Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian (), is a variety of Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It is known among its 12.5 million speakers as Tūnsi "Tunisian" or Derja (; meaning "common or everyday dialect") to distinguish it from Modern Standard Arabic, the official language of Tunisia. Tunisian Arabic is mostly similar to eastern Algerian Arabic and western Libyan Arabic.
As part of the Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum, Tunisian merges into Algerian Arabic and Libyan Arabic at the borders of the country. Like other Maghrebi dialects, it has a vocabulary that is predominantly Semitic and Arabic with a Berber, Latin and possibly Neo-Punic substratum. Tunisian Arabic contains Berber loanwords which represent 8% to 9% of its vocabulary. However, Tunisian has also loanwords from French, Turkish, Italian and the languages of Spain and a little bit of Persian.
Multilingualism within Tunisia and in the Tunisian diaspora makes it common for Tunisians to code-switch, mixing Tunisian with French, English, Italian, Standard Arabic or other languages in daily speech. Within some circles, Tunisian Arabic has thereby integrated new French and English words, notably in technical fields, or has replaced old French and Italian loans with standard Arabic words. Moreover, code-switching between Tunisian Arabic and modern standard Arabic is mainly done by more educated and upper-class people and has not negatively affected the use of more recent French and English loanwords in Tunisian.
Tunisian Arabic is also closely related to Maltese, which is a separate language that descended from Tunisian and Siculo-Arabic. Maltese and Tunisian Arabic have about 30 to 40 per cent spoken mutual intelligibility.
Classification Tunisian Arabic is one of the Arabic languages within the Semitic branchTunisian Arabic at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) of the Afroasiatic language family. It is a variety of Maghrebi Arabic like Moroccan and Algerian Arabic, which are mostly unintelligible to Modern Standard or Mashriqi Arabic speakers. It has a considerable number of pre-hilalian dialects but is usually considered in its koiné form to be a mostly Hilalian variety of Maghrebi Arabic because it was affected by the immigration of Banu Hilal in the 11th century, as were the other Maghrebi varieties.
As a part of the Arabic dialect continuum, it is reported that Tunisian Arabic is partly mutually intelligible with Algerian Arabic, Libyan Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Maltese. However, it is only slightly intelligible, if at all, with Egyptian, Levantine, Mesopotamian, or Gulf Arabic.
History
Beginnings of the dialect Linguistic situation of Ancient Tunisia
During classical antiquity, Tunisia's population spoke Berber languages related to the Numidian language.Gabsi, Z. (2003). An outline of the Shilha (Berber) vernacular of Douiret (southern Tunisia) (Doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Western Sydney Sydney). However, the languages progressively lost their function as main languages of Tunisia since the 12th century BC, and their usage became restricted mainly to the western regions of the country until their disappearance or evolution into other languages.
Indeed, migrants from Phoenicia settled Tunisia during the 12th to the 2nd century BC, founded ancient Carthage and progressively mixed with the local population. The migrants brought with them their culture and language that progressively spread from Tunisia's coastal areas to the rest of the coastal areas of Northwest Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean islands.Aubet, M. E. (2001). The Phoenicians and the West: politics, colonies and trade. Cambridge University Press. From the eighth century BC, most of Tunisia's inhabitants spoke the Punic language, a variant of the Phoenician language influenced by the local Numidian language. Also, already at that time, in the regions near to Punic settlements, the Berber that was used evolved considerably. In the urban centers such as Dougga, Bulla Regia, Thuburnica or Chemtou, Berber lost its Maghrebi phonology but kept the essential of its vocabulary. The word "Africa", which gave its name to the continent, possibly is derived from the name of the Berber tribe of the Afri that was one of the first to enter in contact with Carthage.Geo. Babington Michell, "The Berbers", Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 2, No. 6 (January 1903), pp. 161–194. Also during this period and up to the third century BC, the Tifinagh alphabet developed from the Phoenician alphabet.Penchoen, T. G. (1973). Tamazight of the Ayt Ndhir (Vol. 1). Undena Pubns, pp. 3O'Connor, M. (1996). The Berber Scripts. The world's writing systems, 112–116.
After the arrival of Romans, following the fall of Carthage in 146 BC,Appian of Alexandria (162). The Punic Wars . Roman HistoryAppian of Alexandria (162). "The Third Punic War . Roman History" the coastal population spoke mainly Punic, but that influence decreased away from the coast.Jongeling, K., & Kerr, R.M. (2005). Late Punic epigraphy: an introduction to the study of Neo-Punic and Latino- Punic inscriptions. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 114, . From Roman period until the Arab conquest, Latin, Greek and Numidian further influenced the language, called Neo-Punic to differentiate it from its older version. Lancel, S. (1992). Carthage. Paris: Fayard, pp. 587 This also progressively gave birth to African Romance, a Latin dialect, influenced by Tunisia's other languages and used along with them. Also, as it was the case for the other dialects,Souag, L. (2007). Jabal Al-Lughat: Gafsa and the African neolatin language. Punic probably survived the Arabic conquest of the Maghreb: the geographer al-Bakri described in the 11th century people speaking a language that was not Berber, Latin or Coptic in rural Ifriqiya, a region where spoken Punic survived well past its written use.Jongeling, K., & Kerr, R.M. (2005). Introduction in Late Punic epigraphy: an introduction to the study of Neo-Punic and Latino- Punic inscriptions. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, . However, it may be that the existence of Punic facilitated the spread of Arabic in the region,Jongeling, K., & Kerr, R.M. (2005). Late Punic epigraphy: an introduction to the study of Neo-Punic and Latino- Punic inscriptions. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 71, . as Punic and Arabic are both Semitic languages and share many common roots.Ager, S. (1998). Punic. Omniglot Elimam, A. (2009). Du Punique au Maghribi: Trajectoires d'une langue sémito-méditerranéene'. Synergies Tunisie, (1), 25–38.
Middle Ages
Classical Arabic began to be installed as a governmental and administrative language in Tunisia that was called then Ifriqiya from its older name Africa during the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in 673.Holt, P. M., Lambton, A. K., & Lewis, B. (1977). The Cambridge History of Islam (Vol. 2). Cambridge University Press.Chejne, A. G. (1969). The Arabic language: Its role in history. U of Minnesota Press. The people of several urban cities were progressively influenced by Arabic.Julien, C. (1970). History of North Africa. Praeger. By the 11th century, through contact of local languages such as African Romance or Berber with Classical Arabic, some urban dialects appeared in the main coastal cities of Tunisia.Dominique Caubet, « Questionnaire de dialectologie du Maghreb » , in: EDNA vol.5 (2000–2001), pp.73–92Versteegh, K. (2014). The Arabic Language. Edinburgh University Press. The dialects were slightly and characteristically influenced by several common Berber structures and vocabulary like negation because Tamazight was the language of contact for citizens of that period.Mohand, T. (2011). Berber & Arabic Language Contact. The Semitic Languages. an International Handbook. Queffelec, Y., & Naffati, H. (2004). Le français en Tunisie. Nice, Le français en Afrique, 18. The new dialects were also significantly influenced by other historical languages. Vanhove, M. (1998). De quelques traits préhilaliens en maltais. Aguade et al., ed, 97–108. Quitout, M. (2002). Parlons l'arabe tunisien: langue & culture. Editions L'Harmattan.
Many Tunisian and Maghrebi words, like ("octopus"), have a Latin etymology. Baccouche, T. (1994). L'emprunt en arabe moderne. Académie tunisienne des sciences, des lettres, et des arts, Beït al-Hikma. The dialects were later called Pre-Hilalian Arabic dialects and were used along Classical Arabic for communication in Tunisia.Agius, D. A. (1996). Siculo Arabic (No. 12). Routledge.Agius, D. A. (2007). Who Spoke Siculo Arabic?. XII Incontro Italiano di Linguistica Camito-semitica (Afroasiatica). ATTI Also, Siculo-Arabic was spoken in several islands near Tunisia like Sicily, Pantelleria, and Malta and entered into contact with the Tunisian pre-hilalian dialects.Grand'Henry, J. (2007). L'arabe sicilien dans le contexte maghrébin. XII Incontro Italiano di Linguistica Camito-semitica (Afroasiatica). ATTI Consequently, it ameliorated the divergence in grammar and structures of all the concerned dialects from Classical Arabic.K. Versteegh (Ed.), The encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics (Vol. I). Leiden: E. J. Brill.
By the mid-11th century, the Banu Hilal immigrated to rural northern and central Tunisia and Banu Sulaym immigrated to southern Tunisia.Ritt-Benmimoum, V. (2014). The Tunisian Hilal and Sulaym dialects: A Preliminary Comparative Study. Proceedings of the IXth Conference of AIDA. pp. 351–360 The immigrants played a major role in spreading the use of Tunisian Arabic in an important part of the country.Al-Wer, E., & de Jong, R. (Eds.). (2009). Arabic dialectology: in honour of Clive Holes on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Brill. However, they brought some of the characteristics of their local Arabic dialects as well. In fact, central and western Tunisian Arabic speakers began using the voiced velar stop [ɡ] instead of the voiceless uvular stop [q] in words such as "he said". Main linguists working about Hilalian dialects like Veronika Ritt-Benmimoum and Martine Vanhove supposed that even the replacement of the diphthongs /aw/ and /aj/ respectively by /uː/ and /iː/ vowels was a Hilalian influence. Furthermore, the phonologies brought to the new towns speaking Tunisian Arabic are those of the immigrants and not Tunisian phonology. The Sulaym even spread a new dialect in southern Tunisia, Libyan Arabic.Miller, C. (2004). Variation and changes in Arabic urban vernaculars. Approaches to Arabic Dialects: Collection of Articles presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, 177–206.
However, some dialects avoided the Hilalian influence: Judeo-Tunisian Arabic, a vernacular spoken by Tunisian Jews and known for the conservation of foreign phonemes in loanwords and slightly influenced by Hebrew phonology, Cohen, David. Le parler arabe des juifs de Tunis: Textes et documents linguistiques et ethnographiques.-v. 2. Etude linguistique. Vol. 7. Mouton, 1964. García Arévalo, T. M. (2014). Cuentística en judeo-árabe moderno: edición, traducción y estudio. Sfax dialect Lajmi, D. (2009). Spécificités du dialecte Sfaxien. Synergies Tunisie, 1, 135–142. and Tunisian urban woman dialect. Saada, L. (1967). Le langage de femmes Tunisiennes. Mouton.