Most of the grammatical features you cited are shared with Standard Arabic... that's not a list of differences, it's a general description of Egyptian Arabic with a couple of differences noted. Written in Arabic script, short vowels aren't distinguished most of the time, so that's irrelevant anyhow.
Mark 2009/1/11 Milos Rancic <[email protected]>: > On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:12 AM, Tim Starling <[email protected]> wrote: >> Arabic may have spread from Morocco to Malaysia, but Cairo is quite close >> to the Arabian peninsula, so I wonder if you're not overgeneralising. > > From: http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?menu=004&LangID=51 > > "Egyptian Arabic is distinguished by a larger vowel inventory than > Classical Arabic, with four short vowels (plus epenthetic schwa) and > six long vowels, compared to three short vowels and six long vowels in > Classical Arabic. Consonantal changes have included the loss of > interdental fricatives. Egyptian Arabic is also characterized by two > regular phonological processes lacking in Standard Arabic. First, all > long vowels become shortened in unstressed positions and before > consonant clusters. And second, many instances of short i and u are > dropped by a process known as high vowel deletion. For example, when > the feminine suffix -a is added to the participle kaatib "having > written (masc.)", the i is deleted, resulting in katba. > > Like other varieties of Arabic, Egyptian Arabic derives the bulk of > its vocabulary by applying a number of patterns or templates to a > stock of consonantal roots. For example, from the triliteral root > (three-consonant root) g-w-z with the basic meaning of "pair" is > derived gooz "pair; husband", yiggawwiz "to get married", gawaaz > "marriage", and migwiz "double". As an example of a template, the > template maCCaC is used to derive many nouns referring to a place > where an activity is done by substituting the C's in the template with > the consonants of a triliteral root, such as: maktab "office" (a place > where one writes) and maTbax "kitchen" (a place where one cooks). > > Verbs occur in two aspects: the perfective and the imperfective. The > perfective is usually translated as a past tense or present perfect. > Its conjugational morphology consists entirely of suffixes, for > example: katab "he wrote", katabit "she wrote", katabt "I wrote", > katabna "we wrote". The plain imperfective form is used much like an > infinitive or subjunctive, as yiktib "he writes" in biyHibb yiktib"he > likes to write". The imperfective also serves as the basis for the > present and future tenses with particles bi and Ha, as in biyiktib "he > writes" and Hayiktib "he will write". The conjugational morphology of > the imperfective employs both prefixes and suffixes. > > For example, from the imperfective stem ktib we get yiktib "he > writes", tiktib "she writes", and yiktibu "they write". The imperative > is formed by leaving off the prefix of the imperfective. Verbs, and > certain other elements, are usually negated by simultaneous use of the > particles ma- and -š. Sometimes these particles are affixed to either > side of the verb, as in the past tense makatabš "he didn't write", > while in other cases, the particles combine to form the separate word > miš "not" which occurs before the verb, as in the future miš Hayiktib > "he won't write". > > In addition to the direct object clitics found in Standard Arabic, > Egyptian Arabic also has indirect object clitics which follow any > direct object clitic but precede negative -š. For example, "he wrote" > is katab, "he wrote it (fem.)" is katabha, "he wrote it to you" is > katabhaalak, and finally "he didn't write it to you" is makatabhalakš. > > As in Standard Arabic, nouns are either masculine or feminine, and > either singular, dual, or plural, and plurals are either sound > (regular) or broken (irregular) employing a suffix or broken > (irregular) employing a different template, as described in the Arabic > Overview. Broken plurals are not restricted to a small subset of the > vocabulary and are frequently used even with loanwords having three or > four consonants, such as the English loanword sikšin "section" > > sakaašin"sections". Many adjectives also have broken plural forms. > > Egyptian Arabic is much less averse to borrowing than Standard Arabic, > and the sources from which it has borrowed reflects the influence that > different peoples have had in Egypt over its history. Many borrowings > remain from Coptic, a Cushitic language which has been dead for > several centuries but which was the dominant language in Egypt when > the Arabs first arrived. Borrowings from Coptic are concentrated in > fields of activity for which were foreign to Peninsular Arabic > culture, such as agriculture. Later borrowings came primarily from > Greek, Italian, French, and English. Most new borrowings are from > English. > > Like other modern dialects, though unlike Standard Arabic, the > predominant word order in Egyptian Arabic is Subject Verb Object > (SVO)." > > This is a lot. Not like difference between Hittite and English, but it > is like differences between Old Church Slavonic and Serbian or between > Latin and Italian. > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
