Arabic as an under-documented language: Distinctions between neighboring Arabic dialects

Abstract

The focus in this paper is on Arabic dialects in Israel, The Palestinian Authority and Jordan – all in the Levant Arabic dialects group. Generally, Levant dialects were rather well studied in the 20th century. After the Ottoman Empire’s collapse (1918), British and French ruled the Levant by UN mandates, until the regions became independent states in the 1940’s. These extra-linguistic processes have increased inter-dialect differences. On the other hand, modern communication devices and growing literacy have been decreasing inter-dialect differences. These processes have changed linguistic features, often completely integrating new features in the borrowing dialects. Therefore, many described features are not distinctive dialect markers while new developments are mostly un-documented. What are the original and authentic systems of the many shared and mixed features in Arabic dialects? We point out this problem here and analyze it by examining some dialects of the same dialect area in three geographically adjacent countries. Phonetic-acoustic examples show under-documented and missing data of consonants and vowels’ phonetic features. In addition to the following important human communication problems, this situation can affect other sociolinguistic issues. The conclusion is that these undocumented changes in Arabic dialects require new research efforts before some of them become extinct.