Varieties of Arabic - Sedentary Vs. Nomadic

Sedentary Vs. Nomadic

A basic distinction that cuts across the entire geography of the Arabic-speaking world is between sedentary and nomadic varieties (often misleadingly called Bedouin). Across the Levant and North Africa (i.e. the areas of post-Islamic settlement), this is mostly reflected as an urban (sedentary) vs. rural/nomadic split, but the situation is more complicated in Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula. The distinction stems from the settlement patterns in the wake of the Arab conquests. As regions were conquered, army camps were set up that eventually grew into cities, and settlement of the rural areas by Nomadic Arabs gradually followed thereafter. In some areas, sedentary dialects are divided further into urban and rural variants.

The most obvious phonetic difference between the two groups is the pronunciation of the letter ق qaaf, which is voiced in the Bedouin varieties (usually /ɡ/, but sometimes a palatalized variation /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/), but voiceless in the sedentary varieties (/q/ or /ʔ/) (the former realisation being mostly associated with the countryside, the latter being considered typically urban). The other major phonetic difference is that the rural varieties preserve the Classical Arabic (CA) interdentals /θ/ ث and /ð/ ذ, and merge the CA emphatic sounds /dˤ/ ض and /ðˤ/ ظ into /ðˤ/ rather than sedentary /dˤ/.

The most significant differences between rural Arabic and non-rural Arabic are in syntax. The sedentary varieties in particular share a number of common innovations from CA. This has led to the suggestion, first articulated by Charles Ferguson, that a simplified koiné language developed in the army staging camps in Iraq, from whence the remaining parts of the modern Arab world were conquered.

In general the rural varieties are more conservative than the sedentary varieties and the rural varieties within the Arabian peninsula are even more conservative than those elsewhere. Within the sedentary varieties, the western varieties (particularly, Moroccan Arabic) are less conservative than the eastern varieties.

A number of cities in the Arabic world speak a 'Bedouin' variety, which acquires prestige in that context.