Eastern (Levantine) Arabic

Introduction

Eastern, or Levantine, Arabic is a general term that covers a continuum of spoken dialects along the Eastern Mediterranean Coast in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel.

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language in each of the countries in which Levantine Arabic is spoken. MSA is used in education, for official purposes, in the media, and for written communication. Levantine colloquial Arabic is used in all informal settings, such as in the home, at work, among friends, and in the community. Levantine Arabic is recognized by Arabs virtually anywhere, in large part due to the large number of Lebanese and Palestinians who are living abroad.

Dialects

Levantine Kep

evantine Damascus

The Levantine dialect continuum is usually broken up into two major varieties which, in turn, consist of many smaller dialects.

Dialect	Number of speakers	Where primarily spoken	Worldwide
South Levantine	3.5 million	Jordan	6.1 million
South Levantine	910,000	Israel	6.1 million
North Levantine	8.8 million	Syria	14.1 million
	3.9 million	Lebanon*
	1.6 million	Palestinian West Bank and Gaza

*There may be as many as 15 million Lebanese expatriots living outside of Lebanon and there is no reliable estimate as to how many of them are first- or second-language speakers of Lebanese Arabic.

Structure

Sound System

Levantine Hashemite

Jordanian Man

The table below (Wikipedia) shows some of the sound differences among the Levantine dialects, as compared to MSA.

MSA	/a:/	/aj/	/aw/	/k/	/q/	/d /	//	//
Lebanese	/e:/, /o:/	/ej/	/aw/	/k/	/q/, /?/	//, /d/	/t/	/d/
Central Syrian	/a:/, /e:/	/e:/	/o:/	/k/	/?/	//	/t/	/d/
North Syrian	/e:/	/e:/	/o:/	/k/	/?/	/d/	/t/	/d/
Rural Palestinian	/a:/	/e:/	/o:/	/t/	/k/	/d/	//	//
Urban Palestinian	/a:/	/o:/	/o:/	/k/	/?/	//	/t/	/d/
Bedouin Palestinian	/a:/	/o:/	/o:/	/t/	/g/	/d/	//	//

:	vowel length.
/q/	voiceless uvular stop, pronounced with back of the tongue against the uvula
//	th as in thin
//	th as in those
//	s as in pleasure
/d /	j as in jet
/t/	ch as in chap

Levantine Arabic has retained many of the stress patterns of Classical Arabic.

Click here to hear and watch basic interactions in Jordanian Arabic.

Grammar

Jordanian Woman

Syrian Woman

Syrian Man

Like all spoken Arabic dialects, Levantine Arabic has simplified some features of the grammar of Classical Arabic. These simplifications involve:

loss of case endings in nouns and adjectives;
loss of the dual number in nouns, adjectives, and pronouns;
loss of mood distinctions in the verb.

Noun phrase

MSA nouns have three cases: nominative, genitive and accusative. Levantine Arabic has lost the case system.
Levantine Arabic nouns are marked for definiteness, as they are in all varieties of Arabic. For instance, in Lebanese Arabic, akel means'food' and l'akel means 'the food.'
MSA has three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. The dual number is used for objects that are normally paired.The dual number has been lost in Levantine Arabic.
Possession is expressed by simple juxtaposition, e.g., in Lebanese Arabic, kteb lbint means 'the girl's book' (kteb, 'book,' l-, 'the,' bint, 'girl').
Levantine Arabic has two genders: masculine and feminine. Gender distinctions are absent in the plural.

Verb phrase
The verb system of Arabic is difficult to describe from the perspective of Indo-European languages. Some of its most salient features are listed below.

Person, number, tense, and aspect are marked by prefixes and suffixes.
There is one basic stem (Form I) plus nine derived stems, each with a range of meanings, such as reflexivity, and causativity. Each form has its own set of active and passive participles and verbal nouns.
Arabic has a past, or perfect, suffixed conjugation and a non-past, or imperfect, prefixed conjugation. The perfect can refer to present, pluperfect, or future. The imperfect can refer to present, past, or future.

Word order
The usual word order in Levantine Arabic is Subject-Verb-Object.

Vocabulary

Like MSA, Levantine Arabic forms words by the application of vowels and affixes to consonant roots, e.g., the root K-T-B underlies kteb, 'book.'. Unlike MSA that tends to resist borrowing from other language, Levantine Arabic tends to be more open to borrowing words from other languages. It has borrowed words from French, Greek, Hebrew, and English. For instance, thank you in Lebanese Arabic is merci.

Writing

Petra

Naskh

Levantine Arabic is rarely written, since Modern Standard Arabic is normally used for written communication, although it is occasionally used for captions in cartoons, and transcriptions of spoken language, such as songs, plays, and dialogs.

All varieties of Levantine Arabic are written in the Arabic script. The Arabic script is based on the Nabataean alphabet which was used to write the Nabataean dialect of Aramaic. Nabateans added 6 symbols to the Aramaic alphabet to represent sounds that did not occur in Aramaic. The Nabataean alphabet contained only symbols for consonants. The Arabs added dots above and below the consonant to represent vowels.

The earliest Arabic inscription dates to 512 AD. The script has undergone several modifications. Its present form (Naskhi) first appeared in the 11th century AD, and has been used ever since, especially for print. The script is written from right to left. All but six letters can be attached to the preceding ones. There are no capital letters. The letters are simplified in handwritten form.

The Arabic alphabet is a fairly accurate representation of the sound system of the language. It contains 28 symbols with additional letters for loanwords that contain sounds which do not occur in Arabic, e.g., /p/ and /g/. The letters of the Arabic alphabet are presented below.

Arabic Alphabet

The Arabic script is consonant-based.
Words are written in horizontal lines from right to left.
Most letters change their shape depending on their position in a word.
The shape of some letters allows them to be joined, while the shape of others does not. Letters that can be joined are always joined in both hand-written and printed Arabic.
Vowel diacritics representing short vowels are only used in the Qur'an, religious texts, classical poetry, children's books, and textbooks for learners of Arabic.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Arabic.

Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Click here to learn about Arabic calligraphy.

Resources

Click here to find out where Arabic is taught in the United States.
Click here for materials to study Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian Arabic.

Online resources for the study of Levantine Arabic
University of Oregon's Yamada Language Guides - Arabic
Language Links: Lebanese Arabic
Wikipedia article on Levantine Arabic
Ethnologue reports on Lebanon, Syria, West Bank & Gaza, Jordan
Handbook for students of Arabic
Lebanese Arabic learning materials