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On 2006-08-19 01:23:22 +0900, "Yusuf B Gursey" <ybg@xxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
Paul D wrote:
On 2006-08-17 20:57:23 +0900, "Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim"
<Jdibrahim@xxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
I understand it is not that easy to classify the many varieties of
Arabic but it is still useful for orientation.I would like now to make
the following proposal (subject to change):
1. Middle East
- Mesopotamian Iraq / Kuwait
- Levantine: Syria / Lebanon / Jordan / Palestine
- Arabian Peninsular: Saudi Arabia / UAE / Bahrain
- Yemen& Oman Yemen / Oman
2. Africa
- Egyptian: Egypt, Sudan, Libya
- North African (Maghreb) Algeria / Morocco / Tunisia
West Arabian
- African Mauritania, West Sahara
Somalia, / Djibouti?,
Eritrea?
Chad?
What about Malta? Maltese is an Arabic dialect, albeit with a lot of
borrowing from Sicilian.
Arabists (including e.g. Kaye & Rosenhouse) usually agree that Maltese
is a separate language, because of the immense Italian input, the roman
alphabet, the non-Islamic culture -- and the non-mutual-intelligibility.
also other considerations, like self-identity (they don't consider
themselves arabs), and that it is standardized and used without
diglossia with standard arabic.
All good reasons not to include it, although I wonder about mutual
intelligibility. A Maltese man I know about was able to converse with
Arabs in Libya and Tunisia without too much trouble, apparently.
Perhaps he played down the difficulty.
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