Palestinian Arabic

Palestinian dialects diers from Western Syrian as

far as short stressed /i/ and /u/ are concerned: in
Palestinian they keep a more or less open [] and []
pronunciation, and are not neutralised to [] as in
Syrian.

Palestinian Arabic is a name of several dialects of the

subgroup of Levantine Arabic spoken by the Palestinians
in Palestine, by Arab citizens of Israel and in most Palestinian populations around the world.
Palestinian Arabic is composed of typical Semitic dialects, which exhibits vocabulary strata that include words
from ancient and modern Middle Eastern (Aramaic,
Turkish, Hebrew) and European (Greek, Latin, French,
English) languages.

The Lebanese and Syrian dialects are more prone to

imala of /a:/ than the Palestinian is. For instance
' winter' is ['ta] in Palestinian but ['te] in
Lebanese and Western Syrian. Some Palestinian dialects ignore imala totally (e.g. Gaza).

Dierences compared to other

Levantine Arabic dialects

In morphology, the plural personal pronouns are

'[na] 'we', '[hmme] 'they', -[-km]
'you', - [-hm] 'them' in Palestinian, while they
are in Syria/Lebanon '[nna] 'we', '[hnne]
'they', -[-kn] 'you', - [-hn] 'them'.

The dialects spoken by the Arabs of the Levant - the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean - or Levantine Arabic,
form a rather homogeneous group. Until relatively recently, the Arabic spoken in the Ottoman Sanjak of Syria
was considered as a single Syrian dialect, as for example
presented by F. E. Crow in 1901.[1]

The conjugation of the imperfect 1st and 3rd

person masculine has dierent prex vowels. Palestinians say '[baktb] 'I write'
[bauf] 'I see' where Lebanese and Syrians
say '[bktb] and [buf]. In the 3rd
person masculine, Palestinians say '[bktb]
'He writes where Lebanese and Western Syrians
say '[bjktb].

The Palestinian Arabic dialects are varieties of Levantine

Arabic because they display the following characteristic
Levantine features.
A conservative stress pattern, closer to Classical
Arabic than anywhere else in the Arab world.

Hamza-initial verbs commonly have an [o:] prex

sound in the imperfect in Palestinian. For example,
Classical Arabic has /akala/ 'to eat' in the perfect
tense, and /akulu/ with [a:] sound in the rst
person singular imperfect. The common equivalent
in Palestinian Arabic is /akal/ in the perfect, with
imperfect 1st person singular /bokel/ (with
the indicative b- prex.) Thus, in the Galilee and
Northern West Bank, the colloquial for the verbal
expression, I am eating or I eat is commonly
['bo:kel] / ['bo:tel], rather than ['ba:kl] used in the
Western Syrian dialect. Note however that ['ba:kel]
or even ['ba:kl] are used in the South of Palestine.

The indicative imperfect with a b- prex

A very frequent [imala] of the feminine ending in
front consonant context (names in -eh).
A [] realisation of /q/ in the cities, and a [q] realisation of /q/ by the Druzes, and more variants in the
countryside.
A shared lexicon
The noticeable dierences between Southern forms and
the Northern forms of Levantine Arabic, such as Western
Syrian Arabic and Lebanese Arabic, are stronger in nonurban dialects. The main dierences between Palestinian
and northern Levantine Arabic are as follows:

The conjugation of the imperative is dierent too.

'Write!' is '[ ktb] in Palestinian, but
[ktob], with dierent stress and vowel and length,
in Lebanese and Western Syrian.

Phonetically, Palestinian dialects diers from

Lebanese regarding the classical diphthongs /aj/
and /aw/, which have simplied to [e] and [o:] in
Palestinian dialects as in Western Syrian, while
in Lebanese they have retained a diphthongal
pronunciation: [e] and [o].

For the negation of verbs and prepositional pseudoverbs, Palestinian like Egyptian, typically suxes
[] on top of using the preverb negation /ma/, e.g. 'I
don't write' is [ ma bak'tb] in Palestinian, but [ma 'bktb] in Northern Levantine.
1

2 SOCIAL AND GEOGRAPHIC DIALECT STRUCTURATION

In vocabulary, Palestinian is closer to Lebanese than
to Western Syrian, e.g. 'is not' is [m] in
both Lebanese and Palestinian while it is [mu]
in Syrian; 'How?' is [kif] in Lebanese and
Palestinian while it is [lon] in Syrian as in
Iraqi. However, Palestinian also shares items with
Egyptian, e.g. 'like' (prep.) is [ zejj] in Palestinian instead of [ mtl], as found in Syrian and
Lebanese Arabic.

the followers of the Samaritan faith who have managed

to preserve the old dialect in its purest form. Urban dialects are characterised by the [] (hamza) pronunciation
of ' qaf', the simplication of interdentals as dentals plosives, i.e. as [t], as [d] and both and as [d].
Note however that in borrowings from Modern Standard
Arabic, these interdental consonants are realised as dental sibilants, i.e. as [s], as [z] and both and
as [z]. The Druzes have a dialect that may be classied
with the Urban ones, with the dierence that they keep
There are also typical Palestinian words, who are real the uvular pronunciation of ' qaf' as [q]. The urban dialects also ignore the dierence between masculine and
shibboleths in the Levant.
feminine in the plural pronouns '[ ntu] is both 'you'
(masc. plur.) and 'you' (fem. plur.), and ['hmme] is
A typical Palestinian word is '[ i] 'thing, someboth 'they' (masc.) and 'they' (fem.)
thing', as opposed to [ i] in Lebanon and Syria.
The rural varieties of this Palestinian ('fallahi') are
Besides common Levantine '[ halla] 'now', of three dierent types. All three retain the interdenJerusalemites use [ halke:t] (both from tal consonants. They keep the distinction between mas /ha-l-waqt/ ) and northern Palestinians use culine and feminine plural pronouns, e.g. '[ ntu]
'[ss] (from /s-s:/).
is 'you' (masc.) while '[ ntn] is 'you' (fem.), and
'[ hmme] is 'they' (masc.) while '[ hnne] is 'they'
(fem.). The three rural groups are the following.

Social and geographic dialect

structuration

As is very common in Arabic-speaking countries, the

dialect spoken by a person depends on both the region
he/she comes from, and the social group he/she belongs
to.
The Palestinian urban dialects ('madani') resemble
closely northern Levantine Arabic dialects, that is, the
colloquial variants of western Syria and Lebanon.[2] This
fact, that makes the urban dialects of the Levant remarkably homogeneous, is probably due to the trading network
among cities in the Ottoman Levant, or to an older Arabic dialect layer closer to the qeltu dialects still spoken in
northern Iraq/Syria and Southern Turkey. Nablus takes
a special place. What is recognisable to the ear in the
Nablus dialect is the distribution of accents on the various
syllables of the word. Almost each syllable has a stressed
accent, which gives the dialect a slow and sluggish tone.
The ancient dialect of Nablus even articulates every single syllable in the same word separately. Moreover, word
endings blatantly slant according to a regulated system.
For example, you may say sharqa with an [a:] sound at
the end of the word to refer to the eastern part of the city
and gharbeh with the [e] sound at the end of the word to
refer to the western side of the city. You may also want to
describe the colour of your bag and say safra (yellow) with
an [a:] sound at the end of the word or sode (black) with
an [e] sound at the end of the word. The nun and ha (n and
h) are always slanted and end with the [e] sound; and they
are the bases for the distinctive Nabulsi accent. The two
letters appear frequently at the end of words in the form
of inescapable objective pronouns. In the ancient dialect
of Nablus, the letters tha, thal, thaa, and qaf do not exist. The dialect of old Nablus is now to be found among

Central rural Palestinian (From Nazareth to Bethlehem, including Jaa countryside) exhibits a very
distinctive feature with pronunciation of ' kaf' as
[t] 'tshaf' (e.g. ' keeh' as [t'jje]) and
'qaf' as pharyngealised /k/ i.e. [k] 'kaf' (e.g.
'wheat' as [km]). This k > t sound change is
not conditioned by the surrounding sounds in Central Palestinian. This combination is unique in the
whole Arab world, but could be related to the 'qof'
transition to 'kof' in the Aramaic dialect spoken in
Ma'loula, north of Damascus.
Southern rural Palestinian (to the south of an
Isdud/Ashdod-Bethlehem line) has k > t only in
presence of front vowels (' rooster' is [di:t] in
the singular but the plural ' roosters is [dju:k]
because u prevents /k/ to change to [t]). In this
dialect is not pronounced as [k] but instead as
[g]. This dialect is actually very similar to northern
Jordanian (Ajloun, Irbid) and the dialects of Syrian
Hauran. In Southern rural Palestinian, the feminine
ending often remains [a].
North Galilean rural dialects do not feature the k >
t palatalisation, and many of them have kept the [q]
realisation of ( e.g. Maghr, Tirat Carmel). In the
very north, they announce the Northern Levantine
Lebanese dialects with n-ending pronouns such as
-[-kn] 'you', - [-hn] 'them' (Tarshiha, etc.).
The Palestinian Beduins use two dierent dialects
('badawi') in Galilee and in the Negev The Negev desert
Beduins use a dialect closely related to those spoken in
the Hijaz, and in the Sinai. They are probably the oldest Arab speaking population of the region, being present

3
there before Roman time in the region as attested by the
there is, there are is [ ] in the imperfect, and
Nabatean civilisation at time when the sedentary pop[ ka:n ] in the perfect.
ulations used to speak Aramaic. On the contrary, the
To want is formed with bdd + sux pronouns and
Beduins of Galilee speak a dialect related to those of
to have is formed with nd + sux pronouns. In the
the Syrian Desert and Najd, which indicates their arrival
imperfect they are
could have been relatively recent. The Negev Beduin have
a specic vocabulary, they maintain the interdental consonnants, they do not use the -[-] negative sux, they In the perfect, they are preceded by [ ka:n], e.g. we
always realise /k/ as [k] and /q/ as [g], and distinguish wanted is [ ka:n 'bddna].
plural masculine from plural feminine pronouns, but with Relative clause
dierent forms as the rural speakers.
As in most forms of colloquial Arabic, the relative
Current evolutions
clause markers of Classical Arabic (
On the urban dialects side, the current trend is to have ur- and )have been simplied to a
ban dialects getting closer to their rural neighbours, thus single form '[ lli].
introducing some variability among cities in the Levant. Interrogatives pronouns
For instance, Jerusalem used to say as Damascus ['nna]
(we) and ['hnne] (they) at the beginning of the 20th The main Palestinian interrogative pronouns (with their
century, and this has moved to the more rural ['na] Modern Standard Arabic counterparts) are the following
and ['hmme] nowadays.[3] This trend was probably ini- ones.
tiated by the partition of the Levant of several states in Note that it is tempting to consider the long [i:] in
the course of the 20th century.
[mi:n] 'who?' as an inuence of ancient Hebrew [ mi:]
The Rural description given above is moving nowadays on Classical Arabic [ man], but it could be as well an
with two opposite trends. On the one hand, urbanisation analogy with the long vowels of the other interrogatives.
gives a strong inuence power to urban dialects. As a result, villagers may adopt them at least in part, and Beduin
maintain a two-dialect practice. On the other hand, the
individualisation that comes with urbanisation make people feel more free to choose the way they speak than before, and in the same way as some will use typical Egyptian features as [le:] for [le:], others may use typical rural
features such as the rural realisation [k] of as a pride
reaction against the stigmatisation of this pronunciation.

Specic aspects of the vocabulary

Marking Indirect Object

In Classical Arabic, the indirect object was marked with
the particle /li-/ ('for', 'to'). For instance 'I said to him' was
'[ qultu 'lihi] and 'I wrote to her' was
[ka'tabtu li'ha:]. In Palestinian Arabic, the Indirect Object marker is still based on the consonant /l/, but with
more complex rules, and two dierent vocal patterns.
The basic form before pronouns is a clitic [ll-], that always bears the stress, and to which person pronouns are
suxed. The basic form before nouns is [la]. For instance
[' ...lt la-'mmak' ...] I told your
mother ...'

As Palestinian Arabic is spoken in the heartland of

[ ...tena l makthe Semitic languages, it has kept many typical semitic
tub la m'di l bak' ]We gave the letter to the
words. For this reason, it is relatively easy to guess
bank manager '
how Modern Standard Arabic words map onto Palestinian
Arabic Words. The list (Swadesh list) of basic word of
[ ...lt- 'll-o' ...] I told him ...'
Palestinian Arabic available on the Wiktionary (see external links below) may be used for this. However, some
[ ...lt- 'l(l)-ha' ...] I told her ...'
words are not transparent mappings from MSA, and de [ ...katabt- 'll-i' ...] You wrote me...'
serve a description. This is due either to meaning changes
in Arabic along the centuries - while MSA keeps the
Classical Arabic meanings - or to the adoption of non- Borrowings
Arabic words (see below). Note that this section focuses
Palestinians have borrowed words from the many lanon Urban Palestinian unless otherwise specied.
guages they have been in contact with throughout history.
Prepositional pseudo verbs
For example,
The words used in Palestinian to express the basic verbs
from Aramaic - especially in the place names, for in'to want', 'to have', 'there is/are' are called prepositional
stance there are several mountains called
pseudo verbs because they share all the features of verbs
['abal t tu] where [ tu] is just the Aramaic
but are constructed with a preposition and a sux pro for 'mountain'.
noun.

6
Latin left words in Levantine Arabic, not only those
as [ as] < castrum 'castle' or [ alam]
< calamus which are also known in MSA, but also
words such as [ ta:wle] < tabula 'table', which
are knownn in the Arab world.
from Italian [ ban'do:ra] < pomodoro
'tomato'
from French '[ ketto] < gteau 'cake'
from English '[ banar] < puncture, [trkk] <
truck
From Hebrew, especially the Israeli Arabs have
adopted many words, like yesh ( we did it!" used as sports cheer) which has no real equivalent
in Arabic. According to social linguist Dr. David
Mendelson from Givat Havivas Jewish-Arab Center for Peace, there is an adoption of words from Hebrew in Arabic spoken in Israel where alternative native terms exist. According to linguist Mohammed
Omara, of Bar-Ilan University some researchers call
the Arabic spoken by Israeli Arabs Arabrew. The
list of words adopted contain:
[ ram'zo:r ]from ' trac light'
[' amenet ]from ' sour cream'
[ beseder ]from ' O.K, alright'
[ koxa'vi:t ]from ' asterisk'
[ pele'fo:n ]from ' cellular
phone'.

Palestinians in the Palestinian territories sometimes refer

to their brethren in Israel as the bseder Arabs because
of their adoption of the Hebrew word [ beseder] for
'O.K.', (while Arabic is [ma:i]). However words
like ramzor ' trac light' and masom ' roadblock' have become a part of the general Palestinian vernacular.
The 2009 lm Ajami is mostly spoken in PalestinianHebrew Arabic.

REFERENCES

Aramaic as a written language as shown in Nabatean texts

of Petra or Palmyrenian documents of Tadmor.
The arabisation of the population occurred most probably in several waves. After the Arabs took control of
the area, so as to maintain their regular activity, the upper classes had quickly to get uency in the language of
the new masters who most probably were only few. The
prevalence of Northern Levantine features in the urban
dialects until the early 20th century, as well as in the dialect of Samaritans in Nablus (with systematic imala of
/a:/) tends to show that a rst layer of arabisation of urban upper classes could have led to what is now urban
levantine. Then, the main phenomenon could have been
the slow countryside shift of Aramaic-speaking villages
to Arabic under the inuence of arabicised elites, leading
to the emergence of the rural Palestinian dialects. This
scenario is consistent with several facts.
The rural forms can be correlated with features also
observed in the few Syrian villages where use of
Aramaic has been retained up to this day. Palatalisation of /k/ (but of /t/ too), pronunciation [k] of /q/
for instance. Note that the rst also exists in Najdi
Arabic and Gulf Arabic, but limited to palatal contexts (/k/ followed by i or a). Moreover, those Eastern dialects have [g] or [d] for /q/ .
The less-evolutive urban forms can be explained by
a limitation owed to the contacts urban trader classes
had to maintain with Arabic speakers of other towns
in Syria or Egypt.
The Negev Bedouins dialect shares a number of features with Hijazi dialects.

5 See also
Palestine
Varieties of Arabic
Jordanian Arabic
Syrian Arabic

Hints at a history of Palestinian

Arabic

The variations between dialects probably reect the different historical steps of arabisation of Palestine.
Until the 7th century, the area used to speak predominantly Aramaic (as witnessed, for example, in the Jewish
Aramaic and Christian Aramaic literature), as well as
Greek (probably in upper or trader social classes) and
some remaining traces of Hebrew. At that time, Arabic
speaking people living in the Negev desert or in the Jordan desert beyond Zarqa, Amman or Karak had no signicant inuence - on the contrary they tended to adopt

Egyptian Arabic
Music of Palestine

6 References
[1] Crow, F.E., Arabic manual: a colloquia handbook in the
Syrian dialect, for the use of visitors to Syria and Palestine,
containing a simplied grammar, a comprehensive English
and Arabic vocabulary and dialogues, Luzac & co, London, 1901
[2] Ammon, Ulrich (2006). Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik 3:
An International Handbook of the Science. p. 1922.

[3] U. Seeger, Mediterranean Language Review 10 (1998),

pp. 89-145.

Recommended readings
P. Behnstedt, Wolfdietrich Fischer and Otto Jastrow, Handbuch der Arabischen Dialekte. 2nd
ed. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1980 (ISBN 3-44702039-3)
Haim Blanc, Studies in North Palestinian Arabic: linguistic inquiries among the Druzes of Western Galilee
and Mt. Carmel. Oriental notes and studies, no. 4.
Jerusalem: Typ. Central Press 1953.
J. Blau, Syntax des palstinensischen Bauerndialektes von Bir-Zet: auf Grund der Volkserzahlungen aus Palastina von Hans Schmidt und Paul kahle.
Walldorf-Hessen: Verlag fur Orientkunde H. Vorndran 1960.

Frank A. Rice and Majed F. Sa'ed, Eastern Arabic: an introduction to the spoken Arabic of Palestine,
Syria and Lebanon. Beirut: Khayats 1960.
Frank A. Rice, Eastern Arabic-English, EnglishEastern Arabic: dictionary and phrasebook for the
spoken Arabic of Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine/Israel
and Syria. New York: Hippocrene Books 1998
(ISBN 0-7818-0685-2)
H. Schmidt & P. E. Kahle, Volkserzhlungen aus
Palaestina, gesammelt bei den Bauern von Bir-Zet.
Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1918.
Kimary N. Shahin, Palestinian Rural Arabic (Abu
Shusha dialect). 2nd ed. University of British
Columbia. LINCOM Europa, 2000 (ISBN 389586-960-0)

8 External links

J. Cantineau, Remarques sur les parls de sdentaires syro-libano-palestiniens, in: Bulletin de la Socit de Linguistique de Paris 40 (1938), pp. 8089.

The Arabic dialect of central Palestine

R. L. Cleveland, Notes on an Arabic Dialect of

Southern Palestine, in: Bulletin of the American Society of Oriental Research 185 (1967), pp. 4357.

"Phonological change and variation in Palestinian

Arabic as spoken inside Israel", Dissertation Proposal by Uri Horesh, Philadelphia, December 12,
2003 (PDF)

Olivier Durand, Grammatica di arabo palestinese: il

dialetto di Gerusalemme, Rome: Universit di Roma
La Sapienza 1996.
Yohanan Elihai, Dictionnaire de larabe parle palestinien: francais-arabe. Jerusalem: Typ. Yanetz
1973.
Yohanan Elihai, The olive tree dictionary: a transliterated dictionary of conversational Eastern Arabic
(Palestinian). Washington, DC: Kidron Pub. 2004
(ISBN 0-9759726-0-X)
Elias N. Haddad, Manual of Palestinian Arabic.
Jerusalem: Syrisches Weisenhaus 1909.
Moin Halloun, A Practical Dictionary of the Standard Dialect Spoken in Palestine. Bethlehem University 2000.
Moin Halloun, Lehrbuch ds PalstinensischArabischen. Heidelberg 2001.
Moin Halloun, Spoken Arabic for Foreigners. An Introduction to the Palestinian Dialect. Vol. 1 & 2.
Jerusalem 2003.
Arye Levin, A Grammar of the Arabic Dialect of
Jerusalem [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Magnes Press
1994 (ISBN 965-223-878-3)
M. Piamenta, Studies in the Syntax of Palestinian
Arabic. Jerusalem 1966.

Arabic in Jordan (Palestinian dialect)

The Corpus of Spoken Palestinian Arabic (CoSPA),

project description by Otto Jastrow.
Palestinian Arabic Swadesh list of basic vocabulary
words (from Wiktionarys Swadesh list appendix)

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1

Text

Palestinian Arabic Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Arabic?oldid=701592424 Contributors: Ffaker, Ed Poor, IZAK,

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TaivoLinguist, BD2412, Ian Pitchford, Estrellador*, AJR, Atrix20, Bgwhite, NawlinWiki, Heraclius, Deodar~enwiki, Huldra, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, Enlil Ninlil, Kakun, Jprg1966, Tewk, Chan Yin Keen, Di46Araj, Anthon.E, Khoikhoi, Shamir1, RolandR, TPObot, Drmaik, Shoeofdeath, Jaksmata, Szfski, CmdrObot, Cydebot, DumbBOT, Sirmylesnagopaleentheda, Marek69, Tiamut, Fayenatic london, Akuyume, Kishkushim, CattleGirl, Avicennasis, Dan Pelleg, Huraishi, Wasimsa, Aminullah, Malik Shabazz, Anna Lincoln, DruidODurham, Oneeyedboxer, RaseaC, PGWG, Ori, Hertz1888, Stevejeter, Magister10, Peter cohen, FunkMonk, BenoniBot~enwiki, Skatewalk, Mawad84, Jacob decamillis, Vegas Bleeds Neon, Excirial, The Founders Intent, IraKerem, Nableezy, DeltaQuad, SchreiberBike,
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Alazarerec, Anticyclone banias and Anonymous: 100

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