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Andalusi Arabic

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Andalusi Arabic
العربية الأندلسية
Native toAl-Andalus(modern-daySpainandPortugal)
ExtinctEarly 17th century
Arabic Alpha bet(Maghrebi script)
Language codes
ISO 639-3xaa
Glottologanda1287
This article containsIPAphonetic symbols.Without properrendering support,you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbolsinstead ofUnicodecharacters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA.
TheArt to slightly learn the Arabic language(1506) byPedro de Alcaláuses an innovative system for transcribingAndalusian Arabicthat has been called "the first Western system of Arabic scientific transcription" byFederico Corriente..[1]

Andalusi ArabicorAndalusian Arabic(Arabic:اللهجة العربية الأندلسية,romanized:al-lahja l-ʿarabiyya l-ʾandalusiyya) was avariety or varieties of Arabicspoken mainly from the 9th to the 15th century inAl-Andalus,the regions of theIberian Peninsula,respectively modernSpainuntil the late-15th century, and modernPortugaluntil the mid-13th century[2]underMuslim rule.It became anextinct languagein Iberia after theexpulsion of the Moriscos,which took place over a century after theGranada Warby theCatholic Monarchs of Spain.Once widely spoken in Iberia, the expulsions and persecutions of Arabic speakers caused an abrupt end to the language's use on the peninsula. It continued to be spoken to some degree in North Africa after the expulsion, although Andalusi speakers rapidly assimilated into theMaghrebicommunities to which they fled.

Arabic in al-Andalus existed largely in a situation ofbilingualismwithAndalusi Romance(known popularly asMozarabic) until the 13th century. It was also characterized bydiglossia:in addition to standard written Arabic, spoken varieties could be subdivided into an urban, educatedidiolectand a register of the less-privileged masses.

Spoken Andalusi Arabic had distinct features. It is unique among colloquial dialects in retaining from Standard Arabic theinternal passive voicethrough vocalization. Through contact withRomance,spoken Andalusi Arabic adopted the phonemes/p/and/tʃ/and replacedvowel lengthwithstress(e.g.Andalusíin place ofAndalusī). Like otherMaghrebi Arabicvarieties, the first-personimperfectwas marked with the prefixn-(نلعبnalʿab'I play') like the plural in Standard Arabic, necessitating an analogical imperfect first-person plural, constructed with the suffix-ū(نلعبواnalʿabū'we play').

History

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Origins

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TheMuslim conquest of Spainin 711, about a century after the death ofMuhammad,involved a few thousand Arab tribesmen[3]and a much larger number of partially ArabicizedAmazigh,many of whom spoke little or noArabic.[4]According toConsuelo López-Morillas,"this population sowed the seeds of what was to grow into an indigenous Andalusi Arabic."[4]

Unlike theVisigothic Kingdom of Hispania,through whichLatinremained the dominant language, the Muslim conquest brought a language that was a vehicle for a cultural and religious subjugation.[4]

Spread

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Over the centuries, Arabic spread gradually in al-Andalus, primarily through conversion toIslam.[5]WhileAlvarus of Cordobalamented in the 9th century that Christians were no longer using Latin,Richard Bullietestimates that only 50% of the population of al-Andalus had converted to Islam by the death ofAbd al-Rahman IIIin 961, and 80% by 1100.[6]By about 1260, Muslim territories in Iberia were reduced to theEmirate of Granada,in which more than 90% of the population had converted to Islam and Arabic-Romance bilingualism seems to have disappeared.[6]

A letter handwritten inJudeo-ArabicbyJudah ha-Levi(1075–1141). While Muslims did not write in vernacular registers of Arabic, Andalusi Jews would write in colloquial Arabic withHebrew script.[7]

The colloquial Arabic of al-Andalus was prominent among thevarieties of Arabicof its time in its use for literary purposes, especially inzajalpoetry andproverbsandaphorisms.[4]

Demise

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In 1502, the Muslims of Granada were forced to choose between conversion and exile; those who converted became known as theMoriscos.In 1526, this requirement was extended to Muslims in the rest of Spain, theMudéjars.In 1567, due to thewarsagainst theOttoman Empireand to the fact that the Moriscos had revealed themselves asagentsof the enemy[citation needed]who helped the Ottomans against Spain,Philip II of Spainissued a royal decree in Spain forbidding Moriscos from theuse of Arabic on all occasions,formal and informal, speaking and writing. Using Arabic henceforth would be regarded as a crime. Arabic speakers were given three years to learn a "Christian" language, after which they would have to get rid of all Arabic written material. This triggered one of the largest revolts, theRebellion of the Alpujarras (1568–1571).Still, Andalusi Arabic remained in use in certain areas of Spain (particularly the inner regions ofValenciaandAragon)[8][9]until the finalexpulsion of the Moriscosat the beginning of the 17th century.[10]

Legacy

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Andalusi Arabic is still used inAndalusi classical musicand has significantly influenced the dialects of such towns asSfaxin Tunisia,Rabat,Salé,Fès,TétouanandTangierin Morocco,Nedroma,Tlemcen,Blida,Jijel,andCherchellin Algeria, andAlexandriain Egypt.[11]Andalusi Arabic also influencedAndalusi Romance( "Mozarabic" ),Spanish,Judaeo-Spanishvarieties,Catalan-Valencian-Balearic,Portuguese,Classical ArabicandMoroccan,Tunisian,Egyptian,HassaniandAlgerianArabics.

Sociolinguistic features

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Prestige

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Under Muslim rule, Arabic became asuperstrate,prestigelanguage and the dominant medium ofliteraryand intellectual expression in the southern half of the peninsula from the 8th century to the 13th century.[4]

Multilingualism and language contact

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Arabic in al-Andalus existed largely in a situation ofbilingualismwithRomanceuntil the 13th century.[3]It also coexisted withHebrew,and Arabic features and traditions had a major impact on Jewish poetry in Iberia.[5]There is evidence thatcode-switchingwas commonplace among bilingual populations in al-Andalus.[5]It also had some contact withBerber languagesoral-lisān al-gharbī(اللسان الغربي'the western tongue') in periods of Berber rule, particularly under the Almoravids[12]and Almohads,[13]thoughFederico Corrienteidentified only about 15 Berberisms that entered Andalusi Arabic speech.[4]

The influence of Romance on Andalusi Arabic was especially pronounced in situations of daily Arabic-Romancecontact.For example, an Arabic letter written by a Valencian Morisco in 1595 contained constructions such astaʿmál alburšíblī'do what is possible' andaquštiš matáʿī'at a cost to me.'[5]

Diglossia

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It was also characterized bydiglossia:in addition to standard written Arabic, spoken varieties could be subdivided into an urban, educatedidiolectand a register of the less-privileged masses.[3]

Linguistic features

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Many features of Andalusi Arabic have been reconstructed byArabistsusing Hispano-Arabic texts (such as theazjālofibn Quzman,al-Shushtariand others) composed in Arabic with varying degrees of deviation from classical norms, augmented by further information from the manner in which the Arabic script was used to transliterate Romance words. The first complete linguistic description of Andalusi Arabic was given by the Spanish ArabistFederico Corriente,who drew on theAppendix Probi,zajalpoetry, proverbs and aphorisms, the work of the 16th century lexicographerPedro de Alcalá,and Andalusi letters found in theCairo Geniza.[4]

Lexicography

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Romance loanwords

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As Arabisms moved into varieties of Iberian Romance over time, Andalusi Arabic borrowed widely from the Romance lexicon.[5]Corriente observes three periods in which Romance words entered Arabic, as Romance shifted from a substratum to an adstratum to a superstratum with respect to Arabic.[5]Semantic fields such as plant and animal names, domestic objects, and agriculture received the most loanwords.[5]Sometimes both the Romance and Arabic words were used, such as the wordsimlíq(fromUMBILICU) andsurra(سُرَّة) fornavel;Consuelo Lopez-Morillas recalls "the many households made up of Hispano-Roman women and Arab men."[5]Once subsumed into Arabic morphological patterns, Romance loanwords became difficult to distinguish as such. For example,nibšāriuh(fromaniversario'anniversary' or 'birthday') was made plural asnibšāriyātandlubb(fromlobo'wolf') became abroken pluralaslababah.[5]Romance loanwords were used in Andalusi Arabic through the end of Muslim rule in Iberia, even afterGranadahad been monolingually arabophone for two centuries.[5]

Berber loanwords

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The lexical impact ofBerber languageon Andalusi Arabic appears to be considerably less than that of Romance and very small in proportion to the extensive Berber presence in al-Andalus.[5]Corriente identified about 15 Berberisms that entered Andalusi Arabic, only a few of which were still in use in the early 16th century.[5]

Phonology

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Vowel phonemes of Andalusi Arabic[14]
Short Long
Front Back Front Back
Close /i/ /u/ /iː/ /uː/
Open /a/ /aː/
Diphthongs /aw/,/aj/,/iw/[15]
Andalusi Arabic consonant phonemes[16]
Labial Dental Denti-alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
plain emphatic
Nasal m n
Plosive/
affricate 		voiceless p~pˤ[a] t tˤ t͡ʃ[b] k q[c] ʔ[d]
voiced b d d͡ʒ~ʒ[e] (ɡ)[f]
Fricative voiceless f θ s sˤ ʃ x~χ ħ h
voiced (β~v)[g] ð z ðˤ~dˤ[h] ɣ~ʁ ʕ
Approximant l ɫ[i] j w
Trill r~ɾ[j] rˤ~ɾˤ[k]
  1. ^[p]was at the very least, a marginal phoneme, but a phoneme nonetheless./p/"behaved most of the time as an" emphaticised "phoneme, resistant toimālaor palatalisation "thus possibly being pronounced as[pˤ].[17]
  2. ^[t͡ʃ]was a marginal phoneme used mainly in Romance loanwords. In theGranadandialect,/t͡ʃ/represented the evolution of the cluster/st/.In lower registers,[t͡ʃ]was occasionally an allophone of/d͡ʒ/in word-final position by speakers of Hispanic origin.[18]
  3. ^The standard pronunciation ofقwas most likely[q].Though it merged with[k]in at least some words.[19]
  4. ^[ʔ]only survived in word-initial position, while turning into[j]or[w]intravocalically, or sometimes in other positions. Rarely,[ʔ]would turn into[ʕ].In most other instances,[ʔ]would cause an adjacent vowel to be stressed or would disappear altogether, leaving no trace.[20]
  5. ^جwas variously realized as[d͡ʒ]or[ʒ][21]
  6. ^قhad an alternate and substandard pronunciation of[ɡ]amongst speakers of Hispanic origin, especially bilingual Romance speakers.جwas also alternatively pronounced as[ɡ]by some speakers, although this was marginal.[22]
  7. ^Under Berber and Romance influence,[b]would sometimes turn into a bilabial spirant (fricative)[β],especially intravocalically. This fricative could turn into[f]via devoicing, thus presumably being realized as[v]before devoicing took place. Sometimes, it further evolved into[w].Either way, a voiced bilabial or labiodental fricative was "substandard and repressed".[23]
  8. ^By the time of theCordoban Caliphate,[dˤ]and[ðˤ]had merged. Thus,ضandظwould have been pronounced the same.[24]
  9. ^Velarized in at least the wordAllah,as in most Arabic dialects.[25]
  10. ^رwas realized as either a trill or a tap.[26]
  11. ^Contrasting pairs of words differing only by a plain or an emphatic pronunciation of their respective <r> are found.[27]

Thephonemerepresented by the letter ق in texts is a point of contention. The letter, which in Classical Arabic represented either a voiceless pharyngealizedvelar stopor a voicelessuvular stop,most likely represented some kind of post-alveolar affricate orvelar plosivein Andalusi Arabic. Federico Corriente presents the case that ق most often represented/q/,sometimes/k/,and marginally/ɡ/based on a plethora of surviving Andalusi writings and Romance transcriptions of Andalusi Arabic words.[19]

The vowel system was subject to a heavy amount of fronting and raising, a phenomenon known asimāla,causing/a(ː)/to be raised, probably to[ɛ]or[e]and, particularly with short vowels,[ɪ]in certain circumstances, particularly when i-mutation was possible.

Contact with nativeRomance speakersled to the introduction of the phonemes/p/,/ɡ/and, possibly, the affricate/tʃ/fromloanwords.

Monophthongizationled to the disappearance of certaindiphthongssuch as/aw/and/aj/which were leveled to/oː/and/eː/,respectively, though Colin hypothesizes that these diphthongs remained in the moremesolectalregisters influenced by the Classical language. Alternatively in higher registers,[e]and[o]were only allophones of/i/and/u/respectively, while diphthongs were mostly resistant to monophthongization.[28]However,/a/could turn into[e]or[i]viaimāla.[29]In the presence of velar or pharyngeal contour,/a/was backed into[ɑ]and sometimes even rounded into[o]or[u],or even[ɒ].This is evidenced by occasional Romance or even local Arabic transcription of/a/as[o]or[u].[30]

There was a fair amount of compensatory lengthening involved where a loss of consonantal gemination lengthened the preceding vowel, whence the transformation ofعشّ/ʕuʃ(ʃ)/( "nest" ) intoعوش/ʕuːʃ/.

New phonemes introduced into Andalusi Arabic, such as/p/and/t͡ʃ/were often written as geminatedبّandجّrespectively. This would later be carried over intoAljamiado,in which/p/and/t͡ʃ/in Romance languages would be transcribed with the above letters, each containing ashadda.

Syntax

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Passive voice

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Andalusi Arabic is uniquely conservative among colloquial Arabic dialects for retaining the internalpassive voice(صيغة المجهول'sighatu l-majhūl') ofStandard Arabic verbs,using the same stem of the active voice verb with different vocalization. The passive voice is expressed in the past or perfect tense withkasra(/i/) on the last syllable anddamma(/u/) on all other syllables, and in the imperfect tense with damma /u/ on the personal subject prefix—the first syllable—andfatḥah/a/ on the following syllables.[31]: 89 

Active (مبنى للمعلوم) Passive (مبنى للمجهول)
Andalusi Arabic transliteration English Andalusi Arabic transliteration English
تَرْجَم tarjam (he) translated تُرْجِم turjim (it) was translated
يِتَرْجَم yitarjam (he) translates يُتَرْجَم yutarjam (it) is translated

Noun gender

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Some nouns in Andalusi Arabic shiftedgenderto match the gender of corresponding terms in Romance, such as the feminine Arabic nounsʿayn(عين'eye') andshams(شمس'sun'), which became masculine in al-Andalus, matchingojoandsol.[5]

Morphology

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Gender distinction in second-person pronouns and verbs was abandoned.[5]

There were about twenty suffixes from Romance that were attached to Arabic bases.[5]

The-anwhich, in Classical Arabic, marked a noun as indefiniteaccusative case(seenunation), became an indeclinableconjunctiveparticle, as in ibn Quzmān's expressionrajul-an 'ashīq.

The unconjugated prepositive negative particlelisdeveloped out of the classical verblays-a.

Thederivational morphologyof the verbal system was substantially altered. One example is the initialn-on verbs in thefirst person singular,a feature shared by many Maghrebi varieties. Likewise the form V pattern oftafaʻʻal-a(تَفَعَّلَ) was altered byepenthesis[dubious–discuss]toatfa``al(أتْفَعَّل).

Andalusi Arabic developed a contingent/subjunctivemood(after aprotasiswith the conditional particlelaw)consisting of the imperfect (prefix) form of a verb, preceded by eitherkānorkīn(depending on the register of the speech in question), of which the final-nwas normally assimilated by preformativesy-andt-.An example drawn from Ibn Quzmān will illustrate this:

Example Transliteration English translation
لِس كِن تّراني
لَو لا ما نانّ بعد
 liski-ttarānī(underlying form:kīn tarānī)
law[a]lā mā nānnu baʻad 		You would not see me
if I were not still moaning
  1. ^The conditional "law" (لَو) is the source of the modern SpanishOjalá,(law sha Allah; لَوْ شَآءَ ٱللَّهُ).

Recorded evidence

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The oldest evidence of Andalusi Arabic utterances can be dated from the 10th and 11th century, in isolated quotes, both inproseandstanzaicClassical Andalusi poems (muwashshahat), and then, from the 11th century on, in stanzaic dialectal poems (zajal) and dialectal proverb collections.[10]

Substantial material on late Granadan Arabic survives in the work ofPedro de Alcalá—theVocabulista aravigo en letra castellana[32]andArte para ligeramente saber la lengua araviga,[33]both published in 1505 to explain the language of the conquered to the conquerors following theFall of Granada.[5]

Its last documents are a few business records and one letter written at the beginning of the 17th century inValencia.[10]

See also

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References

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  1. ^«La lengua de la gente común y no los priores de la gramática arábiga».La Doctrina christiana en lengua arábiga y castellana (1566) de Martín Pérez de Ayala,Teresa Soto González, University of Salamanca(in Spanish)
  2. ^"Chapter Five. The Expulsion of the Muslims from Portugal: The Forgotten Persecution".The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal.Brill. January 2007. pp. 241–281.ISBN978-90-474-3155-8.
  3. ^abcUniversity of Zaragoza, ed. (1977-01-01).A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic.Brill.ISBN978-90-04-23027-9.
  4. ^abcdefgMenocal, María Rosa; Scheindlin, Raymond P.; Sells, Micheal (2012).The literature of Al-Andalus.Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-139-17787-0.OCLC819159086.
  5. ^abcdefghijklmnopLópez-Morillas, Consuelo (2000). "Language". The literature of Al-Andalus. New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521471596.004. ISBN 9781139177870.
  6. ^abBulliet, Richard W. (1979-12-31).Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period.De Gruyter.doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674732810.ISBN978-0-674-73280-3.Cited inMorillas, Consuelo López (2000-08-31), Menocal, María Rosa; Scheindlin, Raymond P.; Sells, Michael (eds.),"Language",The Literature of Al-Andalus(1 ed.), Cambridge University Press, pp. 31–59,doi:10.1017/chol9780521471596.004,ISBN978-0-521-47159-6,retrieved2023-02-17
  7. ^López-Morillas, Consuelo (2000). "Chapter 2: Language".The literature of Al-Andalus.Maria Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, Michael Anthony Sells. New York: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-139-17787-0.OCLC794678936.
  8. ^Barceló, Carmen; Labarta, Ana (2009).Archivos moriscos: textos árabes de la minoría islámica valenciana 1401-1608.Universitat de València.ISBN978-84-370-7384-2.OCLC804262422.
  9. ^Fournel-Guerin, Jacqueline (1979)."Le livre et la civilisation écrite dans la communauté morisque aragonaise (1540-1620)".Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez.15(1): 241–259.doi:10.3406/casa.1979.2299.
  10. ^abcKees Versteegh,et al.:Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics,Brill Publishers,2006.
  11. ^"Ramón Cotarelo".Archived fromthe originalon 2009-02-14.Retrieved2009-05-23.
  12. ^Gómez, Emilio García; Palencia, Ángel González (1945).Un eclipse de la poesía en Sevilla: la época almorávide(in Spanish). Real Academia Española.
  13. ^"The Preaching of the Almohads: Loyalty and Resistance across the Strait of Gibraltar",Spanning the Strait,BRILL, pp. 71–101, 2013-01-01,doi:10.1163/9789004256644_004,ISBN9789004256644,retrieved2023-02-13
  14. ^Corriente (2013:1–9)
  15. ^Corriente (2013:7)
  16. ^Corriente (2013:9–36)
  17. ^Corriente (2013:12–14)
  18. ^Corriente (2013:28–29)
  19. ^abCorriente (2013:30–31)
  20. ^Corriente (2013:34–36)
  21. ^Corriente (2013:23)
  22. ^Corriente (2013:27–28, 30)
  23. ^Corriente (2013:10–11)
  24. ^Corriente (2013:23–24)
  25. ^Corriente (2013:21)
  26. ^Corriente (2013:19)
  27. ^Corriente (2013:20)
  28. ^Corriente (2013:5–6, 7–9)
  29. ^Corriente (2013:2)
  30. ^Corriente (2013:4–5)
  31. ^University of Zaragoza, Institute of Islamic Studies (2012).A descriptive and comparative grammar of Andalusi Arabic.Brill.ISBN978-1-283-63484-7.OCLC1259249610.
  32. ^"Vocabulista aravigo en letra castellana".Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.Retrieved2023-04-02.
  33. ^"Arte para ligeramẽte saber la lẽgua arauiga".Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.Retrieved2023-04-02.

Bibliography

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