The Arabic Language

ʾaktib
/
niktibu
, which makes the latter explanation 
much more likely (see Map 10.1).
Map 10.1 Pronominal prefixes of the first person of the imperfect verb 
in the Egyptian Delta (after Behnstedt and Woidich 1985: map 211)

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The Study of the Arabic Dialects 
179
Another example is that of the pronoun of the first-person singular in Yemenite 
dialects (Behnstedt 1985: 9, map 38): in one area both the independent pronoun 
and the suffix are gender-neutral (
ʾana
/
-ni
), more to the west there are a few 
areas where the independent pronoun has a masculine form 
ʾana
and a feminine 
one, 
ʾani
; finally, in the Tihāma both the independent pronoun and the object 
suffix have two forms (
ʾana
/
ʾani
and 
-na
/
-ni
); in the latter area the suffix 
-na
was 
no longer available for the first-person plural, which changed to 
-iḥna
, as in the 
dialect of the Egyptian oasis of Farafra (cf. below, p. 182; see Map 10.2).
When a feature reaches a certain area, it will not affect mechanically every single 
item that it encounters. In many cases, for instance, an innovation spreading from 
an urban centre to the countryside will first affect the most frequent vocabulary 
Map 10.2 Pronominal suffixes of the first person in 
the Yemenite dialects (after Behnstedt 1985: map 38)

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180
The Arabic Language
items, thus creating a split in the vocabulary. The historical circumstances of the 
contact between both areas will determine the subsequent development. Lexical 
variation in the Arabic dialects was used by Cadora (1992) to analyse the ecolin
-
guistic variation, that is, the diffusion of urban variants in Bedouin/rural speech. 
He distinguishes various stages: first, contrastive lexical items are replaced by 
adapted urban ones, for example, in Ramallah Arabic 
ḫūṣa 
‘knife’ is replaced by 
siččīne
,
 
with Bedouin affrication, and eventually, the urban form 
sikkīne 
is taken 
over without any adaptation (1992: 111). Cadora sees the rate of diffusion as an 
index of the speed of urbanisation. When contact becomes permanent, eventu-
ally the innovation will spread across the entire lexicon. But when the innovatory 
influence is withdrawn in mid-course or when loyalty towards the local dialect 
acts as a counter-influence, the non-affected items are left in their original state, 
so that from a diachronic point of view the vocabulary gives the impression of a 
‘mixed’ nature.
In most Arabic dialects, a certain amount of ‘mixing’ took place during the 
second stage of Arabicisation when Bedouin tribes from the Arabian peninsula 
spread across the Islamic empire. The resulting contacts between sedentary 
and Bedouin speakers affected the lexicon in particular. In Uzbekistan Arabic, 
for instance, the usual realisation of Classical /q/ is voiceless /q/, but there are 
a few words containing a Bedouin voiced /g/, for example, 
gidir
‘pot’, 
giddām
‘before’, 
galab
‘to turn around’. This phenomenon is widespread over the Arabo
-
phone world. In Moroccan sedentary dialects, for instance, that of Rabat, a few 
lexical items have Bedouin /g/, as in Uzbekistan Arabic, for example, 
gǝmḥ
‘wheat’ 
(Classical Arabic 
qamḥ
), 
gǝmṛa
‘moon’ (Classical Arabic