Tunisian Arabic

This article is about a general description of the Arabic dialect. For the grammatical cases and conjugation, see Tunisian Arabic morphology.

Tunisian Arabic
تونسي Tūnsi   
Pronunciation[ˈtuːnsi] ⓘ
Native toTunisia[1]
EthnicityTunisian Arabs
Speakers12 million (2021)[1]
Arabic script
Tunisian Sign Language
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
As a variety of Maghrebi Arabic on 7 May 1999 (Not ratified due to several Constitutional Matters):[2][3]
Language codes
ISO 639-3aeb
Glottologtuni1259
Extent of Tunisian Arabic[image reference needed]

Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian (Arabic: تونسي, romanized: Tūnsi), is a variety of Arabic spoken in Tunisia.[4] It is known among its 12 million speakers as Tūnsi, [ˈtuːnsi] ⓘ "Tunisian"[5] or Derja (Arabic: الدارجة; meaning "common or everyday dialect"[6]) 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[7] with a Berber, Latin[8][9] and possibly Neo-Punic[10][11] substratum. Tunisian Arabic contains Berber loanwords which represent 8% to 9% of its vocabulary.[12] However, Tunisian has also loanwords from French,[13] Turkish,[13] Italian[13] and the languages of Spain[13] and a little bit of Persian.[13]

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.[14] 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.[14][15] 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.[14]

Tunisian Arabic is also closely related to Maltese,[16] which is a separate language that descended from Tunisian and Siculo-Arabic.[16][17] Maltese and Tunisian Arabic have about 30 to 40 per cent spoken mutual intelligibility.[18]

  1. ^ a b Tunisian Arabic at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Caubet, Dominique (November–December 2004). "La 'darja', langue de culture en France" (PDF). Hommes et Migrations (in French) (1252, Langues de France): 34–44. doi:10.3406/homig.2004.4263. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015.
  3. ^ Barontini, Alexandrine (2007). "Valorisation des langues vivantes en France: le cas de l'arabe maghrébin". Le français aujourd'hui (in French) (158): 20–27. doi:10.3917/lfa.158.0020. ISSN 2107-0857. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference phon was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Sayahi, Lotfi (24 April 2014). Diglossia and Language Contact: Language Variation and Change in North Africa. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-86707-8.
  6. ^ Wehr, Hans (1979). A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic: (Arab.-Engl.). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 319. ISBN 3447020024. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  7. ^ Elimam, Abdou (2009). "Du Punique au Maghribi: Trajectoires d'une langue sémito-méditerranéenne" (PDF). Synergies Tunisie (1): 29–38. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2014.
  8. ^ Tilmatine, Mohand (1999). "Substrat et convergences: Le berbére et l'arabe nord-africain". Estudios de Dialectologia Norteafricana y Andalusi (in French). 4: 99–119.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference corrient was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Benramdane, Farid (1998). "« Le maghribi, langue trois fois millénaire » de ELIMAM, Abdou (Ed. ANEP, Alger 1997)". Insaniyat (6): 129–130. doi:10.4000/insaniyat.12102. S2CID 161182954.
  11. ^ Leddy-Cecere, Thomas A. (2010). Contact, Restructuring, and Decreolization: The Case of Tunisian Arabic (PDF) (Thesis). Dartmouth College. pp. 10–12–50–77.
  12. ^ Wexler, Paul (1 February 2012). The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-2393-7.
  13. ^ a b c d e Zribi, I.; Boujelbane, R.; Masmoudi, A.; Ellouze, M.; Belguith, L.; Habash, N. (2014). "A Conventional Orthography for Tunisian Arabic". Proceedings of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), Reykjavik, Iceland.
  14. ^ a b c Daoud, Mohamed (2001). "The Language Situation in Tunisia". Current Issues in Language Planning. 2: 1–52. doi:10.1080/14664200108668018. S2CID 144429547.
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference digl was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ a b Azzopardi-Alexander, Marie; Borg, Albert (1997). Maltese. Routledge. p. xiii. ISBN 9780415657150. The immediate source for the Arabic vernacular spoken in Malta was Muslim Sicily, but its ultimate origin appears to have been Tunisia. In fact, Maltese displays some areal traits typical of Maghrebi Arabic although during the past 800 years of independent evolution it has drifted apart from Tunisian Arabic.
  17. ^ "The Language in Tunisia, Tunisia | TourismTunisia.com". www.tourismtunisia.com. Retrieved 31 July 2017.
  18. ^ Čéplö, Slavomír; Bátora, Ján; Benkato, Adam; Milička, Jiří; Pereira, Christophe; Zemánek, Petr (2016). "Mutual Intelligibility of Spoken Maltese, Libyan Arabic and Tunisian Arabic Functionally Tested: A Pilot Study". Folia Linguistica. 50 (2). doi:10.1515/flin-2016-0021. S2CID 266033859.