270
The Arabic Language
Heath pays special attention to the pattern of integration of French loans into
Moroccan Arabic. At an earlier stage, Spanish loans had been integrated into the
language on the basis of the Spanish infinitive (e.g.,
fṛinaṛ-t
‘I braked’,
n-fṛinaṛ
‘I
brake’ < Spanish
frenar
). But for French loans, the basic form seems to have been
a generalised stem ending in a vowel. In the
-er
conjugation in French, many
forms end in a vowel sound (e.g.,
déclarer
‘to declare’,
déclaré
,
déclarez
,
déclarais
);
according to Heath, these forms provided the canonical
pattern for loanwords,
imperfect
y-ḍiklaṛi
, perfect
ḍiklaṛa
, analogous to the Moroccan weak verbs in
-a
/
-i
. As we shall see below (Chapter 15, p. 278), in Maltese, too, the category
of the weak verbs provided a suitable pattern for foreign loans. Other examples
of French loans include
blisa
/
yblisi
‘to wound’ (French
blesser
);
kuṇṭṛula
/
ykuṇṭṛuli
‘to supervise’ (French
contrôler
);
ṣuṭa
/
yṣuṭi
‘to jump’ (French
sauter
). From most
of
these verbs, a passive and a participle may be formed, for example,
ttblisi
‘to
be wounded’,
mblisi
‘wounded’. With regard to loan nouns, it may be noted that
their gender is determined by the presence or absence of an end-vowel; thus,
for instance,
duš
‘shower’ (French
la douche
) is masculine in Moroccan Arabic,
whereas
aṇṭiṛṇa
‘campus’ (French
internat
) is feminine. Many nouns borrowed
from French have a plural in
-at
(e.g.,
dušat
,
gaṛat
, plural from
gaṛ
‘station’, French
gare
). But broken plurals for borrowed nouns are fairly common, for example,
gid
‘tourist guide’,
plural
gyad
(French
guide
),
mašina
‘train’, plural
mašinat
or
mwašǝn
(French
machine
),
tǝnbǝr
‘stamp’, plural
tnabǝr
(French
timbre
).
A special case of code-switching between French and vernacular Arabic is
that of the so-called Franco-Arabe, a mixed code that is used predominantly by
students and completely bicultural families in Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon. As
an illustration, we may quote a sentence in which French and (Lebanese) Arabic
alternate even within conjunctions (
avant mā
):
yā laṭīf kīf ed-dine b-titġayyar, c’était en été avant mā ṣāret el-mašēkil, imagine-toi inno les
X: kil ši ils ont fait, mā ḥadan qallon un seul mot
‘My dear, how the world is changing! It
was in the summer before the problems began,
imagine that the X family, whatever
they did, nobody said a single word to them’. (quoted by Abou 1962: 67)
Most users of Franco-Arabe would not call this a language in its own right,
and when used by students it is generally frowned upon. Nevertheless, speaking
with a constant mixing of French and Arabic is highly popular in certain circles,
especially with youngsters in peer groups in certain intimate settings. Its mainte
-
nance is dependent on the status quo: as soon as the linguistic situation changes,
as it did, for instance, in Lebanon after the civil war, the use of Franco-Arabe
becomes marginalised. Because of its
ad hoc
character, it cannot be regarded as a
new code, since the speakers seldom use it at home and they do not themselves
feel that it is a separate language. The general attitude
towards the mixing of
codes is negative, most people viewing this mixed register as a sign of insuffi-
cient linguistic proficiency and as being detrimental to the social development
of children.
Bilingualism
271
The study of Franco-Arabe with its frequent use of code-switching is of impor-
tance for our knowledge of the nature of bilingualism. In spite of its seemingly
improvised and haphazard appearance, it seems that it obeys certain syntactic
constraints: in other words, speakers avoid certain combinations and seem to
favour others. Abbassi (1977: 162–3) notes, for instance, that it is perfectly accept
-
able to use combinations such as
mšina l-dak la salle de cinéma
‘we went to that movie-
theatre’,
al-lawwal dyal le mois
‘the first of the month’,
saknin f-une grande maison
‘they live in a big house’,
umm kaltum kanet une chanteuse mumtaza
‘ʾUmm Kalṯūm
was an excellent singer’,
in which Arabic demonstratives, genitive exponents,
prepositions or nouns are combined with French nouns and adjectives. The
reversed combinations (
*cette qāʿat as-sinima
;
*le début du šhar
,
*dans waḥǝd ḍ-ḍaṛ
,
*une excellente muġanniya
) would, however, be less acceptable. Similar constraints
are found in research in the Netherlands about the language of Moroccan young
-
sters who use a mixture of Moroccan Arabic and Dutch (cf. below, Chapter 15).
The current coexistence of the two languages is also shown in the lexicon,
where hybrid formations in French have become highly popular in the parlance
of Algerian youths. Benmayouf (2008) mentions cases like
infehmable
‘incompre
-
hensible’,
inšarḥable
‘inexplicable’,
tarbiyation
‘education’ and even
kariṯastrophe
,
a
contamination of
kāriṯa
and
catastrophe
. With this last form we have definitely
crossed the limit of ordinary word formation and reached the domain of word play.
It remains to be mentioned that with the growing acceptance of French as a
natural ingredient in the linguistic profile of the Maghreb, the local character of
French has become more pronounced as well. In the colonial period several levels
of French were in use. The French colonists contributed to the emergence of a
basilectal level by addressing their servants on a foreigner-directed register (see
Chapter 16); the resulting variety was called
Pataouète
. Some traits of this basilectal
French are still found today in the French of those without formal training, for
instance, the use of
à le
instead of
au
, the use of a pronominal support in sentences
like
ta mère y t’appelle
‘your mother is calling you’,
or the resumptive pronoun in
relative
sentences, such as
un enfant que je connais son frère
‘a child whose brother
I know’ (Lanly 1970: 213, 215, 228).
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