same status as French, making it not only an ofﬁcial administrative language but also, more immediately and concretely, an important language of modern education. The proclaimed parity between 45

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Arabic and French was quickly abandoned, for as early as 1980 Arabic was made the only ofﬁcial language. However subsequent policy shifted, according to sectors and periods, between an equal balance between the two languages and a reversal of powers in favor of Arabic.16 If there is one domain, however, where the parity between the two languages has become a reality, it is in road signs and markings of all kinds. At the beginning of the 1990s, almost ten years after the adoption of Arabic as Mauritania’s sole ofﬁcial language, shop signs and advertisement hoardings started to become bilingual French–Arabic. It gave a serious boost to the profession of calligrapher.17 Previously, inscriptions on walls had been only in French and were rather rare, limited to ofﬁcial buildings and to certain premises run by foreigners (essentially French and Lebanese–Syrian) like hotels, import-export businesses or grocery shops. All the small trades were in the hands of Moorish people whose shops did not, and still do not exhibit signs. One of the ﬁrst shops to ignore this rule was the “Bana Bleu” (Blue Bana), a large, well-stocked shop. It painted on its front wall Bana Ble, an approximate transcription of the name given by its French-speaking customers. The term “bana” thus acquired a positive connotation even though originally derived from bana-bana a hawker, and bAnä-bAnä, which in Hassaniyya refers to shoddy goods. Signs became common at the beginning of the 1990s with the development of the liberal professions (doctors, pharmacists, teachers, etc.). In choosing names, at least for administrative purposes, new ofﬁces (in particular pharmacies and clinics), tended to use the propitiatory terms of the Arabic lexicon (abstract names such as “Chiva”, “Ennejah”, “Dawa”, “Elbaraka”, “Emel”, “Al-avia”) or names of famous doctors such as Ibn-Rouchd or Ibn-Sina). Like Mauritanian toponyms or ethnic and personal names, those propitiatory terms, borrowed from classical Arabic, were much easier to write in Arabic script than in Latin and contributed greatly to the arabization of written signs. In the 1990s, which saw a boom in mural calligraphy, the spelling was not perfect. Ten years later, signs, mural calligraphy and hoardings have progressed, in quantity as well as in quality.18 They have changed the face of the city, creating a bilingual written environment in French and (literary) Arabic.19 2.3.3 Language contacts and management of boundaries According to geographers such as J. Levy, urbanity is characterized by the geminate concept “density + diversity” (Louiset 2001: 227–8) and one can wonder how this phenomenon is reﬂected linguistically. In Mauritania, the homogeneity of Hassaniyya has de facto suppressed one of the main sources of linguistic diversity in the Arab world, i.e. dialectal diversity (which has often played a very important role in the history of Arabic urban vernaculars, cf. Miller 2004). Diversity in the Nouakchott context could thus be 46

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thought to be limited to the concurrent and often redundant use of written French and Arabic. However, the situation is not that simple and urban Hassaniyya speakers are often subjected to various and partially new contacts20 to whom they tend to react by adopting attitudes unknown in the past. Previously, the different languages (mainly Hassaniyya, classical Arabic and Zenaga Berber) were rarely mixed and only borrowings and calques that proved essential for inter-communication were accepted.21 Nowadays the dominant trend is toward the blurring of linguistic as well as stylistic boundaries, through lexical borrowings, language mixing and code-switching. The following are some aspects of this development that tend to affect Hassaniya traditional norms. 2.3.3.1 The evolution of Hassaniyya In Nouakchott, a large part of the Hassaniyya traditional lexicon tends to be no longer used. The younger urban born generations ignore the typical vocabulary of the bAdiyya, the traditional location of Bedouin life. Particular terms such as ä∫äylAl “pendulum (from a pendulum well)” or täynnä “pulley” are totally unknown. Similarly, a large part of the vocabulary relating to plants, livestock, farming and agriculture, and which, until the 1960s was still known by the majority of the population, is today scarcely known. Those who do not move outside the urban space have no occasion to use this lexicon and often the gap deepens between younger and older people, the latter being the only ones keeping such vocabulary alive. Poetry is also being slowly forgotten, and given its links with the Bedouin world, one could not expect the γnä to retain the same appeal for city dwellers as it had for nomads. In the 1970s and 1980s, one talked about the “Hassaniyya of the 50’s” when someone was heard speaking in traditional Hassaniyya with obsolete terms, mostly borrowings from European languages, especially French such as boWYmAlä “coin-purse”, g¢rmwäyti “mixed blood”, gläysCs “spinning”, tilbinAW “tribunal” or tAγ¢Y ¢s-s¢kkä “bank note”. Nowadays, the “Hassaniyya of the 70’s” refers to the language used by someone who speaks Hassaniyya without any borrowings, thus showing a good knowledge of the expressive resources of the language. Previously, such knowledge was admired and the proﬁcient speaker was known as udnu bay1a “his ear is white” or äbäy1An m¢n tidinCt w¢ll MAnu “more Moorish than Manu’s lute”. Certain lexical ﬁelds, those closely related to the traditional life style and values, disappeared while others were introduced as a result of the profound changes that occurred in all spheres of life – economic, social, political and cultural. But the evolution of language does not reﬂect communicative needs alone; power and ideology also play a role. The urban lexicon had evolved and integrated dialectal neologisms (cf. käbbä and gaZWa mentioned above), 47

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as well as French and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) borrowings, with a trend toward the increasing use of the latter. 2.3.3.2 Middle Arabic as a “modernization” of the dialect A new usage of Arabic developed during the period 1968–75 under the inﬂuence of Arab media and the increasing contacts with other Arab countries (cf. students going abroad and the opening of Arab cultural centers in the capital). This new usage was clearly associated with political movements. Middle Arabic (∞aWabCya l-wuXYa lit. “Arabic of the middle”) was ﬁrst introduced among the intellectuals who had received a traditional education, in particular those inﬂuenced by pan-Arabism. It then spread among a number of young urban students. Indeed, whereas the numerous French speaking educated people of Nouakchott regularly used French in their discussions, the Arabic speakers – often unfamiliar with the oral use of MSA – did not have an adequate means of expression. Unlike Middle-Eastern countries, Mauritania had retained a very traditional Arabic education system, based on the memorization of the Quran and of a great part of the classical Islamic corpus. This left very limited room for free expression, particularly at the oral level, where the scrupulous respect of case and modal markers made the practice of Standard Classical Arabic (SCA) very difﬁcult. The great novelty then was to follow an intermediary path between colloquial and SCA, by dropping those grammatical complexities which did not serve the purposes of communication. Mauritanian Middle Arabic (MMA) corresponds only partially to what English speaking authors call Educated Spoken Arabic (ESA), because, as the dialectal base is fundamentally homogeneous, there is no need to select between the different colloquial realizations. This selection would involve either “purifying” the lowest variety through the removal of its stigmatized features (cf. the affricate realization of a phoneme, the discontinuous variant of the negation and so on, which are associated with the non-prestigious dialect of a local community, often of rural origin), or to abandon the local variety features in favor of koine features, even if the latter are more deviant from the classical norm than the local features (cf. the [™] realization of the qâf instead of [q] felt locally as typically Druze in Palva (1982)). MMA can thus appear as a semi-literary variety, fairly comparable to the literary classicized colloquial variety studied by Palva (1969), even though MMA probably remains closer to the “purely” dialectal base than most of the production considered as ESA, due to the absence of puriﬁcation tendencies. The transformations observed in MMA are mainly linked to the introduction of words borrowed from MSA. These borrowings respond to new needs of communication and, with a few exceptions, are not inspired by a desire to raise the style level of the discourse through the use of classical Arabic expressions. Borrowings are generally treated according to the morphological 48

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and syntactic rules of Hassaniyya, thus creating a certain systemic discontinuity between Middle Arabic and Standard Arabic. Examples include: the elimination of cases and modes, a very limited use of the TMA (Tense– Modal–Aspect) particles qad and sa-, the absence of dual forms (except for names), a tendency to use the colloquial verbal conjugation such as n- ﬁrst singular imperfective form. But borrowed terms retain their schematic patterns (some are quite rare in Hassaniyya) and their morphology (especially plural nominal forms). At the phonological level they are only partially integrated into Hassaniyya; MMA largely respects the phonological characteristics of classical Arabic: the |Ad / 1A’ distinction, the voiceless realization [q] of qAf, the regular retention of short vowels in open syllables (even though the quality of the vowel sometimes changes) and partial retention of the hamza. Generally speaking, the phonetic and phonological treatment of the borrowings corresponds to the traditional usage of educated Hassaniyya people, when quoting classical Arabic terms in colloquial speech. However, the use of Standard Arabic is so frequent that the dia-systemic aspects have become the main characteristics of MMA. This tendency is further accentuated by the fact that, in contact with a borrowed noun, the speaker tends to use a more standardized form, even when the dialectal form exists: thus, käbCr instead of the dialectal kbCW (what I have called “contiguous arabization”, Taine-Cheikh 1978). One may note that while “pure” colloquial forms are frequent and belong to all syntactic classes, “pure” literary forms, on the contrary, belong to speciﬁc categories (adverbs, particles, conjunctions, etc.), which escape morphological variation but often contribute to a complexiﬁcation of the syntactic structure. Indeed, verbs and verbal nouns are usually borrowed along with their own particular inﬂectional regime. In practice, the use of Middle Arabic is rather limited compared to the use of Hassaniyya, but more frequent than Standard Arabic.22 Nevertheless, MMA can be considered a “mixed dialect” in the sense of Trudgill (1986: 59). It clearly tends, in certain circumstances, to constitute a third code alongside Classical Standard Arabic and Hassaniyya. This was the case, for instance, with the popular preacher who spoke all three codes perfectly and knew how to alternate them appropriately during his sermons (Taine-Cheikh 2002). 2.3.3.3 Contacts, mixity and globalization Despite the spread of Middle Arabic, a great number of the Arabic speaking inhabitants of Nouakchott (especially the }WAYCn) speak only one code perfectly: Hassaniyya. However, they are in contact (in town rather than elsewhere) with other languages, either oral or written, such as French (and, more recently, English), or quasi written such as classical Arabic, or (almost exclusively) oral such as Pulaar, Soninke and Wolof, as well as other Arabic dialects heard in the streets or on television. 49

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Compared to “bush” Hassaniyya, urban Hassaniyya (particularly in Nouakchott) is essentially characterized by a greater permeability to borrowings, (in addition to the previously mentioned loss of the “rural” lexicon, which had many old Zenaga loanwords). Borrowings are mainly initiated and reinforced in towns, even though they do sometimes penetrate the Hassaniyya of the “bush”. Some old French borrowings are still used, as YAblä “table” or bombotBW “pomme de terre”/“potato” whereas others, such as minyistr “minister”/“minister” or Wadyo “radio”, have more or less disappeared, having been replaced by their classical Arabic equivalents wäzCr and iOA∞a. Other more recent Arabic borrowings betray the inﬂuence of Arab media, e.g. bass? “That’s all?” which has penetrated the vocabulary of some traders. Indeed, the frequency of the borrowings in towns is related not only to the presence of the administration and the modern economic (industrial and commercial) sectors, but also to popular markets and to the numerous activities of the informal sector (cf. the activity of michelin which consists in re-inﬂating tires). Generally speaking, we note that French borrowings are tending to decrease while, as already mentioned, Standard Arabic borrowings are on the increase and borrowings from local African languages remain extremely limited. In parallel, the French spoken in Mauritania (Ould Zein and Queffélec 1997) has been enriched by numerous terms directly borrowed from the national languages: melhafa (women’s veil), ogla (shallow well) and kebbe (shanty town) borrowed from Hassaniyya, gordiguene (gay) and bana-bana (poor quality, itinerant petty trader) borrowed from Wolof, niebe (variety of bean) or walo (fertile lands along the Senegal River) borrowed from Pulaar (Fulani). It is also hospitable to neologisms such as enceinter “to impregnate, i.e. to make someone pregnant” and cabiner “to toilet, i.e. to go to the toilet,” and to semantic shifts such as cow boy “a crafty one, bandit” and écritoire “writer, i.e. writing implement: pencil, pen”. These are fairly common phenomena but it is nonetheless interesting to note that often the same terms, such as gordiguene, niebe and cow boy are also used in Hassaniyya, thus bringing closer the lexicons of the two languages. This is an indicator of a phenomenon which, while difﬁcult to quantify, is representative of an increasing trend for languages to “communicate” with each other. Hitherto, the practice of code-mixing had been restricted to less educated people who had the impression that by resorting to numerous French borrowings they gained in expressivity and modernity. But it seems now to have spread and to have touched even new generations of intellectuals, who do not hesitate to code-switch freely between French and Arabic, even in mid-sentence. Borrowings and code-switching tend to function as signs of claims to identity. While borrowing responds ﬁrst to the need to name an object, activity or behavior, it very often carries a positive or negative connotation which it acquires by reference to the speakers’ speech community. The need 50

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for modernity and identity is particularly developed within young people’s speech communities, and among them, those most open to the outside world or the most marginal groups. It explains why the relatively less spoken languages in Mauritania such as Wolof and English are the ones which nonetheless supply a number of words to Mauritanian French and to Hassaniyya, cf. tnappi “to rip somebody off ” which was borrowed from Wolof and whose usage is no longer conﬁned to urban delinquents. From this point of view, among the different urban centers which emerged from the period of colonial administration, the little town of Rosso, located on the Senegal River, (and socially very mixed) is often up with the latest fashion – at the crossroad of Mauritanian and Senegalese fashions.23 Increasing processes of borrowing and diversiﬁcation of the source languages have contributed to the “colorful” aspect of urban Hassaniyya. Moreover, code-switching and code-mixing constitute an even clearer break with former linguistic practices. These developments, together with the emergence of Middle Arabic, are the ﬁrst linguistic results of the upheaval brought about by the multiplication of contacts with the outside world in an urban environment, despite the maintenance of ethnic and tribal afﬁliations both within and beyond the city. The effects of globalization have sometimes been described as “glocalization”, in the sense that they produce local from global, and global from local, in a simultaneous process of heterogenization–homogenization. It seems to me that, with regard to linguistic practices, “glocalization” manifests itself ﬁrst in the increasing diffusion of Arabic and French in society (i.e. the globalization–homogenization facet) and, second, in the development of phenomena of diversiﬁcation and pluralism – borrowing, code-switching, code-mixing – (i.e. the localization–heterogenization facet). While the phenomenon is not limited to Mauritania, it is characteristic of at least the recent history of the country and contemporaneous with its recent urbanization.

Notes 1 Linguistic differentiation can be observed at the margins of Moorish society, either through the more recent arabization process or through the maintenance of Berber–Arabic bilingualism. 2 The preferred Moorish marriage pattern is with a paternal uncle’s daughter (mint ¢l-∞amm). According to the patrilocality rule, the wife will join her husband’s camp. Even when married to a cousin, she can be taken far away from her usual nomadization area. 3 There is a surprising alliance – which may a priori seem against nature but which relates ultimately to the concept of honor – between the anarchic individualism of nomads and the mutual control (or self-control) of individuals by each other. The control exercised by Moorish society with regard to personal injury gives some idea of the control exerted on the language (cf. Taine-Cheikh 2004b).

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4 The acceptability of the changes would especially be dependent on the capacity to preserve synthetic constructions and signiﬁcant semantic oppositions (voice, nominal degrees, comparison, etc.) as well as phonological opposition (where only the dropping of the hamza and the assimilation of the | to 1 are regularly admitted). 5 These tendencies have their origins partially in the phonetics of the substrate language. It may be noted that for certain words, emphatization/de-emphatization occurred among all speakers (X > s in sγ Cr “small” and s > X in XaYla “iron container”). 6 There were moreover itinerant ma}A1¢W, housed under canvas – as well as camp libraries that were transported on camel back. 7 In Ouadane it caused an important tribal conﬂict (in the 1820s), which was the origin of the construction of a second mosque and the gradual abandonment of the old one. 8 Independent because each one was large enough to accommodate an extended family, understood as a small camp, and interdependent because families, especially those from the same tribe, were supposed to help each other in case of danger. 9 The presence of another vernacular language alongside Berber may have accelerated the disappearance of Zenaga, which was dominant in the ancient towns, probably at least until the sixteenth century. 10 Cf. the case of Baghdad where the Muslim dialect is classiﬁed as a former Bedouin dialect, contrary to Christian and Jewish dialects (cf. Blanc 1964). 11 For more details of the names of districts in small towns, cf. Taine-Cheikh 1998: 79–83. 12 Only Zouerate and Akjoujt, other recent cities (and the Cansado district of Nouadhibou) were created because of the implantation of the iron and copper mining industries. 13 The construction of this round-about coincided with the visit of the King of Spain to Mauritania. 14 The term means “squat” and is a neologism derived from the Hassaniyya root GqR, from which is derived gaZZaW “to buck”. 15 Lit. “Rubbish dump(s).” The word, borrowed from Hassaniyya, käbbä, is the nominal derived from käbb “to dump”. 16 On the linguistic policy of Mauritania and its consequences, cf. Taine-Cheikh 2004a. 17 Until then the profession of calligraphist concerned the copying of Arabic manuscripts – a profession clearly in decline at the end of the twentieth century. 18 It is also true for French – the shop sign of “Bana bleu” has indeed added the u of “bleu.” 19 Certain districts however still exhibit the predominant use of Latin script, especially in the district of Sebkha were black Africans are numerous. 20 Spatial mixing is however very limited, ﬁrst because of ethnicism and the “communalization of space” (Choplin 2003: 71–73), second because of the separation between richer neighborhoods (where inhabitants are in the majority “white” Moorish) and poorer neighborhoods (where the majority of the inhabitants are black or, almost exclusively, “black” Moors). 21 Linguistic mixing has always existed in North Africa (cf. Dakhlia 2004), but the degree of mixing has been far from uniform through time and space. 22 It can be reduced to the use of qaY∞an “certainly” and Yab∞an “of course” (expressions on their way to becoming verbal tics). 23 In spite of a dominant Moorish and Hal Pulaaren population, Wolof is the main lingua franca (Fall 1996–97).

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References Beaussier, M. (1958) Dictionnaire pratique arabe-français, Alger: La Maison des Livres. Blanc, H. (1964) Communal Dialects in Baghdad, Middle Eastern Monograph Series X, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bonte, P. (1998) L’Emirat de l’Adrar. Histoire et anthropologie d’une société tribale du Sahara Occidental, Thèse de Doctorat d’Etat, Paris, EHESS. Choplin, A. (2003) Rapports ville-Etat. Le cas de Nouakchott (Mauritanie), Paris: Graﬁgéo. Colin, G. S. (1993) Le Dictionnaire COLIN d’Arabe Dialectal Marocain, Z. IraquiSinaceur (dir.), Rabat–Paris: Al Manahil. Dakhlia, J. (ed.) (2004) Trames de langues: usages et métissages linguistiques dans l’histoire du Maghreb, Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose. Fall, B. (1996–97) “Le langage des jeunes de Rosso”, unpublished MA thesis, University of Nouakchott. Ingham, B. (1979) “Notes on the dialect of the Muyair of Eastern Arabia”, ZAL 2: 23–35. Louiset, O. (2001) “Les villes invisibles”, L’information géographique 65, 3: 219–233. Miller, C. (1996) “Nubien, berbère et beja: notes sur trois langues vernaculaires non arabes de l’Egypte contemporaine”, Egypte/Monde arabe 27–28: 161–70. Miller, C. (2004) “Variation and change in Arabic urban vernaculars”, in M. Haak, R. de Jong and K. Versteegh (eds), Approaches to Arabic Dialects: Collection of Articles Presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, Leiden–Boston: Brill, pp. 177–206. Ould Cheikh, A. W. (1985) “Nomadisme, Islam et pouvoir politique dans la société maure précoloniale (XIe-XIXe siècles). Essai sur quelques aspects du tribalisme”, unpublished thesis, University of Paris V. Ould Cheikh, A. W. (2006) “Nouakchott, capitale nomade?”, in Nouakchott capitale de la Mauritanie: 50 ans de déﬁ, Saint Maur des Fossés: Sépia, pp. 139–148. Ould Zein, B. and Queffélec, A. (1997) Le français en Mauritanie, Vanves: EDICEF/ AUPELF. Palva, H. (1969) “Notes on classicisation in Modern Colloquial Arabic”, Studia Orientalia (Helsinki) XL, 3: 3–41. Palva, H. (1982) “Patterns of koineisation in modern colloquial Arabic”, Acta Orientalia 43: 13–32. Pitte, J.-R. (1977) Nouakchott, capitale de la Mauritanie, Paris: Publications du Département de Géographie de Paris-Sorbonne. Taine-Cheikh, C. (1978) “L’arabe médian parlé par les arabophones de Mauritanie – Etude morpho-syntaxique”, unpublished thesis, University of Paris V – René Descartes. Taine-Cheikh, C. (1989) “La Mauritanie en noir et blanc – petite promenade linguistique en }assAniyya”, Revue des Etudes sur le Monde Méditerranéen et Musulman 54, 4: 90–105. Taine-Cheikh, C. (1991) “L’arabe des BC1An, un dialecte bédouin de Maghreb occidental”, in A. S. Kaye (ed.) Semitic Studies (In Honor of Wolf Leslau: On the Occasion of his Eighty-ﬁfth Birthday November 14th, 1991), vol. 2, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, pp. 1528–1548.

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Taine-Cheikh, C. (1998) “Toponymie et urbanization”, Espaces et sociétés en Mauritanie: fascicule de recherches 33, Tours: Urbama, pp. 77–86. Taine-Cheikh, C. (2002) “De la variation linguistique dans le prêche populaire mauritanien”, in A. Rouchdy (ed.), Language Contact and Language Conﬂict in Arabic, London: RoutledgeCurzon, pp. 177–203. Taine-Cheikh, C. (2004a) “La Mauritanie: vers une nouvelle politique linguistique?”, Aménagement linguistique au Maghreb: revue d’aménagement linguistique, 107: 205–226. Taine-Cheikh, C. (2004b) “L’injure en pays maure ou ‘qui ne loue pas critique’ ”, REMMM 103–104: 83–106. Trudgill, P. (1986) Dialects in Contact, London: Blackwell.

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THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN

3 THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN From chaos to order Enam Al-Wer

3.1 Introduction There has been a surge of interest in sociolinguistic research which focuses on the outcome of dialect contact, especially since the publication of Peter Trudgill’s book Dialects in Contact (Trudgill 1986). A wide range of situations have been documented, such as the dialects of new towns (Kerswill and Williams 2000), dialect boundary regions (Britain 1991), immigrant groups in the city (Kerswill 1994), and the two most recent publications on the formation of New Zealand English (Gordon et al. 2004; Trudgill 2004). The Amman project, on which the present chapter is based, is an investigation of the outcome of contact between Jordanian and Palestinian dialects, which are the dialects spoken by the ﬁrst generations of the vast majority of the city’s population. The analysis of the Amman data is based on the theoretical principles of variation theory, and beneﬁts directly from the accumulation of knowledge in dialect contact research. In contact situations, various linguistic developments can be expected. In some cases, linguistic variants which are characteristic of one of the dialects in the original mix can spread at the expense of other features in the input dialects. In other cases, there can be a fusion of features, resulting in the emergence of intermediate and fudged linguistic forms. In a third category of possibilities, totally new features can emerge, which were neither present in the original mix, nor can be called intermediate features. All of these possible outcomes of dialect contact are exempliﬁed in the data from Amman, as will be shown presently. One of the issues which researchers in the ﬁeld of dialect contact have had to tackle is how to ascertain that the emergent features are indeed contactinduced, rather than linguistic developments which the dialect in question would have undergone without coming in contact with other dialects. In dealing with the Amman data, this issue is immaterial because in this situation 55

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we are not dealing with a continuation of change in a dialect, but with the formation of a dialect from scratch. Amman had no dialect simply because it did not have a native and stable population. The adult population of Amman, including many who were born in the city, continue to afﬁliate themselves with the towns and villages of their forefathers. The youngsters, on the other hand, call themselves ∞ammaniyyCn “Ammanis”, by which they mean that they are native to the city. In the region’s dialects the terms shwAm “Damascenes”, ma§Adse “Jerusalemites”, iribdAwiyye “Irbidis, (from the city of Irbid)”, etc. are well integrated terms, but the derivation ¡ammaniyyCn “Ammanis” did not exist. The coinage of the term indicates that the city is acquiring a native population and a regional identity on a par with the established cities in the region, which coincides with the formation of a distinctive dialect. For the “makers” of the Amman dialect, there is no linguistic metropolis to copy within Jordan. Rather, they are constructing a dialect which itself is to become the linguistic metropolis of Jordan. The linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of this process are compelling. I will start with a general overview of the relevant background information about dialect geography, population growth, and the sociolinguistic situation, focusing on the situation in Amman, and speciﬁcally, on the Jordanian–Palestinian relationships as a priori to understanding the sociolinguistic determinants of variation and change in the Jordanian context.

3.2 The dialect geography of Jordan In order to understand the geo-linguistics of contemporary Jordanian dialects, it is helpful to delineate its borders since they were ﬁrst drafted in 1921. The area which is now Jordan had, until 1921, a geographical (not a political) identity. Ancient travelers referred to it as MashAref ish-ShAm “the approaches to Sham (the northern part of the Peninsula)”. During the Ottoman rule, it was part of the Vilayet of Damascus, and was referred to as sharq il-§urdun “Transjordan, east of the River Jordan”. Shaped like an Arabic coffee pot without a spout (“dalle”), it cuts across the Houran plain and the Badiyat ish-Sham in the north, isolating a sizable part, which includes hundreds of towns and villages, from the Houran heartland in southern Syria. The southern border incorporates fringes from the Hijaz, which include the cities of Aqaba and Ma’an, while the eastern border stretches over some 400 km across the Badiya in a sparsely populated area. The western border ends in the Jordan Valley; it follows the course of the Jordan River from Lake Tiberias to the Dead Sea, and further along the Wadi Araba to the Gulf of Aqaba at the Red Sea. Where the western border was drawn has altered the historical socioeconomic ties between the major urban settlements on the east side of the river and Palestinian cities. It is well known that in this part of Bilad ish-Sham, trade relations had run in an 56

THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN

Map 3.1 Jordan

east–west fashion (rather than north–south), as can be witnessed, for instance, by the close familial relations between the tribes of Sult and Nablus, and the tribes of Kerak and al-Khalil (Hebron). Thus, the western border laid the foundations for a new type of integration: a north–south, instead of an east–west. Within these borders, there are dialects which are akin to two major groups: the eastern and far southern dialects are of Arabian type (and have fewer speakers), and the northern and central dialects are of southern Levantine type (see also Cleveland 1963). The Levantine dialects can be subdivided into Hourani in the far north (the dialect of the city of Ajloun is a 57

ENAM AL-WER

good representative), and Balgawi in the northwest and central areas (the dialect of the city of Sult is an example). This leaves a ﬁnal major urban settlement, that of the city of Kerak and its surroundings (140 km south of Sult), whose traditional dialect diverges from the central and northern dialects in showing afﬁnities with Bedouin dialects further south, and is considered by Palva (1989: 242) as “a dialect of transition between the Syrian area and the Hijaz”. The political re-organization of the Levant after the Great War, and the subsequent political upheavals in the region have favored the emergence of different national norms, as opposed to a pan-Levantine norm based on the dialect of Damascus.

3.3 Population growth, distribution and composition The population of Jordan increased by nearly two million people between 1947 and 1986 (from 500,000 to 2.3 million people), and by more than three million between 1987 and 2005 and it is currently estimated to be 5.7 million people. Sixty-two percent of the population live in the central region (Amman (39 percent), Balga, Zarqa), which comprises only 16 percent of the total area of the country, while the southern region, which comprises 51 percent of the total area, accounts for only 9 percent of the total population. The exceptional increase in the population is due to the war situation in the region, and the displacement of populations. Nearly 1.5 million Palestinians sought refuge in Jordan after 1948 and 1967, and a further 350,000 from Kuwait in 1990. It is obvious from the ﬁgures presented above that the vast majority of the displaced population from Palestine settled in the central region. Amman had 5,000 Circassian settlers (originally monolingual in Circassian) in 1906. In 1930, an additional 5,000 people moved into the City, and between 1950 and 1990 the population increased more than ﬁfteen times, to reach 1.6 million in 2003, i.e. nearly one third of the country’s population.

3.4 Internal politics and sociolinguistic ramiﬁcations Jordan was the ﬁrst country in the Levant to have an Arab central government, and, in its formative years, was a refuge for Arab nationalists from Greater Syria in general. It was also the poorest in natural and human resources. The local population looked to Haifa, Jerusalem, Damascus and Beirut as the region’s cultural centers. Until the 1960s, the country had no institutions of higher education. Those who went to universities were educated either outside the Arab world, or in Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian universities. In the early decades of the establishment of the state, the governing body and the civil servants were almost exclusively of Syrian or Palestinian origins, which did not go unnoticed by the local population, who from time to 58

THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN

time voiced resentments, ﬁrstly targeting the Syrians, and later, as the Syrians were numerically overwhelmed by the Palestinians, some nationalists demanded the “Jordanization” of the administration (in Arabic §ardanat iljihAz il-idArC). Political analysts view this demand as the ﬁrst expression of a Jordanian political identity which was distinct from a pan Syrian identity. However, it would be difﬁcult to understand how the local population were suddenly united and mobilized to express a political identity, or to understand the ramiﬁcations of this event on the sociolinguistic situation (see below), without recognizing that a distinctive social identity and social character had already been in existence at least since the mid-nineteenth century when the region was under the rule of the Ottomans (see, for instance, Dawood 1994). Historically, the dominant dialects in the region are the “city” dialects. The reference to “city” in the context of Jordan during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries meant a settled community, with an economic base that did not only rely on semi-subsistence economy, but also included trade, simple industries, as well as farming. Thus, for instance the dialect of the old city of Sult, the largest in Jordan until the 1930s, was in fact considered madanC “urban” by the local population, despite the fact that all of the (segmental) phonological features of this dialect are “Bedouin” in dialectological terms (see Palva 1994). Where koineization in the central and northern dialects occurs, it is in the direction of features which are characteristic of the traditional dialect of Sult (see Al-Wer 1991). The resurrection of Amman, the ancient site of Rabbath Ammon, and Roman Philadelphia, as the capital of the newly formed Emirate of Transjordan in 1923, deprived Sult of its prominent historical status, and set a new context for future linguistic developments. It is not unreasonable to suggest that had Sult become the capital city, its dialect would have dictated the rubrics of the metropolitan dialect of Jordan. Instead, and over the years, what has happened is that Sult and its dialect were refashioned to become symbols of whatever is “authentic” Jordanian. This role became all the more convincing since Amman had no local population of its own, and since a Jordanian nationalist movement required a territorial base with all the necessary local Jordanian character. The location of Sult at a close proximity to Amman (25 km) enhanced the credibility of its new role.1 After it was chosen as the location of the capital city, Amman became the center of political and economic activity, but without the cultural artefacts. Many of the city’s elite families had come from Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Nablus. These cities already had institutions of higher education when the whole of Jordan had only one secondary school – in Sult. They spoke dialects which were associated with attractive places, and attractive lifestyles. Most of the elite families from the Jordanian side had come from Sult, which, despite enjoying prominent status locally, had no regional signiﬁcance. However, both sectors of the Amman population stood equal 59

ENAM AL-WER

in relation to their new home, in that neither could claim territorial legitimacy, but while the Syrians and the Palestinians were already trained to take over businesses and public-sector jobs, only a small minority of the Jordanians were equipped in these domains. The Jordanian dialects which were spoken by the early migrants in the city share many linguistic features with Syrian and Palestinian dialects generally, but they are especially more similar phonologically to the village, rather than the city dialects in the rest of the region (see Palva 1970, 1994, 2003 on Balga dialects; Palva 1989 on Kerak dialect). Given the situation outlined here, it is not surprising that it was the Jordanians who initially converged to the linguistic habits of urban Palestinians and Syrians. The Jordanians were not only motivated in this direction, but also had access to the target linguistic features, through direct contact, and frequent exposure, to urban Palestinian and Syrian dialects. The salient urban Levantine linguistic features, therefore, were advanced in Amman in the early stage. The ﬂood of immigrants from Palestinian cities and villages into Amman intensiﬁed after 1948 and 1967. The vast majority of the immigrants during this period came from rural locations, which contrasts sharply with the Palestinian presence in Amman in earlier years. The earlier migrants were either of the intellectual and the political elites, or the bourgeoisie, and they, rather than the later Palestinians, were the sector of the Palestinian population who had the most political, economic and social inﬂuence on the Jordanian society. It is noticeable, for instance, that despite the fact that the rural Palestinian dialects have a relatively large linguistic representation in Amman (and larger than the urban representation), none of their linguistic features play any role in the formation of the new dialect. In this context, it is worth highlighting a crucial difference between the Jordanian and the Palestinian societies, despite the two societies being very similar culturally. The Palestinian society is sharply stratiﬁed in terms of urban (townsfolk) and rural (peasants), which explains the persistence of the sharp linguistic distinctions between town dialect and village dialect, even where the villages are in close proximity to the town. Jordanian society, on the other hand, is tribal, a much more egalitarian system which cuts across the social distinctions between town and village.2 The Palestinian system of social organization was simply transplanted in Amman. Even though the townsfolk and the villagers have become citizens of the same locality, they continue to form two sharply distinctive communities. During the late 1960s and 1970s, the modernization process assumed the dimension of a major sociopolitical transformation, which affected the respective roles of the Jordanians and the Palestinians in general, and their relations in the urban context in particular. This change can be described as a strategy on the part of the state to include the indigenous population in the modernization of Jordan. The September 1970 civil war between the Jordanian army and the Palestinian commando movement, which threat60

THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN

ened, or was seen to threaten, the existence of Jordan as a state, made it obvious that the viability of the social and political identity of Jordan depended on the inclusion of the indigenous group in development and economic growth. Four years later, when Jordan recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, the Jordanian nationalist movement reiterated its demands for a larger share of appointments in the state bureaucracy, and this time, on the grounds that “if the PLO represents the Palestinians, Jordan should be a state for the Jordanians”. During the decade following 1974 the Jordanians increasingly occupied a greater proportion of the posts in the bureaucracy and services. This process enhanced different feelings of identity, and may have exacerbated the perception of a Palestinian threat. An indigenous Jordanian population developed and proceeded to reinstate its own cultural identity in the urban context. Subsequently, this group also assumed a ﬁrmer and more secure social and political status, which resulted in a general awareness of a distinct Jordanian identity, and adherence to local norms of social behavior. Above, I made a distinction between the early Palestinian Jordanians and the later Palestinian populations (who also became Jordanian citizens) in terms of their social backgrounds. This distinction is important to understand the analysis of the sociolinguistic developments during the 1970s and 1980s. Members of some of the early Palestinian families, e.g. Touqan and Nabulsi (both originally from Nablus) had in fact been living on the east side of the river (in Sult) for decades prior to the establishment of the state. Others, most notably the Nashashibis of Jerusalem and the Rifa’is of Nablus, had formed a close alliance with the ruling family since the early decades of the twentieth century. If the appointment to high ranking positions during the 1970s and 1980s was a deliberate strategy to give a larger share to indigenous Jordanians, the early Palestinians and the traditional supporters of the state from Palestine were counted among this sector of the population.3 The increase in the number of local Jordanians who came to assume considerable power in politics and in the army, and the fact that Jordan as a country in the region assumed a ﬁrmer and securer position led to a crucial redeﬁnition of the social meanings of the use of the localized linguistic features. They became associated with political inﬂuence and power, over and above associations with a Jordanian, as opposed to a Palestinian, identity.4 It is noticeable that urban Palestinian men in politically dominant positions also used features of Jordanian dialects in public. Women were largely excluded from the modernization process, which can be conﬁrmed by their very modest contribution to the labor force during that period (roughly 7.7 percent rising to 12.5 percent in the 1980s). No women were appointed to senior management, political, or planning and decision making posts. Women were, thus, also excluded from the domains which called for the use of the local Jordanian linguistic features, or the domains in which the use of the local features legitimized an 61

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individual’s position. The arenas in which women were most involved were largely restricted to the ﬁnancial sector, education, and the social services. These arenas were (and still are) the domains in which a pan-Levantine urban linguistic norm is required (cf. the notion of the “linguistic market”, Eckert 2000). The onset of the sharp contrast between male preference for a Jordanian accent and female preference for an urban accent, which has been so often reported (see for instance Abdel-Jawad 1981), can be explained with reference to the linguistic requirements (as part of the symbolic necessities) of the domains in which individuals are involved (e.g. their jobs). Put crudely, men were appointed to positions which required the use of the local dialects, and women were excluded from these positions. Over time, the association of these positions with the use of local features became an association between local linguistic features and the individuals who assumed the positions. This line of explanation has a number of beneﬁts. First, it is functional, as it correlates linguistic variation with the social activities of the speakers. It, therefore, provides a simple explanation of the empirical data which show that the speakers’ (male and female) linguistic usages in Amman do not always correlate with their dialectal heritage. Second, it is based on concrete and well-deﬁned criteria, rather than on the abstract and ill-deﬁned notions of “prestige” and “stigma”. Third, it is realistic and ﬂexible since it integrates linguistic ﬁndings with sophisticated understandings of the social processes. To sum up, in this section, my aim has been to explain, in broad terms, the social factors which inﬂuence the sociolinguistic situation through analyzing the major sociohistorical events. In the course of this chapter, it will become clear that linguistic factors are equally important in the interpretation of the data from Amman.

3.5 The research The data come from ongoing research which I call the Amman project. They were obtained through sociolinguistic interviews, incorporating the latest methodological techniques, and utilizing up to date technological gadgets. So far, the pool of data consists of 25 hours of recorded material. The youngest speaker is 12 years old and the oldest speaker is 78 years old. The ﬁrst stage of the research provided samples across generation groups of two of the main input dialects: Sult from the Jordanian side, and Nablus from the Palestinian side. The speakers represent three generations (grandparents, parents and their children) of four families (two originally from Sult, and two originally from Nablus). In this sample, there are 8 speakers from the grandparents’ generation, 8 parents, and 14 youngsters (6 male and 8 female). The second stage focuses on the third generation. So far I have 20 speakers in this group, 11 female and 9 male. In order to have comparable data from younger speakers outside Amman, I interviewed an 62

THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN

additional 6 speakers (17–20 years), 3 male and 3 female residents of Sult. I also included 2 male speakers from Nablus who were visiting relatives in Amman when the research was being conducted, but who normally live in Nablus. All of the speakers from Amman live in West Amman. The sample of speakers is systematic and, therefore, the data permit comparisons across the speakers; however, the sample is as yet too small to permit statistical testing. It is also too small to warrant generalizations beyond a speciﬁc area in the city (the wealthier and more cosmopolitan West Amman), and beyond a speciﬁc social group (the upper-middle and upper classes). However, I have good reasons to believe that it is in this part of the city that the dialect is undergoing focusing, and that this particular social group is leading the process. A crucial difference between the more traditional East Amman and West Amman is in the socialization pattern of the youth. In East Amman, the youngsters spend considerably more time with their own families, and extended families often live in the same neighborhoods. On the other hand, in West Amman, the youngsters form intimate peer group relations, and spend most of their leisure time away from their homes and families. In addition, the leisure facilities in West Amman are much more widely available for the youth to spend most of their free time together. In other terms, the familial networks in East Amman are closer, and, therefore, linguistic innovations (divergence from the traditional dialects) would not be expected to permeate such tightly-knit social networks easily (cf. Milroy 1980). In this chapter, I present analysis of the linguistic features which show a fairly advanced stage of focusing, judged by the available corpus of data.

3.6 The data The overall picture across the three generation of speakers in Amman is a textbook case of new dialect formation, which can be summed up in the following way. First generation speakers, who arrived in the city as adults, speak dialects which can be easily identiﬁed with the original Jordanian or Palestinian towns from which they migrated. However, the dialects spoken by this generation do show some divergence from the original dialects. The ﬁrst development involves the leveling out of the most localized, and most marked features, a process which Trudgill calls rudimentary leveling (Trudgill 2004: 89–93). The most obvious feature which undergoes leveling at this stage from the Jordanian side (Sult) is /k/ affrication, which is totally absent in the data from ﬁrst generation male and female Jordanians. The traditional dialect of Sult affricates [k] conditionally (mostly in the vicinity of front vowels, e.g. [t∫ε:f ] > [kε:f ] “how”) (see Palva 1994). In my corpus of data from Sult (collected in 1987), the oldest and least mobile speakers affricated /k/ consistently in the feminine sufﬁx /ik/ and occasionally in word roots where /k/ preceded front /a/, and /ε/. Some tokens of affrication 63

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also occurred in my supplementary data (collected in 1997) from the male youngsters in Sult, which indicates that although the feature is receding in the original dialect itself, it has not disappeared altogether.5 Judging by the large corpus of data I have from Sult (see Al-Wer 1991), /k/ affrication may have been already undergoing change in the traditional dialect when migration took place. We can, therefore, consider the absence of affrication in the speech of this generation in Amman as a continuation of this process, which was accelerated in the contact situation. Another example of rudimentary leveling from the Jordanian data, but which does not appear to have started in the home town, and was used variably by this generation is gender neutralizations in the verb endings and the pronominal sufﬁxes. From the Palestinian (Nablus) side, the best example of rudimentary leveling is lowering of [ε:] or [e] to [æ:] in some lexical items, e.g. [¡ammε:n] > [¡ammæ:n] “Amman”, [mbe:ri]] > [mbæ:ri]] “yesterday”, [se:¡a] > [sa:¡a] “hour or watch”. Extremely raised variants of /a/ in these examples are generally stereotypical features of Palestinian dialects (most notable in the dialect of Jerusalem), and the tokens with the lowered vowels in the speech of this generation of Palestinian speakers can be considered a convergence or accommodation to Jordanian dialects. As will be explained below, lowering of /a/ and /a:/ becomes almost consistent in the speech of the third Palestinian generation. The second development in the speech of the ﬁrst generation involves mainly the female Jordanian speakers and the male Palestinian speakers. The Jordanian women in this generation used a few tokens of [t], [d], and [™] instead of the traditional [θ], [o], and [g], respectively. In the speech of Palestinian men some tokens of [g] instead of their traditional [™] were used. These tokens, which represent divergence from the traditional dialects, are really sporadic, and statistically unimportant, but their sociolinguistic patterning is important: it is exactly these two groups of speakers (female Jordanian and male Palestinian) who in subsequent generations diverge most from their heritage dialects. We can, therefore, describe this development as some sort of instatement of sociolinguistic patterning. The second generation show extreme inter-speaker and intra-speaker variability to the extent of appearing chaotic, as a result of using a mixture of the two dialects, although their speech can still be identiﬁed as either Jordanian or Palestinian, mostly through vocalic and morphosyntactic features in the speech of some speakers. Additionally, we ﬁnd a complication in the sociolinguistic correlations, for instance, “gender” emerges as a very important factor, in addition to dialectal or regional origin. Bearing in mind that all speakers showed considerable variability, some patterns are worth noting. The most conservative speakers in this generation, in the sense of diverging least from their traditional dialects, are the Jordanian men and the Palestinian women, and the most innovative speakers are the Jordanian women and the Palestinian men. For example, some Jordanian women in 64

THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN

this generation almost consistently used [™] for traditional [g], and the stop variants for the interdental sounds, but they used none of the Palestinian vocalic features; they mixed Jordanian and Palestinian pronominal sufﬁxes (-hum and -hon, -ku and -kon), and they mixed Jordanian pronoun i}na, and Palestinian ni}na “we”. More examples of [g] for [™] occurred in the speech of Palestinian men, the vowels and the plural pronoun were mixed, and the pronominal sufﬁxes were mostly Palestinian (-hon, -kon, rather than Jordanian -hum, -ku). The Jordanian men remained essentially [g] speakers, used a few tokens of stop for interdental, and the vowels, pronominal sufﬁxes and the plural pronoun were consistently Jordanian (-hum, -ku, i}na). The Palestinian women consistently used traditional [™], identiﬁably Palestinian vowels and pronominal sufﬁxes, and ni}na. These tendencies are tabulated below. Table 3.1 Examples of the patterns found in the second generation

J men P women P men J women

g

§

θ, 6, 1

+

−

+

−

+

−

+

−

+

−

−

+

−

+

−

+

−

+

−

+

+

+

−

+

+

+

−

+

+

+

+

+

−

+

+

−

+

+

+

+

t, d, |

J vowels

P vowels

J sufﬁxes

P sufﬁxes

i}na

ni}na

J: Jordanian; P: Palestinian; + denotes “presence”; − denotes “absence”.

Interestingly, the third generation do not adhere to these forms faithfully, but in some cases they focus the patterns which appear in their parents’ generation, while for many features they set totally new patterns, and use new features which were not present in the original mix. It is the speech of the third generation to which the remainder of this chapter is dedicated, and which shows the blueprint of Ammani. 3.6.1 The third generation: Ammani In the speech of this generation, all of whom were born in Amman, the mixture and variability witnessed in the second generation is considerably reduced, and some orderly linguistic behavior is established. We ﬁnd a high degree of stability of usage of certain linguistic features, use of fudged linguistic forms, and many new patterns and new features. Also in this generation, there is an agreement, a native judgment, concerning what is and what is not Ammani. 65

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3.6.1.1 The consonants The competing features in Ammani are the same sounds that distinguish between the Bedouin and the Sedentary norms in Arabic dialects, namely, [g] versus [™], interdental (plain and emphatic) versus stop (or sibilant), and [d] versus []. The urban Palestinian ingredient in Amman is identical to the system found in all of the other major city dialects in the Levant in having [™], [t], [d], [\] (or the sibilant counterparts [s], [z] [z]) and [].6 All of the Jordanian dialects traditionally have [g], [θ], [o], [2] and [d], but, as I have previously reported, the dialects of Sult, Ajloun and Kerak showed considerable variation, and possibly change, in the interdentals and [d] (AlWer 1991). The data from the youngsters in Amman show that these sounds, [t], [d], [\] (or the sibilants), [] and to a large extent [™] (but see below) have become focused features of Ammani, and, thus, the dialect will be identical to the other Levantine city dialects in its consonantal system. However, the [g] versus [™] alternation has undergone an interesting stylistic and social reallocation. As an outcome of dialect contact, reallocation refers to the phenomenon where “one or more variants in the dialect mix survive the leveling process, but are refunctionalized, evolving new social or linguistic functions in the new dialect” (Britain and Trudgill 2005: 183). The case of [g] in Amman involves social and stylistic reallocation, and here are the data. Recall that in the initial stage of contact the distribution of the usage of [g] and [™] showed a straightforward correlation with the regional origins of the speakers: Jordanians used [g] and urban Palestinians used [™]. Recall also (see Table 3.1) that already in the second generation a gender correlation is apparent, between [™] and the female speakers, and [g] and the male speakers (see Section 3.4 for an explanation of the social motivations and the roots of this development). The third generation inherit this (g)-gender associations from the second generation, but, crucially, the inherited pattern undergoes redeﬁnition of social context, and refunctionalization of the variants in the following ways. The female speakers. Irrespective of their heritage dialects, they use [™] consistently.7 This group of speakers do not really expound the full range of social meanings associated with the use of these variants, but largely advance the same pattern which had been established by the previous generation (see Table 3.1). The male speakers. In the case of [g] versus [™], it is the behavior of the boys which deﬁnes the range of meanings associated with this variation. They utilize the variations in a complex and functional manner: • • •

[™] is used among Palestinian boys (talking to each other) [g] is used among Jordanian boys [™] is used by both groups when talking to girls

66

THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN

•

[g] is used by both groups in mixed (Jordanian and Palestinian) boy groups

In the above situations, the context (mainly the interlocutors) is the determining factor. Further, the use of [g] in “ﬁghts”, what they call /yuwa∫/, plural of /yo:∫ε/, conﬂicts of any sort, is highly meaningful, and a highly valued resource. In these situations, [g] is not only valued for what it symbolizes (macho characteristics), but also for the image it averts. All of the boys that I interviewed claimed that a boy who uses [™] in ﬁghts can be called tant (plural tantAt) “aunt” (from French tante), by which they meant someone who is not tough.8 Interestingly, tant is not a boy who uses [™], but one who does not, or cannot, make the situational switch to [g], i.e. one who is incapable of appropriating the full range of variations. It is also interesting that the girls too participate in the construction of this meaning through their expectance and acceptance of it, even though they do not implement it themselves (and they would rather be courted in [™]); all of the girls in the sample commented on the ﬁghting situation among boys as one which calls for the use of [g]; one girl claimed that “a boy who uses [™] in a ﬁght is a subject of mockery /mahzale/”. The association of [g] with high ranking ofﬁcials also survives in the new dialect. Three of the boys in my sample are sons (in one case a grandson) of men who had served as cabinet ministers. These boys used [g] consistently, also when they interacted with girls. The girls, in these boys’ groups of friends, commented on their use of [g], and licensed it by referring to their parents’ occupations. The fact that the association between the use of [g] and political inﬂuence is functionalized in this way by this generation is rather remarkable. The association which emerged during their grandparents’ generation on the basis of actual usage survives; it is almost as if they inherit it as a commodity; for others, the association has become a “social value”. The overall envelope of meanings demonstrated by the use of [g] presents a tantalizing paradox: [g] is old fashioned and backward (by association with provinciality), but it is also legitimate and attractive (by association with localism and inﬂuential positions). Clearly then, who uses which variant, and the social meanings of these usages is a complex issue. The social meanings as well as the distribution of the variants of (g) have been redeﬁned. It is important to incorporate an understanding of these evolutions in sociolinguistic analysis in order to understand the current situation. 3.6.1.2 The vowels In variation studies on Arabic, especially the Arabic of the Mashreq, it is rare to ﬁnd analyses of variation and change in vocalic features. There is a widespread impression that consonantal variation is sociolinguistically more 67

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salient. Consonantal variation is certainly much easier to detect since it deals with discrete linguistic differences, whereas vocalic variations are gradient in nature (for elaboration, see Al-Wer 2002). The major urban dialects in the region show considerable vocalic differences, also when the consonantal features and the supra-segmental phonologies are identical. In fact, vocalic differences are the only way to tell the dialects of Damascus and Beirut apart phonologically, and the same goes for distinguishing between the dialects of Haifa and Jerusalem. In the contact situation in Amman, vocalic variations are very important, and have become more so since the consonantal system has become more or less identical to those found in the major cities in the Levant. In the Amman project, short and long vowel features have been analyzed. Below is a summary of some of the ﬁndings, and the linguistic processes involved. 3.6.1.2.1 A FUDGED FORM: THE FEMININE ENDING

This variable concerns the raising of the feminine ending /a/ to /ε/. Arabic dialects in general vary with respect to this feature. Some are typically nonraising dialects, and some are typically raising dialects, while others raise the feminine ending conditionally (see Cantineau 1960: 143–166). Urban Palestinian dialects and Jordanian dialects differ in the phonology and phonetics of the feminine ending. Jordanian dialects (central and northern dialects) use /a/ in all environments except after coronal sounds, in which case the ending is raised to a half open [ε] (i.e. /a/ is the default variant), as in the examples below9: /]ilwa/ “pretty”, /maglu:ba/ “Magluba, a traditional dish”, /ya¡ma/ “taste or ﬂavor”, /∫ara:ka/ “partnership”, /bi∫¡a/ “ugly”. But, /madanijjε/ “modern or urban”, /fattε/ “Fatte, a traditional dish”, /sida:dε/ “carpet”, /mdawwazε/ “married”, /sanε/ “a year”, /zγi:rε/ “young”, /¡a:mlε/ “she has done/made” On the other hand, in urban Palestinian the feminine ending is realized as /e/ except after velarized, emphatic and pharyngeal sounds where /a/ is used (i.e. /e/ is the default variant). The raised variant is [e] (cardinal vowel 2 or closer), as in the following examples: /]ilwe/ “pretty”, /nadwe/ “seminar”, /xa¡be/ “difﬁcult”, /ma]kame/ “court”, /mixtilfe/ “different”. But, /mantiqa/ “area/region”, /ruxxa/ “a licence”, /xulya/ “authority”, /a:m¡a/ “university”, /mari:\a/ “ill”. Thus, the word for “pretty” is /]ilwa/ in Sult, but /]ilwe/ in Nablus, and in both dialects /a/ is raised in /∫irse/ “vicious”, but no raising in either dialect in /a:m¡a/ “university”. 68

THE FORMATION OF THE DIALECT OF AMMAN

In Ammani, a fudged form10 is used, which combines Palestinian phonology and Jordanian phonetics, i.e. the younger generation raise everywhere except after velarized, pharyngeal and emphatic sounds, and the raised variant is phonetically half open [ε] (cardinal vowel 3). The Palestinian phonology was used by the third generation speakers consistently, without any exceptions. Regional koineization in this case, as in the case of the consonants, is an inﬂuence, considering that the same phonology is found in all urban dialects in the Levant (but not the same phonetics). With respect to the phonetic quality of the raised vowel, none of the youngsters from a Jordanian dialectal background raise further than [ε], and the vast majority of the youngsters from a Palestinian dialectal background lower [e] to [ε]. Interestingly, most of the [e] examples which occur in the data from the Palestinian youngsters come from the speech of the youngest speakers (12 and 13 year olds), which indicates that [e] is the variant that they acquired in the home environment, and that the acquisition of the lowered variant is a developmental process: the more time they spend with the peer group, the more they diverge from their parents’ dialects. With respect to the phonetics of the feminine ending, Ammani and Damascene can be grouped together in opposition to Beirut and Jerusalem, which have very close realizations; the Beirut variant is an /i/ type of vowel. But, all four dialects have an identical phonology. 3.6.1.2.2 LEVELING OF MARKED FEATURES: THE VARIABLE (r a :)

The input dialects differ with respect to the quality of /a:/ in the vicinity of /r/. Although the quality of /a:/ in this environment in Jordanian and Palestinian is back, the Palestinian variant is considerably more back, accompanied with some degree of lip rounding and pharyngeal constriction11 (except where there is an /i/ after /r/, e.g. /mbε:ri]/ “yesterday”). I shall use IPA [ɑ] for the Jordanian variant, and IPA [ɒ] for the Palestinian variant. Thus, the word /ra:]/ “he has gone” in the Jordanian input is [rɑ:]] and in the Palestinian input is [rɒ:]]. The data from Amman’s younger generation show a markedly more front realization than the input varieties, e.g. /dira:se/ “studying”, /isra:™i:l/ “Israel”, /wra:™/ “papers”, /tia:ra/ “trading”, /ra:j]a/ “I am going”, /kta:r/ “many”. Fronting of (ra:) shows a sharp gender distinction. Of the front realization, 90 percent occurred in the speech of the female Ammanis. It is also noticeable that none of the female Palestinian Ammanis used the Palestinian variant (their heritage variant), and the male Ammanis of Jordanian origin did not use the Palestinian variant at all. Clearly, the very back and rounded pronunciation is being leveled out. In the region as a whole, the Palestinian pronunciation is in the minority; it is localized and marked, and, certainly, a prime candidate for leveling in a contact situation. In phonological space, the variant which is being focused in Amman is nearer to the left end of a continuum of front-back /a/, and more similar to the Damascus and Beirut variants. 69

ENAM AL-WER 3.6.1.2.3 MOVEMENT OF VOWELS: THE VARIABLE (a :)

In phonological environments other than around /r/, the quality of /a:/ in the input dialects is as follows: the Palestinian variant is considerably more peripheral, towards the front end, and raised, ranging from raised /æ:/ ~ /ε:/ ~ /e:/, e.g. /ε:/ or /e:/ “chicken”, /mε:xdi:n/ “we/they have taken”; the Jordanian variant is lower and less peripheral, /da:d/ or /dæ:d/ “chicken”, /ma:xoi:n/. There are more than 800 tokens of (a:) in the data from the third generation, and the variant which is most frequently used by Ammanis is [æ:], i.e. slightly higher than the Jordanian input, and lower than the Palestinian input. All Ammanis showed variation in this feature. However, it is noticeable that the Jordanian third generation did not use Palestinian [æ:] or [e:] for /a:/ at all, i.e. the variation in their speech involved [a:] and [æ:]. The few occurrences of the very advanced [e:]-like pronunciations occurred in the speech of the youngest Palestinian boys (see Al-Wer 2002). 3.6.1.2.4 A CONNECTED MOVEMENT: DIPHTHONGIZATION OF /e :/ AND /i /

The movement of /a:/, outlined above, is linear, ending somewhere within the phonological space of /æ:/ or slightly higher. Ammanis also show divergence from their parents dialects in the lexical sets containing /e:/ and /i:/. In the input dialects, these lexical sets contain pure long vowels, e.g. /be:t/ “house”, /ze:t/ “oil”, /ze:d/ “Zaid (a boy’s name)”, /¡e:n/ “eye”, /∫i:l/ “carry!”, /zi:d/ “add!”. The data show that these vowels in the speech of many speakers move in a non-linear fashion, thereby developing an off-glide, as in the following examples: /™ə∫/ “what”, /heək/ “this way”, /zeət/ “oil”, /miən/ “who”, /¡iəb/ “shame”. It is possible that the diphthongization was triggered by the upward movement of /a:/, causing pressure in the phonological space of /ε:/~ /e:/, and /i:/. This suggests that the movements of the long vowels are connected, showing a prototypical pattern of a chain shift (see Labov 1994: Chapter 5). Seen from the perspective of Jordanian dialects, the clockwise movement of the long vowels shows a prototypical pattern of a chain shift, broadly in line with Labov’s Principles that govern the chain shifting of vowels: Principle I, long vowels rise; and, Principle III, back vowels move to the front (Labov 1994: 116). From the perspective of the Palestinian dialects, the movement of long back [ɒ:] to the front conforms to Labov’s Principle III, but the lowering of [e:] and [ε:] to [æ:] is at variance with Principle I.12 3.6.1.3 Markedness and simpliﬁcation: the pronominal sufﬁx -kum13 One of the most interesting morphosyntactic features which has been focused in Amman is the 2nd person plural pronominal sufﬁx -kum, a clitic form

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which can attach to nouns, verbs, and prepositions in a variety of NP and VP constructions, e.g. /bju:tkum/ “your homes”, /sa™alna:kum/ “we asked you”, /minkum/ “from you”. As used in Amman, this form is neutralized for gender. The data from the ﬁrst generation, as well as the data from my previous research in other locations show that this form does not occur in any of these varieties. On the other hand, the younger generation in Amman only use -kum and no other form. I believe that this feature is an innovation, which was locally “made” by the younger generation of both Jordanian and Palestinian origins. Of course, -kum occurs in the Standard variety, but its use in Standard Arabic is restricted to the 2nd person plural masculine in opposition to -kun, the 2nd person plural feminine clitic. -kum can also be found in a number of Arabic dialects, e.g. Cairo and Baghdad. The -kum in Amman could not have come from these dialects, given the limited contact (or any face to face contact) between the speakers who use it consistently and speakers from Cairo or Baghdad. It is unlikely to have been “borrowed” directly from the Standard variety, seeing that the Standard variety does not show any inﬂuence in other features. Nonetheless, it is perfectly possible that -kum may have become familiar to Ammanis as a “legitimate” 2nd person plural form through its occurrence in the Standard variety or in other dialects. The interesting question, however, is why it was chosen over the forms which are present in the input dialects. In order to address this question, I shall start by listing the forms found in the major input dialects: Jordanian Old northern dialects New koineized northern forms Old southern dialects New koineized southern forms Palestinian

2nd pl. masc -ku -ku -ku -ku -kun/-kon

2nd pl. fem -kin -ku-ku (gender neutralized form) -kan -ku-ku (gender neutralized form) -kun/-kon (gender neutralized form)

Two developments can be noticed by comparing old with new Jordanian forms: the gender distinction is neutralized, and the neutralization is in favor of the masculine form. The same pattern can be found in the developments which have affected the 2nd plural pronouns, where the old intu/intin distinction has been reduced to intu. The Palestinian dialects in the data from Amman do not show gender distinction, rather an already simpliﬁed form, but in this case, the simpliﬁcation is in favor of the originally feminine form -kun/-kon. The formation of the Amman dialect is, in addition to the input varieties, inﬂuenced by regional koineization, as argued above. It would

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be sensible, therefore, to look at the forms found in Damascus and Beirut. Fortunately, we have extensive information on this feature in Behnstedt’s Sprachatlas von Syrien (1997), which shows that both cities and their surroundings have -kon (and so do all Syrian city dialects), i.e. similar to the Palestinian input dialects in Amman. In other words, none of the dialects which may have inﬂuenced Amman have -kum. To all intents and purposes, the form -kun/kon appears to be the regional urban koine. But, why has this form failed to make it in Amman? To explain the failure of the urban koine -kun/kon and the success of -kum in Amman, I shall refer to two related and widely cited phenomena, namely markedness and simpliﬁcation. The idea is that in contact situations and new dialect formation the unmarked forms may have a better chance of survival in the new dialect than the marked forms. Trudgill (2004: 117–120) refers to this principle to explain the presence of the weak vowel merger (see Wells 1982, vol. 1) as a feature in Southern Hemisphere English. The principle of markedness has also been referred to in explanations dealing with Creole genesis (Mufwene 2001, cited in Trudgill 2004). Simpliﬁcation can involve regularization of patterns, reduction, symmetry in paradigms, and generally simpler morphophonemics (see the discussion of simpliﬁcation in Trudgill 1986: 102–107). With respect to markedness, I argue that -kun/kon in the context of Jordan is marked in two ways. First, it is marked phonetically. All of the Jordanian dialects which have a feminine form to contrast with the masculine form have -kin, with a front vowel, not -kun (or -kon) with a back vowel. Second, -kun/kon is marked paradigmatically in that, as noted above, where gender neutralization occurs in Jordanian dialects, it always generalizes the masculine forms, not the feminine forms. In addition to the neutralizations mentioned earlier, this is also true in the case of neutralizations in the 3rd person plural clitics and pronouns (-hum, humme). Therefore, the choice of -kum may be seen as a way out which avoids locally marked forms and patterns. Simpliﬁcation in the choice of -kum, speciﬁcally morphophonemic regularization, is achieved by way of a more regular phonetic correspondence between the 2nd and the 3rd person clitic forms. Consider the paradigms listed on page 73. As can be seen, the Palestinian and the Ammani forms are more regular, although in different ways, than the Jordanian forms. The choice of -hum for 3rd person plural in Amman is in keeping with the Jordanian pattern, namely, where gender is neutralized, the masculine form is generalized, and the choice of -kum then is perfectly in keeping with this pattern, with the additional bonus of achieving regularity. Notice that the Palestinian forms are no less regular than the Amman forms, but they have not been successful in the formation of the new dialect, which is further evidence that it is the interplay of a number of parameters which determines the outcome of contact. 72

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2nd pl. masc 2nd pl. fem 3rd pl. masc 3rd pl. fem Jordanian Old northern dialects New koineized northern forms Old southern dialects New koineized southern forms Palestinian Amman

-ku

-kin

-hum

-hin

-ku

-ku

-hum

-hum

-ku

-kan

-hum

-han

-ku

-ku

-hum

-hum

-kun -kum

-kun -kum

-hun -hum

-hun -hum

3.7 Summary and conclusion The availability of speech samples from all three generations in Amman provides a rather unique opportunity, to observe a language system in the process of formation, and provides a testing ground for the principles of new dialect formation and language change. Although a rounded picture of the dialect will only become clear when a detailed analysis at all linguistic levels has been completed, the data available so far, some of which have been presented in this article outline the essential processes and mechanisms (see also Al-Wer 2002, 2003). The stages of the formation of the dialect of Amman can be summed up in the following way (cf. Trudgill 2004, Chapter 7). In Stage I, ﬁrst generation speakers arrived in the city as adults. They spoke the dialects which they had acquired as children in their home towns. In the context of a location where no one was native to the place, they came into contact with speakers of different dialects. To the extent that they were linguistically capable of acquiring new habits, or altering old habits, and through contact with and exposure to speakers of other dialects, their native dialects underwent rudimentary leveling, as part of a koineization process. Their children, Stage II, the ﬁrst native-born generation, were not only exposed to the dialects of their parents, but, in their formative years and unlike their parents, they were also exposed to a wide range of variations. In other words, they would have acquired a variable model. The data from this generation showed that the mixture of features from more than one dialect stock was still present in their speech as adults, and although some of the features which appear in the third generation appear in the second generation, in Stage II there is little stability, which I described as a chaotic situation, a defuse language situation in the terms of Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985). 73

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In Stage III, the second native-born generation, some aspects of the koineization process continue (e.g. reallocation). However, there is an evolution of norms, stability of usage, and reduction of the extreme variability found in Stage II. In the ﬁnal stage, focusing (see Le Page and TabouretKeller 1985, Chapters 5 and 6) starts, and involves regularization in the linguistic system itself, as well as in the behavior of individuals. A corollary to linguistic focusing is a sense of identiﬁcation with the group and with the locality. In the Amman situation, the derivation Ammaniyyiin may be considered as an emblem of such identiﬁcation.

Notes 1 It is not clear why Amman, at the time a mere village with less than 10,000 migrant inhabitants, rather than Sult, was chosen as the site of the capital city. Popular views in the country suggest that the founder of the Kingdom, King Abdullah I, until then Emir Abdullah of Hijaz, who himself was an outsider, thought it prudent to avoid well established local towns to set up a central government, as a way to minimize local objections to his project. I am not aware of any scholarly works which may have discussed this issue seriously. 2 Salibi 1993, (Chapter 6), makes a similar observation, which he uses to analyze the repercussions of various political developments. In a similar vein, Shami (1982, 137–139) points to the tribal system in Jordan, at the level of politics and power relations, to explain the weakening of the ethnic corporation among the Circassians in the country. 3 In view of this observation, it is more likely the case that those who were promoted came from the sectors of the population that believed in the tenets of the Jordanian State. 4 A further dimension to this analysis is that the Jordanian bureaucracy, by and large, was immune to the level of corruption and bribery seen in other Arab and Third World bureaucracies. Efﬁciency and seriousness in applying the law are generally perceived as traits of the traditional bureaucrat. The local Jordanian linguistic features came to connote such characteristics in an ofﬁcial. 5 Research currently in progress on the traditional dialect of Sult by Bruno Herin of Brussels University shows that /k/ affrication continues to be used, mainly by male older speakers (personal communication). 6 A notable exception to this generalization is the dialect of Aleppo which has all of these but [d] not [] (see Behnstedt 1997). 7 Except in speciﬁc words or expressions in which [g] is fossilized and not subject to variation, e.g. /mgal¡ay/ “disgusting”, which, when used as a swear word, the speakers claimed “has a stronger effect with [g] than with [™]”). 8 tante in French can be used to describe someone as being homosexual. As used in Amman, the term can imply effeminacy in a boy, without reference to sexuality. It can be also directed at girls to mean “not cool” generally. Elie Kallas has suggested that tante may have entered the speech of young Ammanis via Lebanese, which is quite plausible, considering that French borrowings in Jordanian Arabic are usually borrowed secondhand via Lebanese. The term would have undergone modiﬁcations in the range of meanings it denotes in Amman. 9 More examples and further discussion of the vocalic features presented in this chapter can be found in Al-Wer (2002).

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10 For further analyses and discussion of the emergence of fudged linguistic forms in dialect contact situation consult Trudgill (1986: 60–62). 11 The phonetic quality of Palestinian /r/ is subject to some discussion in the literature; Card (1983) argues that it is not emphatic, whereas Younes (1982) argues that it is emphatic and is de-emphaticized in certain environments. In so far as /ra:/ is concerned, this issue does not really impact on the analysis of the quality of the vowel, especially since /a:/ is changing along the same course in other environments (see Section 3.6.1.2.2). The fact is that long /a:/ in all environments moves to the front and, in some cases, upwards. 12 Labov (1994: 137) cites a counter-example to Principle I from East Lettish, where [ε:] is lowered to [a:]. 13 A more detailed analysis of this variable is in Al-Wer (2003).

References Abdel-Jawad, H. (1981) “Lexical and phonological variation in spoken Arabic in Amman”, unpublished thesis, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Al-Wer, E. (1991) “Phonological variation in the speech of women from three urban areas in Jordan”, unpublished thesis, University of Essex, UK. Al-Wer, E. (2002) “Jordanian and Palestinian dialects in contact: vowel raising in Amman”, in M. Jones and E. Esch (eds) Language Change: The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-linguistic Factors, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 63–79. Al-Wer, E. (2003) “New dialect formation: the focusing of -kum in Amman”, in D. Britain and J. Cheshire (eds) Social Dialectology: In Honour of Peter Trudgill, Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 59–67. Behnstedt, P. (1997) Sprachatlas von Syrien, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Britain, D. (1991) “Dialect and space: a geolinguistic study of speech variable in the Fens”, unpublished thesis, University of Essex, UK. Britain, D. and Trudgill, P. (2005) “New dialect formation and contact-induced reallocation: three case studies from the Fens”, International Journal of English Studies 5 (1): 183–209. Cantineau, J. (1960) Cours de phonétique arabe, translated by S. AlQarmaadi (1966), Tunis: Centre of Social and Economic Research and Studies. Card, E. (1983) “A phonetic and phonological study of Arabic emphasis”, unpublished thesis, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. Cleveland, R. (1963) “A classiﬁcation of the Arabic dialects of Jordan”, Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research 167: 56–63. Dawood, G. (1994) “As-Sult wa jiwariha khilal al-fatra 1864–1921 [Sult and its neighborhood during 1864–1921]”, unpublished thesis, University of Jordan, Amman. Eckert, P. (2000) Linguistic Variation as Social Practice, Oxford: Blackwell. Gordon, E., Campbell, L., Hay, J., Maclagan, M., Sudbury, A. and Trudgill, P. (2004) New Zealand English: Its Origins and Evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerswill, P. (1994) Dialects Converging: Rural Speech in Urban Norway, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kerswill, P. and Williams, A. (2000) “Creating a new town koine: children and language change in Milton Keynes”, Language in Society 29: 65–115.

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Labov, W. (1994) Principles of Linguistic Change: Internal Factors, Oxford: Blackwell. Le Page, R. and Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985) Acts of Identity: Creole-based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milroy, Lesley (1980) Language and Social Networks, Oxford: Blackwell. Palva, H. (1970) “Balgawi Arabic: texts from 3afey”, Studia Orientalia XLIII: 1, 3–26. Palva, H. (1989) “Linguistic sketch of the Arabic dialect of El-Karak”, in R. Wexler, A. Borg and S. Somekh (eds) Studia Linguistica et Orientalia Memoriae Haim Blanc Dedicata, Helsinki: Studia Orientalia, pp. 225–251. Palva, H. (1994) “Bedouin and Sedentary elements in the dialect of Es-Salt: diachronic notes on the sociolinguistic development”, in D. Caubet and M. Vanhove (eds) Actes des Premières journées internationales de dialectologie arabe de Paris, Paris: INALCO, pp. 459–469. Palva, H. (2003) “Negation in the dialect of Es-Salt, Jordan”, in M. Haak, R. de Jong and K. Versteegh (eds) Approaches to Arabic Dialects, Leiden: Brill, pp. 221– 226. Salibi, K. (1993) The Modern History of Jordan, London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Shami, S. (1982) “Ethnicity and leadership: the Circassians in Jordan”, unpublished thesis, University of California, Berkeley, USA. Trudgill, P. (1986) Dialects in Contact, Oxford: Blackwell. Trudgill, P. (2004) New Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wells, J. (1982) Accents of English (Volume 1), Newcastle: Athenaeum Press. Younes, M. (1982) “Problems in the segmental phonology of Palestinian Arabic”, unpublished thesis, University of Texas, Austin, USA.

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4 URBANIZATION AND DIALECT CHANGE The Arabic dialect of Tripoli (Libya) Christophe Pereira

4.1 Introduction In this chapter I shall give an account of the historical and contemporary development of Tripolitan Arabic (TA), describing the historical, sociological and urban contexts which have had an inﬂuence. I shall begin by recapping the history of the arabization of Libya from the seventh to eleventh centuries, together with the main historical events of the twentieth century which led to population movements within Libya, and the urbanization of the city of Tripoli itself. I shall then describe some of the characteristics of TA, and compare them with features of pre-Hilalian and Bedouin vernaculars. Finally I shall examine certain questions regarding the nature and origins of TA. The present linguistic description is based on corpora compiled in Tripoli in November 2002 and February 2005, together with a corpus recorded with two 25 year old Tripolitans in Genoa, Italy in September 2003. I also use various materials taken from the published literature on Libyan Arabic.1 Relatively little information is available regarding the linguistic situation in the city of Tripoli. This makes it difﬁcult to provide a sociolinguistic analysis that takes into account variations relating to gender, age, social origin, etc. I have therefore adopted an historical urban dialectology approach, using the categories and dialectal typologies that have been developed to describe the dialectal situation of the Maghreb. I shall attempt to analyze the extent to which TA does or does not match these categories. The categories are based on the distinction between pre-Hilalian and Hilalian dialects (Caubet 2001; P. Marçais 1957; W. Marçais 1950). These terms are used in an historical perspective, based on the classiﬁcations set up by William and Philippe Marçais, with the deﬁnitions they provided, following Ibn Khaldoun. The two dialect groups can be distinguished in the Maghreb by certain linguistic features (Caubet 2001). However the distinction 77

CHRISTOPHE PEREIRA

between pre-Hilalian and Bedouin dialects is based on an historical demarcation which has evolved signiﬁcantly with time, with population movements and inter-mingling, often giving rise to hybrid dialects. The description of TA outlined in this chapter uses isogloss lists in an attempt to determine the extent of hybridization.

4.2 The history and arabization of Libya Like all the countries of the Maghreb, both before and since the arrival of the Arabs, Libya has seen a great diversity of populations, especially in its urban centers. Before the arrival of the Arabs in the seventh century the region of present day Libya was populated, successively or simultaneously, by the Libycs,2 Jews, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals and Byzantines. Berber dialects were not completely obliterated by these successive waves of migration. They still form to this day a number of pockets of resistance.3 The Phoenicians established a coastal empire in Tripolitania based on Punic Carthage, which lasted more than six centuries (from the eighth to the second century bc); they spoke Punic, the ﬁrst Semitic language to become established in North Africa. It was spoken in Tripolitania long after the Roman conquest until the second century ad. The Phoenician trading post of Wy’t, on which Tripoli was built, was founded at this time. The Greeks settled in Eastern Libya as early as the seventh century bc, and in 631 founded Cyrenia, after which the eastern region of present day Libya was to be named (Cyrenaica, or Barqa in Arabic). Eastern Libya remained an active center of Hellenism for more than a thousand years. The Romans destroyed Carthage in 146 bc, and shortly after settled in Libya, where they remained until the ﬁfth century ad. They of course brought Latin, but this remained solely a language of administration, and failed to replace either Berber and Greek in Cyrenaica, or Punic in Tripolitania. The Phoenician trading post of Wy’t was to become the Roman town of Oea. The Vandals, already settled in Spain, invaded North Africa in 430, took Carthage in 439 and went on to occupy Tripolitania. The Byzantines were present in Libya from 535 until the arrival of the Arabs. The Vandal and Byzantine occupations were short lived and did not eliminate the pre-existing linguistic and religious inﬂuences. The Phoenicians set up three trading posts in Tripolitania – Sabratha, Oea (Wy’t) and Leptis Magna. Throughout the Punic and Roman periods the coastal towns of Tripolitania were commercially prosperous. The word Tripoli itself derives from these three towns which joined together to form a state (Greek tripolis: tri three, tri-, and polis town). At the time of the Arab invasion Oea was already a large town. The Arabs settled there and the present day city of Tripoli developed on this site (Azema 2000; Laﬁ 2002; Mantran 1975). The arabization of the Maghreb, resulting from the Muslim conquest which swept in from the East, took place in two stages. The ﬁrst conquest, 78

Map 4.1 Tripoli (Libya)

URBANIZATION AND DIALECT CHANGE

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in the seventh century, did not lead to a comprehensive arabization of Libya, nor of the other North African countries, which for the most part remained Berber-speaking (Mantran 1975; W. Marçais 1961; Rossi 1954, 1968). Tripoli was taken in 645 by ¡Amr ’Ibn al-¡fx, but it was only in 696–697 with the military expedition led by massan al-Ghassani that the Eastern Arabs settled permanently in Libya. This ﬁrst seventh century conquest was not followed by the systematic settlement of the country by the conquerors. They were relatively few in number and occupied only the towns and points of strategic importance. The rural and mountainous areas were left to the Berber populations until the middle of the eleventh century. The Arabic dialects of the regions that were the ﬁrst to be invaded and arabized in the seventh century are thought to have been pre-Hilalian dialects. The systematic and widespread arabization of North Africa occurred in the eleventh century, with the second conquest, when Bedouin tribes settled the area. In 1050–51 the Bane Hilal, the Bane Sulaym and the Ma¡qil reached Cyrenaica. While the Bane Sulaym remained there, the Bane Hilal continued their migration westward. In Tripolitania the Bane Zughba tribe, (a branch of the Bane Hilal) occupied the whole region stretching from Tripoli to Gabès, while the Bane Dabbab (who were another branch of the Bane Hilal) settled the eastern region. In the twelfth century, both arabization and islamization made considerable progress across the plains and desert regions. Pre-Hilalian Arabic survived in urban areas, but the Bedouin inﬂuence grew progressively stronger. Arab settlement was densest in the coastal areas and part of the Tripolitanian hinterland, a process which intensiﬁed during the Hafsidic period, after 1230. Cyrenaica, which was attached to Egypt at this time, was populated mainly by nomadic Arabs. Fezzan, with several prosperous towns, was an independent state, and a transit point for the caravan trade. The Arabic dialects spoken in these regions, occupied and arabized from the eleventh or twelfth century, are thought to have been Bedouin dialects. The arabization of the city of Tripoli thus began in the seventh century (643–645) with the arrival of the ﬁrst Arab conquerors. It is assumed that from this time a pre-Hilalian Arabic dialect became well implanted and was to develop. It would have undergone a process of koineization following the arrival of migrants of rural/Bedouin origin, but it would appear that from the end of the nineteenth century it was spoken only by the Jewish population (see below).

4.3 Population movements and the urbanization of the Tripolitanian littoral The urban development of the Tripolitanian region was the result of population movements which began during the period of Ottoman rule, and increased throughout the twentieth century. Large scale movements towards 80

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Tripoli began with the second period of Ottoman domination in 17114 and continued until the arrival of the Italians in 1911. The Ottomans instigated massive displacements of rural and Bedouin populations in the regions under their control (Burgat and Laronde 2000; P. Marçais 1957; Martel 1991). Tripoli and Tripolitania were the regions of Libya most affected by the Ottoman occupation. The Italians and the British also caused population displacements in Tripolitania between 1930 and 1935, and during World War Two (Bessis 1986; Souriau 1975). At the end of World War Two there was a large inﬂux of young people from rural areas into Tripoli, but it was mostly after Libyan independence in 1951 and the discovery and development of oil reserves in 1955 that very large scale population movements and signiﬁcant demographic changes were seen. The oil revolution very quickly transformed the social situation. It led to the progressive disappearance of the nomadic way of life, a huge rural exodus, inter-urban migrations into Tripoli and Benghazi, the very rapid urbanization of these two cities and the return of many Libyans who had migrated to neighboring countries, and who now chose to settle in Tripoli (Bessis 1986; Djaziri 1996; Martin 1975). Whereas at independence Libya was a country with a rural economy and a large nomadic population, it is now, at the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, one of the most highly urbanized countries of the Arab world, and the most highly urbanized country in Africa. In 1954, Libya had 288,000 nomads, and 273,400 town dwellers out of a total population of 1,089,000. The town dwellers represented 25.1 percent of the population and were spread across a mere ten towns. Today the population totals six million, of which 85.8 percent are town dwellers, living in a hundred towns. Between 1964 and 1995 the urban population grew four fold and the population of Tripoli as a whole increased by 450 percent (Fontaine 2004). In addition to internal migrations, there has been a signiﬁcant immigrant inﬂow. Due to a shortage of local labor, many foreign workers have moved to Libya not only from the neighboring countries of Tunisia and Egypt, but also from the Middle East – Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Between 1954 and 1973, 187,000 foreigners entered Libya, about half settling in Tripoli and Benghazi. The country from which came the highest numbers of immigrants was Egypt, and it is reasonable to suppose that this would inﬂuence the dialects spoken in Libya, especially in the east, where Egyptian immigration was most concentrated. In tandem with these sociohistorical factors which affected the development of TA, we must consider the linguistic and educational policies in force after 1969, which amounted to a strict and uncompromising arabization (Quitout 2004: 5). Classical Arabic was considered the mainstay of ArabMuslim culture and became the sole ofﬁcial language. This involved a rearabization of public life, the work place and education, but more importantly there was a strong literacy policy, for the government of the day wanted not 81

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only to see the arabization of the elite but of the masses as well. It is estimated that in 1973, 32 percent of men and 73 percent of women over 10 years of age were illiterate (Souriau 1986). Libya is currently said to be the country with the lowest illiteracy rate in the Maghreb. In 1995, 76.2 percent of the population (63 percent of women and 87.9 percent of men) was reported to be literate (Ham 2002). At the same time, due to a shortage of teachers, Libya had to recruit foreigners to teach Arabic, many of these coming from other Arab countries, especially Egypt. There are more foreign teachers than Libyan teachers.5 There again it must be supposed that this had an effect on the speech of the Libyan pupils and students taught by these foreign teachers.

4.4 Tripoli from a sociohistorical, demographic and linguistic perspective The profound transformation of the TA dialect caused by these different demographic movements gives rise to a number of important questions. Can it be said that an urban Bedouin dialect emerged in Tripoli as a result of koineization, as happened in other towns of the Maghreb, following the massive rural exodus and the settlement of peasants in the city alongside nomads adopting a sedentary life style (Messaoudi 2003; Miller 2004)? To what extent did Jews and Christians speak different dialects? Did the Jews in Tripoli speak a pre-Hilalian dialect similar to the ancient language of Tripoli, as is indicated in Judeo-Arabic texts?6 And did Muslims also speak a pre-Hilalian dialect, and did they perhaps gradually adopt a koineized Bedouin dialect? Records dating back to the seventeenth century suggest that Tripoli was a cosmopolitan city with a relatively large Jewish community from the Ottoman period onwards, with a territorial division of its different communities which lasted until the beginning of the twentieth century. In the seventeenth century the city had between 15,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, comprising Arabs, Turks, Koulouglis, Jews, Christians (many of them slaves), Janissaries, renegades (Christians converted to Islam) and Arnauts (Albanian Muslims) (cf. Laﬁ 2002). The Jewish community has been relatively well studied and we know it represented a signiﬁcant proportion of the population of Tripoli in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Agostini 1954; Bessis 1986; Laﬁ 2002; Simon 1992). Jews were present in Libya from the end of the third century bc, having come there from Egypt and Palestine. Many Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsular settled in Libya throughout the fourteenth, ﬁfteenth and sixteenth centuries. When Tripoli was occupied by the Ottomans in 1551 there were very few urban Jews in Libya, but the following years saw a gradual Jewish migration from inland areas of Tripolitania to the coastal towns. Between 1906 and 1954 the majority of the Jewish population in Libya lived in Tripoli.7 82

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At the beginning of the twentieth century the population of Tripoli was divided into Muslim districts, }Ema, and Jewish districts, }Ara, (Laﬁ 2002). The Muslims were in the majority and occupied two thirds of the town intra muros, in four districts: }Emat-al-baladCya (1,740 inhabitants), }Emat-γaryAn (3,512 inhabitants), kEKat-as-saffAr (2,277 inhabitants) and bAb-al-b}ar (2,262 inhabitants). The }Emat-γaryAn, which was the most populous district of the Medina, was named after its inhabitants, who had originated in Gharian, a small town at the foot of the Djebel Nefoussa about one hundred kilometers south of Tripoli. It is very probable that the arrival en masse in the mid1960s of these people, with their own particular dialect, would have had an inﬂuence on the Arabic spoken in the Tripolitan Medina. No ancient descriptions of TA exist to conﬁrm that there was ever a pre-Hilalian dialect common to the whole population of the city. The oldest published work is that of Hans Stumme (Stumme 1894, 1898), who at the end of the nineteenth century described a Bedouin dialect with some preHilalian features, which indicate that it was a koine. These features included the absence of interdentals, the expression of the possessive relationship analytically through the particle mtA∞, the use of the structure zDz “two” + noun in the plural when counting objects, and various lexical items from pre-Hilalian dialects. Various writers (Cohen 1930; Goldberg 1978; Saada 1984) have provided us with information on the language spoken by the Jewish community of Tripoli, and it seems that this certainly was a pre-Hilalian dialect. Some writers believe that a pre-Hilalian Jewish dialect co-existed in Tripoli with a Muslim Bedouin dialect, but it is difﬁcult to determine at what point this Muslim dialect, the result of a process of koineization, emerged.

4.5 The Tripolitan dialect of Arabic In examining the recent development of the Tripolitan dialect I compared my ﬁeld data with earlier work by Stumme 1898, Cesàro 1939, Grifﬁni 1913 and Trombetti 1912, as well as my own (Pereira 2003, 2004, 2006, forthcoming). According to these authors, the TA at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries was an historically hybrid dialect, combining at all levels Bedouin type features with Hilalian type features. My more recent research conﬁrms that present day TA is more of a Bedouin type dialect. Lexically, the language of the earlier period borrowed much more from Turkish and Italian, the languages of administration, whereas nowadays many such items have been replaced. Borrowings are now made from Standard Arabic, or, depending on the subject matter involved, from English or Egyptian Arabic. Certain Bedouin features seemed to have been reinforced, such as the use of the duel number for nouns and of the synthetic possessive construction. Phonetically, labio-velarization has disappeared from TA (Pereira 2003). Furthermore, with regard to word 83

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internal combinations or sequences of sibilants, certain sequences now occur in modern TA while there are fewer cases of assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis than in the earlier period. In the following sections I shall present a number of features of TA, emphasizing this co-existence of Bedouin and pre-Hilalian features. As a basis for this comparative research I have used Judeo-Arabic texts dealing with a pre-Hilalian dialect taken from the work of Mordekhai Cohen (1930) and the study of Sumikazu Yoda (2005). I shall also compare TA with the Bedouin dialects of Fezzan (Caubet 2004; P. Marçais 2001) and the urban dialects of Benghazi (Owens 1983, 1984; Panetta 1943). 4.5.1 Phonetics As it is in other Arabic dialects in Libya, whether they be urban or rural, the *q is realized as a voiced occlusive [g]: yug∞od “he remains”, ya}r¢g “he burns”, in¢gg¢z “he jumps”, y¢gd¢r “he can”, etc. In the dialect spoken by the Tripolitan Jewish community8 *q was realized as a voiceless occlusive [q]: qmê}a “a grain of wheat”, l-eqrâb “close friends, neighbors”, qamer “moon”, sûq “marché”, fy-ççandûq “in the box”, §aqrab “scorpion”, sûq “market”, qâl “he said”, }álqa “thimble” (Cohen 1930) and q¢ddam “in front of”, q¢ddaK “how much”, áq¢XX “it was cut”, Ü¢||¢yy¢q “severe, rigid” (Yoda 2005: 58). The pronunciation [q] for *q is also found in certain TA words borrowed from Standard Arabic, especially in religious and legal terminology, such as qur§An “Koran”, YarCqa “manner, religious brotherhood”, quYur “diameter”, qas| “goal, aim”, etc. There are moreover certain words which exhibit a frequent alternation between [g] and [q]. All researchers have noted the following examples, from Tripolitania, Fezzan or Cyrenaica: aqAreb and agAreb “parents”, q0|i and g0|i “judge”. The [q] ~ [g] alternation is a stylistic choice, reﬂecting the register adopted; it is deﬁnitely not a remnant of the pre-Hilalian dialect. TA shows no sign of Middle Eastern inﬂuence and *q is never pronounced as a laryngeal occlusive [™]. Unlike in many Bedouin type dialects, interdental sibilants do not occur in TA. They fuse with dental occlusives: *ªlaªa > tlAta “three, *ohəb > dh¢b “gold”, *xoa > xde “he took”. There is just one voiced emphatic [\]: *mrc\ > mrC| “sick”, *2-h-r > |+h+r “midday”. The loss of interdental sibilants and their fusion with dental occlusives also occurred in pre-Hilalian dialects. Taine-Cheikh (1998: 30) considers that in Tripoli their disappearance is the sole remaining feature of this urban dialect (Yoda 2005: 70). The absence of interdentals would appear to be an urban feature still found today in western Libya. Caubet (2004: 71), writing about Fezzan, says that it is an example of divergence between sedentary or urban and nomadic vernaculars; interdentals do not occur in 84

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“sedentary” texts. Bedouin texts on the other hand do contain interdentals, with a t/• – d/O opposition, and a single emphatic 1. With regard to Cyrenaica, Panetta (1943) noted that in the Benghazi dialect the interdental sibilants *ª and *o are replaced by the plosives [t] and [d] and that the emphatic is [\], while Owens, writing in the 1980s noted the presence of interdentals (p. 7): θi’gi:l “heavy”, ik’θir “it increased” . . . ’Oe:l “tail”, ’yikOib “he lies” and (p. 8) ’1ayyig “narrow”, ’yu1rub “he hits”. The voiceless dental occlusive t seems to have been realized as an invariable [t] in TA: t¢s∞a “nine”, rBt “I saw”. However, the palatalization of *t to [n], realized as a voiceless dental africative with hissing offset, was observed at the beginning of the century in the Jewish dialect (Cesaro 1939; Goldberg 1983; P. Marçais 1977; Saada 1984; Yoda 2005). This has since disappeared and is now absent from the dialects spoken in Cyrenaica (Owens 1983; Panetta 1943) and in Fezzan (Caubet 2004). The phonemes /b/ and /d/ are unlike the three other long vowels /a/, /c/ and /e/, as they represent the reduction of the historical diphthongs ay and aw: zBt (< *zayt) “oil”, LBb (< *Layb) “pocket”, bBn (< *bayn) “between”, yDm (< *yawm) “day”, rDKen (< *rawKen) “window”, dDg (< *dawg) “taste”. The reduction of the diphthongs ay and aw to B and D respectively is a feature which is also found in certain nomadic vernaculars of North Africa. Their reduction to C and E, as found in pre-Hilalian dialects, does not occur, such as }EK “house”, biN “room” (Yoda 2005: 92). In Fezzan, (Caubet 2004: 72; P. Marçais 1977: 17), there is said to be free variation between the diphthongs Sw, Qy and complete reduction to D, B; the former often being the choice of female speakers. There again however, the consonantal environment can play a role in favor of the diphthongs: XSwm “fast” (rather than XDm), XQyf “summer” (rather than XBf ). In Benghazi (Owens 1983: 10; Panetta 1943: 17), following the TA model, the diphthongs *aw and *ay are reduced to D and B. To sum up, Bedouin and pre-Hilalian phonetic features alternate in TA, but Bedouin features predominate. Thus the [g] realization of qAf and the behavior of diphthongs which occur in this dialect are peculiar to Bedouin speech patterns, while the only pre-Hilalian feature is the absence of interdentals; the [q] realization of qAf being speciﬁc to the ancient Jewish dialect. 4.5.2 Morphology Like Bedouin type dialects, TA makes a gender distinction in the second person singular of the verb inﬂection for preﬁxal and sufﬁxal conjugations and the imperative and for the inﬂections of independent pronouns: • •

klBt (masc.) / klBti (fem.) “you ate” tLCb (masc.) / tLCbi (fem.) “you bring” 85

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• •

dCr (masc.) / dCri (fem.) “do” anta (masc.) / enti (fem.) “you”

Conversely, some pre-Hilalian dialects make this second person singular gender distinction neither for the verb nor for pronouns. Turning to Fezzan and Cyrenaica, there is a gender distinction for both second and third persons, singular and plural, in both preﬁxal and sufﬁxal verbal inﬂections, and in the imperative, in independent pronoun inﬂexions, but also for sufﬁxal pronouns. (For Fezzan see the examples in Caubet 2004: 79–84; for Cyrenaica see Panetta 1943: 185–186 and also Owens 1984: pp. 91–92 (pronouns) and pp. 108 ff for the conjugations). With regard to the Jewish vernacular, there is a gender distinction: nNa and nNi “you” (Yoda 2005: 115), kN¢bN and kN¢bNi “tu as écrit” (Yoda 2005: 146), N¢bda and N¢bday “you begin” (Yoda 2005: 148), N∞¢ll¢m and N∞¢llmi “learn” (Yoda 2005: 151). As to pronominal morphology, the 3rd person masculine singular personal pronoun sufﬁx is usually -a or -¢h with a pausal form and never -u (unlike the pre-Hilalian dialects): e.g. ¢l-xAl ﬁ xBW lBn yukbuW l-a wuld-uxt-¢h “the uncle is ﬁne until his nephew has grown up”; -a is lengthened when a sufﬁx is added, e.g. mA-gAl l-A-K “he did not tell him”. In the Jewish vernacular the pronoun is –u after consonants and –h after vowels, as in pre-Hilalian dialects: qElu l-émmu ta‘mél l-u qofYânu (Cohen 1930: 110) “tell his mother to make his kaftan”, eK sâbb el-,âli râ}, mâ LAbûh (Cohen 1930: 172) “the dear child has got lost; they have not brought him back” and |¢W{ú “they beat him” (Yoda 2005: 115–118). The verb conjugation is not of the pre-Hilalian dialect type. In defective verbs there is no reconstruction of the paradigm, with forms of the type t¢lqAy, y¢bdAw, KrAw, mKAt, in which the long vowel A appears. In the preﬁxal conjugation the following forms occur: telgi “you ﬁnd (fem)”; neKru “we buy”; telgu “you ﬁnd (masc. and fem.)”; yebdu they begin (masc. and fem.)”. In the sufﬁxal conjugation is found Kru “they bought (masc. and fem.)”; in the third person feminine singular, TA has the form C1C2¢t found in Bedouin vernaculars: mK¢t “she left”, lg¢t “she found”, ns¢t “she forgot”. In the pre-Hilalian Jewish dialect however, these forms occur with long vowels: en-nâs isemmCûk “people call you” (Cohen 1930: 36 and Yoda 2005: 174). The same is true for Cyrenaica (cf. Panetta 1943: 227). In Owens and in Fezzan on the other hand, diphthongized forms are found, such as ’nalgaw “we ﬁnd” or ’algay “ﬁnd (feminine singular imperative)” (Owens 1984: 114) and t(bdPy “you begin (fem.)”, n(bdPw “we begin”, t(bdPw “you begin (masc.)” and y(bdPw “they begin” (Caubet 2004: 78). In present day TA, as in all the Arabic dialects found in Libya, the diminutive in the triliterals is formed on the pattern C1C2BC3(a): ∞wBla “little family”, }wBK “little house”, rwBs “little head”, l}BmAt “pieces of meat”. The pattern C1C2BC3 peculiar to certain Bedouin dialects stands in opposition to 86

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the pattern C1C2¢yy¢C3 found in pre-Hilalian dialects: u-mlâ-lu Lwîjibu “and ﬁll his little pocket” (Cohen 1930: 138) and Xif¢r “small birds” (Yoda 2005: 245). Quadriliterals formed on the pattern C1vC2C3AC4 (with a long vowel between the 3rd and 4th root consonants) form their diminutive on the pattern C1C2BC3CC4 (with a long c between C3 and C4): m¢ftA} “key” > mfBtC} “little keys”, s¢rwAl “trousers”> srBwCl “short trousers”, K¢bbAk “window grid” > KbBbCk “little window grid”, s¢ndEg “box” > snBdCg “little box” (Caubet 2004: 86; Panetta 1943: 89; Owens 1983: 76). In this respect TA is closer to Bedouin dialects as argued by William Marçais (1950): “certain features indicate an opposition between the whole Bedouin group and the ‘sedentary’ group; the pre-Hilalian f∞îlel contrasts with a Bedouin paradigm f∞êlîl.” Quadriliterals formed on the same pattern C1vC2C3AC4, form their plural on the pattern C1C2AC3CC4 (with a long c between C3 and C4). Examples: m¢ftA} “key” > mfAtC} “keys”, muXm0r “nail” > mXAmCr “nails”, K¢bbAk “window grid”, KbAbCk “window grids”. However in Grifﬁni’s lexicon published in 19139, certain entries propose plurals and diminutives for quadriliterals formed on the pattern C1vC2C3AC4 and on the pre-Hilalian patterns C1C2AC3¢C4 and C1C2BC3¢C4. Cohen (1930: 86), offers the example kmAm¢n “cumin” and Yoda offers fWAW¢L “coqs”, X{a{¢Y “chaussures” (Yoda 2005: 241). In Fezzan, we ﬁnd the two patterns CvCACCC and CvCAC¢C, used in both nomadic and sedentary vernaculars, where this had previously been a distinctive difference between them (cf. Caubet 2004: 86). The same is true for Cyrenaica (cf. Panetta 1943: 73–75; Owens 1983: 66–67). Color adjectives formed on the pattern aC1C2vC3 form their diminutives on the pattern iC1CC2vC3. This is restricted to color names and to Bedouin type dialects, with an initial i vowel. Examples: a}maW “red” > i}CmaW, azrag “blue” > izCrag, ax|¢W “green” > ixC|+r, ak}al “black” > ikC}al. For color adjectives in Fezzan, cf. Caubet 2004: 87 and, for Cyrenaica, Panetta 1943: 108–109; Owens 1983: 57–58; though they do not deal with the diminutives of these adjectives. Hans Stumme (1898: 61) and Antonio Cesàro (1939: 106) describe the duel as limited to nouns expressing notions envisaged as one element of a pair. Names of units of measure and of time take the duel, as do those for double body parts. The duel is formed by sufﬁxing –Bn to nouns. Examples: name of the mother-father pair: wAldBn; units of time: dgCgtBn “two minutes”, yDmBn “two days”, KahrBn “two months”, sA∞tBn “two hours”, ∞AmBn “two years”, lBltBn “two nights”; units of measure: LdEltBn (LdEla, surface area measure, plot), kBltBn (volume measure for grain or a liquid), drA∞Bn “two cubits”, mCtBn “two hundred”, AlfBn “two thousand”; double body parts: wudnBn “two ears”, CdBn “(two) hands”, drA∞Bn “two arms”, kur∞Bn “(two) legs”, r¢LlBn “(two) feet”, ketfBn “two shoulders”. For some double body parts, the duel serves (also) as a plural; others have an internal plural. 87

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Examples: wudnBn “two ears” but udAn “ears”, drA∞Bn “two arms” but der∞An “arms”, ketfBn “two shoulders” but ktAf “shoulders”. However, during my last visit to Tripoli, in February 2005, I observed that any noun can take a duel agreement: Krubt gahwutBn “I drank two coffees”, Kba}t sCyAWtBn “I saw two cars”: fta} bAbBn “he opened two doors”, gW¢t ktAbBn “she read two books”. It does not depend on the social class of the speaker, nor the speech register. In Tripoli, when the duel is not used, it is replaced by the numeral zDz “two” followed by a plural noun. Examples: zDz }EtAt “two ﬁshes”, zDz bCbAn “two doors”, zDz knAsa “two brooms” (cf. also, for Cyrenaica, Panetta 1943: 82–85; Owens 1983: 59). In Fezzan, the sufﬁx is -ãn, but it is not often used in texts; it is more frequent with names of units of measure and double body parts (Caubet 2004: 87). Yoda highlights that duel is limited to nouns expressing units of measure and of time and to say 200 and 2000 (Yoda 2005: 204). In TA, morphology alternates Bedouin and pre-Hilalian features, with a preponderance of the former. Features common to Bedouin type dialects include the treatment of the second person singular, defective verbs and diminutives. The frozen use of the duel is more a pre-Hilalian feature but the duel is currently tending to spread in Tripoli.

4.5.3 Syntax In TA the indeﬁnite is marked by the article Ø: bCr “a well”, WAL¢l “a man”, LWAna “a frog”, }ALa “a thing”, muKkila “a problem”, kWAsi “chairs”, m+wA|C∞ “subjects”. An indeﬁnite article wA}d-¢l- has not developed in this dialect, such as occurs in pre-Hilalian dialects in Morocco and Algeria (for dialects of Cyrenaica cf. Panetta 1943: 53; Owens 1983: 52). Sumikazu Yoda does not treat the indeﬁnite article in his study, but we can read }uK kbCra “a big house” (p. 197). The possessive relationship is expressed by coexisting structures of a more Bedouin type (a synthetic construction) and pre-Hilalian type analytic structures. This coexistence is observed in all speakers, whatever their social origin. The synthetic possessive construction occurs quite frequently in TA. Its use does not seem to be restricted to groups of naturally associated notions, to kinship expressions and body parts. Examples: Ax¢r-¢n-nhAW “the end of the day”, taYyCb-¢l-l}am “the cooking of the meat”, l}am-l¢-xrEf “lamb meat”, }DK-L¢dd-i “my grandfather’s house”, YunL ¢rt-¢l-marga and ma∞En-¢l-marga “the sauce boat”, YarCq¢t-mak¢lt-ah “the way of eating”, Low¢l-lamma “the atmosphere of the meeting”. With sufﬁxal pronouns: lDn-ah “its colour”, CdB-ya “my hands”, YbCxt-ah “its sauce”, xAl-i and ∞amm-i “my uncle”, baYn-¢k “your belly”, Low-na “our atmosphere”. 88

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TA also uses the analytic construction as a possession marker. The particle used in Tripoli is mtAε. Examples: ¢l-marga mtA∞-ah / ¢Y-YbCxa mtA∞-ah “its sauce”, ¢l-Low mtA∞ mak¢lt-¢l-bAzCn “the atmosphere of the meal”, l a∞|Am mtA∞-ah “his bones”, ¢l-wAL ¢b ¢r-ra’isCya mtA∞ }ne “our main meal” – in this latter example it should be noted that the particle mtA∞ is followed not by the ﬁrst person plural sufﬁxal pronoun –na, but by the ﬁrst person plural independent personal pronoun }ne (for Fezzan cf. Caubet 2004: 88; and, for Cyrenaica, Panetta 1943: 128–133; Owens 1983: 82). In the speech of the Jews, the particle used is nNa, (Yoda 2005: 261). In TA, syntax, like the morphology and the phonetics, alternates Bedouin and pre-Hilalian features. The use of the article Ø to mark indeﬁniteness is a Bedouin feature, whereas the use of the analytic construction to express the possessive relationship is pre-Hilalian.

4.5.4 Lexis TA lexis reﬂects various strata and borrowings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, pre-Hilalian and Bedouin items alternated, as shown in the writings of Stumme (1894, 1898), Cesàro (1939, 1954) and Grifﬁni (1913)10 and in the table below. Changes of lexis are to be noted when comparing the dialect described by the aforementioned writers and that of the present day. Tripolitans used lexical items from Bedouin type vernaculars; other items are not used by my Libyan informants,11 with the exception of the verb Wa “he saw”, used only in the ﬁrst and second persons of the sufﬁxal conjugation.

Lexical items

Present day TA

TA as described by Stumme, Grifﬁni and Cesàro

To do To enter To want, desire To see, look at To return, come back To put Hand

dAr, idCr xaKK, ixuKK ba, ye{{i Wa ~ Kba}, yeKba} wålla, iwulli dAr, idCr Cd

∞mel, ya∞mel ~ dAr, idCr dxal, yudxul ~ xaKK, ixuKK }abb, i}ubb ~ ba, ye{{i Wa ~ Kba}, yeKba} rLa∞, yerLa∞ ~ wålla, iwulli }åYY, i}+YY ~ dAr, idCr yedd ~ Cd

Figure 4.1 Lexical evolution of TA

Pre-Hilalian items occur in Judeo-Arabic texts (Cohen 1930): n}abb mîat LCnni u Linnîa “I want one hundred geniuses and one hundred fairies” (voglio cento genî e cento fate); n}abb mîat Linn u-Linn câçi “I want one hundred geniuses and one hundred rebellious geniuses” (voglio cento genî u cento genî ribelli); ,êr mektûbi dLCbû-hû-li bîn jiddîja “I only want that you lead me 89

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to my predestined spouse” (voglio solo che mi conduciate dinanzi lo sposo predestinato); where n}abb has the meaning “I want” and jidd means “hand”, which are pre-Hilalian items (cf. Yoda 2005, “Glossary”: 313–347). TA does not appear to have been inﬂuenced by Berber but in contemporary TA, we ﬁnd those two words that are from Berber origin: smCtri and sfCngri with the meaning “very cold weather”, are very commonly used. The Ottoman presence in Libya (1551 to 1911) however, and the Italian occupation (1911 to 1951) did effect Libyan dialects, especially urban ones. In the Arabic vernacular of Tripoli are to be found many Turkish (Türkmen 1988) and Italian (Abdu 1988) borrowings. These borrowings, found particularly in the administrative and military domains, are now used less and less, being replaced by Arabic items. Given the political importance attached to arabization and re-arabization in the public sphere, the work place and in education, Turkish and Italian items are replaced by Standard Arabic and there are also many borrowings from Standard Arabic in the Arabic dialect of Tripoli. Nonetheless, numerous borrowings from Turkish and Italian do still occur in the names of tools and utensils, clothing and the culinary ﬁeld: kAKCk “spoon” (< kawık), KCKa “bottle” (< wiwe), KanYa “bag, suitcase” (< çanta), kubri “bridge” (< köprü); bAK (< baw) is a mark of respect or superior status, as in bAK-muhandis “senior engineer”, sYa “master, specialist” (< usta), bAmya “okra” (< bamya), are examples of Turkish borrowings; marKabBdi “pavement” (< marciapiede), kaNafCti “screwdriver” (< cacciavite), UibDto “jacket” (< giubotto), kanNBlo “iron gate” (< cancello), simAforo “trafﬁc lights” (< semaforo), Yasa “glass” (< tazza), are Italian borrowings frequently used by my Tripolitan informants. In addition the majority of terms used in the ﬁeld of motor mechanics are borrowed from Italian: dDmAni “steering wheel” (< due mani), stArsu “steering wheel” (< sterzo), frBno “brake” (< freno), frBnDmAno “hand brake” (< freno a mano) together with many names of ﬁsh, such as12: sardCna “sardine” (< sardina), anKEga “anchovy” (< acciuga), lEbbu “sea bass” (< lupo), sAn byCtro “John Dory” (< San Pietro), angwCla “eel” (< anguilla) and mArlEtsu “cod” (< merluzzo). There are also items of Middle Eastern origin (Egyptian Arabic) to be found in TA, but they have been lexicalized and so do not appear as borrowings, for example kwayy¢s “good”, ﬁ “there is/are”, b¢ss “only”, byithayyA l-i “in my opinion”, bardo “also”, which appear in my corpus. These items do not appear in older descriptions. They are very common today in Tripoli. For “there is”, Stumme et al. mention tamma (still found in Tunisia in the form of [ªamma] and which Tripolitan Jews pronounced [namma]), but this item no longer occurs in Tripoli, where only ﬁ occurs. kwayy¢s occurs as frequently as bAhi et mlC} “good”, if not more so; for example when one asks in Tripoli “How are you? Are you well?”, the question is KCn ¢L-Low? KCn }Al-¢k? anta kwayy¢s?

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Young men in present day Tripoli use many English borrowings (my informants are all male, so I cannot say whether the same is true for females). This may be due to the inﬂuence of their university curricula (science, technology, IT), new technologies (computers, mobile phones, etc.), music and cinema; other items including swear words are also borrowed from English (Quitout 2004: 10–13): the expression so nice is used by my informants, mo{ayl “mobile phone” (< mobile) is used alongside naqqAl, kombyEt¢r “computer” (< computer), the verb fuck (transcribed and pronouced fœk) is very common, together with the verb nAk, inCk, as in nfœk “I’m stuck with (someone or something)”: nnCku ﬁ g/m-had ¢rza “we’re stuck with this discussion”, nfœk ﬁ g/m-biliyArdi “I’m stuck with having to play billiards”; where g/m is an English borrowing (< game) and biliyArdi is from Italian (< biliardi).

4.6 Conclusion We have seen that from the eighteenth century onward the city of Tripoli has experienced an important period of urban transformation due to population movements that occurred on an ever increasing scale in the second half of the twentieth century. The Arabic dialect of Tripoli has become bedouinized as a result of the huge rural exodus and the settlement in the city of Bedouins and former peasants. These were no doubt the causes of the emergence of a Tripolitan dialectal koine. The Arabic dialect of Tripoli is linguistically hybrid, a koine which has nonetheless preserved certain preHilalian features and which also borrowed numerous items from Turkish and Italian – traces of the signiﬁcant Ottoman and Italian occupations – though these are now being replaced by terms from Classical Arabic, augmented more recently by borrowings from Egyptian and other Arabic dialects and from Standard Arabic. Tripolitan Arabic is changing, ever more inﬂuenced by Standard Arabic but also by borrowings from foreign languages, especially English, resulting on the one hand from the uncompromising arabization policy and on the other from Libyan students in higher education studying science and technology subjects, where English plays a prominent role, as well as involvement with the new technologies – computing, internet, mobile phones, etc. The Arabic dialect of Tripoli does not seem to have achieved the status of a prestigious “national koine” to be imitated throughout the country. It appears that in Libya – and I say this on the basis of ﬁeld observations and conversations with my informants – every speaker is proud of his or her origins and dialect and does not seek to imitate the Tripolitan vernacular, even when living in the city itself. Some of my informants, from other towns or other regions of Libya (Derna or Benghazi, in Cyrenaica, or from inland Tripolitania, Misurata, Syrte, or Fezzân), living temporarily in Tripoli, were

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keen to explain this to me and to point out the most important phonological and lexical differences. One informant for example, who came from Benghazi, told me that hAlba “much” is Tripolitan and that he said wAL¢d, that in Benghazi interdentals are pronounced, that the *t there is pronounced [ty], with slight palatalization, that instead of YAbla “ash tray” they say Y¢ffAya or Y¢ffAy¢t-s ¢bAsi, that there is a gender distinction in the second and third person plural of pronouns and in the verb conjugation. The present government’s rhetoric on “Bedouin legitimacy” must surely have had an inﬂuence on people’s use of their own regional dialects, rural or otherwise, when they move to Tripoli. Unlike Rabat, Fez or Salé, in Morocco (Messaoudi 2003), it seems there has never been in Libya a myth of an ancient urban elite. It is indeed doubtful whether there ever existed a prestigious native urban culture in Tripoli. Throughout the nineteenth century the elite consisted of Ottomans, Italians or other Europeans and a few Tripolitan families associated with those in power. Gradually, following the departure of the Ottomans in the nineteenth century, then of the Italians and other Europeans, part of the urban elite disappeared. At independence, King Idriss ruled over a much weakened country, both economically and politically. The capital had been moved to Bayda in Cyrenaica, which certainly caused part of the elite to leave Tripoli. When Gadaﬁ took power in 1969, what remained of the Tripolitan elite left the country. Their ideas were opposed to those of Gadaﬁ’s “people’s socialist republic of the masses”. Conversely, there were large scale population movements and the settling of peasants in Tripoli so that the urban population consisted predominantly of former country dwellers and Bedouins. Does there still exist an ancient declining urban elite in Tripoli? According to my informants, Tripolitans whose families come originally from Tripoli, going back several generations and who used to live in the Medina have now settled in the outer suburbs such as sEg-¢L-Lum∞a, g¢rgAr¢K or tALEra, which used to be outside the town but which are now part of the urban region of Tripoli. Gadaﬁ, known as the “Shepherd of Syrtes”, is of course from Syrtes, of rural Bedouin origin and those who hold political and economic power in Libya are similarly of Bedouin origin. This is an important factor which cuts across the question of Bedouin legitimacy, in contrast to the ofﬁcial rhetoric. The majority of the population is rural and Bedouin by origin and 85 percent of the population is now urbanized.13 Gadaﬁ wanted to demolish the Tripoli Medina in the 1980s which by then was completely devoid of its original population, but blocks of ﬂats were built to house migrants arriving from rural areas. There is now an association for the preservation of Tripoli old town (maKrE∞ tan1Cm wa §idAra al-madCna l-qadCma YarAbulus), which is restoring the Medina. The historical urban inheritance is once more seen as something to be valued. 92

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With regard to culture, young Tripolitans listen to a lot of foreign music, especially rock, rap and R&B, as well as “oriental” Arabic music from Egypt, Lebanon and the Gulf States, but between 2002 and 2005 I noticed that recordings of ancient Tripolitan music were being re-issued and were much enjoyed by my young informants. Here again we are witnessing the revaluation of the historical urban inheritance. In 2002, I was unable to buy any ancient Tripolitan music; the music shops in Tripoli did not stock it. In 2005, I was able to ﬁnd it easily. The lyrics are in the Libyan Arabic dialect and it has experienced a big rise in popularity. There is also a large output of reggae sung in Libyan Arabic. The words of these songs need to be analyzed to see what type of Arabic is used and to see whether there are any innovations in the language. The lyrics tend to be nostalgic and romantic, not at all in revolt against the present government. Some allude to a bored generation. Could this be the beginning of a revival of a certain urban city culture?

Notes 1 For a synthesis of the literature on TA see Pereira 2003, 2004 and 2006. 2 The Ancient Libycs were the ancestors of the Berbers. Their vernacular was a Hamito-Semitic language from which modern Berber dialects are derived. The ﬁrst Lybico-Berber inscriptions appeared around 1500–1000 bc (Larcher 2001: 43). 3 Marçais (1961) states that “in Cyrenaica the old language is still spoken by approximately 1.5 percent of the inhabitants. Tripolitania on the other hand has 23 percent Berber speakers”. Berber is at present the native language of 15–20 percent of the Libyan population. Berber-speakers are concentrated in Tripolitania in the coastal town of Zouara and the inland towns of Djebel Nefoussa and the Ghadames oasis. According to some researchers there are also Berber-speaking groups in the oases of Joufra (Larcher 2001: 46–48; Souriau 1986: 40). 4 The Ottomans occupied Libya without interruption from 1551 to 1911, divided into three periods: 1551 to 1711, 1711 to 1835 (the Karamanli Dynasty) and 1835 to 1911. 5 According to The National Report Presented to the International Conference on Education, held in Geneva in 2001 (The Development of Education in the Great Jamahiria: 73), there are 2,814 Libyan teachers in Libyan universities, compared with 2,714 foreign teachers and 1,403 Libyan teachers in professional training institutions, as against 2,234 foreign teachers. 6 According to Sumikazu Yoda (Yoda 2005) “Jews in North Africa adopted Arabic as their native speech during the ﬁrst (pre-Hilalian) period and their dialects therefore preserve archaic features no longer present in the dialects of their Muslim neighbors. The Jewish dialects are also distinguished by the use of many words of Hebrew and Aramaic origin. In Tripoli the difference between the Jewish and Muslim vernaculars manifests itself not only in the vocabulary but also in the language type: The Jewish dialect represents the sedentary type while the Muslim dialect belongs to the Bedouin type.” 7 According to Rachel Simon (1992), the number of Jews in Tripoli was: 12,000 in 1906, 17,196 in 1936, 19,330 in 1945, 21,000 in 1948, and 3,580 in 1954. 8 The examples are from Mordekhai Cohen (1930) and are written in this chapter with the same transcription as in the book (pp. 36, 38, 41, 51, 78).

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9 L’arabo parlato della Libia by Grifﬁni (1913), despite its title, deals with TA. Cf. the sub-title “Cenni grammaticali e repertorio di oltre 10.000 vocaboli, frasi e modi di dire raccolti in Tripolitania”, p. III and “Gli appunti sono stati presi durante i miei primi cinque mesi di soggiorno a Tripoli (3 gennaio-3 giugno 1912)”, p. VII. 10 Regarding lexis, these writers deal with the TA spoken by Muslims. 11 My Libyan informants consider these words as belonging to the lexis of Tunisian Arabic. They appear in the classiﬁcations of William and Philippe Marçais as belonging to pre-Hilalian type dialects, but are in fact at present items that can be considered as pan-dialectal, especially because many of them are close to Standard Arabic, because in Tripoli they are used by the many migrants originating from various different parts of the Arab world, and also because of the inﬂuence of the media. 12 Cf. Dalcl muxawwar li ba¡\ al-’asmak al-™iqtixadcya bi myah al-lamahircya al-¡arabcya al-lcbcya ak-ka¡bcya al-™iktirakcya al-¡u2ma, mankerat markaz bu]eth al-™a]ya’ al-ba]rcya, 1990 [in Arabic]. 13 This is somewhat similar to the situation seen in the Gulf States, where some writers have referred to a “Bedouin urban model”.

References Abdu, H. R. (1988) “Italian Loanwords in Colloquial Libyan Arabic as Spoken in the Tripoli Region”, unpublished thesis, University of Arizona. Agostini, E. de (1954) “Sulle popolazioni della Libia”, Libia, II (anno 2): 3–13. Azema, J. (2000) Libya Handbook, Bath: Footprint. Bessis, J. (1986) La Libye contemporaine, Paris: L’Harmattan. Burgat, F. and Laronde, A. (2000) La Libye, Que sais-je? 1634, Paris: PUF. Caubet, D. (2001) “Questionnaire de dialectologie du Maghreb”, EDNA (Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí) 5: 73–92. —— (2004) “Les parlers arabes nomades et sédentaires du Fezzân, d’après William et Philippe Marçais”, in M. Haak, K. Versteegh and R. Dejong (eds) Approaches to Arabic Dialects: A Collection of Articles Presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, Leiden-Boston: Brill, pp. 67–96. Cesàro, A. (1939) L’arabo parlato a Tripoli, Milan: Mondadori. —— (1954) “Raconti in dialetto tripolino”, Annali di Instituto Universitaro di Napoli 4: 49–59. Cohen, M. (1930) Gli ebrei in Libia: usi e costumi tradotto e annotato da Martino Mario Moreno, Roma: Sindicati Italiano Arti Graﬁche. Djaziri, M. (1996) Etat et société en Libye, Paris: L’Harmattan. Fontaine, J. (2004) “La population libyenne, un demi-siècle de mutations”, in La nouvelle Libye: sociétés, espaces et geopolitique au lendemain de l’embargo, Paris: Karthala, pp. 159–175. Goldberg, H. E. (1978) “The Jewish wedding in Tripolitania: a study in cultural sources”, The Maghreb Review 3–9: 1–6. —— (1983) “Language and culture of the Jews of Tripolitania: a Preliminary View”, Mediterranean Language Review I: 85–102. Grifﬁni, E. (1913) L’arabo parlato della Libia, Milan: Ulrico Hoepli. Ham, A. (2002) Libya, Melbourne: Lonely Planet.

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Laﬁ, N. (2002) Une ville du Maghreb entre ancien régime et réformes ottomanes Genèse des institutions municipales à Tripoli de Barbarie (1795–1911), Paris: L’Harmattan. Larcher, P. (2001) “Les langues de la Libye: passé et présent”, La revue des deux rives 2: 43–51. Mantran, R. (1975) “La Libye des origines à 1912”, in La Libye nouvelle: rupture et continuité, Paris: CNRS, pp. 15–32. Marçais, W. (1950) “Les parlers arabes”, in Initiation à la Tunisie, Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, pp. 195–219. —— (1961) “Comment l’Afrique du Nord a été arabisée”, in Articles et conférences, Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, pp. 171–192. Marçais, P. (1957) “Les parlers arabes”, in Initiation à l’Algérie, Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, pp. 215–237. —— (1977) Esquisse grammaticale de l’arabe maghrébin, Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve. —— (2001) Parlers arabes du Fezzân, textes, traductions et éléments de morphologie rassemblés et présentés par Dominique CAUBET, Aubert MARTIN et Laurence DENOOZ, Université de Liège, Diffusion Librairie Droz: Geneva. Martel, A. (1991) La Libye 1835–1990: essai de géopolitique historique, Paris: PUF. Martin, Y. (1975) “La Libye de 1912 à 1969”, in La Libye nouvelle: rupture et continuité, Paris: CNRS, pp. 33–50. Messaoudi, L. (2003) Etudes sociolinguistiques, Editions OKAD, Kénitra: Université Ibn Tofail. Miller, C. (2004) “Variation and Change in Arabic Urban Vernaculars”, in M. Haak, K. Versteegh and R. Dejong (eds) Approaches to Arabic Dialects: A Collection of Articles Presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, Leiden-Boston: Brill, pp. 177–206. Owens, J. (1983) “Libyan Arabic dialects”, Orbis, XXXII, 1–2: 97–117. —— (1984) A Short Reference Grammar of Eastern Libyan Arabic, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Panetta, E. (1943) L’arabo parlato a Bengasi, I. Testi con traduzione e note, II. Grammatica, Rome: La Libreria dello Stato. Pereira, C. (2003) “Le parler arabe de Tripoli (Libye), etat des lieux (d’après les travaux de Hans Stumme, Antonio Cesàro, Eugenio Grifﬁni . . .)”, EDNA 7: 7–57. —— (2004) “Le parler arabe de Tripoli, un parler mixte”, in I. Ferrando and J. J. Sanchez Sandoral (eds) AIDA Fifth Conference Proceedings, 431–443. —— (2006) “Eléments de description du parler arabe de Tripoli”, in L’arabe dialectal: enquêtes, descriptions, interprétations, Actes d’AIDA 6, Cahier du CERES (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Economiques et Sociales), Série Linguistique no. 13, Tunis. —— (forthcoming) “Arabic of Libya”, in EALL, Vol. III, Leiden: Brill. —— (forthcoming) “Tripoli Arabic”, in EALL (Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics), Vol. IV, Leiden: Brill. Quitout, M. (2004) “Situation linguistique en Libye (Histoire, statut et usage des langues locales et étrangères)”, Folia Orientalia 40: 313–326. Rossi, E. (1954) “Storia della Libia dalla conquista araba al 1911”, Libia, I (anno 2): 3–43.

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—— (1968) Storia di Tripoli e della Tripolitania dalla conquista araba al 1911, Roma: Instituto per l’Oriente. Saada, L. (1984) Eléments de description du parler arabe de Tozeur (Tunisie), Paris: Geuthner. Simon, R. (1992) Change Within Tradition Among Jewish Women in Libya, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Souriau, C. (1975) “La Libye moderne”, in La Libye nouvelle: rupture et continuité, Paris: CNRS, pp. 135–160. —— (1986) Libye l’économie des femmes, Paris: L’Harmattan. Stumme, H. (1894) Tripolitanisch-tunisische Beduinenlieder, Leipzig: J. C. Heinrich’sche Buchhandlung. —— (1898) Märchen und Gedichte aus der Stadt Tripolis in Nordafrika, Leipzig: Heinrich’sche Buchhandlung. Taine-Cheikh, C. (1998) “Deux macro-discriminants de la dialectologie arabe (la réalisation du qâf et des interdentales)”, MAS-GELLAS 9: 11–50. Trombetti A. (1912) Manuale dell’arabo parlato a Tripoli, Bologna: L. Beltrami. Türkmen, E. (1988) “Turkish words in the Libyan dialect of Arabic”, Erdem 4–10: 227–243. Yoda, S. (2005) The Arabic Dialect of the Jews in Tripoli (Libya), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

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5 BECOMING CASABLANCAN Fessis in Casablanca as a case study Atiqa Hachimi

5.1 Introduction Right at the beginning of the twentieth century when Morocco was ofﬁcially declared a French protectorate, the French decided to shift power to Morocco’s coastal areas (i.e. Rabat and Casablanca) at the expense of its interior areas (i.e. Fez and Marrakech). Rabat was made the administrative capital of the country and Casablanca its economic capital. This decision was a turning point in the history of Morocco in general and that of Casablanca in particular. Being promoted to the leading industrial, commercial and port city in Morocco, Casablanca emerged as a hub for migration attracting large numbers of people from urban and rural areas. As a result, the population of the city mushroomed from less than a million inhabitants in the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century to more than four million people today, making it by far the largest Moroccan city. This intense human migration has led to important social, cultural and linguistic changes and has made Casablanca a region that offers important opportunities for research on relations between social and linguistic change in a fast changing complex society. One of the immediate consequences of the rapid urbanization of Casablanca has been the disruption of the rural/urban dichotomy that once dominated Moroccan dialects and identities. Mass migration to Casablanca has created a new linguistic urban model in contemporary Morocco quite different from the old urban model of the imperial cities. Thus it is important to recognize that today two competing local urban models co-exist. On one hand, there are the well-established urban dialects of the historical cities, which have deﬁned urbane and prestigious linguistic practice in Morocco for centuries. These dialects have acted as badges of an urban elite and bourgeois identity. On the other hand, there are the newly formed koinés that have emerged as a result of massive internal rural and urban migration to large urban centers in the twentieth century. These koinés are 97

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establishing themselves as new urban dialects and are shaping a new brand of urban identity. The best representatives of these types of dialects and identities in contemporary Morocco are, without doubt, Fessi (from the city of Fez) and Casablancan (from the city of Casablanca), respectively. The aim of this chapter is to examine the linguistic and social outcomes of the Fessi-Casablancan contact, considering in particular how Fessi women of Andalusian descent construct linguistic and social identity in Casablanca. The study seeks to determine the extent to which the leveling out, or maintenance, of differences between Fessi and Casablancan linguistic forms plays an important part in constructing both social identities and social meaning among Fessi women in Casablanca. The study of the Fessi-Casablancan linguistic and social contact and change is approached from the framework that views sociolinguistic variation and change as a social practice (Eckert 2000). The appeal of this model rests on its central focus on social meaning in explaining linguistic variation and change. The use of variation by speakers is seen as a symbolic resource in constructing social categories and social meaning rather than merely reﬂecting membership in predetermined social categories such as “class” and “sex”. Uncovering that a variant is correlated with certain social groups, say middle class or females, and not others, tells us that these groups use the linguistic form more frequently while other social groups use it less. This correlation stops short of revealing the meaning of this variant to the groups who use it more often and those who use it less often. Therefore, understanding the nuanced social meaning of the variants and their local relation to categories and social identity often depends on investigating speakers very closely in their communities of practice. Drawing on the work of Eckert (2000) and a number of other sociolinguistic studies that have shown speakers’ manipulation of socially signiﬁcant linguistic features in giving meaning to various social identities, the study goes beyond the simple correlation of individual linguistic variables with social membership, and shows how socially meaningful linguistic variables are used as resources in the construction of social identities among Fessi migrants in Casablanca. One of the main goals of this study is to shed light on the interaction between migrants’ perception of their own identity and dialect change and/ or maintenance. It is believed that theories of dialect contact will provide more adequate explanations if social and sociopsychological factors are seriously taken into consideration. Therefore the study has integrated notions of social identity, in-group and out-group identiﬁcation (Terry and Hogg 1996), and recent work on interspeaker accommodation (Giles and Coupland 1991) and the notion of ethnolinguistic vitality (e.g. Landry and Allard 1994) with linguistic factors from the outset of the investigation. Thus informants’ narratives were elicited about informants’ in-group and out-group identiﬁcations and their ideologies and attitudes towards social categorization and its embedded meanings. These narratives reveal a great deal of 98

Map 5.1 Casablanca (Morocco)

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information about what it means to be or to become Casablancan, and what it takes not to be or become one. Latest research on language and identity emphasizes the agency of speakers in dismantling and constructing their own identities (e.g. Gubbins and Holt 2002). Based on informants’ self and group identiﬁcation, this chapter identiﬁes the categories that have emerged as a result of the Fessi-Casablancan contact, e.g. F wassa-d-Fes “pure Fessis”, F wassa-d-Kasa “Fessi-Casablancans” and Bi|awa/Kasawijjin “Casablancans”, and examines the social practices that shape and give meaning to these categories. In other words, this chapter examines what it means to remain “pure” Fessi, to become Fessi-Casablancan, or Casablancan and shows how linguistic variables are used as symbolic resources in the construction of these identities. I argue that variation in Fessi women’s accommodation to Casablancan linguistic norms plays an important part in creating both social categories and social meaning in Casablanca.

5.2 The urbanization of Casablanca Unlike Morocco’s imperial cities (e.g. Fez and Marrakesh), Casablanca cannot pride itself in being a bourgeois city with a long and rich history of urbanity. Its meager historical contribution has earned it the reputation of a city “without history and without soul” (Dernouny and Léonard 1987). In fact, the story of pre-colonial Casablanca is the story of a marginalized city that is remembered by a succession of destructions and hardships. In the seventh century when Islam reached Morocco, Casablanca was a Berber village known as Anfa “hill”. The inhabitants of Anfa are believed to have rejected the new religion of Islam and as a consequence it remained an independent kingdom for four centuries. In the eleventh century Anfa was occupied and destroyed by the Almoravides. However, under the Merenids in the fourteenth century Anfa stabilized and the town reportedly became important for exporting goods to far away regions but it never reached the rank of a Muslim city (Cohen and Eleb 2002). A century later Anfa became independent again and during this period it became a place for pirates who were attacking incoming ships. In retaliation, the Portuguese invaded and destroyed the town. However, in the sixteenth century the Portuguese decided to come back to the area and settle in it permanently. They built the city and named it Casa Branca “the white house”. In 1755, the Portuguese abandoned the city after an earthquake that destroyed it completely. After the departure of the Portuguese, Casablanca remained deserted until the Alaouite Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah rebuilt it near the end of the eighteenth century. He renamed it Addaru lbay|a§, which is the literal Arabic translation for Casa Branca. The city acquired its Spanish name Casa Blanca when Spanish companies established themselves in the city in 1781. Today the city is known by its Standard Arabic name addaru lbay|a§, and d-dar(l)bi|a in Moroccan Arabic, as well as Casablanca or Casa for short. 100

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It is undeniable that after the construction of its small port in 1789 Casablanca’s commercial relations with Europe and America started developing, making it an important center in the Atlantic Ocean throughout the nineteenth century. However, its development as a major urban center started in earnest at the beginning of the twentieth century under French colonization. The urbanization of Casablanca is associated de facto with Louis Hubert Lyautey, the French Resident General in the country, who decided to turn the city into the leading industrial, commercial and seaport city in Morocco in 1912. The impact of Lyautey’s decision soon precipitated economic and social changes. As soon as Casablanca started showing signs of economic growth and prosperity, large numbers of people, including both foreigners and Moroccans, started migrating to the city. The migrant population of the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century included Europeans who came from Europe or from other cities in North Africa, and Moroccans both Muslims and Jews. In 1950, Casablanca contained 414,500 Muslims, 158,000 Europeans and 72,000 Jews. After independence from the French in 1956 until the present, the population of Casablanca has seen dramatic growth. As Figure 5.1 shows, in less than half a century the population of the city went from less than a million to almost four million inhabitants today. Furthermore, the post-independence period in Casablanca is marked by a dramatic decrease in the number of the non-Muslim population and a remarkable increase in the number of the Muslim population. In 1913 for

4,020,000 3,520,000 3,020,000 2,520,000 2,020,000 1,520,000 1,020,000 520,000

18 97 19 07 19 13 19 18 19 21 19 26 19 31 19 36 19 47 19 50 19 51 19 60 19 82 19 94 19 99 20 03

20,000

Figure 5.1 Casablanca’s population growth from 1897 to 2003 Sources: Cohen and Eleb (2002: 286). Adapted from a graph illustrating Casablanca’s population growth between 1897 and 1950, RGPH (1982 and 1994) and CERED (1993).

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instance the non-Muslims accounted for 49 percent of the population while the Muslims accounted for only 51 percent but in 1998 the Muslim population had risen to 99 percent of the population of the city (CERED 1998). What is remarkable however is that within the Muslim population there was an increase in rural migration to the city at the expense of urban migration. The strong industrial expansion between 1952 and 1960 and the subsequent creation of manufacturing jobs lured migrants from the countryside and small towns to stream to the city in search of jobs in factories. In short, while urban migration to the city characterized the ﬁrst half of the century, rural migration characterizes the second half. 5.2.1 Major ethnolinguistic migrant groups of Casablanca The population of Casablanca today is made up of a mixture of people born in Casablanca and those born in other areas. We will consider here the three main ethnolinguistic groups that make up the Muslim population of Casablanca today; ∞rubis (the rurals), Soussis (the Berbers) and Fessis. Casablancans of ∞rubi origin make up the bulk of the population in the city, which explains the predominance of rural (historically Bedouin) features in the Casablancan dialect. ∞rubis are believed to be the descendants of the Bedouin Arab tribes that settled back in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the neighboring Atlantic plains of Chaouia, Doukkala and Chiadma and Lhaouz, where Greater Casablanca is now located. Originally the term ∞rubi referred to people who originate from these areas but the term today has come to include “unworldly” or “uncultured” behavior or persons. The second largest ethnolinguistic group in Casablanca is the Soussis; Berbers from the Sous region in the southern parts of the High-Atlas in the southwest of Morocco. They are also known as Shleu} in reference to the name of the Berber variety spoken in the Sous region “Tashl}it”. Thus, Soussis bring a different language to the city and most of them are bilingual in Tashl}it and Moroccan Arabic. Soussi-Casablancans are without doubt the economic and political rivals of Fessis in Casablanca. Fessis, known as F wassa or hal Fas “the people of Fez”, are the third largest ethnolinguistic group in Casablanca. They are counted with nonFessi urbanites as urban migrants. According to the 1971 census, urbanites represent 43.3 percent of all immigrants, but their number has been decreasing ever since. The Fessis in Casablanca are not as big in number as the other groups, like the ∞rubis and Soussis but they have big ﬁnancial capacities and a complex and solid network of alliances. They have enjoyed, since independence, positions of power in the higher administration, politics, economy and international affairs (Adam 1968). In short, today Fessis are well represented in all sectors of power. Fessi identity must be viewed as an ethnolinguistic identity rather than a mere regional identity. Fessis, as Hillili (1987) rightly notes, are a 102

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homogeneous group not necessarily deﬁned by residence in Fez. In fact, birth in the city of Fez and a lifetime residence there do not bestow urban Fessi identity upon all residents. On the other hand, Fessis born in other cities even if they were there for generations would still be called Fessis. Fessi, therefore, refers to a speciﬁc group of aristocratic and bourgeois families from Fez, particularly those of Andalusian descent. Family names, for instance, are always reliable in identifying them. Among the oldest Fessi families in Casablanca are the families of Benzakour, Benkiran, Benjelloun, Bennis, Sqalli, Ya¡qoubi among others (Adam 1968). The ﬁrst Fessi family, the Benzakour family, established itself in Casablanca beginning in 1830 (Le Tourneau 1965) and the other families have followed since 1880. Earlier accounts of the social role of Fessis in Casablanca hold that they “alone had retained the traditions of an old urban civilization.” According to Adam (1968) it is the Fessis who provided Casablanca with its urban bourgeoisie and its modern elite. Next to family names and several other social practices, Fessi dialect has also been a reliable badge in identifying and distinguishing Fessis from nonFessis. Fessi dialect is a well-established urban (historically sedentary) variety and there are several phonetic, morphological and lexical features that differentiate it from other Moroccan dialects (cf. Hillili 1979, 1987; Zemmama 1975). It is important to mention that Fessi, just like other traditional urban dialects in Morocco and other North African cities, has generally been preserved among old and illiterate speakers, especially among women (Caubet 1998; Iraqui-Sinaceur 1998; Jabeur 1996; Messaoudi 1998, 2002; Trabelsi 1988). The fact that Fessi speech has been maintained and used predominantly among women is largely responsible for associating it with being a feminine variety. It is no coincidence then that in the city of Fez today, young Fessi girls are encouraged to maintain stereotypical Fessi features in their speech while boys tend to adopt a more koiné speech considered more virile for men (Caubet 1993). In addition, Fessi dialect has traditionally been perceived as a “posh” dialect probably because it is the variety spoken by the Fessi bourgeoisie (Hillili 1987). The rich urbane past of the city and the cultural practices of its elite must have contributed to the construction of this prestige. Examining how Fessi women in Casablanca view the Fessi dialect today will shed light on whether this traditional urban prestige lives on or whether it is a thing of the past. 5.2.2 The dialect of Casablanca Casablancan dialect is not as old nor as well established a dialect as Fessi. At the beginning of the twentieth century when Casablanca had a population of less than 24,000 inhabitants, Kampffmeyer (1912) noted that the dialect of Casablanca and that of the rural population of the Chaouia tribes 103

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surrounding Casablanca had basically the same rural features. By the 1950s, increased migration to the city from all corners of the country had allowed for contact between different regional dialects, urban and rural, and by this time the Casablancan dialect was described as a “hybrid” and “mixed” dialect (Brunot 1950). Towards the end of the twentieth century, it was described as an “interdialect” that has psychological reality for Moroccans (Moumine 1990). There is no doubt that migration and contact between migrants has greatly complicated the urban/rural split in present-day Casablanca and that a new dialect is forming, however, up to now there is hardly any work documenting the koinéization processes responsible for the emerging dialect in Casablanca. Yet, it is widely accepted that the dominant Casablancan variety has many rural features (Elbiad 1992; Heath 1989, 2002; Lévy 2002; Moumine 1990). In general, Casablancan dialect has received very little attention compared to dialects spoken in other major cities in the Arabic speaking world. Kampffmeyer (1912) is the ﬁrst linguistic investigation of the dialect spoken in Casablanca. Although the main objective of Kampffmeyer is the study of Moroccan Arabic, the large body of data of spoken Casablancan made available in his work is invaluable in tracing the diachronic changes of the dialect from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present. Some studies have looked at the phonological aspects of the Casablancan dialect (Hamdi and Puech 1987; Khomsi 1975; Nejmi 1995), and there are also some short descriptions of the distinguishing linguistic features of the Casablancan variety (Aguadé 2003; Elbiad 1992). The most comprehensive sociolinguistic study of Casablancan dialect is Moumine (1990), which examines the sociolinguistic patterning of variation in the city following the classical Labovian paradigm. Another important study is Moumine (1995), which looks at attitudes towards the dialect of Casablanca. Moumine found that different regional groups have different attitudes vis-à-vis the dialect spoken in Casablanca. While Marrakshis (people from the city of Marrakesh) and Oujdis (people from the city of Oujda) had positive reactions toward Casablancan on several traits, Fessis in particular did not. Fessis found Casablancan to be “tough”, “masculine”, “uncultured”, “unfamiliar” and “not likeable”. Furthermore, Fessis were the only group of respondents to express greater sensitivity to the rural aspect of the Casablancan dialect (Moumine 1995: 76). To conclude, Casablancan is a recently formed immigrant koiné characterized by the predominance of several rural features, a variety considered particularly by Fessis to be rural, non-prestigious and masculine. In light of this, can we expect any type of accommodation toward Casablancan dialect among Fessi women? A prestige-oriented analysis would predict that Fessi women have no motivation to accommodate to the Casablancan variety because in doing so they would sound ∞rubi and “masculine”. The identity and meaning-oriented approach adopted in this study, on the other hand, 104

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would not assume a priori that ∞rubi “rural”, “tough” and “masculine” are undesirable traits to aspire to, instead it allows for the local construction of meaning which is at the core of shaping one’s identity. Furthermore, such an approach would also account for speakers who accommodate to Fessi speech when they want or need to.

5.3 Methodology: data collection and informants Data for the present study come from in-depth ethnographic interviews that I carried out with ﬁfteen Fessi women in Casablanca during a fourteenmonth period of ﬁeldwork in 1999–2000. The ﬁrst generation (i.e. not born in Casablanca) consists of seven Fessi women who have lived in Casablanca for at least seventeen years, which means that we are dealing with a case of long-term rather than short-term contact. The second and third generations, on the other hand, consist of eight Casablanca-born Fessis who were born to Fessi parents and who have lived all their lives in Casablanca. As Table 5.1 shows, the ﬁfteen women not only represent different generations of Fessis but different age groups and educational backgrounds (Hachimi 2005). Table 5.1 Social profile of informants Informants

Age

Place of birth

Level of education

Hajja Fatima Nadia Keltoum Samia Amina Hayat Leila Khadija Ihsan Siham Kawtar Saida Fatma Zakia Lamia

70+ 36 41 39 45 50 61 29 28 24 21 56 26 24 22

Fez France Khenifra Fez Fez Khenifra Oujda Casablanca Casablanca Casablanca Casablanca Casablanca Casablanca Casablanca Casablanca

None University High school University College Junior high school Junior high school University University University High school Junior high school College College College

Being Moroccan myself and having an extensive network of family and friends in Casablanca made it relatively easy to have access to these communities since most of them are friends of friends or family. It is important to mention that I am neither Fessi nor native of Casablanca. Interestingly, however, I was believed to be Casablancan. The reason behind assigning me a Casablancan identity will become clearer when we discuss the social meanings associated with being Casablancan. 105

ATIQA HACHIMI

In order to examine Fessi women’s accommodation, or lack of accommodation, to the Casablancan linguistic forms, the study will assess women’s use of two phonological variables; (r) and (q), and one morphosyntactic variable (-i). These linguistic variables differentiate the Casablanca dialect from the Fessi dialect as shown in Table 5.2. Table 5.2 The linguistic variables Variables

Fessi variants

Casablancan variants

(q) (r)

[ʔ] ~ [q] [ ] Post-alveolar approximant [-Ø] Gender neutralization

[g] ~ [q] [r] Trilled alveolar [-i] Gender distinction

(-i) 2nd fem.sing. clitic on verbs

It is important to note that the phonological variables are highly stereotypical as Fessi while the morphosyntactic variable is not. In fact, it is below the level of social awareness. The Fessi approximant in particular is a minority form, i.e. a form found only among Fessis. Studies of dialect contact have repeatedly shown that minority and stereotypical forms are usually leveled in dialect contact. This would predict that [q] and [ ] are more likely to be left behind while gender neutralization is more likely to be carried over. This study will examine the linguistic processes that have been shown to emerge as a result of accommodation between speakers of different dialects in situations of long-term contact (Trudgill 1986) in order to show evidence for accommodation among Fessis in Casablanca. The chief focus here is on leveling, simpliﬁcation and mixing in the reﬂexes of dialect contact in Casablanca.

5.4 Maintenance and leveling of Fessi linguistic forms General ﬁndings reveal that maintenance and/or leveling of Fessi linguistic forms are not necessarily constrained by the immigration status of the speakers. That is, some ﬁrst migrant Fessis have adopted Casablancan variants and use them more frequently than some Fessis born in Casablanca. On the other hand, a native of Casablanca may maintain all Fessi variants. Before turning to the local meaning of maintenance and/or change to our informants general results for each linguistic variable will be discussed ﬁrst. 5.4.1 The (r) variable The outcome of contact between Fessi post-alveolar approximant [ ] and Casablancan alveolar trill [r] has produced three groups of speakers: (1) 106

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maintainers of Fessi [ ]; (2) adopters of Casablancan [r]; and (3) users of an intermediate form [m], a form “halfway” between Fessi [ ] and Casablancan [r]. Table 5.3 Frequency of use of Casablancan [r] by Fessi women

Fessi [ó ] users Fatima Amina Samia Ihsan Intermediate [ï] users Kawtar Siham Casablancan [r] users Nadia Hayat Leila Keltoum Khadija Lamia Fatma Zakia

Generation

Fessi [ ]

I I I II

56 172 57 51

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

II II

5 0

105 68

5 42

4.34 38.18

I I I I II III III III

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 5 1 2 3 6

32 128 95 64 72 92 32 82

100 100 100 92.75 98.63 97.87 91.42 93.18

Intermediate [M]

Casablancan [r]

% of [r] 0 0 0 0

There are no linguistic constraints on the adoption of trilled [r] or the maintenance of Fessi [ ]. As we can see from Table 5.3, speakers who use trilled [r] or maintain Fessi [ ] do so in all their speech without variation between one form and the other. For the intermediate [m] users, however, some linguistic constraints are identiﬁed such as the use of trilled [r] next to back vowels and inter-vocalically, but no linguistic generalizations can be made in this regard since this observation is based on few instances and more data are needed to support it. Examination of the social constraints on leveling and/or maintenance reveals an intimate interaction between age of exposure and social network. Overall ﬁndings show that trilled [r] is harder to learn and produce and this is evidenced by the fact that Fessis who maintain the approximant were not able to trill the [r] when I asked them to produce it as part of an imitation task. It seems that after a certain age speakers cannot trill the [r] even if they wish to do so. This indicates that a relatively late exposure to trilled [r], which maybe the result of having Fessi-speaking caregivers during formative years, and a tight-knit Fessi network are instrumental in the maintenance of the Fessi approximant. In general, most adopters turn out to have relatively weaker Fessi network ties than the maintainers. For both maintainers and adopters the age and network factors are reinforced by social attitudes and group identity (cf. Hachimi 2005). 107

ATIQA HACHIMI

The fact that some women maintain Fessi [ ], which is both a minority form and a highly stereotypical trait of Fessi speech, does not lend support to theories of dialect leveling, which predict that a form like [ ] would usually be lost in dialect contact (Trudgill 1986). Furthermore, the fact that Ihsan has been born, raised, attended school in Casablanca and has never lived anywhere else, is no guarantee that a Fessi speaker will accommodate to the Casablancan dialect. This indicates that an individual’s network and the attitudes that might develop and be maintained in that network, as well as the varying practices that reinforce one’s Fessiness, may weaken the importance of the nativeness criterion itself. 5.4.2 The (q) variable The qaf variable reveals a different pattern of adoption and maintenance than the raa variable. The main ﬁnding is that all speakers maintain the Fessi variant [q] in all lexical items, except for the verb (qal) “to say”. Speakers are thus divided into categorical users of Fessi [™al] or [qal] (the Old and Modern Fessi variants, respectively), categorical users of Casablancan [gal] and one speaker who varies between [qal] and [gal] about 50 percent of the time. Table 5.4 The variable (qal) by speakers Fessi [§al]/[qAl] users

[gAl] users

[gAl]~[qAl] user

[Åal] user Fatima [qÑl] users Samia Amina Ihsan

Leila Keltoum Hayat Saida Khadija Kawtar Fatma Siham Zakia

Nadia

If we compare Tables 5.3 and 5.4, it becomes clear that the same women who maintain Fessi [ ] also maintain the Fessi variants [™al]/[qal] while the women who have leveled Fessi [ ] almost all of them have leveled [qal] and are using [gal] instead. Among these regular maintainers is a Casablancaborn Fessi. Her consistent use of Fessi variants provides further evidence that being native of Casablanca does not necessarily guarantee that a Fessi woman would leave behind stereotypical Fessi features. This is quite different, for instance, from what Miller (2005) found among Upper Egyptian migrants in Cairo where it took only one generation to switch to the Cairene variety. 108

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Finding that there are lexical constraints on the qaf variable supports ﬁndings in other Arabic speaking communities (e.g. Gibson 2002; Haeri 1997; Holes 1986). However, to my knowledge, none of these studies have found variation in one lexical item alone. The question that follows, therefore, is why do Fessi women maintain the Fessi variant [q] in all other lexical items but they vary with respect to the verb (qAl) in particular? In other words, why did they adopt [gal] but not, say, [gbəl] “before”, [trbg] “street”, [srəg] “steal” and several other lexical items where variation between [q] and [g] is possible in the Casablancan variety? The answer to these questions lies in the social meanings encoded in [qal] on the one hand and in [gal] on the other. Based on women’s comments it appears that there is a clear boundary between [qal] users and [gal] users. Most of these women are unwilling to identify with [qal] users mainly because [qal] indexes F wassa-d-Fes or “pure Fessi” identity. They emphasize their use of [gal] to assert their distance from speaking the Fessi dialect and also to assert that [gal] allows them to sound “normal”. For instance, Kawtar likes the fact that she maintains non-trilled Fessi [ ] because it is very feminine and charming. For her [qal] indexes pure Fessiness more so than the variant [ ], in fact, she considers bhal “stupid” a Fessi who uses the Fessi variants of qAf ([ʔ] or [q]). Kawtar: ma∫i fassija fassija, je suis normale / ana ∫wija bi%awija, je parle [r] avec a c’est tout/parce que lfassijat tajgulu ‘qatli qutl¢k’/ ana c’est ‘galli gutl¢k’ dik ‘qalli u-qutl¢k’ c’est bête. “I am not pure Fessi, I am normal . . . I am Casablancan a little. I speak with [Fessi] [ ] that’s all, because Fessi women say ‘qatli qutlək’ . . . Me it’s ‘galli gutlək’ saying ‘qatli qutlək’ is stupid.” If we accept the argument that saying [gal] instead of [qal] casts the speaker as Casablancan, we can therefore suggest that these women employ the most socially signiﬁcant linguistic resource that readily allows them to sound Casablancan. Furthermore, to adopt [g] in other lexical items beside gAl would mean to sound ∞rubi-Casablancan rather than Casablancan. It seems that these women are distancing themselves not only from pure Fessis, but from ∞rubi-Casablancans as well. They do that by maintaining [q] in all other lexical items while adopting the koiné form [gal]. Both of these linguistic choices allow them to sound “normal”. As we will see later these choices are essential in shaping the hybrid Fessi-Casablancan identity most of these women claim. In addition, it seems that these women are adopting as their target the koiné variety, rather than Casablancan features per se. If this is the case, then this would support results from the Arabic speaking world that women target the local urban vernacular, which is attested in well-established urban 109

ATIQA HACHIMI

dialects such as Cairene Arabic (Haeri 1997) as well as in newly formed dialects such as Amman Arabic (Al-Wer 1999, 2002). 5.4.3 The (-i) variable The morphosyntactic variable (-i) has two variants in the second person singular feminine subject clitic, the Casablancan variant where gender is distinguished and marked by the clitic [-i] and the Fessi variant where gender is neutralized and marked by a zero subject clitic [-Ø]. The results for the morphosyntactic variable (-i) indicate that Fessi women behave differently towards the low-salience morphosyntactic variable than they did towards the highly salient phonological variables (q) and (r). That is, contrary to the high rate of adoption of Casablancan [r] and [gal], most speakers maintain the Fessi morphosyntactic variant, either categorically or partially. Similar to the Moroccan Arabic koiné, Fessi and Casablancan dialects neutralize gender distinction towards the feminine in the perfective but they differ in the imperfective and the imperative. Table 5.5 Second person singular in Fessi and Casablancan dialects Verb k-t-b

Fessi dialect

Casablancan dialect

‘to write’

Masculine/Feminine

Masculine

Feminine

Perfective Imperfective Imperative

kt£bt-i t-kt£b kt£b

kt£bt-i t-kt£b kt£b

kt£bt-i t-kt£b-i k£tb-i

Table 5.5 clearly shows that while feminine and masculine genders are distinguished in sufﬁxed pronouns in imperfective and imperative aspects in Casablancan, this distinction is neutralized in the Fessi dialect. This neutralization is not limited to the Fessi dialect but is spread across old urban dialects in Morocco and North Africa in general. Unlike the (qal) and (r) variables, the majority of informants maintain Fessi gender neutralization since nine women, six of whom are native to Casablanca, have zero usage of the Casablancan variant [-i]. In fact no woman in this study has shown categorical use of gender distinction as they did for example with [r] and [gal], instead the remaining ﬁve women vary between gender neutralization and distinction. Interestingly, maintainers include Fessis native to Casablanca and Fessis native to Fez. Among these women are the four women whom we have become accustomed to ﬁnding as maintainers (Amina, Fatima, Samia and Ihsan). It is not surprising that these four women would maintain gender neutralization given that they maintain even the highly salient Fessi [ ] and [qal]. 110

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Table 5.6 Frequency of use of gender distinction in 2nd person singular among Fessis Informants Fessi [-Ø] maintainers Siham Samia Amina Fatima Saida Ihsan Kawtar Fatma Zakia Lamia [-Ø] ~ [-i] users Keltoum Hayat Leila Nadia Khadija

Fessi [-Ø]

Casablancan [-i]

% of [-i]

14 33 45 21 16 27 25 9 12 30

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

6.66 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

26 28 18 5 13

25 29 16 6 4

49.01 50.87 47.05 54.54 23.52

What is surprising, however, is the maintenance of Fessi gender neutralization by Casablanca-born Fessis who are trilling [r] and using [gal]. One would expect these women to adopt second person singular gender distinction if they are indeed targeting the Moroccan Arabic koiné. However, the fact that almost all Casablanca-born Fessis maintain second person gender neutralization indicates that this feature is the norm among Fessis native to Casablanca. In Hachimi (2005) I suggest that linguistic regularization and simplicity of gender neutralization are potential linguistic factors responsible for the wider retention of the Fessi morphosyntactic variant. The process of regularization has to do with generalization of gender neutralization changes attested in the possessive and object clitic system to subject clitics. In most Moroccan Arabic dialects object and possessive sufﬁxes are neutralized toward the masculine gender in the second person singular. For instance, -¢k is the gender neutral form used in second person singular object and possessive sufﬁxes. The second potential contributing factor in the survival of gender neutralization among Fessi women may be the simplicity of gender neutralization over gender distinction. Following principles of dialect contact and change (e.g. Siegel 1985) simpler forms tend to win out when in competition with more complex forms. This suggests that the simplicity of Fessi gender neutralization allows it to survive, thus inhibiting the adoption of the relatively more “complex” gender distinction. Although language-internal factors may act as forces in inhibiting wider adoption of gender distinction, social and social psychological factors 111

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may counteract the linguistic pressures mentioned above. Speakers who have adopted the gender distinction are in fact using a more “complex” form rather than the simple uninﬂected neutralized form. It seems that the desire to accommodate and be understood by others is important. This suggests that no matter how strong internal-language factors may be, social and social psychological factors do sometimes take precedence. 5.4.4 Local meaning of maintenance and leveling Fessi women in Casablanca vary in reducing differences between the Fessi and Casablancan dialects. In this section we uncover the social meanings behind this variation by looking closely at Fessi women’s attitudes toward the Fessi and Casablancan dialects and identity. The point is to determine the extent to which maintaining salient linguistic forms, or leveling them out, plays an important part in constructing both social categories and social meaning among Fessi women in Casablanca. 5.4.5 Correlations of maintenance, attitudes and identity There are four speakers who are categorized as maintainers of salient Fessi features; non-trilled [ ] and [™al]/[qal]. They include Fez-born women migrants to Casablanca (Amina, Hajja Fatima and Samia) and a native to Casablanca (Ihsan). In this section we examine their attitudes towards the Fessi and Casablancan dialects, their attitudes toward Fessis and non-Fessis, as well as their self and group identiﬁcations. A neat correlation between maintenance of Fessi features, positive attitudes towards the Fessi dialect and strong in-group feelings is best seen in Amina and Samia. Both women have expressed great pride in being Fessi and in speaking in a way that indexes their Fessiness. They perceive the Fessi dialect as rYiYba “soft”, m’adba “polite”, }luwa “sweet”, ﬁha laγna “rhythmic” (lit. sing-song), katliq blamra “suitable for the woman”, in contrast to Casablancan speech, which they label ∞rubi “rural and unsophisticated”, }r¢∫ “tough, coarse” and vulgaire “vulgar”. These traits of softness, politeness and a melodic way of speaking are central to what has been constructed traditionally as desirable femininity. This is also true for other old urban centers in North Africa such as Tlemcen women who hold a comparable position to Fessi women. Similarly, Samia and Amina have a set of criteria by which they distinguish Fessis from non-Fessis in general. They emphasize the historical and sociocultural aspects of this distinction, and they even go a step further than distinguishing between “us” (Fessis) and “them” (non-Fessis), to expressing the superiority of Fessis over the non-Fessi Moroccans. This superiority is attributed to the fact that Fessis have inherited urbane lifestyle and cultural practices from their Andalusian ancestors. Their urbane socio-cultural 112

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practices and lifestyle, they say, have been passed on §aban ∞an add “from father to son” and have been perfected for centuries, which both women insist cannot be emulated by other groups no matter how urbanized they have become. Both used the following Moroccan saying to show how other regional groups are envious of Fessis and their city: Amina/Samia: Lfassi kajqul ‘ya ¢bbi ∞Yini ¢nna’, u ssusi tajqullu ‘ya ¢bbi ∞Yini Fas’ “The Fessi says ‘God please give me Heaven’ and the Soussi says ‘God please give me Fez’.” Like Amina and Samia, Hajja Fatima agrees that Fez and Fessis are the city and the group of people who deﬁne civilization in Morocco. In fact, her comments about Fessis and non-Fessis and her statement iwa kayn Fes ukayn lmaγrib “well, there is Fez and there is Morocco” reminds us of the old Fessi attitude that emphasizes the division of Moroccans into Fessis and non-Fessis. She made another comment that Fes huwa lmaγrib “Fez is Morocco” which also seems to reiterate the old Fessi worldview. It is important to note, however, that Hajja Fatima did not express overt negative or positive attitudes toward the Fessi or the Casablancan dialects. Her unwillingness seems to be in line with attitudes of older people in the 70s and 80s age group who show a certain degree of neutrality towards the dialects (e.g. Moumine 1990). She did acknowledge, however, the difference between the two dialects and brought up the lack of mutual intelligibility between her and speakers of Casablancan dialect. In general, Fessis like Fatima, Samia and Amina comprehend their collective Fessi identity as “primordial”. Under the “primordial model” of ethnic identity, the nature of ethnic ties is considered “‘given’, deeply rooted, not a matter of choice but of circumstantial inheritance” and identity is “rooted in history and tradition” and seen as “stable” and “permanent” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998: 68). This one-to-one relationship between positive attitudes and maintenance of Fessi features does not seem to be as strong for Ihsan; the regular maintainer who is native to Casablanca. Ihsan seems to share the same views and attitudes as the three women from the ﬁrst generation who consider being Fessi a great asset for a woman but when she ventures to selfidentify with a group, a more nuanced Fessi identity emerges. She clearly discriminates between “pure Fessis”, “Fessi-Casablancans” and “non-Fessis”, in particular the ¡rubis and Soussis. What is striking about Ihsan is her earnest desire to distance herself from “pure” Fessi women who she believes are “naïve, spoiled, snobbish and too delicate”. Instead, Ihsan considers herself }¢r∫a “tough” which, as she observes herself, may not be revealed in her use of typical pure Fessi forms but more so in the way she behaves and sees herself. In her view, speaking with stereotypical Fessi linguistic forms 113

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must not be a factor in lumping her with the “pure” Fessis. It seems that for this young Casablanca-born Fessi, self-identifying as a “pure” Fessi has become more of a liability than an asset, as is the case with the Fez-born maintainers discussed earlier. Here the instrumentalist (utilitarian) nature of identity is useful in understanding why individuals (or groups) identify the way they do (Cornell and Hartmann 1998: 56– 60). Ihsan is actively engaged in tailoring her own identity by separating her stereotypical Fessi way of speaking from her identity. Her agency in building a hybrid FessiCasablancan identity and assigning meaning to this category is reﬂected not only in rejecting any association with “pure” Fessis but in distancing herself from Casablancan women who are of ∞rubi origin. Being perceived as }¢r∫a seems to be positive for Ihsan probably because it carries the meaning of an independent and modern woman. The notion of }¢ru∫ija “roughness and toughness” and how it relates to Fessi-Casablancan identity will be taken up in the next section. 5.4.6 Correlations of leveling, attitudes and identity There are eleven speakers who fall under the category of levelers, i.e. women who leveled salient Fessi features. Four of them (Hayat, Leila, Keltoum and Nadia) are migrants while the others are all native to Casablanca. The goal here is to see whether there is a qualitative difference between the levelers and the maintainers in terms of their attitudes towards the Fessi and Casablancan dialects, towards Fessis and non-Fessis and self and group identiﬁcations. Findings show that levelers vary in their attitudes towards Fessi and Casablancan dialects and groups. Thus, while there is correlation between leveling and negative attitudes among some women, this does not hold for all of them as some show ambivalent attitudes. Insofar as in-group and out-group identiﬁcation are concerned levelers have shown highly nuanced categories and meanings. Similar to the maintainers, levelers who have expressed positive attitudes towards Fessi dialect also emphasize the desirable feminine qualities of Fessi speech particularly its softness, politeness and sing-song prosody. These traits, according to Leila, a 60 year-old migrant, make Fessi speech sound more civilisé “civilized” compared to the ∞rubi dialect, which she considers m∫ufa “savage”. Similar views are reiterated by a 21 year-old second generation Fessi who stresses the aesthetic and the reﬁned aspects of Fessi speech and contrasts them to “the aggressiveness” of Casablancan speech. Lamia: tatini mazjana ﬂ}aqiqa. wllahila ﬂ}aqiqa zwina lfassija, rYiYba/ lh¢|ra djal lkasawijin hija l¢m|arba djal F wassa “I ﬁnd it really nice actually, honestly. In fact, Fessi speech is beautiful and soft . . . the way Casablancans speak is similar to an argument by Fessis . . .” 114

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Lamia is a good example of Fessis native to Casablanca who have the greatest delight and pride in belonging to the Fessi group. However, like most levelers in this study, Lamia draws a clear line between F wassa-d-Fes “Fessis from Fez” and F wassa-d-Kasa “Fessis from Casablanca” and gives out several clues on what it means to be one or the other: Lamia: F wassa d Fez, tajkunu ∫wija b¢hlin b¢∞da, uh|¢rthum makat fh¢mha∫ presque ga∞ . . . tajkunu ∫wija m∞¢qdin, f∫i ∫k¢l, ∞¢ndhum l}¢∫ma b¢zzaf, ∞¢ndhum daks∫i t¢qlidi b¢zzaf, alors que lli tajY¢l∞u lkasa, taj}ra∫u . . . “Fessis from Fez are a bit naïve, their dialect is almost unintelligible . . . they are a little behind, they are shy, and they are very traditional. But those who come to Casablanca have become tougher . . .” Similarly, levelers who have negative attitudes towards Fessi agree with Lamia on the near unintelligibility of pure Fessi speech. It is quite revealing to see Nadia who uses qAl about half the time in her speech just as eager to distance herself from pure Fessis as the others: Nadia: kajiwni z¢∞ma lfasiyin pures kajjib li llah b}alli h|art m∞a∫i b¢rrani ma∫i mʁarba. “I ﬁnd pure Fessis like foreigners, speaking to them is like speaking to non-Moroccans.” In addition, most levelers agree that pure Fessi speech is “slow”, “outdated”, “pompous” and some perceive its features to be “out of the ordinary”. To a 26 year-old third generation Fessi, pure Fessi speech seems to be utterly unbearable. Fatma: Je ne peux pas tenir une discussion m∞a Fessi, pure Fessi, moi ça m’étouffe. “I cannot hold a conversation with a Fessi, a pure Fessi, it suffocates me.” By distancing themselves from the “pure” Fessi stock indicates that to these levelers stereotypical Fessi linguistic forms are a liability rather than an asset. Furthermore, it must be mentioned that these women make a clear distinction also between ∞rubi “rural” and ∞adi “normal” Casablancan speech. All of them ﬁnd ∞rubi-Casablancan to be “too tough” and “vulgar” except for Keltoum who ﬁnds certain ∞rubi expressions to be funny and charming. This sheds light on why these women reject “pure” Fessi and “pure” ∞rubi identities, and reconstruct their identity as Fessi-Casablancan. 115

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5.5 Becoming Casablancan Whereas the maintainers, particularly those non-native to Casablanca, stress the difference between “us Fessis” and “them non-Fessis”, levelers stress the difference between “us Fessis of Casablanca” and “them Fessis of Fez”. I argue here that the category Fessi-Casablancan emerges in the intersection between speaking ∞adi “normal” and becoming ∫¢∞bi “like the others” and }r¢∫ “tough”, all of which are important to thinning out pure Fessi identity. 5.5.1 Speaking Çadi Without exception all speakers who leveled stereotypical Fessi linguistic forms have used the adjective “normal” to describe the way they speak. They used the Moroccan Arabic word ∞adi and/or the French normale. But what does “normal” mean and how does it help us understand the process of becoming Casablancan? Several deﬁnitions have come up when I asked the women to explain what they mean by “normal”. Leila: ma fasija ma mknasija ma walu normale . . . ∞adija, ma ∞¢ndi la §af wa la aw. ana had∫∫i kullu ma∞¢ndish. ∞¢ndi h¢|ra ∞adija “Not Fessi, Meknesi or anything else. It is normal . . . I do not have the §af or the aw. I do not have all that. I have normal speech.” What is quite fascinating about this description is that it is precisely a deﬁnition of leveling; which is the attrition of salient, strongly localized and stigmatized features in favor of forms that are widely used in other dialects (Kerswill and Williams 2002; Milroy et al. 1995). Similarly, other levelers conveyed the idea by deﬁning “normal” in the negative as well. Keltoum, for instance, gives the example of Fessi [ ] and the glottal stop [ʔ], in particular, as being “out of the ordinary”, as she put it “ça sort de l’ordinaire”, whereas Fatma used the phrase h¢|ra mqadda “straight speech” to explain what she means by “normal”. On the other hand, others like Khadija added that “normal” means speech that is “not vulgar” and Nadia says that it is speech that is “not salient” or as she phrased it bhal kikajhdru∞ibad llah “like everybody else”. In their explanation of “normal speech”, almost all levelers contrast “pure Fessi”, “¡rubi Casablancan” to “normal” speech. “Normal” as we can see here is deﬁned in the negative; it is neither this speech nor that. This is akin to the point made by Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998) about Standard American English, which is deﬁned more by what it is not rather than by what it is, as they put it “if a person’s speech is free of structures that can be identiﬁed as nonstandard, then it is considered standard” (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1998: 12). I argue that what these women are referring to as

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“normal speech” is the Moroccan Arabic koiné, which is deﬁned more by what it is not rather than by what it is. The close connection between speaking in a “normal” way and becoming Bi|awija “Casablancan” came up in several discussions with the women. Kawtar, for instance, clearly expresses the interconnectedness between leveling and the thinning out of pure Fessi identity. If we recall from the previous section, Kawtar uses an intermediate [m] and uses [gal]. For Kawtar [qal] variant indexes pure Fessiness more than the variant [ ]. For ease of reference, Kawtar’s quote will be repeated here. Kawtar: ma∫i fassija fassija, je suis normale . . . ana ∫wiya bi|awija, je parle [r] avec [ ] c’est tout, parce que lfassijat tajgulu ‘qatli/qutl¢k’, ana c’est ‘galli gutlak’ dik qalli uqutl¢k c’est bête. “I am not Fessi Fessi. I am normal . . . I am Casablancan a little. I speak with [Fessi] [ ] that’s all, because Fessi women say ‘qatli/ qutlək’. I say ‘galli gutlak’ saying ‘qatli/qutlək’ is stupid.” It is clear from Kawtar’s comments that she puts lots of emphasis on [gal] variant being part of normal Casablancan speech. Her use of [gal] instead of [qal] seems to be an important component in thinning out “pure” Fessi identity and casts her as Fessi-Casablancan. 5.5.2 Becoming CaÇbi The notion of “normal” that came through in the quote above is not simply being convergent linguistically but being “one of the people” as well. I argue that while speaking with Fessi features indexes snobbishness, leveling indexes ta∫ ∞bit, which is a desire to be like the others. Many levelers pride themselves of being ∫¢∞bijat “one of the people, down to earth” as opposed to “snob and pompous”, which is how pure Fessis are described. Keltoum is very keen on distancing herself from Fessis who are “snobbish” and “racist”: dik la haute societé ma∞¢ndi∫ m∞aha “I am not very fond of high society”, emphasizing instead that she likes ordinary people. It is worth mentioning that even among some levelers who have expressed the most positive feelings towards everything Fessi, they are reluctant to identify with “pure” Fessis particularly because of the elitist attitudes they apparently have towards other Moroccan social groups. Leila, for instance, embraces a Fessi identity only as far as certain cultural practices are concerned, such as cooking, dressing, and arranging a bride’s trousseau, but she was proud of the fact that the way she speaks is “normal” and that she is “one of the folks”. For other levelers, like Fatma and Zakia, this notion of ta∫ ∞bit has a lot to do with being able to adapt and blend in both linguistically and socially. It seems that ta∫ ∞bit is important to becoming Fessi-Casablancan or Casablancan. 117

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5.5.3 Becoming íërCa So far we have seen that speaking normally and becoming ∫¢∞bi are integral to the category “us Fessis of Casablanca”. Another very important component of this social category is to become }r¢∫. Almost all informants have used the word }¢r∫a, which seems to have become a typical word for describing people and their speech in Casablanca. Almost all Fessi informants, levelers and maintainers, agree that Casablanca-born Fessis are tougher than Fez-born Fessis and it appears that “toughness” distinguishes them from Fessis from Fez. But again what does it mean to become }¢r∫a? Keltoum is aware of the changes that have happened to her dialect and to her personality after she immigrated to Casablanca. She emphasizes the fact that she has become aggressive, independent, street smart, less delicate when she moved to Casablanca. In short, she became }¢r∫a. Keltoum: kunt timide kan∫ufhum kanw¢lli k¢neʁz¢l nw¢lli }¢mra ila ∫af ﬁja ﬁja ∫i wa}ed kulli, it ll¢hna }ra∫it, Bi|awija pure . . . }ra∫it fa∫ it lkasa. hd¢rti wllat }¢r∫a, le r w¢lla }ra∫ . . . ra daba wllat tats¢rreh li ra. “I used to be shy, when I see them (men) I start shaking and I blush. I came here I became tough, pure Casablancan. Everything about me has become tough when I came to Casablanca. My dialect became tough too. My r has become tough. My ra has become straight.” It is clear that leveling is central to becoming }¢r∫a. Keltoum’s comment indicates that leaving behind stereotypical Fessi variants and becoming “tough” are important factors in becoming Casablancan. While many levelers have expressed positive attitudes towards “normal” speech, they agree that in comparison with Fessi speech, this variety is }¢r∫a. Toughness, as studies have shown, is a positive male value usually associated with working class status and with the use of vernacular features (e.g. Trudgill 1974). What is striking here is that what is considered a “tough” dialect, mainly because of [gal] and trilled [r], are precisely the variants some of these Fessi women are adopting. Becoming “tough” is far from carrying negative meanings as one might expect, rather it seems to be an attractive trait that distinguishes Fessi-Casablancans from Fessis from Fez. However, there seems to be general agreement among these women that speaking with Fessi accent makes a man sound effeminate. Fatma, for instance, is unequivocal about the type of identities a man and a woman should embrace; a man should be Bi|awi “Casablancan” whereas the woman should be in-between Fessi and Casablancan. As we have seen so far, Fessi features index traditional femininity. One can argue that if Fessi variants index an outdated, traditional and reserved

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persona, becoming tough and less feminine are desirable probably because they index modernity. This would suggest that Fessi women who leveled Fessi variants do not mind trading off traditional femininity for a modern identity, where the pressures to be “aggressive and tough” are overriding. Thus, sounding “normal”, even if it means sounding “tough” and “less feminine” is important in becoming Fessi-Casablancan.

5.6 Conclusions In this article we have looked at the correlations between dialect leveling and/or maintenance, attitudes and identity. Based on speakers’ overt and covert attitudes and ideologies towards Fessi and Casablancan linguistic and social identity, we have identiﬁed the categories that have emerged as a result of the migration of Fessis to Casablanca, such as F wassa-d-Fes “pure Fessis”, F wassa-d-Kasa “Fessi-Casablancans” and Bi|awa “Casablancans”. It turned out that leveling and/or maintenance of stereotypical features is a site and a resource in Fessi identity (re)construction in Casablanca. That is, leveling stereotypical Fessi traits is important in setting the boundary for Fessi-Casablancan identity and giving it meaning, while maintenance of these linguistic forms tends to be, to some extent, crucial in the maintenance of “pure” Fessi identity. Leveling of salient Fessi linguistic forms shapes and deﬁnes a hybrid FessiCasablancan identity. In general, those who do not level Fessi linguistic forms have a stronger Fessi identiﬁcation, while leveling helps in thinning pure Fessi identity. That is, the use of [gal] instead of [qal] is an important resource for a Fessi-Casablancan identity. Informants agree that Casablancaborn Fessis have become “tough” in Casablanca and that it is this “toughness” that distinguishes them from Fessis from Fez. The category F wassa-d-kasa “Fessi-Casablancans” has emerged because of this “toughness”. In other words, part of what deﬁnes a Fessi-Casablancan is that they think they are “tougher” than Fessis from Fez, and leveling of stereotypical Fessi variants is central to the existence of this category. The key to understanding what it means for a Fessi to become Casablancan is found in an interaction between linguistic and social practices. To become Casablancan depends on (1) speaking “normally”, i.e. leveling stereotypical linguistic forms, such as leaving behind [™al] or [qal] for Casablancan [gal] and adopting Casablancan trilled [r] instead of the Fessi approximant; (2) to shift from a perceived “soft, delicate and too feminine” persona to becoming }¢r∫a “i.e. tough, street smart, independent, less delicate and over the edge”; and, (3) becoming ∫a∞bija “one of the folks, unassuming and down to earth”. These are important resources in thinning out “pure” Fessi identity, and do in turn index Fessi-Casablancan or Casablancan identity.

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TWO CASES OF MOROCCAN ARABIC IN THE DIASPORA

6 TWO CASES OF MOROCCAN ARABIC IN THE DIASPORA Ángeles Vicente

6.1 Introduction Migration movements have been one of the most signiﬁcant social phenomena in the twentieth century, producing considerable changes in both the urban and rural societies of the Arab World. From a sociolinguistic perspective, the greatest effect of these migrations has been an increased contact between various Arabic vernaculars particularly in the cities, due to the rapid urbanization process. But in order to present a complete picture of the impact of urbanization upon Arabic vernaculars, one must take into account not only the internal rural-urban migration trends occurring in present-day Arabicspeaking countries but also the impact of foreign urban migration. In this foreign context, a speciﬁc linguistic evolution is taken place, due to the fact that the immigrants’ Arabic mother tongues have a minority status and are evolving in contact with the dominant languages of the host country. Contemporary studies concerning Arabic dialects spoken in migratory situations concern both the Western non-Muslim countries of Europe and the United States, or non-Western countries where vernacular Arabic is spoken in contact with more prestigious or ofﬁcial languages. The most notable cases concerning Arabic-speaking communities in Europe, include: Iraqis in the United Kingdom (Abu-Haidar 1989, 1991), Moroccans in Holland (Boumans 1998; Boumans and de Ruiter 2002), and Maghrebians, particularly Algerians and Moroccans, in France (Caubet 2001a, 2001b; El Minaoui 2001; Melliani 2000). Few studies have been done in the United States, save those of A. Rouchdy (1992, 2002). Numerous works refer to the Arabic dialects spoken by Arabic-speaking minorities in the rest of the world.1 In these countries, Arabic speaking communities often represent ancient diasporas, unlike most of those found in Europe and the United States. Therefore the linguistic evolution of those Arabic vernaculars was/is rather different from what can be observed today in the Western world. Within this scholarship, one can quote studies on Arabic varieties spoken in Africa (Nigeria, Chad, Uganda, or South Sudan), in Asia (Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkey), on Maltese, on Kormakiti 123

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Arabic in Cyprus or the historical studies on Arabic languages that have disappeared, such as Andalusi Arabic and Sicilian Arabic.2 These Arabic dialects have all been inﬂuenced by local dominant languages, for example, Italian in Maltese or Sub-Saharan languages in the African group. In any case, these studies highlight the existence of an extremely heterogeneous landscape, so that the Arabic vernaculars in the diaspora cannot be treated as a uniform entity. The particular characteristics of each speciﬁc context need to be taken into consideration. The mother tongues of immigrants evolve differently depending upon the neighboring dominant language, but also upon extralinguistic factors peculiar to each community, a point I seek to conﬁrm below. A good example of such a local speciﬁcity is the case of France, where colloquial Arabic is considered “a language of France”. The vitality of Maghrebian Arabic in France differs greatly from what has been recorded in other European countries (Caubet 2001a, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b, 2004a, 2004b, 2005). In my opinion, the study of the evolution of Arabic vernaculars in the diaspora, in a diachronic and synchronic perspective, and the comparison with similar processes in the countries of origin is imperative in order to better understand the linguistic processes of urbanization and koineization affecting the Arabic language in general.

6.2 Moroccan Arabic in the diaspora Moroccan emigration has been largely orientated ﬁrst toward France, subsequently toward Holland, Belgium, and Germany and more recently, toward Spain and Italy. Accordingly, though sharing some common characteristics, the numerous Moroccan communities in Europe lived in different social and linguistic situations. Linguistically, these immigrant groups are quite varied, and several factors have inﬂuenced the evolution of their vernaculars. First, the dominant interactive language is distinct in each country, and second the time factor has had an important impact, due to the fact that the linguistic situation of Morocco has evolved since the departure of the early immigrants up to the arrival of the recent ones. With these factors in mind, I have chosen the Spanish–Moroccan Arabic case to demonstrate that the evolution of an Arabic dialect within a minority language context varies from one host country to another, or from one city to another, even if in contact with the same foreign language in the same country.3 With regards to Moroccan Arabic spoken outside of Morocco, the French and Dutch cases are the best known, particularly concerning the processes of interaction between Moroccan Arabic4 and the dominant languages, French and Dutch respectively, through the studies of linguistic practices triggered by contact and bilingualism (Boumans 1998; Boumans and Caubet 2000). According to Boumans and de Ruiter (2002), the language uses of a Moroccan community in the diaspora does not mirror the language situation 124

TWO CASES OF MOROCCAN ARABIC IN THE DIASPORA

of the country of origin.5 The varieties spoken as mother tongue or lingua franca by these Moroccan immigrants may differ from the local varieties spoken by the monolingual or even bilingual urban speakers in Morocco. A number of European cities are characterized by the presence of a large community of Moroccan migrants coming from a single region, a factor that enhances the maintenance of speciﬁc Arabic and Berber vernaculars in these Europeans urban centers and their eventual development as lingua franca among the Moroccan communities. Therefore certain Arabic and Berber vernaculars happen to play a more important role in the diaspora than in the Moroccan urban centers. While this assertion may be correct, it must be qualiﬁed, as these diaspora communities are nevertheless different from one another. Accordingly, a number of social factors play an important role in the evolution of their mother tongues, as for example a greater or lesser level of contact with the country of origin, the time of settlement of the community in the host society, whether or not the dominant language is mastered, whether or not a “second” or “third” generation exists,6 the sociolinguistic proﬁle of the community members and its homogeneity, the social networks and so on. All of these factors actively shape the evolution of mother tongues. This chapter seeks to analyze the dynamics of linguistic changes within Moroccan Arabic in different migratory situations taking into account the impact of extra-linguistic factors. To do this, I will study the process of linguistic integration of the population of Moroccan origin within two Spanish cities: Ceuta and Zaragoza. These communities differ on several points, including patterns and timing of their establishment as well as their relationship with the country of origin. Ceuta is a very distinctive city because its present-day Muslim community of Moroccan origin has had a prolonged development, over almost one and a half centuries, and is characterized by its geographical proximity to and continued relations with Morocco, particularly with the population from the northern region. In fact the geographical location of Ceuta and its situation as a Spanish enclave within North Africa makes it rather problematic to talk about a Moroccan diaspora, even if the city is ofﬁcially Spanish. In this sense, Ceuta can be considered as an intermediate case between a situation of internal ruralurban migration and a situation of foreign migration. Whereas the community of Moroccan-origin Muslims living in Zaragoza settled very recently, and is mainly an “economic migration”, rather similar to those that took place in other European countries in earlier times. Contact with the country of origin in Zaragoza is often quite sporadic, normally limited to vacation periods. The analysis of these two concrete and distinct sociolinguistic contexts will conﬁrm how the linguistic practices of immigrants differ depending upon the internal constituency of each group and upon the degree of their linguistic integration in the host society. These circumstances will have 125

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Map 6.1 Zaragoza and Ceuta

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diverse linguistic impacts on both the evolution of their mother tongues and their relationship with the dominant language.

6.3 The city of Ceuta The history of the city of Ceuta illustrates its distinctiveness in relation to both other Moroccan cities and European cities. Its geographic space has been inhabited since Antiquity by diverse peoples. It was likely a site of Phoenician origins; but its status as an urban center was not conﬁrmed until the Muslim medieval period, when Ceuta enjoyed, from an economic and cultural point of view, a lustrous moment. In the ﬁfteenth century, following a short period under the Portuguese who had control of the Muslim city, Ceuta became a North-African Spanish enclave, a political situation which has endured until modern times, and which has provo