Kuwaiti Arabic

Kuwaiti (in Kuwaiti كويتي, /kwe:ti/) is a Gulf Arabic dialect spoken in Kuwait. Kuwaiti Arabic shares many phonetic features unique to Gulf dialects. Due to Kuwait's soap opera industry, Kuwaiti Arabic spread throughout the Arabic-speaking world and became familiar even to people in countries such as Tunisia and Jordan.[4][5]

Not to be confused with Kuwaiti Persian.
Kuwaiti
كويتي
Pronunciation[kwe:ti]
Native toGrane, nowadays State of Kuwait
Native speakers
1.3 million (L1 only, approx.) (2016)[1]
L2 negligible
Arabic, with addition of 3 or 4 letters.[2]
Kuwaiti Sign Language
(لغة الاشارة الكويتية)
Official status
Official language in
Not official in any country
Regulated byNot recognised as a language
Language codes
ISO 639-1none
ISO 639-3–
Glottologkuwa1251[3]

History and Development

Since Kuwait was a nation of immigrants with no native population, Kuwait has a different sociolinguists structure. Three groups make up the Kuwaiti population: the first being the descendant of Arab tribes, while the second are people originally from al-Hasa, Bahrain and Iraq, and the third are people originally from Persia (modern-day Iran), known in Kuwait by the name Ayam.

Kuwaiti Arabic is rapidly changing due to many factors.[6]

Phonology[7]

Emphatics

/b/, /f/, /l/, /m/, /n/ and /r/ become the emphatics ḅ, f, ḷ, ṃ, ṇ, and ṛ only when they are in the contiguity of an emphatic, a back vowel, or if they precede /a:/.

Varieties

Kuwaiti is divided into two varieties: Urban (Sedentary) and Nomadic or Bedouin.[8] The first is believed to have developed due to exposure to the outside world, as well as Kuwait being a country of multi-regional immigrants during its infancy. The Urban dialect is seen as more prestigious than the Bedouin one.[9]

The Urban dialect is divided into four sub-dialects, while the Bedouin is divided into two.[10] The four sedent dialects are:

  • Sharq: Mainly used by Ayam people, who settled the district. It is a result of a mixture of the various different dialects spoken in Kuwait in the past.[11] (See also Sharg)[12]
  • Jibla (See also Jibla)
  • Failicha (See also Failicha Island, Kuwait)
  • Fintaas (See also Fintaas, Kuwait)

While the two Bedouin varieties are:

  • Jahra (See also Jahra, Kuwait)
  • Dimna: Used mainly by the descendants of Al-Azmy tribe. ad-Dimna is the old name of Salmiya City, Kuwait

Historians and researchers usually demonstrate differences between the dialects using the Kuwaiti word for Sugar, which has three different pronunciation. It is pronounced Shikar (/ʃɪkɐr/) in Sharg dialect, Shakar (/ʃɐkɐr/) in Fintaas dialect, and Shakir (/ʃɐkɪr/) in Jibla dialect.[13][14][15]

Status

Dashti identifies four varieties of Arabic in Kuwait. Classical Arabic (CA), the language of the Quran, the liturgical language of Islam, the religion of the vast majority of Kuwaitis, and old Arabic literature, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the medium of formal communication and school education. This variety is considered the second language of Kuwaitis as they are only introduced to when they start school. Kuwaiti Arabic (KA), the language of everyday's life and the symbol of the Kuwaiti identity. It is a symbol of prestige in the Kuwaiti society. The last variety is Educated Standard Arabic (ESA), in which the speaker mixes between MSA and KA. This language is used in Radio, TV, and academics' informal discussions. Kuwait is diglossic, like the rest of the Arab world, with the Arabic language being seen as the high variety, while Kuwaiti is seen more like a patois or a low-variety colloquial dialect of Arabic.[16][17]

Kuwaiti is the "normal" way of speaking in everyday's life and is acquired naturally at home and not taught at schools (as it is considered a mere dialect of the Arabic language by the public).

After conducting several interviews with speakers of Kuwaiti, Akbar states that for many, speaking Kuwaiti is the most important criterion of being considered Kuwaiti.[18]

Features and characteristics

Kuwaiti Arabic is a variant of Gulf Arabic, sharing similarities with the dialects of neighboring coastal areas in Eastern Arabia.[19] Due to immigration during its early history as well as trade, Kuwaiti was influenced by many languages such as Persian, English, Italian, Urdu, Turkish, and others.[20]

A characteristic in Kuwait is the use of words and phrases by women exclusively, for example "يَا حَافِظ", roughly translated to "Oh Saver [God]", is rarely or never used by men.[21] It also differs from other Arabic variants in the way phonological assimilation occurs to a multitude of words, but not to all of them. The only case of full assimilation is /dˤ/ changing to /ðˤ/ in all words.

Differences between Arabic and Kuwaiti
See also: Arabic § Koiné

Standard Arabic is a dead language; meaning it is not spoken natively by people anymore. Each variety of Arabic has evolved and developed over time. Some of the differences between the formal Arabic and Kuwaiti are:

  • Kuwaiti uses SVO more often (unless the subject is omitted because of the verb's conjugation), while Modern Standard Arabic uses VSO most of the time. There may be a relationship between definiteness and pragmatic factors that control the choice of VSO vs. SVO in Kuwaiti and other Arabic varieties.[22]
  • Copulas are used in Kuwaiti, unlike Arabic. Below is a table of copulas used in Kuwaitis:

Note: Copulas are used before verbs only, not adjectives. For example: I am drinking, not I am drunk. Many linguists define copulas as expressing identity and "is-a" relations. Since the following "copulas" are only use before verbs, they may be classified as aspectual particles.

VerbIn KuwaitiTransliteration
am, isقَعَ/قَامْ/قَاعِدْ/قَاعْ/قَعْدْ/gɐʕ/, /gam/, /gaʕɪd/, /gaʕ/, /gɐʕd/
areقَعَ/قَامْ/قَاعْدِينْ/قَاعْ/قَعْدْ/gɐʕ/, /gam/, /gaʕdin/, /gaʕ/, /gɐʕd/

The past tenses are formed by adding كَانْ /kaan/ before each copula.

  • Almost all of Arabic declensions are omitted in Kuwaiti.
  • Dual grammatical person is not used, though dual nouns are still used.
  • Feminine forms in plural second and third person are not used.
  • The definite article, al- (/al/), became el- (/ɪl-) in Kuwaiti.

Lexicon

Kuwaiti borrowed many words from other languages due to immigration and trade. Below are few examples with the corresponding Arabic words. As noticed, many words come from Persian. This is due to the fact that the only original inhabitants of Kuwait were mixture of Arabs and Persians.

Note: A green box indicates that the MSA word is used in Kuwaiti (most of the times interchangeably), while a red box means it's not.

Word Pronunciation Meaning Origin In Original Language In Modern Standard Arabic
دِقْمَة /dɪg.mɐ/ button (A physical button, like in a device, or a digital button, like in a computer program) Persian or Turkish دکمه or düğme زِر
زرَار /zrar/ button (in clothes) Arabic زِر
شِقَرْدِي /ʃɪgɐrdɪ/ good or kind-hearted person Persian شگردي طَيِّب
بَخْت /bɐxt/ luck or fortune Persian بخت حَظ
وَايِر /wajɪr/ wire English --- سِلْك
دَبَل /dɐbɐl/ double English --- مزدوج or ثنائي
أَصَنْصير /ɐsˤɐn.sˤe:r/ lift (elevator) French ascenseur مِصْعَد
تِيلَة /tiːlɐ/ marble (toy) Persian تیله Does not exist
كَتِر /kɐtɪr/ (physical) place or quarter, as in a place in a house English quarter مكان or زاوية
جيكَر /dʒeːkɐr/ ugly (often used humourously) English joker, from the playing card قبيح (lacks humorous meaning)
رزنامة /rɪznamɐ/ calendar Persian روزنامه تقويم
شورْبَة /ʃo:rbɐ/ soup Turkish çorba حَسَاء
صَالون /sˤalo:n/ lounge French salon ردهة
طرْشِي /tˤʊrʃi/ pickle Persian ترشي مُخَلَّل
ڤِلَّه /vɪl.lɐ/ villa French villa Does not exist. However the same word is used sometimes.
نَمْرَة or نِمْرَة /nɪmrɐ/ or /nɐmrɐ/ (phone) number Romance رقم
بنگ /bɐng/ bank English bank مَصْرِف
يَواشْ يَواش /jɐwaʃ jɐwaʃ/ slow down/be careful Turkish yavaş تَمَهَّل
طوز /tˤo:z/ sandstorm Turkish toz عاصفة غبارية/عاصفة ترابية
قز /gɐz/ nougat Persian گز نوغة
هم /hɐm/ also Persian هم أيضًا
يا /ja:/ or Persian يا أو
قَز (Homonym of the above word) /gɐz/ meander (verb) English gaze[23]

Old-fashioned or obsolete words

some words were replaced by native Arabic words over time. A few examples of such words include:[24][25]

  • رنق (ring), A Persian word that means colour.
  • خاتون (ḵātūn) "female nurse", from Persian word meaning "noble woman", now replaced with سستر (sister), from English.
  • بنسل (binsil), from English Pencil.
  • كنديشن (candēshin), from English Conditioner (as in Air conditioner).
  • فنگر (fingar), from English "finger".[26]
  • كرفاية (karfāya), from Hindi.

Dr. Ya'goob al-Ghaneem points at the increasing numbers of Arab expatriate and exposure to media in different Arabics as the reasons behind this change. Fatima Mahasin hypothesises that the words being replaced are not of English, French or Italian origins, and tend originate from "less-prestigious" languages.[27]

gollark: But yes, for sandboxing DO NOT DO BLACKLISTING.
gollark: This isn't for sandboxing, though, just undoing what CraftOS does.
gollark: This is what mine does.
gollark: ```lua-- hacky magic to run our code and not the BIOS stuff-- this terminates the shell, which crashes the BIOS, which then causes an error, which is printed with printErrorlocal old_printError = _G.printErrorfunction _G.printError() _G.printError = old_printError -- Multishell must die. term.redirect(term.native()) multishell = nil term.setTextColor(colors.yellow) term.setBackgroundColor(colors.black) term.setCursorPos(1,1) term.clear() _G.polychoron = {version = version, process = process} polychoron.polychoron = polychoron polychoron.BSOD = BSOD for n, p in pairs(base_processes) do process.spawn(p, n) end os.queueEvent "event" -- so that processes get one free "tick" run_loop()end os.queueEvent "terminate"```
gollark: PotatOS's potatoscheduler uses a TLCO thing to escape this and run its own main loop.

See also

References
  1. "نظام الخدمات الإحصائية". Archived from the original on 27 January 2016. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  2. Qafisheh, Hamdi A. 1999. NTC's Gulf Arabic-English Dictionary. (USA: McGraw-Hill Contemporary), p. XV
  3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Kuwaiti Hadari Arabic". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. Mansfield, Peter (1990). Kuwait: vanguard of the Gulf. Hutchinson. p. 113. Some Kuwaiti soap operas have become extremely popular and, although they are usually performed in the Kuwaiti dialect, they have been shown with success as far away as Tunisia.
  5. Clyne, Michael G. (1992). Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. ISBN 9783110128550.
  6. AlBader, Yousef (April 2015). "1.1 Purpose" (PDF). Semantic Innovation and Change in Kuwaiti Arabic: A Study of the Polysemy of Verbs (Ph.D.). Cardiff University. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  7. AlBader, Yousef (April 2015). "TRANSCRIPTION AND SYMBOLS" (PDF). Semantic Innovation and Change in Kuwaiti Arabic: A Study of the Polysemy of Verbs (Ph.D.). Cardiff University. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  8. Mahsain, Fatima (April 2007). "1.2.4.1 Language" (PDF). Motivations Behind Code-switching Among Kuwaiti Bilingual Schools" Students (Ph.D.). University of Manchester. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  9. Dashti, Abdulmuhsin (1997). Language choice in the state of Kuwait : a sociolinguistic investigation (Ph.D.). p. 41.
  10. "خالد الرشيد: "اللهجة الكويتية" "مظلومة" في مدارسنا.. لأن أغلب معلمينا وافدون". 2015-01-20. Archived from the original on 2015-01-20. Retrieved 2016-10-01.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  11. Taqi, Hanan (2010). Two ethnicities, three generations: Phonological variation and change in Kuwait (PDF) (PhD). Newcastle University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-10-19. Retrieved 2017-01-26. p. 14
  12. "نحن عيم الكويت".
  13. "خالد الرشيد: "اللهجة الكويتية" "مظلومة" في مدارسنا.. لأن أغلب معلمينا وافدون". 2015-01-20. Archived from the original on 2015-01-20. Retrieved 2016-10-01.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  14. http://www.kuwaitmag.com/index.jsp?inc=5&id=1031&pid=219&version=9%5B%5D
  15. ":: Lahjah :: لـهجـة". www.lahjah.com. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  16. Akbar, Rahima (April 2007). "1.3 The Sociolinguistic Situation in Kuwait" (PDF). Students' and Teachers' attitudes towards Kuwaiti/English code-switching (Ph.D.). Cardiff University. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  17. Mahsain, Fatima (April 2007). "1.2.4.2 Literacy" (PDF). Motivations Behind Code-switching Among Kuwaiti Bilingual Schools" Students (Ph.D.). University of Manchester. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  18. Akbar, Rahima (April 2007). "2.2.2 Language as a Symbol of Group Identity" (PDF). Students' and Teachers' attitudes towards Kuwaiti/English code-switching (Ph.D.). Cardiff University. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  19. "خالد الرشيد: "اللهجة الكويتية" "مظلومة" في مدارسنا.. لأن أغلب معلمينا وافدون". 2015-01-20. Archived from the original on 2015-01-20. Retrieved 2016-10-01.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  20. Mahsain, Fatima (April 2007). "1.2.4.1 Language" (PDF). Motivations Behind Code-switching Among Kuwaiti Bilingual Schools" Students (Ph.D.). University of Manchester. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  21. Lahjah Kuwaiti-Arabic dictionary
  22. The Syntax of Spoken Arabic, Kristen Brustad
  23. "يوسف البدر يستعرض كلمات كويتية اصولها الاولى بريطانية في جامعة شيفيلد بالمملكة المتحدة". الوطـــن الإلكترونية. Retrieved 2016-07-08.
  24. https://www.kuna.net.kw/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=2722026
  25. al-Ghaneem, Ya'goob. ألفاظ اللهجة الكويتية في كتاب – لسان العرب – لإبن منظور.
  26. Dashti, Abdulmuhsin (2015). "The Role and Status of the English Language in Kuwait". English Today. pp. 28-33. doi:10.1017/S026607841500022X
  27. Mahsain, Fatima (April 2007). "1.2.4.1 Language" (PDF). Motivations Behind Code-switching Among Kuwaiti Bilingual Schools" Students (Ph.D.). University of Manchester. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
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