The Arabic Language

qamar
), 
gǝdra
‘pot’ (Classical 
Arabic 
qidr
), 
gǝṛn
‘horn’ (Classical Arabic 
qarn
). It may be added that, inversely, in 
Bedouin dialects with the realisation /g/, there are usually some lexical items 
with /q/, for instance, in the Moroccan dialect of Skūra 
qbǝṛ
‘grave’ (Classical 
Arabic 
qabr
), 
qbīla
‘tribe’ (Classical Arabic 
qabīla
), 
qsǝm
‘to divide’ (Classical Arabic 
qasama
). The city of Marrakech speaks a Hilālī (Bedouin) dialect, but originally 
this dialect belonged to the sedentary group of the first wave of Arabicisation 
(see below, Chapter 11, p. 211). This pre-Hilālī substrate is manifest, for instance, 
in the frequent use of the particle 
ka- 
for continuous aspect, along with Hilālī 
ta-
, 
and the use of the genitive exponent 
d-
, 
dǝl
, along with Hilālī 
ntāʿ 
(Lévy 1998: 23).
A well-documented case of dialect contact is that of the dialects in the Western 
oases in Egypt (Farafra, Daḫla, Ḫarga; cf. below, p. 208). According to Woidich’s 
interpretation of the structure of these dialects (1993), some of the features 
exhibited by them, such as the prefix 
n-
in the first-person singular of the imper-
fect verb, may have been introduced in the course of contact with later invading 
Bedouin from the west, in particular, the Banū Sulaym on their migrations back 
east. The dialect mixing in the oases demonstrates another result of dialect 
contact, namely, accommodation and over-generalisation. As an example, we may 
mention the word-final stress in these dialects, which resembles that in Maghreb 

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The Study of the Arabic Dialects 
181
Map 10.3 Reflexes of /q/ and /j/ in the Egyptian Delta 
(after Behnstedt and Woidich 1985: 31–2 and map 15)
Map 10.4 Medieval trade centres in the Egyptian Delta 
(after Behnstedt and Woidich 1985: map 551)

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182
The Arabic Language
dialects. Contrary to what happens in the Maghreb dialects, however, the dialects 
of the oases also have word-final stress when the penultimate syllable is long, 
or when the final syllable ends in a vowel, for example, in Farafra 
minžál
‘sickle’, 
bayt
s
iḥníy
‘our house’. This is probably to be interpreted as a generalisation of the 
rule in the Maghreb dialects. When the inhabitants of the oases came into contact 
with dialects in which many words were stressed on the final syllable, they over-
generalised in their attempt to accommodate to these dialects and extended the 
rule to all words.
The development of dialectal koines is a special case of dialect contact. Within 
the confines of the national states, the new dialect of the capital started to exert 
an enormous influence on the neighbouring areas. In Iraq, for instance, the 
dialect of the Muslims of Baghdad has become the prestige dialect, and speakers 
from the countryside tend to switch from their own local dialect to the dialect 
of the capital (even when features of their own dialect are closer to the Classical 
language, for example, in the realisation of the Classical /q/!). A good example is 
the speech style of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who in his public 
speeches adapted to the Baghdad Muslim dialect – with 
g
for Classical 
q
– rather 
than using the rural dialect of his birthplace Tikrit, which has a voiceless realisa
-
tion of the 
q
. The voiceless realisation is associated with both rural and minority 
varieties. The latter association is also found in the case of Bahrain mentioned 
above (p. 176).
In Egypt, the dialect of Cairo has spread over a large area in the Delta. The map 
of the realisation of /q/ and /j/ in the central Delta shows an oblong area leading 
from Cairo to Damietta, in which the Cairene forms /ʾ/ and /g/ are used, whereas 
the rest of the Delta has /g/ and /j/ (see Map 10.3).
After the decline of Alexandria as the main port of Cairo in the fourteenth 
century, the principal trade route ran from the capital along the eastern branch 
of the Nile to Damietta, as is shown by the concentration of trade centres along 
this route in the Middle Ages (see Map 10.4).
Nowadays, the road from Cairo to Alexandria is the main artery in the Delta, 
and Cairene influence is indeed visible in Alexandria (/g/ and /ʾ/), though not in 
the surrounding area. The configuration of the dialect map shows that Cairene 
Arabic influence corresponded to the frequency of trade contacts. A second 
conclusion that may be drawn from this configuration is that the realisation of /j/ 
as /g/ is not a recent development, but goes back at least to the flourishing period 
of the Damietta route. An alternative explanation is advanced by Behnstedt (2006: 
589): the ‘Cairene’ realisation may be a relic of the original situation in the Delta 
dialects, and the ‘Bedouin’ realisation may be a later layer, imposed during the 
later migrations. In this explanation, too, the Damietta route, retains its crucial 
role, but this time as a language barrier.
The dialects of the capitals themselves often have a complicated history. In the 
case of Cairene Arabic, Woidich (1994, 1995) has analysed its formation at the end 

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The Study of the Arabic Dialects 
183
of the nineteenth century (see below, p. 207). Many other Middle Eastern capitals, 
such as Amman and Baghdad, have also gone through a period of rapid urban
-
isation, in which thousands of migrants flocked to the capital from the country-
side, bringing with them their rural dialects. The ensuing mixture of dialects 
led to the emergence of more and less prestigious varieties, depending on the 
relative social and political power of the speakers involved. The levelling influ-
ence of urban dialects such as Cairene Arabic is manifest in the speech patterns 
of recent migrants from the countryside to the capital. In a recent survey, Miller 
(2005) has shown that the first generation of rural migrants has accommodated 
partially to Cairene Arabic: they replace lexical–syntactic features, for instance, 
the Saʿīdī genitive exponent 
šuġl 
or 
hinīn
with Cairene 
bitāʿ
, but often retain the 
phonological traits such as the Saʿīdī realisation of 
jīm
/j/ rather than /g/. The 
pattern of accommodation corresponds to those features of Cairene Arabic that 
had already been taken over in urban centres outside Cairo. The second genera
-
tion of migrants adapts entirely to Cairene Arabic and loses all traces of South 
Egyptian speech.
The dialect of the Jordanian capital Amman is a special case. Until the 1950s 
this city had a mere 100,000 inhabitants, but in forty years it went through a 
tremendous growth, reaching more than 1.5 million inhabitants in the 1990s, in 
the first place because of the massive influx of Palestinians who brought their 
own Palestinian dialect. Because the dialect of Amman did not possess the kind 
of prestige that the dialects of other capitals held, these newcomers did not feel 
the need to accommodate to this dialect. Nonetheless, in the recent past, the 
youngest generations have started to regard themselves as speakers of a newly 
formed ʿAmmānī dialect, which is part new formation, part mixture of the constit-
uent dialects (Al Wer 2007b).
The process of koineisation even extends outside the borders of national states. 
The Egyptian dialect in particular has become known all over the Arab world,