The Arabic Language

Wortatlas der arabischen Dialekte 
has 
been set up onomasiologically, that is, classified according to the meaning of the 
lexical items. The first volume, dedicated to humans and nature, contains maps 
on items such as ‘widow’, ‘thief’, ‘gecko’ and, of course, the famous 
ḫōḫ 
(
WAD 
I, 
502–7), often adduced as an example of lexical variation by speakers of Arabic: 
in the Levant it means ‘prune’, in Egypt ‘peach’ and in Mauritania ‘apricot’. The 
second volume deals with material culture. Unlike traditional lexical investiga
-
tions, the authors do not limit their maps to agricultural items, but also include 
modern items, such as ‘gas station’ or ‘mobile phone’. The latter (
WAD
II, 467–8) 
nicely illustrates the creation of neologisms as well as the influence of English and 
French: in Egypt 
maḥmūl 
is becoming old-fashioned and is increasingly replaced 
by 
mūbayl 
(English 
mobile
); in Iraq and Libya 
naqqāl 
is used, in Saudi Arabia 
jawwāl
, 
but in Morocco 
poṛṭabl 
(French 
portable
) is the most popular designation (cf. p. 234).
The synchronic record of a dialect map represents innovations as clear-cut 
phenomena that are either present or absent, but at the same time, it allows 
one to infer something about the diachronic development of the area. Very often 
maps tell us something about the relative chronology of the features, since as a 
rule the periphery of the area preserves the oldest features, that have not yet 
been reached by innovations from the prestige dialect of a cultural or political 
centre. The existence of transitional zones demonstrates the gradual introduction 

---

178
The Arabic Language
of innovations. On the dialect maps, this is visualised in the form of an accumula
-
tion of phenomena (
terrace landscape
, or in German 
Staffellandschaft
, see Behnstedt 
and Woidich 2005: 160–3). One example is that of the 
ʾaktib
/
niktibu
dialects in the 
Egyptian Delta. All dialects of the Maghreb are characterised by the prefix 
n-
of 
the first-person singular of the imperfect verb. This is one of the most frequently 
cited isoglosses in Arabic dialectology, which divides the Western from the 
Eastern dialects. Moroccan Arabic has 
nǝktǝb
/
nkǝtbu
‘I write/we write’, whereas 
Eastern Arabic, for instance, Syrian Arabic, has 
ʾǝktob
/
nǝktob
. The 
n-
prefix is also 
found in Maltese Arabic and in those sub-Saharan dialects that derived from 
a North African variety. The borderline between the Western and the Eastern 
dialects lies in the Egyptian Delta. There are two competing explanations for this 
development. The first explanation posits a change in the singular 
nǝktǝb
, which 
is explained as contraction of the personal pronoun with the verb: 
ʾanā ʾaktubu
→ 
naktubu
; in this explanation, the plural is regarded as an analogous forma
-
tion on the basis of the new singular. The second explanation starts from the 
plural form 
nkǝtbu
, which is explained as an analogous formation to the forms 
for the second- and the third-person plural 
tkǝtbu
, 
ikǝtbu
, the singular form being 
a secondary development. The dialect map of the Delta shows that between the 
two areas there is an area with