Differences From Standard Arabic
Lebanese Arabic (also sometimes referred to as the "Lebanese language") shares many features with other so-called modern varieties of Arabic. Lebanese, like many other spoken Levantine varieties, exhibits a very different syllable structure from Modern Standard Arabic. While Standard Arabic can have only one consonant at the beginning of a syllable, after which a vowel must follow, Lebanese commonly has two consonants in the onset.
- Syntax: simpler, without any mood and case markings.
- Number: verbal agreement regarding number and gender is required for all subjects, whether already mentioned or not.
- Gender: plural inanimate nouns are treated as feminine.
- Vocabulary: significant borrowings from other languages, most prominently Ottoman Turkish, Greek, and French, as well as, less significantly, Armenian, English, and Persian.
Read more about this topic: Lebanese Arabic
Famous quotes containing the words differences and/or standard:
“Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)
“Society’s double behavioral standard for women and for men is, in fact, a more effective deterrent than economic discrimination because it is more insidious, less tangible. Economic disadvantages involve ascertainable amounts, but the very nature of societal value judgments makes them harder to define, their effects harder to relate.”
—Anne Tucker (b. 1945)