Palestinian Arabic - Sub-dialects of Palestinian Arabic

Sub-dialects of Palestinian Arabic

Palestinian Arabic falls into three groups:

• Urban Palestinian,
• Rural Palestinian
• Bedouin Palestinian.

Of these, the urban dialect is the closest to northern Levantine Arabic of Syria and Lebanon. Meanwhile, the Bedouin dialect is nearer to varieties of Arabic spoken in Arabia itself, the Bedouins being more certainly known to be Arabs not only in culture, language and customs but also by descent traceable outside Palestine/Israel (as opposed to being locals whose ethnic identity - Aramaic, Jewish, Greek - had shifted to an Arab ethnic identity following the process of cultural and linguistic Arabization over the centuries).

Notable differences in the varieties of Palestinian Arabic are as follows:

• The pronunciation of qāf serves as a shibboleth to distinguish the three main Palestinian dialects: it becomes a glottal stop in most cities, a pharyngealized k in smaller villages and the countryside, in some areas a (non-pharyngealized) k, and g in the far south and among Bedouin speakers. In a number of villages in the Galilee (e.g. Maghār), especially but not only among the Druze, the qāf is actually pronounced qāf as in Classical Arabic and other previous semitic languages of the area.
• In dialects where qāf is pronounced as k, a true kāf is often pronounced /tʃ/, as in some dialects of Gulf Arabic. This is generally a feature of more conservative idiolects. This pronunciation of kāf also happens in the northern West Bank and adjacent Palestinian populated areas in Israel, known as "the triangle". This pronunciation is often stigmatised by urban Palestinians and some villagers who refrain from that pronunciation.
• In addition, a feminine suffix -a rather than the more common Levantine -i or -é is fairly widespread, particularly in the south of the area. However, the "-i" or something approximating it is in use in the "triangle" while the Westbank and the Galilee mostly use -é.
• Another interesting sub-dialectical marker is the word used for the preposition "here". The urban dialect favours "hōn". The Negev Bedouin, on the other hand, tend to use "hiniyye" or even "hiniyante".
• In the Negev, the -sh form is not used in negating the past or present. Instead, the Bedouin dialect uses only the "mā" particle to negate.

In general, the rural dialects are somewhat stigmatised and urban pronunciations are gaining ground, as is the case in other Arabic dialect groups. In contrast, Bedouin dialect use remains quite common, even among university educated Bedouins. While stigmatized by other Arab Israelis, the basic characteristics of the Bedouin dialect (e.g. the qāf pronounced as a g) are used very widely in all informal contexts by Bedouin speakers, including those who are university-educated. Thus, a phenomenon similar to the disappearance of the /tʃ/ for the kāf - as seen in the "triangle" - has yet to be witnessed in the Negev. This is not the case, however, with Bedouin from the Negev who moved to Lod and Ramle in the 1960s and show more of a tendency to adopt a standard urban dialect.