Chadian Arabic Information

Chadian Arabic or Shuwa Arabic (also known as Arabe Choa, Shua Arabic, Shua, Chowa, Chad Arabic, Suwa, L'arabe du Tchad, Chadic Arabic, Baggara) is the variety of Arabic spoken in the region of Lake Chad. It is the first language for nearly one million people in Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, and Central African Republic and serves as a lingua franca in much of the region.^[1]

In Nigeria, it spoken by 10% of the population of Maidaguri.^[2] It is characterized by the loss of the pharyngeals [ħ] and [ʕ], the interdental fricatives [ð], [θ] and [ðˤ], and diphthongs.^[3][4] But it also has /lˤ/, /rˤ/ and /mˤ/ as extra phonemic emphatics. Some examples of minimal pairs for such emphatics are /ɡallab/ "he galloped", /ɡalˤlˤab/ "he got angry"; /karra/ "he tore", /karˤrˤa/ "he dragged"; /amm/ "uncle", /amˤmˤ/ "mother".^[3] In addition, Nigerian Arabic has the feature of inserting an /a/ after gutturals (ʔ,h,x,q).^[3] Another notable feature is the change of Standard Arabic Form V from tafaʻal(a) to alfaʻal; for example, the word "taʻallam(a)" becomes alʻallam.^[5] The first person singular of verbs is different from its formation in other Arabic dialects in that it does not have a final t. Thus, the first person singular of the verb katab is katáb, with stress on the second syllable of the word, whereas the third-person singular is kátab, with stress on the first syllable.^[3]

The following is a sample vocabulary:

Notes

1. ^ Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
2. ^ Owens, Jonathan (2007). "Close Encounters of a Different Kind: Two types of insertion in Nigerian Arabic code switching". In Miller, Catherine G.. Arabic in the city: issues in dialect contact and language variation. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-77311-3.
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Jonathan Owens 2006, A Linguistic History of Arabic. Oxford University Press
4. ^ Andrew, Fox; Kaye, Alan S. (October 1988). "Nigerian Arabic–English Dictionary, Book Review". Language (Language, Vol. 64, No. 4) 64 (4): 836. doi:10.2307/414603. http://jstor.org/stable/414603.
5. ^ Jonathan Owens 2000, Arabic as a Minority Language. Walter de Gruyter

External links

• Chadian Arabic videos

Categories: Central Semitic languages | Arabic languages | Languages of Chad | Languages of Nigeria | Languages of Cameroon | Languages of Niger |

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See Also:

• Ancient North Arabian
• Arabic
• Arabic Afrikaans
• Arabic Literature
• Arabic Numerals
• Arabic Phonology
• Arabic Proverbs
• Eastern Arabic Numerals
• Maghrebi Arabic
• Sudanese Arabic