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145-614: Levantine Arabic , also called Shami ( autonym : ‏ شامي ‎ šāmi or اللهجة الشامية el-lahje š-šāmiyye ), is an Arabic variety spoken in the Levant , namely in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and southern Turkey (historically only in Adana , Mersin and Hatay provinces). With over 54 million speakers, Levantine is, alongside Egyptian , one of the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic comprehensible all over

290-423: A native language . In Israel and Turkey, Levantine is a minority language . The Palestinian dialect is the closest vernacular Arabic variety to MSA, with about 50% of common words. Nevertheless, Levantine and MSA are not mutually intelligible. Levantine speakers therefore often call their language ‏ العامية ‎ al-ʿāmmiyya listen , ' slang ', 'dialect', or 'colloquial'. However, with

435-700: A pejorative way. For example, Romani people often prefer that term to exonyms such as Gypsy (from the name of Egypt ), and the French term bohémien , bohème (from the name of Bohemia ). People may also avoid exonyms for reasons of historical sensitivity, as in the case of German names for Polish and Czech places that, at one time, had been ethnically or politically German (e.g. Danzig/ Gdańsk , Auschwitz/ Oświęcim and Karlsbad/ Karlovy Vary ); and Russian names for non-Russian locations that were subsequently renamed or had their spelling changed (e.g. Kiev/ Kyiv ). In recent years, geographers have sought to reduce

580-721: A "'bottom-up' orthography" and there is now "a high degree of normativization or standardisation in Arabizi orthography." Among consonants, only five (ج ,ذ ,ض ,ظ ,ق) revealed variability in their Arabizi representation. A 2012 study found that on the Jordanian forum Mahjoob about one-third of messages were written in Levantine in the Arabic script, one-third in Arabizi, and one-third in English. Another 2012 study found that on Facebook,

725-679: A "special status" in Israel under the Basic Law . French is also recognized in Lebanon. In Turkey, the only official language is Turkish. Any variation from MSA is considered a "dialect" of Arabic. As in the rest of the Arab world , this linguistic situation has been described as diglossia : MSA is nobody's first acquired language; it is learned through formal instruction rather than transmission from parent to child . This diglossia has been compared to

870-415: A 2013 study, Abuhakema investigated 270 written commercial ads in two Jordanian ( Al Ghad and Ad-Dustour ) and two Palestinian ( Al-Quds and Al-Ayyam ) daily newspapers. The study concluded that MSA is still the most used variety in ads, although both varieties are acceptable and Levantine is increasingly used. Most comedies are written in Levantine. In Syria, plays became more common and popular in

1015-628: A broad meaning, referring to all the dialects of Greater Syria , which corresponds to the Levant). Most authors only include sedentary dialects, excluding Bedouin dialects of the Syrian Desert and the Negev , which belong to the dialects of the Arabian peninsula. Mesopotamian dialects from northeast Syria are also excluded. Other authors include Bedouin varieties. The term "Levantine Arabic"

1160-538: A broad, empirical window into the motivating forces behind slang. While many forms of lexicon may be considered low-register or "sub-standard", slang remains distinct from colloquial and jargon terms because of its specific social contexts . While viewed as inappropriate in formal usage, colloquial terms are typically considered acceptable in speech across a wide range of contexts, whereas slang tends to be perceived as inappropriate in many common communication situations. Jargon refers to language used by personnel in

1305-440: A group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used primarily outside the particular place inhabited by the group or linguistic community. Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words, or from non-systematic attempts at transcribing into a different writing system. For instance, Deutschland

1450-399: A language over time. The 1941 film, Ball of Fire , portrays a professor played by Gary Cooper who is researching and writing an encyclopedia article about slang. The 2006 film, Idiocracy , portrays a less intelligent society in the year 2505 that has people who use all various sorts of aggressive slang. These slangs sound very foreign and alienating to the protagonist of the movie,

1595-526: A mix of MSA and Lebanese Arabic. Levantine is seldom written, except for some novels, plays, and humorous writings. Most Arab critics do not acknowledge the literary dignity of prose in dialect. Prose written in Lebanese goes back to at least 1892 when Tannus al-Hurr published Riwāyat aš-šābb as-sikkīr ʾay Qiṣṣat Naṣṣūr as-Sikrī , 'The tale of the drunken youth, or The story of Nassur the Drunkard'. In

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1740-477: A mixture of the three. Arabizi is a non-standard romanization used by Levantine speakers in social media and discussion forums , SMS messaging , and online chat . Arabizi initially developed because the Arabic script was not available or not easy to use on most computers and smartphones; its usage declined after Arabic software became widespread. According to a 2020 survey done in Nazareth , Arabizi "emerged" as

1885-611: A modified version of the Classical language, which is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Classical Arabic and vernacular varieties all developed from an unattested common ancestor, Proto-Arabic . The ISO 639-3 standard classifies Levantine as a language, member of the macrolanguage Arabic. Sedentary vernaculars (also called dialects) are traditionally classified into five groups according to shared features: Peninsular , Mesopotamian, Levantine, Egyptian , and Maghrebi . The linguistic distance between these vernaculars

2030-504: A neutral name may be preferred so as to not offend anyone. Thus, an exonym such as Brussels in English could be used instead of favoring either one of the local names ( Dutch / Flemish : Brussel ; French : Bruxelles ). Other difficulties with endonyms have to do with pronunciation, spelling, and word category . The endonym may include sounds and spellings that are highly unfamiliar to speakers of other languages, making appropriate usage difficult if not impossible for an outsider. Over

2175-412: A new Latin alphabet for Lebanese and promoted the official use of Lebanese instead of MSA, but this movement was unsuccessful. Although Levantine dialects have remained stable over the past two centuries, in cities such as Amman and Damascus, language standardization occurs through variant reduction and linguistic homogenization among the various religious groups and neighborhoods. Urbanization and

2320-465: A particular field or to language used to represent specific terms within a field to those with a particular interest. Although jargon and slang can both be used to exclude non-group members from the conversation, slang tends to emphasize social and contextual understanding whereas the main purpose of jargon is to optimize communication using terms that imply technical understanding. While colloquialisms and jargon may seem like slang because they reference

2465-425: A particular group, they do not necessarily fit the same definition because they do not represent a particular effort to replace the general lexicon of a standard language . Colloquialisms are considered more acceptable and more expected in standard usage than slang is, and jargon is often created to talk about aspects of a particular field that are not accounted for in the general lexicon. However, this differentiation

2610-609: A post in the same script). Levantine speakers in Turkey use the Latin-based Turkish alphabet . The Arabic alphabet is always cursive , and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial (middle), final, or isolated position ( IMFI ). Only the isolated form is shown in the tables below. In the Arabic script, short vowels are not represented by letters but by diacritics above or below

2755-435: A result, more short vowels are distinguished. In the north, stressed i and u merge. They usually become i , but might also be u near emphatic consonants. Syrians and Beirutis tend to pronounce both of them as schwa [ ə ] . The long vowel "ā" is pronounced similar to "ē" or even merges with "ē", when it is not near an emphatic or guttural consonant. Syllabification and phonotactics are complex, even within

2900-403: A role in constructing identity. While slang outlines social space, attitudes about slang partly construct group identity and identify individuals as members of groups. Therefore, using the slang of a particular group associates an individual with that group. Michael Silverstein 's orders of indexicality can be employed to assign a slang term as a second-order index to that particular group. Using

3045-408: A single dialect. Speakers often add a short vowel, called helping vowel or epenthetic vowel, sounding like a short schwa right before a word-initial consonant cluster to break it, as in ktiːr mniːħ , 'very good/well'. They are not considered part of the word and are never stressed. This process of anaptyxis is subject to social and regional variation. They are usually not written. A helping vowel

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3190-477: A slang term removes its status as true slang because it is then accepted by the media and is thus no longer the special insider speech of a particular group. For example, Black American music frequently uses slang, and many of its frequently used terms have therefore become part of vernacular English. Some say that a general test for whether a word is slang or not is whether or not it would be acceptable in an academic or legal setting, but that would consider slang to be

3335-573: A slang term, however, can also give an individual the qualities associated with the term's group of origin, whether or not the individual is trying to identify as a member of the group. This allocation of qualities based on abstract group association is known as third-order indexicality. As outlined in Elisa Mattiello's book "An Introduction to English Slang", a slang term can assume several levels of meaning and can be used for many reasons connected with identity. For example, male adolescents use

3480-492: A whole. Lebanese literary figure Said Akl led a movement to recognize the " Lebanese language " as a distinct prestigious language instead of MSA. Levantine is a variety of Arabic, a Semitic language . There is no consensus regarding the genealogical position of Arabic within the Semitic languages. The position of Levantine and other Arabic vernaculars in the Arabic macrolanguage family has also been contested. According to

3625-676: Is endangered . Bedouin varieties are spoken in the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula , areas of transition between Levantine and Egyptian. The dialect of Arish , Egypt, is classified by Linguasphere as Levantine. The Amman dialect is emerging as an urban standard in Jordanian Arabic , while other Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic dialects include Fellahi (rural) and Madani (urban). The Gaza dialect contains features of both urban Palestinian and Bedouin Arabic . The Levant

3770-857: Is almost exclusively written in MSA. Internet users in the Arab world communicate with their dialect language (such as Levantine) more than MSA on social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, or in the comments of online newspapers). According to one study, between 12% and 23% of all dialectal Arabic content online was written in Levantine depending on the platform. Levantine phonology is characterized by rich socio-phonetic variations along socio-cultural (gender; religion; urban, rural or Bedouin) and geographical lines. For instance, in urban varieties, interdentals /θ/ , /ð/ , and /ðʕ/ tend to merge to stops or fricatives [t] ~ [s] ; [d] ~ [z] ; and [dʕ] ~ [zʕ] respectively. The Classical Arabic voiceless uvular plosive /q/

3915-402: Is at least as large as between Germanic languages or Romance languages . It is, for instance, extremely difficult for Moroccans and Iraqis, each speaking their own variety, to understand each other. Levantine and Egyptian are the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic; they are also the most widely understood dialects in the Arab world and the most commonly taught to non-native speakers outside

4060-474: Is characterized by ethnic diversity and religious pluralism . Levantine dialects vary along sectarian lines. Religious groups include Sunni Muslims , Shia Muslims , Alawites , Christians, Druze , and Jews. Differences between Muslim and Christian dialects are minimal, mainly involving some religious vocabulary. A minority of features are perceived as typically associated with one group. For example, in Beirut,

4205-455: Is especially awesome and "hype". Words and phrases from popular Hollywood films and television series frequently become slang. One early slang-like code, thieves' cant , was first used in England in around the year 1600 as a way of law-breakers to communicate without the authorities knowing of what they were saying. Slang is usually associated with a particular social group and plays

4350-436: Is impossible to predict them exactly. One common pattern is for instance CvCvC => CuCaCa (e.g.: singular: ‏ مدير ‎ mudīr , 'manager'; plural: ‏ مدرا ‎ mudara , 'managers'). Inanimate objects take feminine singular agreement in the plural, for verbs, attached pronouns, and adjectives. Endonym and exonym An exonym (also known as xenonym ) is an established, non-native name for

4495-474: Is inserted: In the Damascus dialect, word stress falls on the last superheavy syllable (CVːC or CVCC). In the absence of a superheavy syllable: Until recently, Levantine was rarely written. Brustad and Zuniga report that in 1988, they did not find anything published in Levantine in Syria. By the late 2010s, written Levantine was used in many public venues and on the internet, especially social media. There

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4640-468: Is most commonly used. The changes to Hanyu Pinyin were not only financially costly but were unpopular with the locals, who opined that the Hanyu Pinyin versions were too difficult for non-Chinese or non-Mandarin speakers to pronounce. The government eventually stopped the changes by the 1990s, which has led to some place names within a locality having differing spellings. For example, Nee Soon Road and

4785-506: Is mostly used when reading from a scripted text (e.g., news bulletins) and for prayer and sermons in the mosque or church. In Israel, Hebrew is the language used in the public sphere, except internally among the Arab communities . Levantine is the usual medium of communication in all other domains. Traditionally in the Arab world, colloquial varieties, such as Levantine, have been regarded as corrupt forms of MSA, less eloquent and not fit for literature, and thus looked upon with disdain. Because

4930-532: Is no standard Levantine orthography. There have been failed attempts to Latinize Levantine, especially Lebanese . For instance, Said Akl promoted a modified Latin alphabet . Akl used this alphabet to write books and publish a newspaper, Lebnaan . Written communication takes place using a variety of orthographies and writing systems, including Arabic ( right-to-left script ), Hebrew (right-to-left, used in Israel, especially online among Bedouin , Arab Christians, and Druze ), Latin ( Arabizi , left-to-right), and

5075-581: Is not consistently applied by linguists; the terms "slang" and "jargon" are sometimes treated as synonymous, and the scope of "jargon" is at times extended to mean all forms of socially-restricted language. It is often difficult to differentiate slang from colloquialisms and even high-register lexicon because slang generally becomes accepted into common vocabulary over time. Words such as "spurious" and "strenuous" were once perceived as slang, but they are now considered general, even high-register words. Some literature on slang even says that mainstream acceptance of

5220-488: Is not indigenous and, according to linguists Kristen Brustad and Emilie Zuniga, "it is likely that many speakers would resist the grouping on the basis that the rich phonological, morphological and lexical variation within the Levant carries important social meanings and distinctions." Levantine speakers often call their language ‏ العامية ‎ al-ʿāmmiyya , ' slang ', 'dialect', or 'colloquial' ( lit.   '

5365-718: Is not its Dutch exonym. Old place names that have become outdated after renaming may afterward still be used as historicisms . For example, even today one would talk about the Siege of Leningrad , not the Siege of St. Petersburg because at that time (1941–1944) the city was called Leningrad. Likewise, one would say that Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg in 1724, not in Kaliningrad ( Калининград ), as it has been called since 1946. Likewise, Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul )

5510-925: Is now regarded in a more positive light, and its use in informal modes of writing is acknowledged, thanks to its recent widespread use online in both written and spoken forms. Code-switching between Levantine, MSA, English, French (in Lebanon and among Arab Christians in Syria ), and Hebrew (in Israel) is frequent among Levantine speakers, in both informal and formal settings (such as on television). Gordon cites two Lebanese examples: "Bonjour, ya habibti, how are you?" ("Hello, my love, how are you?") and "Oui, but leish?" ("Yes, but why?"). Code-switching also happens in politics. For instance, not all politicians master MSA in Lebanon, so they rely on Lebanese. Many public and formal speeches and most political talk shows are in Lebanese instead of MSA. In Israel, Arabic and Hebrew are allowed in

5655-563: Is now spelled Xinyi . However, districts like Tamsui and even Taipei itself are not spelled according to Hanyu Pinyin spelling rules. As a matter of fact, most names of Taiwanese cities are still spelled using Chinese postal romanization , including Taipei , Taichung , Taitung , Keelung , and Kaohsiung . During the 1980s, the Singapore Government encouraged the use of Hanyu Pinyin spelling for place names, especially those with Teochew, Hokkien or Cantonese names, as part of

5800-458: Is overwhelmingly Arabic, with a significant Aramaic influence. The lack of written sources in Levantine makes it impossible to determine its history before the modern period . Aramaic was the dominant language in the Levant starting in the 1st millennium BCE; it coexisted with other languages, including many Arabic dialects spoken by various Arab tribes. With the Muslim conquest of the Levant in

5945-686: Is primarily spoken by Arabs . It is also spoken as a first or second language by several ethnic minorities . In particular, it is spoken natively by Samaritans and by most Circassians in Jordan , Armenians in Jordan and Israel , Assyrians in Israel , Turkmen in Syria and Lebanon , Kurds in Lebanon , and Dom people in Jerusalem. Most Christian and Muslim Lebanese people in Israel speak Lebanese Arabic. Syrian Jews , Lebanese Jews , and Turkish Jews from Çukurova are native Levantine speakers; however, most moved to Israel after 1948 . Levantine

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6090-680: Is pronounced [q] (among Druze), [ʔ] (in most urban centers, especially Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem, and in Amman among women), [ɡ] (in Amman among men, in most other Jordanian dialects and in Gaza), [k] or even /kʕ/ (in rural Palestinian). Vowel length is phonemic in Levantine. Vowels often show dialectal or allophonic variations that are socially, geographically, and phonologically conditioned. Diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ are found in some Lebanese dialects, they respectively correspond to long vowels /eː/ and /oː/ in other dialects. One of

6235-549: Is still called Constantinople ( Κωνσταντινούπολη ) in Greek, although the name was changed in Turkish to dissociate the city from its Greek past between 1923 and 1930 (the name Istanbul itself derives from a Medieval Greek phrase ). Prior to Constantinople , the city was known in Greek as Byzantion ( Greek : Βυζάντιον , Latin : Byzantium ), named after its mythical founder, Byzas . Following independence from

6380-614: Is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms Germany and Germania in English and Italian , respectively, Alemania and Allemagne in Spanish and French , respectively, Niemcy in Polish , Saksa and Saksamaa in Finnish and Estonian . The terms autonym , endonym , exonym and xenonym are formed by adding specific prefixes to

6525-572: Is the human tendency towards neighbours to "be pejorative rather than complimentary, especially where there is a real or fancied difference in cultural level between the ingroup and the outgroup ." For example, Matisoff notes, Khang "an opprobrious term indicating mixed race or parentage" is the Palaung name for Jingpo people and the Jingpo name for Chin people ; both the Jingpo and Burmese use

6670-733: Is the only language of instruction in Arab schools . Hebrew is studied as a second language by all Palestinian students from at least the second grade and English from the third grade. In Jewish schools, in 2012, 23,000 pupils were studying spoken Palestinian in 800 elementary schools. Palestinian Arabic is compulsory in Jewish elementary schools in the Northern District ; otherwise, Jewish schools teach MSA. Junior high schools must teach all students MSA, but only two-thirds meet this obligation. At all stages in 2012, 141,000 Jewish students were learning Arabic. In 2020, 3.7% of Jewish students took

6815-545: Is unknown. Old Arabic was a dialect continuum stretching from the southern Levant (where Northern Old Arabic was spoken) to the northern Hijaz , in the Arabian Peninsula , where Old Hijazi was spoken. In the early 1st century CE, a great variety of Arabic dialects were already spoken by various nomadic or semi-nomadic Arabic tribes in the Levant , such as the Nabataeans —who used Aramaic for official purposes,

6960-748: The Anti-Lebanon Mountains , and the Beqaa Valley . The Muslim conquest of the Levant (634–640) brought Arabic speakers from the Arabian Peninsula who settled in the Levant. Arabic became the language of trade and public life in cities, while Aramaic continued to be spoken at home and in the countryside. Arabic gradually replaced Greek as the language of administration in 700 by order of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik . The language shift from Aramaic to vernacular Arabic

7105-457: The Arab world . Levantine is not officially recognized in any state or territory. Although it is the majority language in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, it is predominantly used as a spoken vernacular in daily communication, whereas most written and official documents and media in these countries use the official Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), a form of literary Arabic only acquired through formal education that does not function as

7250-513: The Bagrut exam in MSA. Most films and songs are in vernacular Arabic. Egypt was the most influential center of Arab media productions (movies, drama , TV series) during the 20th century, but Levantine is now competing with Egyptian. As of 2013, about 40% of all music production in the Arab world was in Lebanese. Lebanese television is the oldest and largest private Arab broadcast industry. Most big-budget pan-Arab entertainment shows are filmed in

7395-656: The Beijing dialect , became the official romanization method for Mandarin in the 1970s. As the Mandarin pronunciation does not perfectly map to an English phoneme , English speakers using either romanization will not pronounce the names correctly if standard English pronunciation is used. Nonetheless, many older English speakers still refer to the cities by their older English names, and even today they are often used in their traditional associations, such as Peking duck , Peking opera , and Peking University . As for Nanjing,

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7540-606: The Greek root word ónoma ( ὄνομα , 'name'), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nómn̥ . The prefixes added to these terms are also derived from Greek: The terms autonym and xenonym also have different applications, thus leaving endonym and exonym as the preferred forms. Marcel Aurousseau , an Australian geographer , first used the term exonym in his work The Rendering of Geographical Names (1957). Endonyms and exonyms can be divided in three main categories: As it pertains to geographical features ,

7685-530: The Knesset , but Arabic is rarely used. MK Ahmad Tibi often adds Palestinian Arabic sentences to his Hebrew speech but only gives partial speeches in Arabic. In the Levant, MSA is the only variety authorized for use in schools, although in practice, lessons are often taught in a mix of MSA and Levantine with, for instance, the lesson read out in MSA and explained in Levantine. In Lebanon , about 50% of school students study in French. In most Arab universities ,

7830-472: The Lebanese Civil War and expanded to the rest of the Arab world. In 2009, Al Jazeera used MSA only and Al Arabiya and Al-Manar used MSA or a hybrid between MSA and colloquial for talk shows. On the popular Lebanese satellite channel Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI), Arab and international news bulletins are only in MSA, while the Lebanese national news broadcast is in

7975-650: The Ottoman Empire dominated the Levant . Many Western words entered Arabic through Ottoman Turkish as it was the main language for transmitting Western ideas into the Arab world. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century reduced the use of Turkish words due to Arabization and the negative perception of the Ottoman era among Arabs. With the French Mandate for Syria and

8120-526: The Roman Empire applied the word " Walha " to foreigners they encountered and this evolved in West Germanic languages as a generic name for speakers of Celtic and later (as Celts became increasingly romanised) Romance languages; thence: During the late 20th century, the use of exonyms often became controversial. Groups often prefer that outsiders avoid exonyms where they have come to be used in

8265-557: The Singapore Armed Forces base Nee Soon Camp are both located in Yishun but retained the old spelling. Matisoff wrote, "A group's autonym is often egocentric, equating the name of the people with 'mankind in general,' or the name of the language with 'human speech'." In Basque , the term erdara/erdera is used for speakers of any language other than Basque (usually Spanish or French). Many millennia earlier,

8410-514: The Slavs are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones". The most common names of several Indigenous American tribes derive from pejorative exonyms. The name " Apache " most likely derives from a Zuni word meaning "enemy". The name " Sioux ", an abbreviated form of Nadouessioux , most likely derived from a Proto-Algonquian term, * -a·towe· ('foreign-speaking). The name " Comanche " comes from

8555-547: The Speak Mandarin Campaign to promote Mandarin and discourage the use of dialects. For example, the area of Nee Soon, named after Teochew -Peranakan businessman Lim Nee Soon (Hanyu Pinyin: Lín Yìshùn) became Yishun and the neighbourhood schools and places established following the change used the Hanyu Pinyin spelling. In contrast, Hougang is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling but the Hokkien pronunciation au-kang

8700-698: The Tanukhids , and the Ghassanids . These dialects were local, coming from the Hauran —and not from the Arabian peninsula— and related to later Classical Arabic. Initially restricted to the steppe , Arabic-speaking nomads started to settle in cities and fertile areas after the Plague of Justinian in 542 CE. These Arab communities stretched from the southern extremities of the Syrian Desert to central Syria,

8845-541: The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names defines: For example, India , China , Egypt , and Germany are the English-language exonyms corresponding to the endonyms Bhārat ( भारत ), Zhōngguó ( 中国 ), Masr ( مَصر ), and Deutschland , respectively. There are also typonyms of specific features, for example hydronyms for bodies of water. In

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8990-511: The Ute word kɨmantsi meaning "enemy, stranger". The Ancestral Puebloans are also known as the "Anasazi", a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemies", and contemporary Puebloans discourage the use of the exonym. Various Native-American autonyms are sometimes explained to English readers as having literal translations of "original people" or "normal people", with implicit contrast to other first nations as not original or not normal. Although

9135-419: The exponent ‏ تاع ‎ tēʕ is only used by Muslims and never by Christians who use ‏ تبع ‎ tabaʕ . Contrary to others, Druze and Alawite dialects retained the phoneme /q/ . MSA influences Sunni dialects more. Jewish dialects diverge more from Muslim dialects and often show influences from other towns due to trade networks and contacts with other Jewish communities. For instance,

9280-499: The medium of instruction is MSA in social sciences and humanities , and English or French in the applied and medical sciences . In Syria , only MSA is used. In Turkey , article 42.9 of the Constitution prohibits languages other than Turkish from being taught as a mother tongue and almost all indigenous Arabic speakers are illiterate in the Arabic script unless they have learned it for religious purposes. In Israel, MSA

9425-517: The verb precedes the object . SVO is more common in Levantine, while Classical Arabic prefers VSO. Subject-initial order indicates topic-prominent sentences, while verb-initial order indicates subject-prominent sentences. In interrogative sentences, the interrogative particle comes first. Nouns are either masculine or feminine and singular, dual or plural. The dual is formed with the suffix ين- -ēn . Most feminine singular nouns end with ـة tāʼ marbūṭah , pronounced as –a or -e depending on

9570-561: The "language". The term survives to this day in the Slavic languages (e.g. Ukrainian німці (nimtsi); Russian немцы (nemtsy), Slovene Nemčija), and was borrowed into Hungarian , Romanian , and Ottoman Turkish (in which case it referred specifically to Austria ). One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term " Slav " suggests that it comes from the Slavic root slovo (hence " Slovakia " and " Slovenia " for example), meaning 'word' or 'speech'. In this context,

9715-658: The 1960s, Said Akl led a movement in Lebanon to replace MSA as the national and literary language, and a handful of writers wrote in Lebanese. Foreign works, such as La Fontaine's Fables , were translated into Lebanese using Akl's alphabet. The Gospel of Mark was published in Palestinian in 1940, followed by the Gospel of Matthew and the Letter of James in 1946. The four gospels were translated in Lebanese using Akl's alphabet in 1996 by Gilbert Khalifé. Muris 'Awwad translated

9860-463: The 1980s by using Levantine instead of Classical Arabic. Saadallah Wannous , the most renowned Syrian playwright, used Syrian Arabic in his later plays. Comic books , like the Syrian comic strip Kūktīl , are often written in Levantine instead of MSA. In novels and short stories, most authors, such as Arab Israelis Riyad Baydas  [ ar ] and Odeh Bisharat  [ ar ] , write

10005-467: The 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE) and was maintained by the Roman (64 BCE–475 CE), then Byzantine (476–640) empires. From the early 1st millennium BCE until the 6th century CE, there was a continuum of Central Semitic languages in the Arabian Peninsula, and Central Arabia was home to languages quite distinct from Arabic. Because there are no written sources, the history of Levantine before the modern period

10150-486: The 7th century, new Arabic speakers from the Arabian Peninsula settled in the area, and a lengthy language shift from Aramaic to vernacular Arabic occurred. Scholars use "Levantine Arabic" to describe the continuum of mutually intelligible dialects spoken across the Levant. Other terms include "Syro-Palestinian", "Eastern Arabic", "East Mediterranean Arabic", "Syro-Lebanese" (as a broad term covering Jordan and Palestine as well), "Greater Syrian", or "Syrian Arabic" (in

10295-509: The 9th to 10th centuries or earlier. The shift from / q / to a glottal stop is dated between the 11th and 15th centuries. Imāla seems already important in pre-Islamic times. Swedish orientalist Carlo Landberg  [ sv ] writes about the vulgarisms encountered in Damascene poet Usama ibn Munqidh 's Memoirs : "All of them are found in today's spoken language of Syria and it is very interesting to note that that language is, on

10440-562: The Arab world. Levantine is spoken in the fertile strip on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean : from the Turkish coastal provinces of Adana , Hatay , and Mersin in the north to the Negev, passing through Lebanon, the coastal regions of Syria ( Latakia and Tartus governorates) as well as around Aleppo and Damascus, the Hauran in Syria and Jordan, the rest of western Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Other Arabic varieties border it: Mesopotamian and North Mesopotamian Arabic to

10585-631: The Arabic script was dominant in Syria, while the Latin script dominated in Lebanon. Both scripts were used in Palestine, Israel, and Jordan. Several factors affect script choice: formality (the Arabic script is more formal), ethnicity and religion (Muslims use the Arabic script more while Israeli Druze and Bedouins prefer Hebrew characters), age (young use Latin more), education (educated people write more in Latin), and script congruence (the tendency to reply to

10730-593: The Arabic tradition, Classical Arabic was the spoken language of the pre-Islamic and Early Islamic periods and remained stable until today's MSA. According to this view, all Arabic vernaculars, including Levantine, descend from Classical Arabic and were corrupted by contacts with other languages. Several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars are not

10875-817: The Chinese word yeren ( 野人 ; 'wild men', 'savage', 'rustic people' ) as the name for Lisu people . As exonyms develop for places of significance for speakers of the language of the exonym, consequently, many European capitals have English exonyms, for example: In contrast, historically less-prominent capitals such as Ljubljana and Zagreb do not have English exonyms, but do have exonyms in languages spoken nearby, e.g. German : Laibach and Agram (the latter being obsolete); Italian : Lubiana and Zagabria . Madrid , Berlin , Oslo , and Amsterdam , with identical names in most major European languages , are exceptions. Some European cities might be considered partial exceptions, in that whilst

11020-452: The Damascus dialect of that period. Because its Arabic text is written in Greek characters , it reveals the pronunciation of the time; it features many examples of imāla (the fronting and raising of /a/ toward /i/ ). It also features a pre-grammarian standard of Arabic and the dialect from which it sprung, likely Old Hijazi. Scholars disagree on the dates of phonological changes. The shift of interdental spirants to dental stops dates to

11165-523: The French and the British emphasized vernaculars when they colonized the Arab world, dialects were also seen as a tool of colonialism and imperialism . Writing in the vernacular has been controversial because pan-Arab nationalists consider that this might divide the Arab people into different nations. On the other hand, Classical Arabic is seen as "the language of the Quran " and revered by Muslims who form

11310-651: The Greeks thought that all non-Greeks were uncultured and so called them " barbarians ", which eventually gave rise to the exonym " Berber ". Exonyms often describe others as "foreign-speaking", "non-speaking", or "nonsense-speaking". One example is the Slavic term for the Germans, nemtsi , possibly deriving from plural of nemy ("mute"); standard etymology has it that the Slavic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because they could not speak

11455-513: The Hijazi vernacular of the Umayyad elites . In the Levant, these Peninsular dialects mixed with ancient forms of Arabic, such as the northern Old Arabic dialect. By the mid-6th century CE, the Petra papyri show that the onset of the article and its vowel seem to have weakened. The article is sometimes written as /el-/ or simply /l-/. A similar, but not identical, situation is found in the texts from

11600-498: The Islamic period. Unlike the pre-Islamic attestations, the coda of the article in 'conquest Arabic' assimilates to a following coronal consonant . According to Pr. Simon Hopkins, this document shows that there is "a very impressive continuity in colloquial Arabic usage, and the roots of the modern vernaculars are thus seen to lie very deep". The Damascus Psalm Fragment , dated to the 9th century but possibly earlier, sheds light on

11745-530: The Jewish dialect of Hatay is very similar to the Aleppo dialect, particularly the dialect of the Jews of Aleppo. It shows traits otherwise not found in any dialect of Hatay. Koineization in cities such as Damascus leads to a homogenization of the language among religious groups. In contrast, the marginalization of Christians in Jordan intensifies linguistic differences between Christian Arabs and Muslims. Levantine

11890-487: The Lebanese dialect in the studios of Beirut. Moreover, the Syrian dialect dominates in Syrian TV series (such as Bab Al-Hara ) and in the dubbing of Turkish television dramas (such as Noor ), famous across the Arab world. As of 2009, most Arabic satellite television networks use colloquial varieties in their programs, except news bulletins in MSA. The use of vernacular in broadcasting started in Lebanon during

12035-586: The Lebanon (1920–1946), the British protectorate over Jordan (1921–1946), and the British Mandate for Palestine (1923–1948), French and English words gradually entered Levantine Arabic. Similarly, Modern Hebrew has significantly influenced the Palestinian dialect of Arab Israelis since the establishment of Israel in 1948. In the 1960s, Said Akl—inspired by the Maltese and Turkish alphabets — designed

12180-561: The Portuguese Colónia closely reflects the Latin original. In some cases, no standardised spelling is available, either because the language itself is unwritten (even unanalysed) or because there are competing non-standard spellings. Use of a misspelled endonym is perhaps more problematic than the respectful use of an existing exonym. Finally, an endonym may be a plural noun and may not naturally extend itself to adjectival usage in another language like English, which has

12325-529: The Province of Guangdong ( 广东 ; Guǎngdōng ). However, older English exonyms are sometimes used in certain contexts, for example: Peking (Beijing; duck , opera , etc.), Tsingtao (Qingdao), and Canton (Guangdong). In some cases the traditional English exonym is based on a local Chinese variety instead of Mandarin , in the case of Xiamen , where the name Amoy is closer to the Hokkien pronunciation. In

12470-510: The Russians used the village name of Chechen , medieval Europeans took the tribal name Tatar as emblematic for the whole Mongolic confederation (and then confused it with Tartarus , a word for Hell , to produce Tartar ), and the Magyar invaders were equated with the 500-years-earlier Hunnish invaders in the same territory, and were called Hungarians . The Germanic invaders of

12615-454: The UK in 1947, many regions and cities have been renamed in accordance with local languages, or to change the English spelling to more closely match the indigenous local name. The name Madras , now Chennai , may be a special case . When the city was first settled by English people , in the early 17th century, both names were in use. They possibly referred to different villages which were fused into

12760-430: The case of Beijing , the adoption of the exonym by media outlets quickly gave rise to a hyperforeignised pronunciation, with the result that many English speakers actualize the j in Beijing as / ʒ / . One exception of Pinyin standardization in mainland China is the spelling of the province Shaanxi , which is the mixed Gwoyeu Romatzyh –Pinyin spelling of the province. That is because if Pinyin were used to spell

12905-409: The case of endonyms and exonyms of language names (glossonyms), Chinese , German , and Dutch , for example, are English-language exonyms for the languages that are endonymously known as Zhōngwén ( 中文 ), Deutsch , and Nederlands , respectively. By their relation to endonyms, all exonyms can be divided into three main categories: Sometimes, a place name may be unable to use many of

13050-401: The dialogues in their Levantine dialect, while the rest of the text is in MSA. Lebanese authors Elias Khoury (especially in his recent works) and Kahlil Gibran wrote the main narrative in Levantine. Some collections of short stories and anthologies of Palestinian folktales ( turāṯ , 'heritage literature') display full texts in dialect. On the other hand, Palestinian children's literature

13195-403: The early 2000s along with the rise in popularity of social networking services, including Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram . This has spawned new vocabularies associated with each new social media venue, such as the use of the term "friending" on Facebook, which is a verbification of "friend" used to describe the process of adding a new person to one's group of friends on the website, despite

13340-411: The early nineteenth century, it was no longer exclusively associated with disreputable people, but continued to be applied to usages below the level of standard educated speech. In Scots dialect it meant "talk, chat, gossip", as used by Aberdeen poet William Scott in 1832: "The slang gaed on aboot their war'ly care." In northern English dialect it meant "impertinence, abusive language". The origin of

13485-408: The emergence of social media, attitudes toward Levantine have improved. The amount of written Levantine has significantly increased, especially online, where Levantine is written using Arabic , Latin , or Hebrew characters . Levantine pronunciation varies greatly along social, ethnic, and geographical lines. Its grammar is similar to that shared by most vernacular varieties of Arabic. Its lexicon

13630-864: The endonym Nederland is singular, while all the aforementioned translations except Irish are plural. Exonyms can also be divided into native and borrowed, e.g., from a third language. For example, the Slovene exonyms Dunaj ( Vienna ) and Benetke ( Venice ) are native, but the Avar name of Paris, Париж ( Parizh ) is borrowed from Russian Париж ( Parizh ), which comes from Polish Paryż , which comes from Italian Parigi . A substantial proportion of English-language exonyms for places in continental Europe are borrowed (or adapted) from French; for example: Many exonyms result from adaptations of an endonym into another language, mediated by differences in phonetics, while others may result from translation of

13775-404: The endonym, or as a reflection of the specific relationship an outsider group has with a local place or geographical feature. According to James Matisoff , who introduced the term autonym into linguistics , exonyms can also arise from the "egocentric" tendency of in-groups to identify themselves with "mankind in general", producing an endonym that out groups would not use, while another source

13920-399: The exact boundary. The dialect of Aleppo shows Mesopotamian influence. The prestige dialect of Damascus is the most documented Levantine dialect. A "common Syrian Arabic" is emerging. Similarly, a "Standard Lebanese Arabic" is emerging, combining features of Beiruti Arabic (which is not prestigious) and Jabale Arabic, the language of Mount Lebanon . In Çukurova , Turkey, the local dialect

14065-450: The existence of an analogous term "befriend". This term is much older than Facebook, but has only recently entered the popular lexicon. Other examples of slang in social media demonstrate a proclivity toward shortened words or acronyms. These are especially associated with services such as Twitter, which (as of November 2017 ) has a 280-character limit for each message and therefore requires a relatively brief mode of expression. This includes

14210-399: The first to report on the phenomenon of slang in a systematic and linguistic way, postulated that a term would likely be in circulation for a decade before it would be written down. Nevertheless, it seems that slang generally forms via deviation from a standard form. This "spawning" of slang occurs in much the same way that any general semantic change might occur. The difference here is that

14355-422: The floor laughing"), which are widely used in instant messaging on the internet. As subcultures are often forms of counterculture, which is understood to oppose the norm, it follows that slang has come to be associated with counterculture. Slang is often adopted from social media as a sign of social awareness and shared knowledge of popular culture . This type known as internet slang has become prevalent since

14500-607: The four gospels and The Little Prince in 2001 in Lebanese in Arabic script. The Little Prince was also translated into Palestinian and published in two biscriptal editions (one Arabic/Hebrew script, one Arabic/Latin script). Newspapers usually use MSA and reserve Levantine for sarcastic commentaries and caricatures. Headlines in Levantine are common. The letter to the editor section often includes entire paragraphs in Levantine. Many newspapers also regularly publish personal columns in Levantine, such as خرم إبرة xurm ʾibra , lit.   ' [through the] needle's eye ' in

14645-531: The hippie slang of the 1960s. The word "gig" is now a widely accepted synonym for a concert, recital, or performance of any type. Generally, slang terms undergo the same processes of semantic change that words in the regular lexicon do. Slang often forms from words with previously differing meanings, one example is the often used and popular slang word "lit", which was created by a generation labeled "Generation Z". The word itself used to be associated with something being on fire or being "lit" up until 1988 when it

14790-555: The historical event called the Nanking Massacre (1937) uses the city's older name because that was the name of the city at the time of occurrence. Likewise, many Korean cities like Busan and Incheon (formerly Pusan and Inchǒn respectively) also underwent changes in spelling due to changes in romanization, even though the Korean pronunciations have largely stayed the same. Exonyms and endonyms must not be confused with

14935-446: The increasing proportion of youth constitute the causes of dialect change . Urban forms are considered more prestigious, and prestige dialects of the capitals are replacing the rural varieties. With the emergence of social media, the amount of written Levantine has also significantly increased online. Levantine is not recognized in any state or territory. MSA is the sole official language in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria; it has

15080-456: The indexicalized social identifications the former convey. In terms of first and second order indexicality, the usage of speaker-oriented terms by male adolescents indicated their membership to their age group, to reinforce connection to their peer group, and to exclude outsiders. In terms of higher order indexicality, anyone using these terms may desire to appear fresher, undoubtedly more playful, faddish, and colourful than someone who employs

15225-432: The lack of a clear definition, however, Bethany K. Dumas and Jonathan Lighter argue that an expression should be considered "true slang" if it meets at least two of the following criteria: Michael Adams remarks that "[Slang] is liminal language... it is often impossible to tell, even in context, which interests and motives it serves... slang is on the edge." Slang dictionaries, collecting thousands of slang entries, offer

15370-413: The language exclusively used by the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity , exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception, with no single technical usage in linguistics. In its earliest attested use (1756), the word slang referred to the vocabulary of "low" or "disreputable" people. By

15515-445: The language of common people ' ), to contrast it to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Classical Arabic (‏ الفصحى ‎ al-fuṣḥā , lit.   ' the eloquent ' ). They also call their spoken language ‏ عربي ‎ ʿarabiyy , 'Arabic'. Alternatively, they identify their language by the name of their country. ‏ شامي ‎ šāmi can refer to Damascus Arabic , Syrian Arabic , or Levantine as

15660-820: The letters when transliterated into an exonym because of the corresponding language's lack of common sounds. Māori , having only one liquid consonant , is an example of this here. London (originally Latin : Londinium ), for example, is known by the cognate exonyms: An example of a translated exonym is the name for the Netherlands ( Nederland in Dutch) used, respectively, in German ( Niederlande ), French ( Pays-Bas ), Italian ( Paesi Bassi ), Spanish ( Países Bajos ), Irish ( An Ísiltír ), Portuguese ( Países Baixos ) and Romanian ( Țările de Jos ), all of which mean " Low Countries ". However,

15805-483: The letters. When Levantine is written with the Arabic script, short vowels are usually only indicated if a word is ambiguous. In the Arabic script, a shadda above a consonant doubles it. In Latin alphabet, the consonant is written twice: ‏ مدرِّسة ‎, mudarrise , 'a female teacher' / ‏ مدرسة ‎, madrase , 'a school'. Said Akl's Latin alphabet uses non-standard characters. VSO and SVO word orders are possible in Levantine. In both cases,

15950-419: The majority of the population. It is believed to be pure and everlasting, and Islamic religious ideology considers vernaculars to be inferior. Until recently, the use of Levantine in formal settings or written form was often ideologically motivated, for instance in opposition to pan-Arabism. Language attitudes are shifting, and using Levantine became de-ideologized for most speakers by the late 2010s. Levantine

16095-430: The most distinctive features of Levantine is word-final imāla , a process by which the vowel corresponding to ة tāʼ marbūṭah is raised from [a] to [æ] , [ɛ] , [e] or even [i] in some dialects. The difference between the short vowel pairs e and i as well as o and u is not always phonemic. The vowel quality is usually i and u in stressed syllables. Vowels in word-final position are shortened. As

16240-472: The new settlement. In any case, Madras became the exonym, while more recently, Chennai became the endonym. Madrasi, a term for a native of the city, has often been used derogatorily to refer to the people of Dravidian origin from the southern states of India . Slang A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases , and linguistic usages ) of an informal register , common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also often refers to

16385-492: The north and north-east; Najdi Arabic to the east and south-east; and Northwest Arabian Arabic to the south and south-west. The similarity among Levantine dialects transcends geographical location and political boundaries. The urban dialects of the main cities (such as Damascus , Beirut , and Jerusalem ) have much more in common with each other than they do with the rural dialects of their respective countries. The sociolects of two different social or religious groups within

16530-460: The noun or adjective and has multiple pronunciations. Its vowel is dropped when the preceding word ends in a vowel. A helping vowel "e" is inserted if the following word begins with a consonant cluster. It assimilates with " sun letters " (consonants that are pronounced with the tip of the tongue). The letter Jeem ( ج ) is a sun letter for speakers pronouncing it as [ ʒ ] but not for those pronouncing it as [ d͡ʒ ]. For nouns referring to humans,

16675-434: The number of exonyms were over-optimistic and not possible to realise in an intended way. The reason would appear to be that many exonyms have become common words in a language and can be seen as part of the language's cultural heritage. In some situations, the use of exonyms can be preferred. For instance, in multilingual cities such as Brussels , which is known for its linguistic tensions between Dutch- and French-speakers,

16820-517: The possibility of a Scandinavian origin, suggesting the same root as that of sling , which means "to throw", and noting that slang is thrown language – a quick and honest way to make your point. Linguists have no simple and clear definition of slang but agree that it is a constantly changing linguistic phenomenon present in every subculture worldwide. Some argue that slang exists because we must come up with ways to define new experiences that have surfaced with time and modernity. Attempting to remedy

16965-401: The preceding consonant: -a after guttural ( ح خ ع غ ق ه ء ) and emphatic consonants ( ر ص ض ط ظ ), -e after other consonants. Unlike Classical Arabic, Levantine has no case marking . Levantine has a definite article , which marks common nouns (i.e. nouns that are not proper nouns) as definite. Its absence marks common nouns as indefinite. The Arabic definite article ال il precedes

17110-557: The pronunciation for several names of Chinese cities such as Beijing and Nanjing has not changed for quite some time while in Mandarin Chinese (although the prestige dialect shifted from Nanjing dialect to Beijing dialect during the 19th century), they were called Peking and Nanking in English due to the older Chinese postal romanization convention, based largely on the Nanjing dialect . Pinyin , based largely on

17255-520: The propensity to use the adjectives for describing culture and language. Sometimes the government of a country tries to endorse the use of an endonym instead of traditional exonyms outside the country: Following the 1979 declaration of Hanyu Pinyin spelling as the standard romanisation of Chinese , many Chinese endonyms have successfully replaced English exonyms, especially city and most provincial names in mainland China , for example: Beijing ( 北京 ; Běijīng ), Qingdao ( 青岛 ; Qīngdǎo ), and

17400-474: The province, it would be indistinguishable from its neighboring province Shanxi , where the pronunciations of the two provinces only differ by tones, which are usually not written down when used in English. In Taiwan, however, the standardization of Hanyu Pinyin has only seen mixed results. In Taipei , most (but not all) street and district names shifted to Hanyu Pinyin. For example, the Sinyi District

17545-543: The region, especially among the Palestinian , Lebanese , and Syrian diasporas . The language has fallen into disuse among subsequent diaspora generations , such as the 7 million Lebanese Brazilians . Starting in the 1st millennium BCE , Aramaic was the dominant spoken language and the language of writing and administration in the Levant. Greek was the language of administration of the Seleucid Empire (in

17690-479: The regular (also called sound) masculine plural is formed with the suffix -īn. The regular feminine plural is formed with -āt. The masculine plural is used to refer to a group with both genders. There are many broken plurals (also called internal plurals), in which the consonantal root of the singular is changed . These plural patterns are shared with other varieties of Arabic and may also be applied to foreign borrowings. Several patterns of broken plurals exist, and it

17835-563: The results of geographical renaming as in the case of Saint Petersburg , which became Petrograd ( Петроград ) in 1914, Leningrad ( Ленинград ) in 1924, and again Saint Petersburg ( Санкт-Петербург , Sankt-Peterbúrg ) in 1991. In this case, although Saint Petersburg has a Dutch etymology, it was never a Dutch exonym for the city between 1914 and 1991, just as Nieuw Amsterdam , the Dutch name of New York City until 1664,

17980-518: The same as normal, everyday, informal language. Others say that a general test is whether the word has been entered in the Oxford English Dictionary, which some scholars claim changes its status as slang. It is often difficult to collect etymologies for slang terms, largely because slang is a phenomenon of speech, rather than written language and etymologies which are typically traced via corpus . Eric Partridge , cited as

18125-579: The same country may also show more dissimilarity with each other than when compared with their counterparts in another country. The process of linguistic homogenization within each country of the Levant makes a classification of dialects by country possible today. Linguist Kees Versteegh classifies Levantine into three groups: Lebanese/Central Syrian (including Beirut, Damascus, Druze Arabic , Cypriot Maronite ), North Syrian (including Aleppo), and Palestinian/Jordanian. He writes that distinctions between these groups are unclear, and isoglosses cannot determine

18270-588: The semantic point of view, slangy foxy is more loaded than neutral sexy in terms of information provided. That is, for young people foxy means having the quality of: (1) attracting interest, attention, affection, (2) causing desire, (3) excellent or admirable in appearance, and (4) sexually provocative, exciting, etc., whereas sexy only refers to the quality indicated in point (4). Matiello stresses that those agents who identify themselves as "young men" have "genuinely coined" these terms and choose to use them over "canonical" terms —like beautiful or sexy—because of

18415-458: The slang term's new meaning takes on a specific social significance having to do with the group the term indexes. Coleman also suggests that slang is differentiated within more general semantic change in that it typically has to do with a certain degree of "playfulness". The development of slang is considered to be a largely "spontaneous, lively, and creative" speech process. Still, while a great deal of slang takes off, even becoming accepted into

18560-492: The socially preferable or "correct" ways to speak, according to a language's normative grammar and syntactical words, descriptivists focus on studying language to further understand the subconscious rules of how individuals speak, which makes slang important in understanding such rules. Noam Chomsky , a founder of anthropological linguistic thought, challenged structural and prescriptive grammar and began to study sounds and morphemes functionally, as well as their changes within

18705-475: The spelling is the same across languages, the pronunciation can differ. For example, the city of Paris is spelled the same way in French and English, but the French pronunciation [ paʁi ] is different from the English pronunciation [ ˈpærɪs ]. For places considered to be of lesser significance, attempts to reproduce local names have been made in English since the time of the Crusades . Livorno , for instance,

18850-436: The standard English term "beautiful". This appearance relies heavily on the hearer's third-order understanding of the term's associated social nuances and presupposed use-cases. Often, distinct subcultures will create slang that members will use in order to associate themselves with the group, or to delineate outsiders. Slang terms are often known only within a clique or ingroup . For example, Leet ("Leetspeak" or "1337")

18995-401: The standard lexicon, much slang dies out, sometimes only referencing a group. An example of this is the term "groovy" which is a relic of 1960s and 70s American hippie slang. Nevertheless, for a slang term to become a slang term, people must use it, at some point in time, as a way to flout standard language. Additionally, slang terms may be borrowed between groups, such as the term "gig" which

19140-412: The terms "foxy" and "shagadelic" to "show their belonging to a band, to stress their virility or their age, to reinforce connection with their peer group and to exclude outsiders, to show off, etc." These two examples use both traditional and nontraditional methods of word formation to create words with more meaning and expressiveness than the more direct and traditional words "sexy" and "beautiful": From

19285-514: The use of Latin as the sole written, official, liturgical , and literary language in Europe during the medieval period , while Romance languages were the spoken languages. Levantine and MSA are mutually unintelligible. They differ significantly in their phonology , morphology , lexicon and syntax . MSA is the language of literature, official documents, and formal written media (newspapers, instruction leaflets, school books). In spoken form, MSA

19430-450: The use of hashtags which explicitly state the main content of a message or image, such as #food or #photography. Some critics believe that when slang becomes more commonplace it effectively eradicates the "proper" use of a certain language. However, academic (descriptive) linguists believe that language is not static but ever-changing and that slang terms are valid words within a language's lexicon. While prescriptivists study and promote

19575-710: The use of exonyms to avoid this kind of problem. For example, it is now common for Spanish speakers to refer to the Turkish capital as Ankara rather than use the Spanish exonym Angora . Another example, it is now common for Italian speakers to refer to some African states as Mauritius and Seychelles rather than use the Italian exonyms Maurizio and Seicelle . According to the United Nations Statistics Division : Time has, however, shown that initial ambitious attempts to rapidly decrease

19720-520: The weekend edition of Al-Ayyam . From 1983 to 1990, Said Akl's newspaper Lebnaan was published in Lebanese written in the Latin alphabet. Levantine is also commonly used in zajal and other forms of oral poetry. Zajal written in vernacular was published in Lebanese newspapers such as Al-Mashriq ("The Levant", from 1898) and Ad-Dabbur ("The Hornet", from 1925). In the 1940s, five reviews in Beirut were dedicated exclusively to poetry in Lebanese. In

19865-416: The whole, not very different from the language of ˀUsāma's days", in the 12th century. Lucas Caballero's Compendio (1709) describes spoken Damascene Arabic in the early 1700s. It corresponds to modern Damascene in some respects, such as the allomorphic variation between - a /- e in the feminine suffix. On the contrary, the insertion and deletion of vowels differ from the modern dialect. From 1516 to 1918,

20010-568: The word "slang" is unclear. It was first used in print around 1800 to refer to the language of the disreputable and criminal classes in London, though its usage likely dates back further. A Scandinavian origin has been proposed (compare, for example, Norwegian slengenavn , which means "nickname"), but based on "date and early associations" is discounted by the Oxford English Dictionary . Jonathon Green , however, agrees with

20155-540: The years, the endonym may have undergone phonetic changes, either in the original language or the borrowing language, thus changing an endonym into an exonym, as in the case of Paris , where the s was formerly pronounced in French. Another example is the endonym for the German city of Cologne , where the Latin original of Colonia has evolved into Köln in German, while the Italian and Spanish exonym Colonia or

20300-527: Was Leghorn because it was an Italian port essential to English merchants and, by the 18th century, to the British Navy ; not far away, Rapallo , a minor port on the same sea, never received an exonym. In earlier times, the name of the first tribe or village encountered became the exonym for the whole people beyond. Thus, the Romans used the tribal names Graecus (Greek) and Germanus (Germanic),

20445-468: Was a long process over several generations, with an extended period of bilingualism , especially among non-Muslims. Christians continued to speak Syriac for about two centuries, and Syriac remained their literary language until the 14th century. In its spoken form, Aramaic nearly disappeared, except for a few Aramaic-speaking villages, but it has left substrate influences on Levantine. Different Peninsular Arabic dialects competed for prestige, including

20590-410: Was first used in writing to indicate a person who was drunk in the book "Warbirds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator". Since this time "lit" has gained popularity through Rap songs such as ASAP Rocky's "Get Lit" in 2011. As the popularity of the word has increased so too has the number of different meanings associated with the word. Now "lit" describes a person who is drunk and/or high, as well as an event that

20735-445: Was originally coined by jazz musicians in the 1930s and then borrowed into the same hippie slang of the 1960s. 'The word "groovy" has remained a part of subculture lexicon since its popularization. It is still in common use today by a significant population. The word "gig" to refer to a performance very likely originated well before the 1930s, and remained a common term throughout the 1940s and 1950s before becoming vaguely associated with

20880-494: Was originally popular only among certain internet subcultures such as software crackers and online video gamers. During the 1990s, and into the early 21st century, however, Leet became increasingly commonplace on the internet, and it has spread outside internet-based communication and into spoken languages. Other types of slang include SMS language used on mobile phones, and "chatspeak", (e.g., " LOL ", an acronym meaning "laughing out loud" or "laugh out loud" or ROFL , "rolling on

21025-437: Was spoken natively by most Jews in Jerusalem , but the community shifted to Modern Hebrew after the establishment of Israel. Levantine is the second language of Dom people across the Levant, Circassians in Israel , Armenians in Lebanon , Chechens in Jordan , Assyrians in Syria and Lebanon , and most Kurds in Syria . In addition to the Levant, where it is indigenous , Levantine is spoken among diaspora communities from

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