Andalusian Arabic (also known as
Andalusi Arabic,
Spanish Arabic, or
Moorish Arabic) was a
varietyThe Arabic language is a Semitic language with many varieties that diverge widely from one another—both from country to country and within a single country. A distinction is to be made between Classical/Standard Arabic and these "colloquial" variants...
of the
Arabic languageArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
spoken in
Al-AndalusAl-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Arab and North African Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492....
, the regions of the
Iberian PeninsulaThe Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small area of France. It is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulas—the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas...
(modern
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
and
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east...
) under Muslim rule. It became an
extinct languageAn extinct language is a language which no longer has any speakers. Extinct languages may be contrasted with dead languages: no longer spoken as a main language.-Language loss:...
in Iberia after the
expulsion of the MoriscosOn April 9, 1609, King Philip III of Spain decreed the expulsion of the Moriscos. The Moriscos were the descendants of the Muslim population that converted to Christianity under threat of exile from Ferdinand and Isabella in 1502. From 1609 through 1614, the Spanish government systematically...
following the
ReconquistaThe Reconquista was a period of 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula succeeded in retaking the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims...
by Christian Spain. It is still used in Andalusi music and has significantly influenced the dialects of such towns as Fez,
NedromaNedroma is a city in Tlemcen Province, Algeria. Once the capital of Trara, it was built on the ruins of a Berber city, Abd al-Mu'min is native of Nedroma.- World Heritage Status :...
,
TlemcenTlemcen is a town in Northwestern Algeria, and the capital of the the province of the same name. Its population is 132,341 as of the 1998 census. Located inland, it is located in the center of a region known for its olive plantations and vineyards. The city has developed leather, carpet, and...
, and
BlidaBlida is a city in Algeria. It is the capital of Blida Province, and it is located about 45 km south-west of Algiers, the national capital. The name Blida, i.e...
,
CherchellCherchell is a seaport town in the Province of Tipaza, Algeria, 55 miles West of Algiers. It is the district seat of Cherchell District. As of 1998, it had a population of 24,400.-Ancient History:...
, , Tangiers,
TetouanTétouan , also spelled Tetuan, sometimes Tettawen or Tettawin, is a city in northern Morocco. It is the only open port of Morocco on the Mediterranean Sea, a few miles south of the Strait of Gibraltar, and about 40 mi E.S.E. of Tangier. In 2004 the city had 320,539 inhabitants...
, etc. Where many
AndalusianThe adjective Andalusian can refer to:*Andalusia, a region in Spain*Al-Andalus, a historical state on the Iberian Peninsula*Andalusian people, an ethnic group or nation in Spain centered in the Andalusia region...
s and
MoriscoA morisco or mourisco , meaning "Moor-like", was a nominally Catholic inhabitant of Spain and Portugal of Muslim heritage. Over time the term was used in a pejorative sense applied to those nominal Catholics who were suspected of secretly practicing Islam...
s fled to. It also exerted some influence on
MozarabicMozarabic was a continuum of closely related Romance dialects spoken in Muslim dominated areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the Romance languages' development in Iberia...
,
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
(particularly
AndalusianThe Andalusian dialect of Spanish is spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and parts of southern Extremadura. It is perhaps the most distinct of the southern dialects of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern dialects as well as from Standard Spanish...
),
CatalanCatalan is a Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencià , as well as in the city of Alghero on the Italian island of...
,
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
and the
Moroccan ArabicMoroccan Arabic is the variety of Arabic spoken in the Arabic-speaking areas of Morocco, as opposed to the official communications of government and other public bodies which use Modern Standard Arabic, as is the case in most Arabic-speaking countries, while a mixture of French and Moroccan...
dialect.
Andalusian Arabic appears to have spread rapidly and been in general oral use in most parts of Al-Andalus between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. The number of speakers is estimated to have peaked at around 5-7 million speakers around the eleventh and twelfth centuries before dwindling as a consequence of the gradual but relentless takeover by the Christians. In 1502, the Muslims of Granada were forced to choose between conversion and exile; those who converted became known as the Moriscos. In 1526, this requirement was extended to the Muslims elsewhere in Spain (
MudéjarMudéjar is the name given to individual Moors or Muslims of Al-Andalus who remained in Christian territory after the Reconquista but were not converted to Christianity...
s). In 1567,
Philip II of SpainPhilip II was King of Spain and Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, during his wife Mary Tudor's reign, King of England and Ireland...
issued a royal decree in Spain which forced Moriscos to abandon using Arabic on all occasions, formal and informal, speaking and writing. Using Arabic in any sense of the word would be regarded as a crime. They were given three years to learn the language of the Christian Spanish, after which they would have to get rid of all Arabic written material. This triggered one of the largest
Morisco RevoltThe Morisco Revolt occurred in 1568. It was a rebellion by the remnants of the community of Muslim converts to Christianity in Granada against the Crown of Castile.-The defeat of Muslim Spain:...
s. Still, Andalusian Arabic remained in use in certain areas until the final
expulsion of the MoriscosOn April 9, 1609, King Philip III of Spain decreed the expulsion of the Moriscos. The Moriscos were the descendants of the Muslim population that converted to Christianity under threat of exile from Ferdinand and Isabella in 1502. From 1609 through 1614, the Spanish government systematically...
at the beginning of the 17th century.
As in every other Arabic-speaking land, the Andalusian people were diglossic, that is, they spoke their local dialect in all low-register situations, but only Classical Arabic was resorted to when a high register was required and for written purposes as well.
Andalusian Arabic belongs to Early Western Neo-Arabic, which does not allow for any separation between Bedouin, urban, or rural dialects, nor does it show any detectable difference between communal dialects, such as
Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
,
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and the Son of God.The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to...
and Jewish.
The oldest evidence of Andalusian Arabic utterances can be dated from the 10th and 11th century, in isolated quotes, both in prose and stanzaic Classical Andalusi poems (
muwashahat), and then, from the 11th century on, in stanzaic dialectal poems (
zajal) and dialectal proverb collections, while its last documents are a few business records and one letter written at the beginning of the 17th century in Valencia.
Features of Andalusian Arabic
Many features of Andalusian Arabic have been reconstructed by Arabists using Hispano-Arabic texts (such as the
azjâl of Ibn Quzmân, Shushtari and others) composed in Arabic with varying degrees of deviation from classical norms, augmented by further information from the manner in which the Arabic script was used to transliterate Romance words. Such features include the following.
Phonology
The phoneme represented by the letter ق in texts is a point of contention. The letter, which in Classical Arabic represented either a voiceless pharyngealized velar stop or a voiceless uvular stop, most likely represented some kind of postalveolar affricate or velar plosive in Andalusian Arabic.
The vowel system was subject to a heavy amount of fronting and raising, a phenomenon known as
imâla, causing to become and, particularly with short vowels, in certain circumstances, particularly when i-mutation was possible.
Contact with native Romance speakers led to the introduction of the phonemes , and, possibly, the affricate from borrowed words.
Monophthongization led to the disappearance of certain diphthongs such as and which were leveled to and , respectively, though Colin hypothesizes that these diphthongs remained in the more mediolectic registers influenced by the Classical language.
There was a fair amount of compensatory lengthening involved where a loss of consonantal gemination lengthened the preceding vowel. Whence the transformation of عشّ
`ushsh ('nest') into عوش '`ûsh
.
Syntax and Morphology
The -an
which, in Classical Arabic, marked a noun as indefinite accusative, became an indeclinable conjunctive particle, as in Ibn Quzmân's expression rajulan 'ashîq
.
The unconjugated prepositive negative particle lis
developed out of the classical verb laisa
.
The derivational morphology of the verbal system was substantially altered. Whence the initial n-
on verbs in the first person singular, a feature shared by many Maghrebi dialects. Likewise the form V pattern of tafa``ala
( تَفَعَّلَ) was altered by epenthesis to atfa``al
(أتْفَعَّل).
Andalusian Arabic developed a contingent tense (after a protasis with the conditional particle lau
) consisting of the imperfect (prefix) form of a verb, preceded by either kân
or kîn
(depending on the register of the speech in question), of which the final -n
was normally assimilated by preformatives y-
and t-
. An example drawn from Ibn Quzmân will illustrate this:
لِس كِن تّراني
لَو لا ما نانّ بعد
lis
ki-ttarânî (underlying form: kîn tarânî)
law lâ mâ nânnu ba`ad
Translation:
You would not see me if I were not still moaning