Tunisian Arabic - Dialects

Dialects

The major distinction within Tunisian Arabic is that between sedentary (mainly urban) and Nomadic-origin (rural) dialects (see Sedentary vs. Nomadic). Note that most speakers of these rural varieties are not actually nomadic. Sedentary varieties are spoken in large cities on or near the coast, such as Tunis, Bizerte, Nabeul, Hammamet, Sousse, Monastir, Mahdia, Kairouan, and Sfax, while the rest of the country to the west and south of this coastal strip uses rural varieties, including the towns of Gabès, Gafsa, Tozeur, El Kef and Béja. Rural dialects are also found in small villages not far from the centres of the urban dialects.

All the urban varieties use the voiceless uvular plosive in words such as "he said", while rural varieties have the voiced velar plosive as in . Urban varieties also pronounce a final root vowel before another vowel, as in the word "they went", while rural varieties delete this final vowel, giving . Urban varieties also share with Maltese the distinction amongst Arabic dialects of not marking gender in the second person. The otherwise feminine /ʔinti/ is used to address men and women, much to the bemusement of other Arabic speakers, while in the verb no feminine marking is used. Rural dialects maintain the usual distinctions found in Arabic, whether standard or spoken.

There is further variation within both urban and rural dialects. For example, the dialect of Sfax maintains the diphthongs of Standard Arabic in words such as /lajl/ "evening" (commonly pronounced as in other regions), a trait shared by Maltese and the traditional women's dialect of Tunis.

Further information on Tunisian dialectology can be found in Gibson (1998), Marçais (1950), Singer (1984), and Talmoudi (1980).