French Loans in Tunisian Arabic from Phonetic and Phonological Perspective

Abstract

Tunisian Arabic, in addition to words inherited and borrowed from Arabic, has a considerable number of loanwords taken from such languages as Berber, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, French, and English. The main purpose of this paper is the inquiry into the words of French origin, since it is from French that Tunisian Arabic has borrowed a considerable amount of loanwords, a process that continues especially in the fields of technology, medicine, and internet communication. Although French loanwords have already been subjected to various and even detailed investigations, it does not seem that this problem has been sufficiently elucidated, in particular from a theoretical point of view. Several proposals for different approaches to French loanwords in Tunisian are offered here for consideration.