The Phoenicians were an ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean , primarily modern Lebanon . They developed a maritime civilization which expanded and contracted throughout history, with the core of their culture stretching from Arwad in modern Syria to Mount Carmel . The Phoenicians extended their cultural influence through trade and colonization throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula .
167-460: Tunisian Arabic , or simply Tunisian ( Arabic : تونسي , romanized : Tūnsi ), is a variety of Arabic spoken in Tunisia . It is known among its 12 million speakers as Tūnsi , [ˈtuːnsi] "Tunisian" or Derja ( Arabic : الدارجة ; meaning "common or everyday dialect") to distinguish it from Modern Standard Arabic , the official language of Tunisia. Tunisian Arabic
334-516: A Eurasian steppe population). One 2018 study of mitochondrial lineages in Sardinia concluded that the Phoenicians were "inclusive, multicultural and featured significant female mobility", with evidence of indigenous Sardinians integrating "peacefully and permanently" with Semitic Phoenician settlers. The study also found evidence suggesting that south Europeans may have likewise settled in
501-436: A Hellenization policy, whereby Hellenic culture, religion, and sometimes language were spread or imposed across conquered peoples. However, Hellenisation was not enforced most of the time and was just a language of administration until his death. This was typically implemented through the founding of new cities, the settlement of a Macedonian or Greek urban elite, and the alteration of native place names to Greek. However, there
668-533: A Latin dialect , influenced by Tunisia's other languages and used along with them. Also, as it was the case for the other dialects, Punic probably survived the Arabic conquest of the Maghreb : the geographer al-Bakri described in the 11th century people speaking a language that was not Berber, Latin or Coptic in rural Ifriqiya , a region where spoken Punic survived well past its written use. However, it may be that
835-468: A Punic term for 'Phoenicians', which may be reconstructed as * Pōnnīm . Since little has survived of Phoenician records or literature , most of what is known about their origins and history comes from the accounts of other civilizations and inferences from their material culture excavated throughout the Mediterranean. The scholarly consensus is that the Phoenicians' period of greatest prominence
1002-597: A "land of fnḫw ", fnḫw being the plural form of fnḫ , the Ancient Egyptian word for 'carpenter'. This "land of carpenters" is generally identified as Phoenicia, given that Phoenicia played a central role in the lumber trade of the Levant. As an exonym , fnḫw was evidently borrowed into Greek as φοῖνιξ , phoînix , which meant variably 'Phoenician person', ' Tyrian purple , crimson ' or ' date palm '. Homer used it with each of these meanings. The word
1169-496: A Greek historian from Sicily c. 300 BC, places the foundation of Carthage in 814 BC, which is the date generally accepted by modern historians. Legend, including Virgil 's Aeneid , assigns the founding of the city to Queen Dido . Carthage would grow into a multi-ethnic empire spanning North Africa, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, the Balearic Islands, and southern Iberia, but would ultimately be destroyed by Rome in
1336-559: A Latin etymology. The dialects were later called Pre-Hilalian Arabic dialects and were used along Classical Arabic for communication in Tunisia. Also, Siculo-Arabic was spoken in several islands near Tunisia like Sicily , Pantelleria , and Malta and entered into contact with the Tunisian pre-hilalian dialects. Consequently, it ameliorated the divergence in grammar and structures of all the concerned dialects from Classical Arabic. By
1503-522: A claim that they came from Tylos and Arad ( Bahrain and Muharraq ). Some archaeologists working on the Persian Gulf have accepted these traditions and suggest a migration connected with the collapse of the Dilmun civilization c. 1750 BC. However, most scholars reject the idea of a migration; archaeological and historical evidence alike indicate millennia of population continuity in
1670-586: A cohesive culture or society as it would have been understood natively. Therefore, the division between Canaanites and Phoenicians around 1200 BC is regarded as a modern and artificial division. The Phoenicians, known for their prowess in trade, seafaring and navigation, dominated commerce across classical antiquity and developed an expansive maritime trade network lasting over a millennium. This network facilitated cultural exchanges among major cradles of civilization , such as Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. The Phoenicians established colonies and trading posts across
1837-522: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
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#17327653293712004-650: A complex and influential civilization. Their best known legacy is the world's oldest verified alphabet , whose origin was connected to the Proto-Sinaitic script , and which was transmitted across the Mediterranean and used to develop the Arabic script and Greek alphabet and in turn the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets . The Phoenicians are also credited with innovations in shipbuilding, navigation, industry, agriculture, and government. Their international trade network
2171-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
2338-1030: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
2505-633: A failed rebellion against Artaxerxes III , enlisting the help of the Egyptians, who were subsequently drawn into a war with the Persians. The resulting destruction of Sidon led to the resurgence of Tyre, which remained the dominant Phoenician city for two decades until the arrival of Alexander the Great. Phoenicia was one of the first areas to be conquered by Alexander the Great during his military campaigns across western Asia . Alexander's main target in
2672-607: A hundred sites remain to be excavated, while others that have been are yet to be fully analysed. The Middle Bronze Age was a generally peaceful time of increasing population, trade, and prosperity, though there was competition for natural resources. In the Late Bronze Age , rivalry between Egypt, the Mittani, the Hittites, and Assyria had a significant impact on Phoenician cities. The Canaanite culture that gave rise to
2839-559: A language in Tunisia and abroad. The Derja Association also offers an annual prize, the Abdelaziz Aroui Prize , for the best work written in Tunisian Arabic. Since the 2011 revolution, there have been many novels published in Tunisian Arabic. The first such novel was Taoufik Ben Brik 's Kelb ben Kelb (2013); several prominent novels have been written by Anis Ezzine and Faten Fazaâ (the first woman to publish
3006-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
3173-553: A major part of Phoenician wealth. The violet-purple dye derived from the hypobranchial gland of the Murex marine snail, once profusely available in coastal waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea but exploited to local extinction. Phoenicians may have discovered the dye as early as 1750 BC. The Phoenicians established a second production center for the dye in Mogador , in present-day Morocco . The Phoenicians' exclusive command over
3340-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
3507-868: A novel in Tunisian Arabic). Although often criticized by literary critics, the Tunisian Arabic novels have been commercially successful: the first printing of Faten Fazaâ 's third novel sold out in less than a month. Tunisian Arabic is a variety of Arabic and as such shares many features with other modern varieties , especially the Maghrebi varieties of Arabic. Some of its distinctive features (compared to other Arabic dialects) are listed here. The Arabic dialects of Tunisia belong to either pre-Hilalian or Hilalian dialectal families. Before 1980, The pre-Hilalian group included old ( Baldī ) Urban dialects of Tunis, Kairouan, Sfax, Sousse, Nabeul and its region Cap Bon, Bizerte, old Village dialects (Sahel dialects), and
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#17327653293713674-661: A population coming from the North, related to ancient Anatolians or ancient South-Eastern Europeans (12–37%). The results show that a Steppe-like ancestry , typically found in Europeans, appears in the region starting from the Iron Age. The Phoenicians served as intermediaries between the disparate civilizations that spanned the Mediterranean and Near East, facilitating the exchange of goods and knowledge, culture, and religious traditions. Their expansive and enduring trade network
3841-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
4008-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
4175-462: A series of campaigns against neighboring states. The Phoenician city-states fell under his rule, forced to pay heavy tribute in money, goods, and natural resources. Initially, they were not annexed outright—they remained in a state of vassalage, subordinate to the Assyrians but allowed a certain degree of freedom. This changed in 744 BC with the ascension of Tiglath-Pileser III . By 738 BC, most of
4342-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
4509-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
4676-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
4843-482: A version of its official website in Tunisian Arabic. However, this version was closed after a week of work because of an internet poll that has concluded that 53% of the users of the website were against using Tunisian Arabic in the website. In 2013, Kélemti initiative was founded by Hager Ben Ammar, Scolibris, Arabesques Publishing House, and Valérie Vacchiani to promote and encourage the creation and publication of written resources about and in Tunisian Arabic. In 2014,
5010-681: A version of the Tunisian Constitution of 2014 was published in Tunisian Arabic by the Tunisian Association of Constitutional Law. In 2016 and after two years of work, the Derja Association has been launched by Ramzi Cherif and Mourad Ghachem in order to standardize and regulate Tunisian, to define a standard set of orthographic rules and vocabularies for it, to promote its use in daily life, literature and science, and to get an official recognition for it as
5177-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
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5344-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
5511-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
5678-543: Is already attested in Mycenaean Greek Linear B from the 2nd millennium BC, as po-ni-ki-jo . In those records, it means 'crimson' or 'palm tree' and does not denote a group of people. The name Phoenicians , like Latin Poenī (adj. poenicus , later pūnicus ), comes from Greek Φοινίκη , Phoiníkē . Poenulus , a Latin comedic play written in the early 2nd century BC, appears to preserve
5845-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
6012-405: Is believed to have fostered the economic, political, and cultural foundations of Classical Western civilization . Being a society of independent city states, the Phoenicians apparently did not have a term to denote the land of Phoenicia as a whole; instead, demonyms were often derived from the name of the city an individual hailed from (e.g., Sidonian for Sidon , Tyrian for Tyre , etc.) If
6179-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
6346-613: Is credited with laying the foundations of an economically and culturally cohesive Mediterranean, which would be continued by the Greeks and especially the Romans. Phoenician ties with the Greeks ran deep. The earliest verified relationship appears to have begun with the Minoan civilization on Crete (1950–1450 BC), which together with the Mycenaean civilization (1600–1100 BC) is considered
6513-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
6680-412: Is known for the pronunciation of ū and ī respectively as [o:] and [e:] in an emphatic or uvular environment. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) is a Central Semitic language of
6847-403: Is known for the substitution of [ʒ] by [z] when it comes at the beginning of a word and when that word contains [s] or [z] in its middle or end. Also, it is known for the pronunciation of ū and ī respectively as [o:] and [e:] when they are in an emphatic or uvular environment. As well, northwestern dialect is known for using مش miš that is pronounced as [məʃ] instead of مانيش mānīš to mean
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7014-431: Is known for the use of نحنا naḥnā instead of أحنا aḥnā as a plural second person personal pronoun and the southern area of this Tunisian dialect like El Kef is known for the use of ناي nāy or ناية nāya instead of آنا ānā (meaning I) excepting Kairouan that is known for using يانة yāna in this situation. The southeastern dialect is known for a different conjugation of verbs ending with ā in
7181-502: Is known like the Sahil dialect for the pronunciation /uː/ and /iː/ as respectively [oː] and [eː] when it is a substitution of the common classical Arabic diphthongs /aw/ and /aj/. Furthermore, this dialect is also known for the use of أنا anā instead of آنا ānā (meaning I), the use of حنا ḥnā instead of أحنا aḥnā (meaning we), the use of إنتم intumm (masc.) and إنتن intinn (fem.) instead of انتوما intūma (meaning you in plural) and
7348-404: Is mainly done by more educated and upper-class people and has not negatively affected the use of more recent French and English loanwords in Tunisian. Tunisian Arabic is also closely related to Maltese , which is a separate language that descended from Tunisian and Siculo-Arabic . Maltese and Tunisian Arabic have about 30 to 40 per cent spoken mutual intelligibility . Tunisian Arabic is one of
7515-605: Is mostly similar to eastern Algerian Arabic and western Libyan Arabic . As part of the Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum , Tunisian merges into Algerian Arabic and Libyan Arabic at the borders of the country. Like other Maghrebi dialects, it has a vocabulary that is predominantly Semitic and Arabic with a Berber , Latin and possibly Neo-Punic substratum . Tunisian Arabic contains Berber loanwords which represent 8% to 9% of its vocabulary. However, Tunisian has also loanwords from French , Turkish , Italian and
7682-534: Is no record of Persian administrators governing the Phoenician city-states. Local Phoenician kings were allowed to remain in power and given the same rights as Persian satraps (governors), such as hereditary offices and minting their coins. The Phoenicians remained a core asset to the Achaemenid Empire, particularly for their prowess in maritime technology and navigation; they furnished the bulk of
7849-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
8016-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
8183-514: Is pronounced as [tlɛːθæ]. As well, the Sahel dialect is known for using مش miš instead of موش mūš to mean the negation of future predicted action. The Sfax dialect is known mostly for its conservation of the Arabic diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ and of the short /a/ between two consonants and its use of وحيد wḥīd instead of وحود wḥūd to mean the plural of someone. Other dialects have substituted them respectively by /iː/ and /uː/ and dropped
8350-399: Is pronounced as [ze:t] and لون lūn is pronounced as [lɔːn]. Furthermore, when ā is at the end of the indefinite or "il-" definite word, this final ā is pronounced as [iː]. For example, سماء smā is pronounced as [smiː]. Moreover, If a word begins with a consonant cluster starting with /θ/ or /ð/, these sounds are pronounced respectively as [t] and [d]. For example, ثلاثة /θlaːθa/
8517-507: Is sometimes described as a "Phoenician renaissance". The Phoenician city-states filled the power vacuum caused by the Late Bronze Age collapse and created a vast mercantile network. The city-states during this time were Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Aradus, Beirut, and Tripoli. The recovery of the Mediterranean economy can be credited to Phoenician mariners and merchants, who re-established long-distance trade between Egypt and Mesopotamia in
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#17327653293718684-726: Is still limited as it is only recognized in France as a minority language part of Maghrebi Arabic according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of May 1999. However, even the charter was not agreed on by the Constitutional Council of France because its conflicts with the Article 2 of the French Constitution of 1958 . Also, no official recognition or standardization in Tunisia
8851-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
9018-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
9185-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
9352-456: Is to implement Maghrebi Arabic , mainly Tunisian Arabic, in basic education. But, those were not the only trials of Tunisian Arabic in education. A project to teach basic education for the elderly people using Tunisian Arabic was proposed in 1977 by Tunisian linguist Mohamed Maamouri. It aimed to ameliorate the quality and intelligibility of basic courses for elderly people who could not understand Standard Arabic as they did not learn it. However,
9519-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
9686-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
9853-702: The Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
10020-466: The Arabic languages within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family . It is a variety of Maghrebi Arabic like Moroccan and Algerian Arabic , which are mostly unintelligible to Modern Standard or Mashriqi Arabic speakers. It has a considerable number of pre-hilalian dialects but is usually considered in its koiné form to be a mostly Hilalian variety of Maghrebi Arabic because it
10187-510: The Bronze Age Canaanites , continuing their cultural traditions following the decline of most major cultures in the Late Bronze Age collapse and into the Iron Age without interruption. It is believed that they self-identified as Canaanites and referred to their land as Canaan, indicating a continuous cultural and geographical association. The name Phoenicia is an ancient Greek exonym that did not correspond precisely to
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#173276532937110354-732: The Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (in Paris with Tunisian Arabic courses since 1916) and the Institut Bourguiba des Langues Vivantes (in Tunis with Tunisian Arabic courses since 1990). or in French high schools as an optional language. In fact, 1878 students sat for the Tunisian Arabic examination in the 1999 French Baccalauréat . Nowadays, the tendency in France
10521-805: The Judeo-Tunisian . The Hilalian set includes the Sulaym dialects in the south and the Eastern Hilal dialects in central Tunisia. The latter were also spoken in the Constantinois (eastern Algeria). Nowadays and due to dialect leveling, the main dialect varieties of Tunisian Arabic are Northwestern Tunisian (also spoken in Northeastern Algeria), southwestern Tunisian, Tunis dialect, Sahel dialect, Sfax dialect and southeastern Tunisian. All of these varieties are Hilalian excepting
10688-718: The Neolithic Revolution in the Levant . The Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit is considered quintessentially Canaanite archaeologically, even though the Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite languages proper. The fourth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the Phoenicians had migrated from the Erythraean Sea around 2750 BC and the first-century AD geographer Strabo reports
10855-424: The Numidian language . However, the languages progressively lost their function as main languages of Tunisia since the 12th century BC, and their usage became restricted mainly to the western regions of the country until their disappearance or evolution into other languages. Indeed, migrants from Phoenicia settled Tunisia during the 12th to the 2nd century BC, founded ancient Carthage and progressively mixed with
11022-400: The Ottoman Turkish : -jī suffix added to several nouns to mean professions like kawwāṛjī , qahwājī ... During the mid-19th century, Tunisian Arabic was studied by several European scientists. In 1893, a first linguistic study was completed by the German linguist Hans Stumme . That began a still ongoing research trend on Tunisian Arabic. During the French protectorate of Tunisia ,
11189-499: The Punic Wars (264–146 BC) before being rebuilt as a Roman city. As mercantile city-states concentrated along a narrow coastal strip of land, the Phoenicians lacked the size and population to support a large military. Thus, as neighboring empires began to rise, the Phoenicians increasingly fell under the sway of foreign rulers, who to varying degrees circumscribed their autonomy. The Assyrian conquest of Phoenicia began with King Shalmaneser III . He rose to power in 858 BC and began
11356-505: The Rhone valley and coastal Massalia ". Strabo states that there was a highly lucrative Phoenician trade with Britain for tin via the Cassiterides , whose location is unknown but may have been off the northwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Phoenicia lacked considerable natural resources other than its cedar wood. Timber was probably the earliest and most lucrative source of wealth; neither Egypt nor Mesopotamia had adequate wood sources. Unable to rely solely on this limited resource,
11523-467: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
11690-536: The languages of Spain and a little bit of Persian . Multilingualism within Tunisia and in the Tunisian diaspora makes it common for Tunisians to code-switch , mixing Tunisian with French, English, Italian, Standard Arabic or other languages in daily speech. Within some circles, Tunisian Arabic has thereby integrated new French and English words, notably in technical fields, or has replaced old French and Italian loans with standard Arabic words. Moreover, code-switching between Tunisian Arabic and modern standard Arabic
11857-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, 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 do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
12024-425: The voiced velar stop [ɡ] instead of the voiceless uvular stop [q] in words such as qāl "he said". Main linguists working about Hilalian dialects like Veronika Ritt-Benmimoum and Martine Vanhove supposed that even the replacement of the diphthongs /aw/ and /aj/ respectively by /uː/ and /iː/ vowels was a Hilalian influence. Furthermore, the phonologies brought to the new towns speaking Tunisian Arabic are those of
12191-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
12358-736: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Phoenicia The Phoenicians directly succeeded
12525-601: The 10th century BC. Early into the Iron Age , the Phoenicians established ports, warehouses, markets, and settlement all across the Mediterranean and up to the southern Black Sea. Colonies were established on Cyprus , Sardinia , the Balearic Islands , Sicily , and Malta , as well as the coasts of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Phoenician hacksilver dated to this period bears lead isotope ratios matching ores in Sardinia and Spain, indicating
12692-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
12859-532: The 11th century, through contact of local languages such as African Romance or Berber with Classical Arabic, some urban dialects appeared in the main coastal cities of Tunisia. The dialects were slightly and characteristically influenced by several common Berber structures and vocabulary like negation because Tamazight was the language of contact for citizens of that period. The new dialects were also significantly influenced by other historical languages. Many Tunisian and Maghrebi words, like qarnīṭ ("octopus"), have
13026-555: The 15th century, after the Reconquista and subsequent decline of the formerly Arabic-speaking al-Andalus , many Andalusians immigrated to the Tunisian main coastal cities. These migrants brought some of the characteristics of Andalusian Arabic to the sedentary urban dialects spoken in Tunisia. Among others, it led to the reuse of the voiceless uvular stop [q] instead of the nomadic Hilalian voiced velar stop [ɡ] and to speech simplification in Tunisian, which further differentiated
13193-571: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
13360-834: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
13527-695: The Levant since at least the Bronze Age . More specifically, the research of geneticist Chris Tyler-Smith and his team at the Sanger Institute in Britain, who compared "sampled ancient DNA from five Canaanite people who lived 3,750 and 3,650 years ago" to modern people, revealed that 93 percent of the genetic ancestry of people in Lebanon came from the Canaanites (the other 7 percent was of
13694-424: The Levant, including northern Phoenicia, were annexed; only Tyre and Byblos, the most powerful city-states, remained tributary states outside of direct Assyrian control. Tyre, Byblos, and Sidon all rebelled against Assyrian rule. In 721 BC, Sargon II besieged Tyre and crushed the rebellion. His successor Sennacherib suppressed further rebellions across the region. During the seventh century BC, Sidon rebelled and
13861-873: The Libyan Arabic phonology. Additionally, Tunis, Sfax and the urban Sahel dialects are known for not marking the second person gender. Hence, the otherwise feminine إنتِي /ʔinti/ is used to address both men and women, and no feminine marking is used in verbs ( inti mšīt ). Northwestern, southeastern and southwestern varieties maintain the gender distinction found in Classical Arabic ( إنتَا مشيت inta mšīt , إنتِي مشيتي inti mšītī ). Furthermore, Tunis, Sfax and Sahel varieties conjugate CCā verbs like mšā and klā in feminine third person and in past tense as CCāt. For example, هية مشات hiya mšāt . However, Northwestern, southeastern and southwestern varieties conjugate them in feminine third person and in past tense as CCat For example, هية مشت hiya mšat . Finally, each of
14028-623: The Mediterranean. Excavations of colonies in Spain suggest they also used the potter's wheel . Their exposure to a wide variety of cultures allowed them to manufacture goods for specific markets. The Iliad suggests Phoenician clothing and metal goods were highly prized by the Greeks. Specialized goods were designed specifically for wealthier clientele, including ivory reliefs and plaques, carved clam shells, sculpted amber, and finely detailed and painted ostrich eggs. The most prized Phoenician goods were fabrics dyed with Tyrian purple , which formed
14195-584: The Mediterranean; Carthage , a settlement in northwest Africa, became a major civilization in its own right in the seventh century BC. The Phoenicians were organized in city-states , similar to those of ancient Greece , of which the most notable were Tyre , Sidon , and Byblos . Each city-state was politically independent, and there is no evidence the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single nationality. While most city-states were governed by some form of kingship , merchant families probably exercised influence through oligarchies . After reaching its zenith in
14362-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
14529-556: The Near East, the Phoenicians apparently made the pragmatic calculation of "[yielding] themselves to the Persians". Most of the Levant was consolidated by Cyrus into a single satrapy (province) and forced to pay a yearly tribute of 350 talents , which was roughly half the tribute that was required of Egypt and Libya. The Phoenician area was later divided into four vassal kingdoms—Sidon, Tyre, Arwad, and Byblos—which were allowed considerable autonomy. Unlike in other empire areas, there
14696-580: The Persian Levant was Tyre, now the region's largest and most important city. It capitulated after a roughly seven month siege , during which many of its citizens fled to Carthage. Tyre's refusal to allow Alexander to visit its temple to Melqart , culminating in the killing of his envoys, led to a brutal reprisal: 2,000 of its leading citizens were crucified and a puppet ruler was installed. The rest of Phoenicia easily came under his control, with Sidon surrendering peacefully. Alexander's empire had
14863-738: The Persian fleet during the Greco-Persian Wars of the late fifth century BC. Phoenicians under Xerxes I built the Xerxes Canal and the pontoon bridges that allowed his forces to cross into mainland Greece. Nevertheless, they were harshly punished by the Persian King following his defeat at the Battle of Salamis , which he blamed on Phoenician cowardice and incompetence. In the mid-fourth century BC, King Tennes of Sidon led
15030-636: The Phoenician cities were mainly self-governed. Many of them were fought for or over by the warring factions of the Seleucid royal family. Some Phoenician regions were under Jewish influence, after the Jews revolted and succeeded in defeating the Seleucids in 164 BC. A significant portion of the Phoenician diaspora in North Africa thus converted to Judaism in the late millennium BC. The Seleucid Kingdom
15197-512: The Phoenicians apparently developed in situ from the earlier Ghassulian chalcolithic culture. Ghassulian itself developed from the Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex , which in turn developed from a fusion of their ancestral Natufian and Harifian cultures with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing the domestication of animals during the 8.2 kiloyear event , which led to
15364-504: The Phoenicians developed an industrial base manufacturing a variety of goods for both everyday and luxury use. The Phoenicians developed or mastered techniques such as glass-making , engraved and chased metalwork (including bronze, iron, and gold), ivory carving, and woodwork. The Phoenicians were early pioneers in mass production, and sold a variety of items in bulk. They became the leading source of glassware in antiquity, shipping thousands of flasks, beads, and other glass objects across
15531-475: The Phoenicians had an endonym to denote the land overall, some scholars believe that they would have used " Canaan " and therefore referred to themselves as "Canaanites". Krahmalkov reconstructs the Honeyman inscription (dated to c. 900 BC by William F. Albright ) as containing a reference to the Phoenician homeland, calling it Pūt ( Phoenician : 𐤐𐤕). Obelisks at Karnak contain references to
15698-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
15865-522: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
16032-648: The Sfax one. Tunis, Sahel and Sfax dialects (considered sedentary dialects) use the voiceless uvular stop [ q ] in words such as قال /qaːl/ "he said" while southeastern, northwestern and southwestern varieties (considered nomadic dialects) substitute it by the voiced velar stop [ ɡ ] as in /ɡaːl/ . Moreover, only Tunis, Sfax and Sahel dialects use Tunisian phonology. Indeed, northwestern and southwestern Tunisians speak Tunisian with Algerian Arabic phonology, which tends to simplify short vowels as short schwas while southeastern Tunisian speak Tunisian with
16199-486: The area of modern Lebanon. In a 2020 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics , researchers have shown that there is substantial genetic continuity in Lebanon since the Bronze Age interrupted by three significant admixture events during the Iron Age , Hellenistic , and Ottoman period. In particular, the Phoenicians can be modeled as a mixture of the local Bronze Age population (63–88%) and
16366-422: The automated creation of several speech recognition -based and Internet -based corpora , including the publicly available Tunisian Arabic Corpus Others, more traditional, were also made about the phonology, the morphology, the pragmatic and the semantics of Tunisian. The language has also been used to write several novels since the 1990s and even a Swadesh list in 2012. Now, it is taught by many institutions like
16533-623: The beginning of a word and when that word contains [s] or [z] in its middle or end. For example, جزّار /ʒazzaːrˤ/ is pronounced as [zæzzɑːrˤ] and جرجيس /ʒarʒiːs/ is pronounced as [zærzi:s]. Unlike other Tunisian dialects, Sfax dialect does not simplify the last long vowel at the end of a word. It is also known for some specific verbs like أرى aṛā (to see) and the use of the demonstrative articles هاكومة hākūma for those and هاكة hāka (m.) and هٰاكي hākī (f.) for that respectively instead of هاذوكم hāðūkum and هاذاكة hāðāka (m.) and هاذيكة hāðākī (f.) determinants. Finally,
16700-617: The city they hailed from (e.g., Sidonian for Sidon , Tyrian for Tyre , etc.) A 2008 study led by Pierre Zalloua found that six subclades of Haplogroup J-M172 (J2)—thought to have originated between the Caucasus Mountains , Mesopotamia and the Levant —were of a "Phoenician signature" and present amongst the male populations of coastal Lebanon as well as the wider Levant (the "Phoenician Periphery"), followed by other areas of historic Phoenician settlement, spanning Cyprus through to Morocco. This deliberate sequential sampling
16867-437: The conjugation of mūš as a modal verb uses ماهواش māhūwāš instead of ماهوش māhūš , ماهياش māhīyāš instead of ماهيش māhīš , ماحناش māḥnāš instead of ماناش mānāš and ماهوماش māhūmāš instead of ماهمش māhumš . Sfax dialect is also known for its profusion of diminutives. For example, The northwestern dialect is known by pronouncing r as [rˤ] when it is written before an ā or ū. Furthermore, it
17034-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
17201-544: The country encountered the Standard French language . That affected Tunisian considerably, as new loanwords, meanings and structures were drawn from French. The unintelligibility of Tunisian to Middle Eastern Arabic speakers was worsened. However, the same period was characterized by the rise of interest toward Tunisian Arabic. Indeed, this period was the beginning of the spread of the formal use of Tunisian Arabic as by Taht Essour . Also, more research about Tunisian
17368-460: The designs, ornamentation, and embroidery used in Phoenician textiles were well-regarded, the techniques and specific descriptions are unknown. Mining operations in the Phoenician homeland were limited; iron was the only metal of any worth. The first large-scale mining operations probably occurred in Cyprus, principally for copper. Sardinia may have been colonized almost exclusively for its mineral resources; Phoenician settlements were concentrated in
17535-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
17702-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
17869-494: The existence of Punic facilitated the spread of Arabic in the region, as Punic and Arabic are both Semitic languages and share many common roots. Classical Arabic began to be installed as a governmental and administrative language in Tunisia that was called then Ifriqiya from its older name Africa during the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in 673. The people of several urban cities were progressively influenced by Arabic. By
18036-504: The extent of Phoenician trade networks. By the tenth century BC, Tyre rose to become the richest and most powerful Phoenician city-state, particularly during the reign of Hiram I ( c. 969–936 BC). The expertise of Phoenician artisans sent by Hiram I of Tyre in significant construction projects during the reign of Solomon , the King of Israel, is documented in the Bible. During
18203-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
18370-458: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
18537-434: The height of Phoenician shipping, mercantile, and cultural activity, particularly between 750 and 650 BC. The Phoenician influence was visible in the "orientalization" of Greek cultural and artistic conventions. Among their most popular goods were fine textiles, typically dyed with Tyrian purple . Homer's Iliad , which was composed during this period, references the quality of Phoenician clothing and metal goods. Carthage
18704-455: The immigrants and not Tunisian phonology. The Sulaym even spread a new dialect in southern Tunisia, Libyan Arabic. However, some dialects avoided the Hilalian influence: Judeo-Tunisian Arabic , a vernacular spoken by Tunisian Jews and known for the conservation of foreign phonemes in loanwords and slightly influenced by Hebrew phonology , Sfax dialect and Tunisian urban woman dialect. By
18871-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
19038-682: The interior (via the Nahr al-Kabir and the Orontes rivers ). The cities provided Egypt with access to Mesopotamian trade and abundant stocks of the region's native cedarwood . There was no equivalent in the Egyptian homeland. By the mid-14th century BC, the Phoenician city-states were considered "favored cities" to the Egyptians. Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Byblos were regarded as the most important. The Phoenicians had considerable autonomy, and their cities were reasonably well developed and prosperous. Byblos
19205-719: The language from Classical Arabic. Furthermore, the changes were recognized by the Hafsid scholar ibn Khaldun in his Muqaddimah in 1377. He said that language contact between classical Arabic and local languages caused the creation of many Arabic varieties very distinct from formal Arabic. During the 17th to the 19th centuries, Tunisia came under Spanish , then Ottoman rule and hosted Morisco then Italian immigrants from 1609. That made Tunisian, Spanish , Italian , Mediterranean Lingua Franca , and Turkish languages connected. Tunisian acquired several new loanwords from Italian , Spanish , and Turkish and even some structures like
19372-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
19539-563: The large terracotta jars used for transporting wine. From Egypt, the Phoenicians bought Nubian gold. From elsewhere, they obtained other materials, perhaps the most crucial being silver , mostly from Sardinia and the Iberian Peninsula . Tin for making bronze "may have been acquired from Galicia by way of the Atlantic coast of southern Spain; alternatively, it may have come from northern Europe ( Cornwall or Brittany ) via
19706-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
19873-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
20040-553: The local population. The migrants brought with them their culture and language that progressively spread from Tunisia's coastal areas to the rest of the coastal areas of Northwest Africa , the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean islands. From the eighth century BC, most of Tunisia's inhabitants spoke the Punic language , a variant of the Phoenician language influenced by the local Numidian language. Also, already at that time, in
20207-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
20374-462: The mid-11th century, the Banu Hilal immigrated to rural northern and central Tunisia and Banu Sulaym immigrated to southern Tunisia. The immigrants played a major role in spreading the use of Tunisian Arabic in an important part of the country. However, they brought some of the characteristics of their local Arabic dialects as well. In fact, central and western Tunisian Arabic speakers began using
20541-782: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
20708-469: The negation of future predicted action. Similarly, the conjugation of مش miš as a modal verb uses مشني mišnī instead of مانيش mānīš , مشك mišk instead of ماكش mākš , مشّو miššū instead of موش mūš and ماهوش māhūš , مشها mišhā instead of ماهيش māhīš , مشنا mišnā instead of ماناش mānāš , مشكم miškum instead of ماكمش mākumš and مشهم mišhum instead of ماهمش māhumš . Moreover, northwestern dialect
20875-475: The ninth century BC, the Phoenician civilization in the eastern Mediterranean gradually declined due to external influences and conquests. Yet, their presence persisted in the central and western Mediterranean until the destruction of Carthage in the mid-second century BC. The Phoenicians were long considered a lost civilization due to the lack of indigenous written records, and only since the mid-20th century have historians and archaeologists been able to reveal
21042-572: The north. Egypt subsequently lost its coastal holdings from Ugarit in northern Syria to Byblos near central Lebanon. Sometime between 1200 and 1150 BC, the Late Bronze Age collapse severely weakened or destroyed most civilizations in the region, including the Egyptians and Hittites. The Phoenicians were able to survive and navigate the challenges of the crisis, and by 1230 BC city-states such as Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos, maintained political independence, asserted their maritime interests through overseas colonization, and enjoyed economic prosperity. The period
21209-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
21376-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
21543-411: The production and trade of the dye, combined with the labor-intensive extraction process, made it very expensive. Tyrian purple subsequently became associated with the upper classes. It soon became a status symbol in several civilizations, most notably among the Romans. Assyrian tribute records from the Phoenicians include "garments of brightly colored stuff" that most likely included Tyrian purple. While
21710-562: The progenitor of classical Greece. Archaeological research suggests that the Minoans gradually imported Near Eastern goods, artistic styles, and customs from other cultures via the Phoenicians. To Egypt the Phoenicians sold logs of cedar for significant sums, and wine beginning in the eighth century. The wine trade with Egypt is vividly documented by shipwrecks discovered in 1997 in the open sea 50 kilometres (30 mi) west of Ascalon , Israel. Pottery kilns at Tyre and Sarepta produced
21877-523: The progressive and partial minimisation of code-switching from European languages in Tunisian and the use of code-switching from Standard Arabic. Furthermore, the creation of the Établissement de la radiodiffusion-télévision tunisienne in 1966 and the nationwide spread of television with the contact of dialects led to a dialect leveling by the 1980s. By then, Tunisian Arabic reached nationwide usage and became composed of six slightly different but fully mutually intelligible dialects: Tunis dialect, considered
22044-478: The project was not implemented. Nowadays, the linguistic classification of Tunisian Arabic causes controversies between interested people. The problem is caused because of the Arabic dialect continuum. Some linguists, such as Michel Quitout and Keith Walters, consider it an independent language, and some others, such as Enam El-Wer, consider it a divergent dialect of Arabic that is still dependent of Arabic morphology and structures. Moreover, its political recognition
22211-532: The rare U5b2c1 maternal haplogroup was identified in the DNA of a 2,500-year-old male skeleton excavated from a Punic tomb in Tunisia. The lineage of this "Young Man of Byrsa" is believed to represent early gene flow from Iberia to the Maghreb . According to a 2017 study published by the American Journal of Human Genetics , present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite -related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in
22378-491: The reference Tunisian dialect; Sahil dialect; Sfax dialect; southwestern dialect; southeastern dialect and northwestern dialect. Older dialects became less commonly used and began disappearing. Consequently, Tunisian became the main prestigious language of communication and interaction within the Tunisian community and Tunisia became the most linguistically homogeneous state of the Maghreb . However, Berber dialects, Libyan and Algerian Arabic as well as several Tunisian dialects like
22545-561: The region in the 8th millennium BC". Brian R. Doak states that scholars use "Phoenicians" as a short-hand for "Canaanites living in a set of cities along the northern Levantine coast who shared a language and material culture in the Iron I–II period and who also developed an organized system of colonies in the western Mediterranean world". The Phoenician Early Bronze Age is largely unknown. The two most important sites are Byblos and Sidon-Dakerman (near Sidon), although, as of 2021, well over
22712-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
22879-495: The region, and recent genetic research indicates that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population. The first known account of the Phoenicians relates to the conquests of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC). The Egyptians targeted coastal cities which they wrote belonged to the Fenekhu , 'carpenters', such as Byblos, Arwad, and Ullasa for their crucial geographic and commercial links with
23046-570: The regions near to Punic settlements, the Berber that was used evolved considerably. In the urban centers such as Dougga , Bulla Regia , Thuburnica or Chemtou , Berber lost its Maghrebi phonology but kept the essential of its vocabulary. The word " Africa ", which gave its name to the continent , possibly is derived from the name of the Berber tribe of the Afri that was one of the first to enter in contact with Carthage. Also during this period and up to
23213-503: The reigns of the first Babylonian King, Nabopolassar (626–605 BC), and his son Nebuchadnezzar II ( c. 605 – c. 562 BC). In 587 BC Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre, which resisted for thirteen years, but ultimately capitulated under "favorable terms". In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great , king and founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire , took Babylon. As Cyrus began consolidating territories across
23380-518: The rule of the priest Ithobaal (887–856 BC), Tyre expanded its territory as far north as Beirut and into part of Cyprus; this unusual act of aggression was the closest the Phoenicians ever came to forming a unitary territorial state. Once his realm reached its largest territorial extent, Ithobaal declared himself "King of the Sidonians", a title that would be used by his successors and mentioned in both Greek and Jewish accounts. The Late Iron Age saw
23547-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
23714-418: The short /a/ between the first and second consonant of the word. It is also known by the substitution of short /u/ by short /i/, when it comes in the beginning of the word or just after the first consonant. For example, خبز /χubz/ is pronounced as [χibz]. It is also known for the use of specific words, like baṛmaqnī meaning window. Furthermore, it is known for the substitution of [ʒ] by [z] when it comes in
23881-558: The six dialects have specific vocabulary and patterns. As the prestige variety of media, the Tunis dialect is considered the standard form of Tunisian Arabic and is the variety described in pedagogical and reference materials about "Tunisian" Arabic. It is spoken on the Northern East of Tunisia around Tunis, Cap Bon and Bizerte. However, it has a characteristic not shared with some of the other Tunisian Arabic dialects. It distinguishes
24048-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
24215-572: The southern parts of the island, close to sources of copper and lead. Piles of scoria and copper ingots, which appear to predate Roman occupation, suggest the Phoenicians mined and processed metals on the island. The Iberian Peninsula was the richest source of numerous metals in antiquity, including gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and lead. The significant output of these metals during the Phoenician and Carthaginian occupation strongly implied large scale mining operations. The Carthaginians are documented to have relied on slave labor for mining, though it
24382-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
24549-534: The third century BC, the Tifinagh alphabet developed from the Phoenician alphabet . After the arrival of Romans, following the fall of Carthage in 146 BC, the coastal population spoke mainly Punic, but that influence decreased away from the coast. From Roman period until the Arab conquest, Latin , Greek and Numidian further influenced the language, called Neo-Punic to differentiate it from its older version. This also progressively gave birth to African Romance ,
24716-399: The third person of plural. Furthermore, this dialect is also known for the use of ناي nāy instead of آنا ānā (meaning I), the use of حني ḥnī instead of أحنا aḥnā (meaning we), the use of إنتم intumm (masc.) and إنتن intinn (fem.) instead of انتوما intūma (meaning you in plural) and the use of هم humm (masc.) and هن hinn (fem.) instead of هوما hūma (meaning they). Moreover, it
24883-452: The third person of plural. In fact, people speaking this variety of Tunisian Arabic do not add the regular ū suffix after the vowel ā but used to drop the ā and then add the ū . For example, مشى mšā is conjugated as مشوا mšū instead of مشاوا mšāw with the third person of plural. Furthermore, it is known for the substitution of [ʒ] by [z] at the beginning of a word and when that word contains [s] or [z] in its middle or end. Moreover, it
25050-445: The three short vowels and tends to pronounce [æ] as [ɛ] and the āš suffix, used in the end of question words, as an [ɛ:h]. The Sahel dialect is known for the use of the singular first person ānī instead of ānā . It is also known for the pronunciation of wā as [wɑː] and the pronunciation ū and ī as respectively [oː] and [eː] when it is a substitution of the common Classical Arabic diphthongs /aw/ and /aj/. For example, زيت zīt
25217-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
25384-515: The traditional urban woman dialect, Judeo-Tunisian Arabic or even several Tunisian structures like lā noun +š , also practically disappeared from Tunisia. The period after Tunisian independence was also marked by the spread of Tunisian Arabic usage in literature and education. In fact, Tunisian Arabic was taught by the Peace Corps from 1966 until 1993 and more studies were carried out. Some which used new methods like computing operations and
25551-428: The use of هم humm (masc.) and هن hinn (fem.) instead of هوما hūma (meaning they). The southwestern dialect is known for a different conjugation of verbs ending with ā in the third person of plural. In fact, people who are speaking this variety of Tunisian Arabic do not add the regular ū suffix after the vowel ā but used to drop the ā and then add the ū . For example, مشى mšā is conjugated as مشوا mšū with
25718-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
25885-578: Was 1200 BC to the end of the Persian period (332 BC). It is debated whether Phoenicians were actually distinct from the broader group of Semitic-speaking peoples known as Canaanites . Historian Robert Drews believes the term "Canaanites" corresponds to the ethnic group referred to as "Phoenicians" by the ancient Greeks; archaeologist Jonathan N. Tubb argues that " Ammonites , Moabites , Israelites , and Phoenicians undoubtedly achieved their own cultural identities, and yet ethnically they were all Canaanites", "the same people who settled in farming villages in
26052-494: Was affected by the immigration of Banu Hilal in the 11th century, as were the other Maghrebi varieties. As a part of the Arabic dialect continuum , it is reported that Tunisian Arabic is partly mutually intelligible with Algerian Arabic, Libyan Arabic , Moroccan, and Maltese . However, it is only slightly intelligible, if at all, with Egyptian , Levantine , Mesopotamian , or Gulf Arabic . During classical antiquity , Tunisia's population spoke Berber languages related to
26219-527: Was an attempt to develop a methodology to link the documented historical expansion of a population with a particular geographic genetic pattern or patterns. The researchers suggested that the proposed genetic signature stemmed from "a common source of related lineages rooted in Lebanon ". Another study in 2006 found evidence for the genetic persistence of Phoenicians in the Spanish island of Ibiza . In 2016,
26386-491: Was delivering goods to Tyre. The adaptation to Macedonian rule was probably aided by the Phoenicians' historical ties with the Greeks, with whom they shared some mythological stories and figures; the two peoples were even sometimes considered "relatives". When Alexander's empire collapsed after his death in 323 BC, the Phoenicians came under the control of the largest of its successors, the Seleucids . The Phoenician homeland
26553-589: Was destroyed by Esarhaddon , who enslaved its inhabitants and built a new city on its ruins. By the end of the century, the Assyrians had been weakened by successive revolts, which led to their destruction by the Median Empire . The Babylonians, formerly vassals of the Assyrians, took advantage of the empire's collapse and rebelled, quickly establishing the Neo-Babylonian Empire in its place. Phoenician cities revolted several times throughout
26720-417: Was founded by Phoenicians coming from Tyre, probably initially as a station in the metal trade with the southern Iberian Peninsula . The city's name in Punic , Qart-Ḥadašt ( 𐤒𐤓𐤕 𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕 ) , means 'New City'. There is a tradition in some ancient sources, such as Philistos of Syracuse , for an "early" foundation date of around 1215 BC—before the fall of Troy in 1180 BC. However, Timaeus ,
26887-422: Was inhabited, its long history as a migration land and the profusion of cultures that have inhabited it, and the geographical length and diversification of the country, divided between mountain, forest, plain, coastal, island and desert areas. That is why Tunisian leader Habib Bourguiba began a trial of Arabization and Tunisification of Tunisia and spread free basic education for all Tunisians. That contributed to
27054-551: Was no organized Hellenization in Phoenicia, and with one or two minor exceptions, all Phoenician city-states retained their native names, while Greek settlement and administration appear to have been very limited. The Phoenicians maintained cultural and commercial links with their western counterparts. Polybius recounts how the Seleucid King Demetrius I escaped from Rome by boarding a Carthaginian ship that
27221-455: Was produced, mainly by French and German linguists. Tunisian Arabic became even taught in French high schools, as an optional language. By the Tunisian independence in 1956, Tunisian Arabic was spoken only in coastal Tunisia while the other regions spoke Algerian Arabic , Libyan Arabic or several Berber dialects . The profusion is from many factors including the length of time the country
27388-468: Was provided for Tunisian Arabic until 2011 despite the efforts of Tunisian professors Salah Guermadi and Hedi Balegh to prove that Tunisian is a language. After the Tunisian revolution of 2011 when Tunisian Arabic was the mainly used language of communication, efforts to have the Tunisian language recognised were reinvigorated. In 2011, the Tunisian Ministry of Youth and Sports has launched
27555-549: Was repeatedly contested by the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt during the forty-year Syrian Wars , coming under Ptolemaic rule in the third century BC. The Seleucids reclaimed the area the following century, holding it until the mid-first 2nd century BC. Under their rule, the Phoenicians were allowed a considerable degree of autonomy and self-governance. During the Seleucid Dynastic Wars (157–63 BC),
27722-529: Was seized by Tigranes the Great of Armenia in 82 BC, ending the Hellenistic influence on the Levant. The people now known as Phoenicians were a group of ancient Semitic-speaking peoples that emerged in the Levant in at least the third millennium BC. Phoenicians did not refer themselves as "Phoenicians" but rather are thought to have broadly referred to themselves as "Kenaʿani", meaning ' Canaanites '. Phoenicians specifically identified themselves with
27889-442: Was the leading city; it was a center for bronze-making and the primary terminus of precious goods such as tin and lapis lazuli from as far east as Afghanistan . Sidon and Tyre also commanded interest among Egyptian officials, beginning a pattern of rivalry that would span the next millennium. The Amarna letters report that from 1350 to 1300 BC, neighboring Amorites and Hittites were capturing Phoenician cities, especially in
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