North African Linguistics

This lesson is based on the Muhammed Metwally Badr, the author of Nobīn Nog Gery "Read in Nubian." The original lessons use romanization and offer Arabic translations. In these lessons I'll provide the English equivalents as well and do my best to explain the grammar as it comes up. Macrons above vowels indicate a long vowel. I won't provide information about tone (because the original doesn't and I myself don't yet know it well enough to provide it, but you can find out more information about pronunciation here ). You can also here some pronunciations of words here , but I'm using Badr's textbook because I find the organization and pedagogy a bit better despite not using the Nubian script or having audio. I'm doing my best to keep the orthography consistent with the ⲛⲟⲡⲓ̄ⲛⳟⲁ ⲕⲟⲩⲗⲗⲁⲛ textbook but may make some mistakes (the other widespread orthography might slip in sometimes--- ⳣ = ⲱ = /w/ and  ⲡ = ⲃ = /b/ هذا الدرس مبني على عمل محمد متولي بدر وهو...

Azul fellawen! It's finally time for another lesson in Zuaran Berber. First off, some basic vocabulary, including masculine, feminine, and plural nouns. Note that masculine nouns typically start with /a/ and feminine nouns typically start and end with /t/. Masculine plurals typically begin with /i/ and end with /n/. Feminine plurals typically begin with /ti/ and end with /n/ but there may be some other plural patterns. أزول فلاون! إنه أخيرا وقت درس جديد بالتويلولت! أولا, بعض المفردات الأساسية ومنهم أسماء في صيغة المذكر والمؤنث والجمع. لاحظوا أن الاسم المذكر عادة يبدأ ب(ا) وأن الاسم المؤنث يبدأ وينتهي ب(ت). يبدأ الجمع المذكر ب(اِ أو اِي) وينتهي ب(ن) وبدأ جمع المؤنث ب(تِ أو تي) وينتهي ب(ن) كذلك ولكن قد توجد تراكيب أخرى للجمع. Twilult English تويلولت عربي afrux boy افروخ ولد tafruxt girl تافروخت بنت bushir older word for boy بوشير ولد (كلمة قديمة) ibushiren boys ايبوشيرن أولاد tibushiren girls تيبوشيرن بنات akshish young man اكشيش شاب takshisht young woman تاكشيشت شابة awal speech اوا...

The term Yemeni Arabic actually comprises a bunch of different, really fascinating dialects. For example, the Zabidi dialect uses "am" for the definite article instead of the typical "al." It's generally difficult to find resources for Yemeni Arabic compared to more popular ones like Levantine and Egyptian. I personally found that Yemeni dialects are really difficult to understand, even if you know MSA and another dialect like Egyptian well. Dictionaries NTC's Yemeni Arabic Dictionary  this seems pretty good if you can find a copy. Deboo's English-German-Arabic lexicon is probably the most comprehensive, but lack examples and is all romanized. One of its best features is that is lists which region of Yemen words belong to. Yemeni Arabic Learner's Dictionary is an app I created. Though the number of entries is fairly small, it has quiz functionality. Textbooks By and large I've found most textbooks to not be of great quality for self-study. With...

I think it would be nice to make some information on Twilult more easily publicly available, so I'm going to start a series of posts about the language, starting with the basics that I know so far. As I learn more, I'll keep adding posts. أعتقد أنه سيكون من اللطيف أن اجعل بعض المعلومات ان لغة أهل زوارة أي تويلولت متاحة علنا بسهولة أكثر فسأبدأ سلسلة بوستات عن اللغة وسوف أبدأ بالأساسيات التي أعرفها. خلال رحلتي في تعلم هذه اللغة سأضل أكتب أكثر. Today will be something simple -- personal pronouns. بوست اليوم عن شيء بسيط وهو الضمائر الشخصية. A note about transliteration: I've used <e> to represent the schwa, which can sound like a schwa or often to my ears like a short /ɪ/ like the <i> in "bit." <ch> represents the /tʃ/ like in English "chair" and <sh> is /ʃ/ like in English "share." The Arabic transliteration is based on ways I've seen native speakers write informally. I tried my hand at a Tifinagh transliteration but I...

As a learner of Arabic it was always easy to find resources for standard Arabic, but finding quality resources for colloquial varieties was not. Egyptian Arabic is luckily one of the better resourced ones, owing maybe to its large film and music industries, its history of French and British colonialism, and its ancient monuments drawing in tourists and researchers from abroad. Still, it's harder to find resources for than abundantly-resourced western European languages like French and Spanish. For that reason, I wanted to start off my blog by making a list of resources I recommend.  Dictionaries   -One of the best dictionaries out there is the one by Hinds and Badawi , but in the modern day and age I think the best dictionaries should be available in digital form, and with more functionality. One of the best online dictionaries for colloquial Arabic varieties is Lughatuna . It contains probably most of the entries from Hinds and Badawi, is full of useful examples, and being ab...