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THE ARABIC DIALECT of JEWS in MODERN EGYPT.Pdf the israeli academic center in cairo ¯È‰˜· Èχ¯˘È‰ ÈÓ„˜‡‰ ÊίӉ Gabriel M. Rosenbaum THE ARABIC DIALECT OF JEWS IN MODERN EGYPT Gabriel M. Rosenbaum was born in Jerusalem and has lived most of his life in Tel Aviv. He received his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in 1995 and is a senior lecturer in Arabic Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research and academic publications focus on the literature, drama, language and folklore of modern Egypt, based both on written sources and on close contact with Egyptian culture and its makers. He writes fiction prose and poetry in Hebrew and has also published translations of foreign literary works into Hebrew, including two plays by Egyptian playwrights. He has visited Egypt many times and has lectured on several occasions at the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo. INTRODUCTION1 spoken dialect of the Jews of Egypt tures of this Jewish Arabic speech has received scant attention, and are constant, irrespective of the cir- Jews living in various parts of the extremely little has been written on cumstances of communication. Arab world sometimes spoke dis- the basis of data collected from The distinctive lexical features, on tinctive Arabic dialects,2 differing Jewish speakers of Egyptian Ara- the other hand, usually appear in a number of respects from the bic. 5 The purpose of my study is to only in communications among Arabic spoken by their Muslim continue Blanc’s work and fill a Jews. and Christian neighbors. As Haim gap in this area. In the twentieth century, about Blanc has pointed out, however, In Egypt, Muslims and Coptic 98% of the Jews of Egypt lived in until recently the Arabic spoken by Christians speak what is essential- the two large cities of Cairo and the Jews of Egypt in the twentieth ly the same dialect; local variants Alexandria.6 Today almost no Jews century has been thought to differ are geographically rather than eth- remain in Egypt, and the number very little from that spoken by nically conditioned. However, the of those outside Egypt who still non-Jews. In a preliminary study language of the Jews of Cairo and use Egyptian Judeo-Arabic is con- of the Arabic of the Jews of Cairo, Alexandria, while influenced by stantly diminishing, so that this Blanc was careful not to label the the respective local dialects, con- language will probably disappear linguistic variety he was describ- tains many common elements – in in the not far-distant future. The ing as “Jewish Cairene.”3 Notwith- the areas of phonology, morpholo- following survey, based primarily standing this guarded formulation, gy, and particularly vocabulary – on data elicited from informants he laid the foundations for a des- which are not to be found in the and constrained by limitations of cription of modern spoken Egypt- dialects spoken by non-Jews. From space, gives but a sampling of the ian Judeo-Arabic. Beyond his the point of view of phonology relevant grammatical phenomena pioneering articles,4 however, the and morphology, the unique fea- and vocabulary items. 7 35 BULLETIN DISTINCTIVE which does not exist in Arabic, as p Vowels in words of Hebrew ori- CHARACTERISTICS OF (p = p), but some pronounce it as b gin are usually preserved in Jewish ¬ Shewa mobile EGYPTIAN SPOKEN JEWISH (p> b); the former would say pur m Arabic. at the begin- (Purim, “the Feast of Lots”), the ning of a word or syllable is almost ARABIC: PHONOLOGY latter bur¬m. On the other hand, the always pronounced e, as in tefill® AND MORPHOLOGY consonant q (‚), realized as a uvu- (prayer). The doubling of conso- lar stop in Standard Arabic, is uni- nants in Hebrew words is also Consonants and Vowels versally pronounced as a glottal retained, as in kipp‚r ([Yom] Kip- stop (like hamza) in Cairo and the pur, the Day of Atonement). The The phonetic realization of the cities of Lower Egypt, and this is stress in such words is usually Egyptian dialect (henceforth: true of the Jews as well (q > ’) – where it would be according to the Egyptian Arabic) by Jews is nearly even when uttering words of rules of accentuation in Hebrew, identical to that of non-Jews. How- Hebrew origin, such as ≠atta’ (“be even where these contradict the ever, some differences do exist, quiet, don’t talk about this now”), rules of Egyptian Arabic. mostly as a consequence of the derived from the Hebrew root introduction of non-Arabic ele- ±TQ. Occasionally, this consonant ments into the spoken language, may also be realized as a velar stop The Definite Article, the mainly from Hebrew but also (q > k), yielding, for example, kadd¬≠ Feminine, and the Plural some from a number of European (Kaddish, a liturgical prayer also languages. used in commemoration of a The Arabic definite article el is also Certain consonants have enter- death) instead of the more com- used before words of non-Arabic ed Jewish Arabic in borrowings mon form ’add¬≠. The phoneme origin. Only in collocations of from Hebrew and other languages. /b/, which in Hebrew is pro- Hebrew origin is the Hebrew defi- These are sometimes pronounced nounced either as a stop [b] or as nite article ha retained, as in the as in the source language and a fricative [v], is always pro- oath be’em∂t hator® (by the Torah!). sometimes adapted to the pronun- nounced b by Egyptian Jews in In rare cases, the prefixed ha is per- ciation of Egyptian Arabic. For words of Hebrew origin, as in ceived as part of the succeeding example, most speakers of Jewish kab∂d (see below), versus kav∂d in word, and the Arabic definite arti- Arabic pronounce the consonant p, Hebrew. cle may then be attached as well: el-haramb®m (Maimonides, called in Hebrew by his acronym, Ram- bam, for Rabbenu Moshe ben Mai- mon). Feminine forms of words of Hebrew origin are usually consis- tent with Arabic nominal patterns but retain the stress they would have had in Hebrew. For example, kabed® is the feminine form of kab∂d (pest, nuisance, lit.: heavy), while kohen® (daughter/wife of a priest) is the feminine form of koh∂n (priest). 8 In the plural, the Hebrew form is usually retained, as in mamzer¬m (bastards) or mitsv¨t (religious commandments), but the Arabic plural suffix ¬n is occasionally Purim play staged by Jewish schoolgirls in Cairo. attested, as in mamzer¬n. 36 the israeli academic center in cairo ¯È‰˜· Èχ¯˘È‰ ÈÓ„˜‡‰ ÊίӉ nouns, as against the use of anoth- ≠ubb®k (“window”) to ≠ebb®k, er vowel in the standard dialect. which is the more common form in In Egyptian Arabic, some first- the standard dialect. form verbs have two possible pat- A unique feature of Jewish Ara- terns, fe’el and fu’ul, both of which bic is the use of the vowel u even in are in use. Today there is a tenden- cases where the standard dialect cy to prefer the fe’el pattern, but has no such form, but uses e (or i) Jewish speakers more commonly exclusively. Examples include use the fu’ul pattern. For example, mu≠fl (comb), versus standard me≠fl; Jewish speakers will prefer the flu≠t (tub or washtub), versus stan- form ¿ulu◊ (come to an end, be fin- dard fle≠t; and mu¿adda (pillow), ished) to ¿ele◊. The same is true of versus standard me¿adda. Even nouns with two alternative pro- some words of Hebrew origin nunciation patterns. Jewish speak- have Jewish Arabic versions sub- ers prefer forms with the vowel u, stituting u for the original vowel: while the preferred forms in the kutubb® (marriage contract), as standard dialect are usually those opposed to ketubb®; or kupp‚r with the vowel e (or i). Thus, for ([Yom] Kippur), as opposed to kip- Judeo-Arabic letter of recommendation example, the Jews prefer the form p‚r. by Maimonides, bearing his signature. Non-Standard Verbal Patterns Whereas Cairene Arabic uses the prefixes a and n, respectively, for the imperfect first person singular and plural, Alexandrians use the prefix n for the first person singu- lar and the prefix n together with the suffix u for the plural.9 This is the usage of the Jews in both Alexandria and Cairo. For exam- ple, a Cairo-born Jewish woman said: ’ana ba’a benΩebb-e ’awi b®ba wum®ma, ma ’ederte≠ nef®re’hum (I love Dad and Mom very much; I couldn't leave them). Non-standard verbal patterns in the past tense of a verb derived from the root GY’ will be dis- cussed below, in the section on “Participles and Typical Words.” Preference for the Vowel u in Verbs and Nouns A typical feature of Egyptian Jew- ish Arabic is the preferential use of A marriage contract from Mit-Ghamr (1903), decorated with motifs from Egyptian the vowel u in some verbs and folklore. 37 BULLETIN PARTICLES AND such as gu (they came), versus as Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). The 13 TYPICAL WORDS standard gum, and de (this), used syntactic patterns into which all in addition to the standard form the Hebrew and other non-Arabic Jewish Arabic uses the demonstra- da.14 Another non-standard form components of the vocabulary are tive pronouns de and d¨n in addi- used by many Jewish informants is implanted are those of Egyptian tion to the standard forms da and the third person feminine singular Arabic. d¨l.10 I also found the form d¨ni, as form g®tet (she came), versus gat in As in the vocabularies of other a variant of d¨n.
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