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Home , Lebanese Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Palestinian Arabic

MEDITERRANEAN LANGUAGE REVIEW

edited by Matthias Kappler, Werner Arnold and Till Stellino

with the editorial assistance of Ingeborg Hauenschild 19 (2012)

Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden Contents

Articles

Klaus Beyer Die Entstehung des Alphabets ...... 1 Adolfo Zavaroni Il suffisso di compagnia -pi, - ed il suffisso agentivo/pertinentivo -si/-osio in etrusco e falisco ...... 13 Michael Waltisberg Zur Syntax eines arabischen Beduinendialekts ...... 35 Dimitris Evripidou Factors Influencing Greek Cypriot Senior-Adults’ Attitudes Towards Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek ...... 59 Ibrahim Bassal Hebrew and Substrata in Spoken Palestinian ...... 85 Edward Y. Odisho Mechanisms for Lexical Enrichment in Modern Aramaic...... 105

Book Reviews

Scott N. Callaham Modality and the Infinitive Absolute (Christian Stadel) ...... 117 Gianluca Frenguelli & Laura Melosi (eds.) Lingua e cultura dell’Italia coloniale (Francesco Bianco) ...... 121 Jared Greenblatt The Jewish Neo-Aramaic of Amәdiya (Steven E. Fassberg) ...... 131 Annette Herkenrath Wh-Konstruktionen im Türkischen (Jaklin Kornfilt) ...... 134 Veronika Ritt-Benmimoun Texte im arabischen Beduinendialekt der Region Douz (Südtunesien) (Judith Rosenhouse) ...... 146 Hebrew and Aramaic Substrata in Spoken

Ibrahim Bassal (Beit-Berl College & Arab College, Haifa)

1 Introduction (1) The Palestinian include layers of ancient languages that belong to the earliest historical periods of culture of indigenous tongues: Canaanite, classical Hebrew (Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew), Aramaic (particularly Western Aramaic), Persian, Greek and . Moreover, from the new era, it con- tains components of the Turkish and European languages, mainly English, French, German and Italian. Since the establishment of the state of in 1948, there has been a significant influence of Hebrew on the Palestinian Arab dialect as a result of the immediate contact between the Palestinian population and the Jewish population in Israel.1 Former peoples and cultures found in Palestine in past centuries had an impact, directly or indirectly, on the linguistic profile of Palestine. One of the earliest ele- ments making a significant mark on Palestinian Arab dialects is the Aramaic layer. (2) Aramaic predominated as the spoken and written language in , Babylonia, and Palestine for over fifteen hundred years, from the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.E. to the 9th and 10th centuries C.E.2 From the mid-seventh century B.C.E. officials in the Assyrian kingdom began to use the Aramaic language for writing official docu- ments. During the period of the Assyrian empire, Aramaic spread across the whole area including Palestine. In the Bible, 2 Kings 18:26, we find evidence of the use of Aramaic for diplomatic exchanges at this time rather than for daily use. During the time of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, around the year 500 B.C.E., King Darius I (522–486 B.C.E.) used the Aramaic language as the official language for admini- stration. This choice increased the prestige of the Aramaic language. As the official language of the state, it was in use from western Iran to the Mediterranean, and down to the southern part of . However, with the rise of in the 7th cen- tury, this situation changed, and Aramaic was supplanted by the Arabic of the con- querors which became the spoken and written language. Late Aramaic had been at its peak and dominated the entire region, both orally and in writing, among Jews,

1 For a detailed discussion on the foreign strata in Palestinian Arabic, see Bassal (2010). 2 About the language of Palestine from 200 B.C.E–200 C.E., see Greenfield (1978); and about Hebrew and Aramaic in the Persian period, see Greenfield & Naveh (1999); on diglosia in Palestine in ancient times, see Spolsky (1983). 86 Ibrahim Bassal

Christians, Mandaeans, , and pagans. Simon Hopkins writes that Arab conquest changed this linguistic situation rapidly and decisively. In most areas, people stopped speaking Aramaic, and the literary activity was interrupted com- pletely or was reduced to very minor proportions, Ancient Aramaic languages were preserved for ritual cult and tradition. In the course of time, indigenous people un- derstood them less and less. Linguistically and religiously, the area became a Mus- lim Arab region, and in the new era, Aramaic survived only among Christian mi- norities, Jews and Mandaeans.3 Later Aramaic4 was in direct contact with Arabic and its dialects, and we still find residues of it in dialects spoken in Palestine and Israel. Such residues have been naturalized, and it is quite hard to identify them. They belong to different fields of everyday life such as seasonal agriculture, house- keeping, tools and utensils, alongside Christian religious terms. However, within these major macro groups in Palestinian dialects which are spoken in Israel and Palestine, the degree of influence varies from one region inside Israel to another. There are the North ( dialects),5 the Centre (the Triangle-Muṯallaṯ dialect),6 the South (the dialect),7 the dialects. Also, the Jewish, Christian

3 Hopkins 2000: 119. 4 On distribution of Aramaic, see Beyer (1986). 5 The Arab inhabitants of al-Ǧalīl (Galilee) in the northern part of Israel are very heterogeneous, contrary to the Muṯallaṯ, where both the population and the spoken dialect are homogeneous in character, or to the Naqab area with the Bedouin dialect. The Galilee population consists of various religious groups: Muslims, Christians, , and to some extent different ethnic groups: Circassians (non-Arab Muslims), Armenians (non-), and Maronites (Christians of Syrian origin who speak a unique dialect that resembles the Lebanese-Syrian dialect of the Maronite communities). The vernacular dialects of these groups have deep variety. Sometimes we find differences between one village and another and among the members of the same religious community. There are several works about Palestinian Arabic dialects: Bergsträsser (1915) Sprachatlas von Syrien und Palästina, Blanc (1953) Studies in North Palestinian Arabic, Piamenta (1964) wrote on the use of tenses, aspects and moods of dialect; (1959) wrote chapters on the Arab dialects of the Central Galilee. Palva (1965) Lower Galilean Arabic Dialects, Rozenhouse (1969), wrote on the dialect of Sakhnīn town; (1984) wrote on the Bedouin dialects in the North of Israel, and Levin (1995), wrote about Arabic of Jerusalem, Geva-Kleinberger (2004) wrote on the Arab dialects of the residents of Haifa in the first half of the 20th century that was spoken by Muslims, Christians and Jews. also dealt with the Arab Jewish dialect in the North of Israel in the first half of the 20th century (in Haifa, Tzfat and Tiberias, where Jews lived beside Arabs); (2009) Autochthonous texts in the Arabic dialect of the Jews of Tiberias, Khariush (2004) published a book about the phonological description of the Palestinian dialects, through surveying the researches that had dealt with the Palestinian dialect, its distribution and linkage to old Arab dialects [in Arabic]. Havelova (2000) Arabic Dialects of which contains dialectological and sociolinguistic description. See also Bassal (2008) (Western Galilee) Kufur-Yasīf Dialect: A Morphophonemic Description. 6 On the Muṯallaṯ dialects, see O. Jastrow’s (2004) paper that deals with phonological aspects and morphophonemics. 7 On the Bedouin dialect of the , see Blanc (1970); Shawarba (2007) about the Tiyaha Bedouin dialect and Henkin (2010). Hebrew and Aramaic Substrata 87 and Samaritan dialects of Aramaic that were spoken in Palestine each left its own mark. Therefore, it is reasonable that the substrata from Late Aramaic dialects that were spoken in Palestine on the eve of the Arab expansion were pushed back gradu- ally, and Arabic became the dominant language in the , supplanting Aramaic as the language of spoken communication. But Aramaic traces remained in Arabic in the regions that were formerly dominated by Aramaic, especially in rural areas.8 Our discussion of residues concerns itself with Late Western Aramaic with the sub-dia- lects: Jewish Aramaic, Christian Aramaic, and Samaritan Aramaic.9 These came in direct contact with Arabic and Arab dialects, and it is only natural that through this contact, they would affect the existing linguistic profile of Palestine.10 (3) Palestinian Arabic is a dialect subgroup spoken by Palestini- ans. It falls into three groups: urban Palestinian, rural Palestinian and Bedouin. Of these, the urban dialect is the closest to northern Levantine Arabic (such as Syrian and Lebanese), while the Bedouin dialect is nearer to the dialects of Arabia itself. Within each of these groups there are of course geographical, ethnic and religious variations: Palestinian Arabic is spoken by Muslims, Druze, Jews, Samaritans and various denominations of Christians.11 The varieties are reflected in the pronouncia- tion of some phonemes which differ from one area to another or from one village to another, in morphophonemic changes and in lexical items. There are some villages that exhibit a remarkable number of conservative features and they preserve the classical pronunciation. Others, however, exhibit deviation of some phonemes from the classical pronunciation. Researchers studying the vocabulary of spoken Arabic in Palestine and who are familiar with Aramaic dialects find substrata of Aramaic: nouns, verbs, grammatical forms that are alien to , and are typical of the Arabic spoken in the region of Aramaic influence – especially in the vernacular Arabic of Syria and Palestine.12

8 For the subject of supplanting Aramaic by Arabic in Syria and Palestine, see Ben-David 1967: 153–165; Cambridge (1999); on the replacement, in speech and writing, of Samaritan Aramaic by Arabic, see Shehadeh (1983). 9 Greenfield (2001: 369) notes that the elements that are common to these Aramaic dialects are more numerous than are those that distinguish them from each other. Three different scripts were used – the Jewish for Jewish Aramaic; a development of the paleo-Hebrew for Samaritan; and a modification of the Syriac script for Christian Palestinian Aramaic; Greenfield (1978: 150) notes that the New Testament as well as Talmudic sources of a later period observe that the Galilean dialect of Aramaic was different from that of Judah. There are some slight differences between these Aramaic dialects as compiled by Gluska 1999: 48–51. 10 See Tal (1980) for some notes and clarifications regarding demonstrative pronouns and their use in the Aramaic of Palestine [in Hebrew]. 11 For a profound and comprehensive description of the Palestinian Arabic see Hopkins 2012: 51. 12 Good studies have been made on this subject: Behnstedt & Arnold 1993; Behnstedt 1997. 88 Ibrahim Bassal

The task of sketching these Aramaic characteristics in Palestinian Arabic has been considerably facilitated in recent decades by the appearance of important dic- tionaries of Aramaic dialects in Palestine such as Lexicon Syropalaestinum of Schulthess (1903), although it is not updated and not comprehensive; Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Sokoloff 1990); Dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic (Tal 2000); and the dictionaries of Mishnaic Hebrew (Levy; Jastrow); in addition to the Syriac glossaries and dictionaries. These dictionaries assist us in finding Aramaic characteristics existing in Palestinian dialects. In addition to the above, we have the prototype texts of the Palestinian Talmud and Palestinian Midrashim and the Neofiti translation of the Bible. It is significiant to note that in grammar, Aramaic influence on the Arab dialects in Palestine is relatively minor, but it is particularly prominent in vocabulary. Although there are several studies on the Aramaic influence upon the Arab dia- lects, they are partial and actually no more than lists of words. Yehezkel Kutscher, who wrote on Aramaic items in the Hebrew Encyclopedia (pp. 959–969), argues that Aramaic elements were preserved in Arabic dialects in locations where Aramaic was dominant. However, Avishur in his article “The Ancient Aramaic elements in the Iraqi Judaeo-Arabic” (Avishur 2001), suggests that research done on the topic is partial and needs to be augmented and updated. Indeed, most of it, produced by Christian priests, has been limited to word-lists, and the subject of Aramaic influ- ence need to be examined, using scientific tools.

2 Research overview Siegmund Fraenkel’s (1866) study of Aramaic loans in classical Arabic is known, but it lacks vocabulary employed in written Christian .13 There are some studies on the Lebanese dialect, the most prominent being that of Feghali. On we have Seidel (1988) and Arnold & Behnstedt (1993: 47–92). In fact, there is no methodical and comprehensive research on the topic that inte- grates the post-classical Hebrew and Aramaic elements existing in both literary and spoken languages, especially in Palestine. In this paper I intend to deal with some grammatical characteristics that can be plausibly ascribed to Aramaic and will go on to focus principally on the lexicon. I will discuss the elements of early Aramaic and post-classical Hebrew in the spoken Arabic of Israel and Palestine, both in its grammar and vocabulary. For the latter, I will focus particularly on two domains: household and vineyard.

3 Morphology (a) The shift of the pronominal suffix -kum > -kon; -hum > -hon In literary Arabic, the suffix for possessive pronoun 2nd pers. plur. masc. is -kum ;(their brother) أھُ ;.your brother) and for 3nd pers. plur. masc. is -hum) ُأ .e.g

13 For a detailed discussion on Aramaic words in Christian Arabic Bible translations, see Bassal 2004. Hebrew and Aramaic Substrata 89 while in Syriac, the pronominal suffix is -kon for 2nd pers. plur. masc.; -hon for 3rd pers. plur. masc.14 It is remarkable that in the Arabic spoken in Northern Galilee – especially in the Northern villages close to , such as Miʕilia, Fassūṭṭa, Tarshīḥa, al-Rāmi, Bqēʕa, Ǧišš, Ḥorfeesh, Kufr-smeeʕ, and Druze villages on the Karmel: Dāliat al-Karmel and ʕisifya – the shift of -kum > -kon; -hum > -hon has I will hit) أ ;( ُأ) your brother), in classical Arabic) أ .taken place .(أ) them), in classical Arabic Indeed, it is a morphological that typifies the Arab villages close to Lebanon and Syria and distinguishes them from the rest of the southern Arab vil- lages located on the outskirts of the cities Acre and Haifa and in other parts of the country. The form as used in spoken Arabic is consistent with the form as it exists in Syriac. It may be noted that Feghali mentioned this shift in the .15 There is no doubt that this is an Aramaic influence that has remained in the ver- nacular Arabic in this area. (b) The form for nisba -ānī In Arabic, nisba is made by a morphophonological change in the pattern of the word. But there is another frequently occurring way to mark nisba in Spoken Arabic by adding the form -ānī as a suffix. For example: barrānī (external); ǧūwwānī (in- ternal); maġlawānī (over charging); haqqānī (honest); tabarānī (Tiberian). Blau noted that this is an Aramaic influence since its use in classical Arabic is restricted.16 (c) The Syriac form of diminution: -ōn/-ūn; -ōs/-ūs The diminutive form in Arabic is expressed by a morphophonological change of the word pattern, e.g. kalb (dog) > kulayb (puppy); walad (boy) > wulayd (youngster). Of interest to us is that some Arabic words and other words borrowed from Syriac (ǧamalōn / ǧamlōn: (ridged roof ن are used with the diminutive suffix -ōn/-ūn known in Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian colloquial Arabic.17 It should be observed that the word is not mentioned in classical Arabic dictionaries, and Fraenkel notes that the basis of the word is Gamla with the addition of the Syriac diminutive mor- pheme -ōn. Other examples of this form of diminution are: karʕūne (small qalḥūn (small twig) in the Druze dialect of ن ;(sannūn (small tooth َ ﱡن ;(leg qarʕūn (small almonds). This last ن ;the residents of Dāliat al-Karmel village term is familiar in the Druze spoken language of the Golan, (and, I have been told, among the Christians in al-Rāmi). It is of interest that in colloquial Arabic in Israel we also find words with the Syriac diminutive suffix -ōn/-ūn. Some of these words are not found in the classical

14 On diminution in , see Wright 1967: 166–175. 15 Feghali 1919: 84; Diem (1972); Behnstedt (1991). 16 Blau 1967: 231, note 144. 17 Bustani 1983: 125; Dozy 1967: I, 219; Barthélmy 1935–55: I, 122; Hava 1964: 99; on spoken Arabic of Syria, see Mubāraka 1999: 107; Frayḥa 1973: 29; on the Iraqi dialect, see al-Bakri 1972: 147. 90 Ibrahim Bassal

Arab dictionaries18 but are found in Aramaic or Syriac, and in the Arabic dialects of Syria and Lebanon. An example is the word ṭarbūn (the soft part of the leaf). This word is used in the Arab dialect in the north of Israel in two variants: ṭarbūn /ṭarnūb (metathesis). The word is not known in the Mutallat dialect. Even al-Barghouthi, in his dictionary of the Palestinian Arab dialect, does not mention the word, whereas it is mentioned in regard to Syria and Lebanon, Hobeika ascribed it to Syriac and noted the shift of p>b in the Arabic form. Furthermore, Frayḥa added a morphologi- cal explanation: that the word is composed of the root plus the suffix diminutive morpheme. In the Syrian Arab dialect, this word is used as noted by Mubaraka, who added that in the spoken Arabic of Syria, there are two variants: ṭarnūfa / ṭarbūna. The word taraf, a basis of these variants, exists in Mishnaic Hebrew and in the Ara- maic translations of the Bible: Onkelos and Peshitta, in Genesis 8:11. Indeed, the word exists in the former region of Aramaic influence, and it exists in Mishnaic -which appears in a Midrash frag ,מטרבת Hebrew. Lieberman19 noted that the form produces leaves, blossoms. It is ,"מוציאה טרפין" ,'מטרפת ' ment, is a doublet of the form והטריבו העצים" :also found in another passage of the Midrash fragment which reads they blossomed and produced). Sokoloff, in his dictionary of the Jewish) "ועשו פירות 20.'טרב' ,'טרף ' Palestinian Aramaic, gives two forms in the entry of About words with the suffix -ūs/-ōs: there is one word in colloquial Arabic in Galilee with this suffix: ṭalmūsi (small round cake of bread). The word is known in the vernacular Arabic of Syria and Lebanon. Hobeika and Abed-Alraḥīm21 state that this word is a Syriac residue in colloquial Lebanese and Syrian. (d) šaf ʕal form In classical Arabic the form šaf ʕala is very rare. The dictionary Lisān al-ʕArab gives two verbs in this form: šabraqa (to tear, to cut) from the stem brq, and šašqala from the stem šql (to weigh).22 However, in the spoken Arabic of Syria and Palestine, this form is very productive, as noted by Feghali.23 The classical form parallel with šaf ʕala is saf ʕala, and this form – in colloquial Arabic – is borrowed from Aramaic. In colloquial Arabic in Palestinian dialects, especially in the north of Israel, there is a frequency of verbs in the form šaf ʕal: šalhab (reddened); šartaḥ (make poor, to

18 In the Arabic lexicon there are some words that terminate with -us, e.g ʕamrūs (a lamb). Arabic grammarians treat them as foreign words, and some of the Arab philologists attribute them to Greek, or they express their lack of knowledge by the statement: ‘God knows!’ 19 Lieberman 1946: 318–319. 20 Sokoloff 1990: 231–232; about the shift between voiced and unvoiced in the case of consonants -הבקר ;נפרשת-נברשת with closed articulation in Mishnaic Hebrew, e.g p turned into b: see .Epstein 1948: II, 1220 ,הפקיע - הבקיע ;הפקר 21 Abed-al-Raḥīm 2003: III, 989. 22 About Šaf ʕala forms, see Nöldeke 1970: 179; Brockelmann 1908–13: I, 525 notes that causative verbs with prefix ša entered the Aramaic dialects from Akkadian; Attalla (2000) in his discussion about quadrilateral verbs; about Šaf ʕala in Iraqi Judaeo-Arabic, see Avishur 2009: 166–170. 23 Feghali 1919: 83, §c. Hebrew and Aramaic Substrata 91 live a life of poverty, but in Syriac there is an opposite meaning – to make rich, to live a life of abundance); šargal (to let slide); šaḥtaf (to rub); šaqbaʕ (to fall); šalwaḥ (expose him to cold wind); šanhaq (bray of an ass); šaḥbar (to scribble). Thus, we can conclude that vernacular Arabic borrowed the form šaf ʕal from Aramaic and built new in this pattern. (e) la as an object marker We may conclude that the presence of Aramaic remnants in several new Arab dia- lects spoken today, in areas that were previously dominated by Aramaic, is probably not coincidental. As an example we can note the use of la as an object marker. In his comprehensive article about la and its occurrence as an object marker, Levin24 summarizes that the occurrence in the Arabic dialects is usually attributed to an Aramaic substratum. e.g. Smiʕtu la-axūk? (did you hear your brother?). In Aramaic the use of la is limited to definite objects.25 There is evidence of la as an object marker in texts that are rendered from Aramaic, especially in Christian Arabic texts from the south of Palestine. Blau also notes that in Christian Arabic texts rendered from the Syriac we can discern this use of la as an object marker.26 Furthermore I have cited some samples of la as an object marker in the Arabic Bible translations from Syriac.27

4 Lexicon Notwithstanding the grammatical influence of Aramaic in Arabic, the bulk of the substrata is found in vocabulary. In general, Aramaic loan words underwent mor- phophonemic adaptation when they entered vernacular Arabic. In the course of time, it has become difficult to identify them. Some of these words have become produc- tive and have given rise to verbal derivations. Here I will present a collection of words from everyday life in two fields: agri- culture and the household, which may demonstrate the Aramaic generating sedi- ments that were used in the territory of Palestine. In fact these words do not exist in classical Arabic, and some of them are not mentioned in al-Barghouthi’s dictionary of the colloquial Arabic of Palestine.

24 Levin 1987: 38. 25 Nöldeke 1970: 226–231, §287–288. 26 Blau 1966–67: II, 413–415, 305.1.1–305.1.1.1. 27 Bassal (2004), Dissertation, p. 119 [in Hebrew]. 92 Ibrahim Bassal

Words from the household cazaqah – (ring) In the Spoken Arabic in the north of Israel, one finds the word cazaqah (a ring). This word is not recorded in Arabic literature and does not exist in many Arab dialects, and the question of its origin arises. But the word ʕazaqtha is known in Aramaic. It occurs in the Peshitta and in Daniel 6:18: וְהֵיתָיִת אֶבֶן חֲדָה וְשֻׂמַת עַל-פֻּם גֻּבָּא וְחַתְמַהּ מַלְכָּא בְּעִזְקְתֵ הּ וּבְעִזְקָת רַ בְרְ בָנוֹהִי דִּי לָא-תִשְׁנֵא צְבוּ בְּדָנִיֵּאל. Syriac dictionaries list the word in the sense of ‘ring’. The word is documented in in ;עסקה :in Samaritan Aramaic ;עִזְקָה/א ;עִזְקָתָא ;עֶזְקְתָה :Jewish Aramaic dialects In the Neofiti translation the Hebrew word .ــ Christian Palestinan Aramaic :Genesis 41:42 ,עזקתא :is translated to the Aramaic word טבעת ועבר פרעה ית עזקתא מעילוי ידיה ויהב יתיה על ידוי דיוסף ואלבש יתיה לבושין דבוץ ושוי דדהבא מניכא על צואריה. and Exodus 26:24: ויהון מתכוונין מן מלרע וכחדא יהוון מכוונין על רישא לגו עזקתא חדא כדן יהוי לתריהון לתרין יהוון סטרין. means ‘to hold fast’.28 עזק In Post-Biblical Hebrew the verb This word is used in the vernacular Arabic of Syria and Lebanon. Feghali and Frayḥa refer to it as a loan word from Aramaic. What emerges from the discussion above is that the word is part of an Aramaic substratum in vernacular Arabic in Syria, Israel, and Palestine. (fireplace) – ّر bannūr In his book Land, Man and Effort, Arraf records an abundance of words from the everyday life of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel. This documentation of ancient words makes a contribution to the study of the Palestinian dialects used in Israel. These dialects preserve words from ancient layers, words that have disappeared due to changes in technology. In his description of the locksmith’s work, he uses the word bannūr (fireplace) which is a part of the furnace. He writes: وار ك ت و رأس اّر اي ا ... (The coals are stirred by the spit, and with the tongs, the cover of the fireplace is opened, bringing the wind). The word is vague in Arabic, and there is no mention of it in the Arabic lexicon, And thus the phrase 29. ار although Dozy and Dalman do mention the phrase

28 Jastrow 1903: 1062. 29 Dozy 1967: I, 132; Dalman 1964: II, 139.