The Arabic Language

8.2 The new type of Arabic
Our main sources for the reconstruction of the historical process of emergence 
of a colloquial type of Arabic are the modern dialects. Terminologically, there 
is some confusion about the name for the new type of Arabic. The name ‘New 
Arabic’ (or ‘Neo-Arabic’) will be used here for the colloquial type of Arabic that 
became current in the early stages of the conquests and that developed into 
the Arabic dialects as we know them today. In this terminology, the new type 
of Arabic is contrasted with Old Arabic, that is, the Arabic that was used in the 
Jāhiliyya
. As we have seen in Chapter 4, there is no consensus about the linguistic 
situation in the pre-Islamic period, so that the term ‘Old Arabic’ is used both 
for the 
ʿArabiyya
as the uniform language of the Bedouin tribes, the 
Qurʾān
and 
pre-Islamic poetry, and alternatively, for the poetico-Qurʾānic koine that was 
used as a literary language transcending the dialects of the Bedouin tribes. In 
either case, Old Arabic represents the type of Arabic that in its codified form by 
the grammarians became the literary and cultural language of the Arabo-Islamic 
empire and is known as Classical Arabic. After the period of the conquests, Old 
and New Arabic coexisted in a sociolinguistic relationship that is usually called 
‘diglossia’ (see below, Chapter 13).
As we shall see below (pp. 139f.), the opposition of Old/New Arabic is strongly 
opposed by Owens (2006), who does not believe that the history of the Arabic 
language was punctuated by a break in transmission between an alleged Old and 
New type: both types coexisted in the pre-Islamic period and in fact, ‘New’ Arabic 
may even go back to an older stage in the development of the Semitic languages 
than ‘Old’ Arabic, which he believes represents in some ways an innovation. 
Notwithstanding these objections, we shall continue to use the two terms here, 
but on the understanding that the diachronic relationship between the two is 
controversial and not accepted by all scholars. 
Whatever our views on the linguistic situation in the pre-Islamic period, we 
still need an explanation for the emergence of the new type of Arabic. Even if 
some of the traits of this new type of Arabic were already found in the pre-Islamic 
dialects – such as the subject–verb agreement or the undeclined dual in the 
Ḥijāz (cf. above, Chapter 4, pp. 51f.), or the possible disappearance of the declen-
sional endings in the peripheral dialects in North Arabia (cf. above, pp. 53f.) – 

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The Emergence of New Arabic 
133
no one maintains that all features of the modern dialects can be traced back to 
the pre-Islamic period. Any theory about the emergence of the dialects must 
therefore account for the changes that took place after the conquests and that 
demarcate the new type of Arabic from the old type. At the same time, such a 
theory must not only explain the common features of the dialects as against the 
Classical standard, but also provide an explanation for the numerous differences 
among the dialects. In the pre-Islamic period, Arabs from all over the peninsula 
could communicate with each other with relative ease. Nowadays, Moroccans 
and Iraqis, each speaking their own dialect, would find it extremely difficult to 
understand each other, and it is fair to say that the linguistic distance between 
the dialects is as large as that between the Germanic languages and the Romance 
languages, including Romanian, if not larger.
Before we go into the theories that have been advanced for the present-day 
situation of Arabic, we shall first survey the common features that characterise 
the dialects vis-à-vis the Classical language. No single dialect exhibits all of these 
features, but they may be regarded as a common denominator of the structure 
of dialects in the Arab world. Generally speaking, these features are much more 
frequent in the sedentary dialects, for which Syrian Arabic has been used here in 
most examples, whereas the Bedouin dialects tend to be more conservative (cf. 
below, Chapter 10).
In the following list of features, the structure of the dialects will be compared 
with that of Classical Arabic. This might create the impression that the dialects 
were directly derived from Classical Arabic input. In view of the controversies 
surrounding the relationship between the two types, such a presupposition 
should be avoided. If we follow Owens, most traits were already there and it could 
not be said that the ‘New’ type derives from the ‘Old’ type. Even from the opposite 
point of view – that the ‘New’ type did not emerge until after the conquests in 
a process of second-language acquisition (see below Chapter 16, pp. 299f.) – the 
input for the new speakers of Arabic was certainly not the elevated form of Arabic 
used in poetry and the 
Qurʾān
,
 
nor even the everyday language of the Bedouin, but 
a simplified version of the language, which they used to address foreigners. For 
the sake of convenience, in comparing the two types we shall sometimes resort 
to formulations that might suggest a diachronic relationship (for instance, when 
we use the signs < or > in comparisons). 
In the phonological system of the dialects, a number of differences may be 
noted:
• 
The glottal stop, which was present in Eastern Arabic and in the 
Qurʾān
, 
but
 
absent in Western Arabic (cf. above, pp. 45f., 49), is not found in any 
dialect (e.g., Classical Arabic 
raʾs
‘head’, Syrian Arabic 
rās
; Classical Arabic 
miʾa
‘hundred’, Syrian Arabic 
mīye
), except where it is the reflex of another 
phoneme, such as Egyptian /ʾ/ for Classical Arabic /q/.

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134
The Arabic Language
• 
In the sedentary dialects, the interdental fricatives correspond to dental 
stops (e.g., Classical Arabic 
ṯalāṯa
‘three’, Syrian Arabic 
tlāte
; Classical Arabic 
ḏanab
‘tail’, Syrian Arabic 
danab
); most Bedouin dialects have interdentals.
• The two Classical Arabic phonemes /ḍ/ and /ḏ̣/ have merged into /ḍ/ in 
the sedentary dialects, and /ḏ̣/ in the Bedouin dialects (e.g., Classical 
ḏ̣
uhr
‘noon’, Syrian Arabic 
ḍǝhr
).
• Final short vowels have been dropped in the dialects; final long vowels have 
become short (e.g., 
kataba
/
katabū
‘he wrote/they wrote’, Syrian Arabic 
katab
/
katabu
).
• 
Stress in the Arabic dialects has become more expiratory, as shown by the 
frequent reduction of short vowels in open syllables (e.g., Classical Arabic 
kaṯīr
‘many’ > 
kiṯīr
> Syrian Arabic 
ktīr
; Classical Arabic 
kātiba
‘writing [feminine]’ 
> Syrian Arabic 
kātbe
); in the dialects of North Africa, only stressed short 
vowels have been retained.
• The opposition of the two short vowels /i/ and /u/ has been reduced in 
many of the sedentary dialects; often they merge into one phoneme, usually 
transcribed with /ǝ/, e.g., in Syrian Arabic 
ʾǝṣṣa
‘story’ (Classical Arabic 
qiṣṣa
), 
and 
mǝrr
‘bitter’ (Classical Arabic 
murr
)
.