The Arabic Language

ʾimāla
is an historical process that has led to the change 
ā
> 
ē
in the neighbourhood 
of an 
i
vowel, for example, in the dialect of Aleppo 
lisān
> 
lsēn
‘tongue’, 
jāmiʿ
> 
jēmeʿ 
‘mosque’. This change usually took place even when the 
ā
followed an emphatic 
or pharyngal consonant, for example, 
ṭāleb
> 
ṭēleb
‘striving’. The historical devel
-
opment is to be distinguished from the synchronic rules governing the pronun
-
ciation of Classical Arabic /ā/, which ranges from [ɒː] in the neighbourhood of 
emphatics to [ɑː] in the neighbourhood of gutturals, and to [ɛː] or [æː] elsewhere. 
We therefore find contrasting pairs such as 
ṭēleb
[eːleb] ‘striving’ as the regular 
development of /ā/, as against 
ṭāleb
[ɒːleb] ‘student’, or 
kēteb
[keːteb] ‘writing’ 
as against 
kāteb
[kæːteb] ‘writer’, in which the second member is probably a loan 
from Classical Arabic, since it did not undergo the change to 
ē
. In the pronuncia
-
tion, there is a clear distinction between [eː] and [æː].
By contrast, in Lebanese Arabic, /ā/ is realised either as [æː] (
ʾimāla
) or [ɒː] 
(
tafḫīm
), depending on the context, for instance, in the dialect of Bišmizzīn: 
māt
[mæːt] ‘to die’ as against 
ṣār 
[ɒː] ‘to become’. But the distribution of these two 
variants is not always clear, since in some contexts both may occur, for instance, 
žā 
[ʒɒː] ‘to come’ as against 
žāb
[ʒæːb] ‘to bring’, which even leads to formal 
opposition pairs, such as 
ktāb 
[ktɒːb] ‘write!’ as against 
ktāb 
[ktæːb] ‘book’. In most 
Lebanese dialects, the diphthongs /ay/ and /aw/ have been preserved at least 

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The Dialects of Arabic 
199
in open syllables. In closed syllables, they develop into /ē/ and /ō/ and become 
indistinguishable from the two allophones of /ā/, as in Tripoli. Since the context 
in which original /ay/ and /aw/ occur is not conditioned (for instance, /ē/ may 
occur after an emphatic consonant as in 
ṣef
‘summer’), the contrast between the 
two allophones of /ā/ has become phonemic.
The distinctions between the three groups are not clear-cut, however. The 
exact boundary between the Lebanese/Central Syrian and the North Syrian group 
cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. Likewise, there is an isogloss 
separating the Palestinian and the South Lebanese dialects from the rest, based on 
the behaviour of the short vowels. Palestinian Arabic and most Lebanese dialects 
have three short vowels, /a/, /i/ and /u/. The other dialects have preserved the 
opposition between /i/ and /u/ only in unstressed final syllables (often translit-
erated as 
e
and 
o
), whereas in all other environments they have merged into one 
vowel phoneme (transliterated as 
ǝ
). The reduction of the opposition between 
/i/ and /u/ has been reinforced by their elision in all open, unstressed syllables. 
Thus, we find, for instance, in Damascene Arabic 
kǝtob
< 
kutub
‘books’, with stress 
on the penultimate, but 
ṭlūʿ 
< 
ṭulūʿ 
‘ascent’, with stress on the ultimate, and preser
-
vation of the long /ū/. Compare also 
šǝreb
< 
šariba
‘to drink’, with stress on the 
penultimate, and