Sa'idi Arabic

Sa‘īdi Arabic
Native to Egypt
Native speakers
 22.4 million (2016)[1]
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3 aec
Glottolog said1239[2]
Linguasphere 12-AAC-eb[3]

Ṣa‘īdi Arabic (Sa'idi Arabic: صعيدي‎, locally [sˤɑˈʕiːdi], Egyptian Arabic: [sˤeˈʕiːdi]), also known as Upper Egyptian Arabic,[4] is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Ṣa‘īdi people south of Cairo, Egypt, to the border of Sudan.[5] It shares linguistic features with both Egyptian Arabic and the Quran's Classical Arabic. Dialects include Middle and Upper Egyptian Arabic.

Speakers of Egyptian Arabic do not always understand more conservative varieties of Ṣa‘īdi Arabic.[6]

Ṣa‘īdi Arabic carries little prestige nationally, but it continues to be widely spoken, including in the north by rural migrants who have partially adapted to Egyptian Arabic. For example, the Ṣa‘īdi genitive exponent is usually replaced with Egyptian bitāʿ, but the realisation of /q/ as [ɡ] is retained (normally realised in Egyptian Arabic as [ʔ]).

Second- and third-generation Ṣa‘īdi migrants are monolingual in Egyptian Arabic but maintain cultural and family ties to the south.

The Egyptian poet Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi wrote in his native Sa'idi.

Phonology

Consonants

Ṣa‘īdi Arabic has the following consonants:[7]

BilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarUvularPharyngealGlottal
Nasal mn
Plosive voiceless tkʔ
voiced bdɡ
Fricative voiceless fsʃχħh
voiced zʁʕ
Affricate voiceless t͡ʃ
voiced d͡ʒ*
Trill r
Approximant wlj

  • ^* /d͡ʒ/ may also be realised as [ʒ] or as [d], when it merges with /d/.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Arabic, Sa'idi Spoken". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-08-08.
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Saidi Arabic". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ "a" (PDF). The Linguasphere Register. p. 128. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
  4. ↑ "Arabic, Sa'idi Spoken". Ethnologue. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
  5. ↑ Versteegh, p. 163
  6. ↑ Raymond G. Gordon Jr., ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
  7. ↑ Khalafallah 1969

Sources

  • Khalafallah, Abdelghany A. 1969. A Descriptive Grammar of Sa'i:di Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Janua Linguarum, Series Practica 32. The Hague: Mouton.
  • Versteegh, Kees (2001). The Arabic Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1436-2.
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