Levantine Arabic, also called Shami (autonym: شامي, šāmi or اللهجة الشامية, el-lahje š-šāmiyye), is an Arabic variety spoken in the Levant, namely in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and southern Turkey. With over 60 million speakers, Levantine is, alongside Egyptian, one of the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic comprehensible all over the Arab world.

In Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine, Levantine is the primary language and is commonly spoken in daily life. However, it is not officially recognized as a separate language, and most written and official documents and media in these countries use Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), a form of literary Arabic acquired through formal education, which is not mutually intelligible with Levantine. In Israel and Turkey, Levantine is a minority language.

The Palestinian dialect is lexically the closest vernacular Arabic variety to MSA, with about 50% of common words. Levantine speakers therefore often call their language ‏العامية‎ al-ʿāmmiyya , 'slang', 'dialect', or 'colloquial'. With the emergence of social media, attitudes toward Levantine have improved. The amount of written Levantine has significantly increased, especially online, where Levantine is written using Arabic, Latin, or Hebrew characters. Levantine pronunciation varies greatly along social, ethnic, and geographical lines. Its grammar is similar to that shared by most vernacular varieties of Arabic. Its lexicon is overwhelmingly Arabic, with a significant Aramaic influence.

The lack of written sources in Levantine makes it impossible to determine its history before the modern period. Aramaic was the dominant language in the Levant starting in the 1st millennium BCE; it coexisted with other languages, including many Arabic dialects spoken by various Arab tribes. With the Muslim conquest of Syria in the 7th century, new Arabic speakers from the Arabian Peninsula settled in the area, and a lengthy language shift from Aramaic to vernacular Arabic occurred.

Naming and classification

Scholars use "Levantine Arabic" to describe the continuum of mutually intelligible dialects spoken across the Levant. Other terms include "Syro-Palestinian", "Eastern Arabic", "East Mediterranean Arabic", "Syro-Lebanese" (as a broad term covering Jordan and Palestine as well), "Greater Syrian", or "Syrian Arabic" (in a broad meaning, referring to all the dialects of Greater Syria, which corresponds to the Levant). Most authors only include sedentary dialects, excluding Levantine Bedawi Arabic of the Syrian Desert and the Negev, which belongs to Peninsular Arabic. Mesopotamian Arabic from northeast Syria is also excluded. Other authors include Bedouin varieties.

The term "Levantine Arabic" is not indigenous and, according to linguists Kristen Brustad and Emilie Zuniga, "it is likely that many speakers would resist the grouping on the basis that the rich phonological, morphological and lexical variation within the Levant carries important social meanings and distinctions." Levantine speakers often call their language ‏العامية‎ al-ʿāmmiyya, 'slang', 'dialect', or 'colloquial' (lit. 'the language of common people'), to contrast it to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Classical Arabic (‏الفصحى‎ al-fuṣḥā, lit. 'the eloquent'). They also call their spoken language ‏عربي‎ ʿarabiyy, 'Arabic'. Alternatively, they identify their language by the name of their country. ‏شامي‎ šāmi can refer to Damascus Arabic, Syrian Arabic, or Levantine as a whole. Lebanese literary figure Said Akl led a movement to recognize the "Lebanese language" as a distinct prestigious language instead of MSA.

Levantine is a variety of Arabic, a Semitic language. There is no consensus regarding the genealogical position of Arabic within the Semitic languages. The position of Levantine and other Arabic vernaculars in the Arabic macrolanguage family has also been contested. According to the Arabic tradition, Classical Arabic was the spoken language of the pre-Islamic and Early Islamic periods and remained stable until today's MSA. According to this view, all Arabic vernaculars, including Levantine, descend from Classical Arabic and were corrupted by contacts with other languages. Several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars are not a modified version of the Classical language, which is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Classical Arabic and vernacular varieties all developed from an unattested common ancestor, Proto-Arabic. The ISO 639-3 standard classifies Levantine as a language, member of the macrolanguage Arabic.

Sedentary vernaculars (also called dialects) are traditionally classified into five groups according to shared features: Peninsular, Mesopotamian, Levantine, Egyptian, and Maghrebi. The linguistic distance between these vernaculars is at least as large as between Germanic languages or Romance languages. It is, for instance, extremely difficult for Moroccans and Iraqis, each speaking their own variety, to understand each other. Levantine and Egyptian are the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic; they are also the most widely understood vernaculars in the Arab world and the most commonly taught to non-native speakers outside the Arab world.

Geographical distribution and varieties

Dialects

Levantine is spoken in the fertile strip on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean: from the Turkish coastal provinces of Adana, Hatay, and Mersin in the north to the Negev, passing through Lebanon, the coastal regions of Syria (Latakia and Tartus governorates) as well as around Aleppo and Damascus, the Hauran in Syria and Jordan, the rest of western Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Other Arabic varieties border it: Mesopotamian and North Mesopotamian Arabic to the north and north-east; Najdi Arabic to the east and south-east; and Northwest Arabian Arabic to the south and south-west.

The similarity among Levantine dialects transcends geographical location and political boundaries. The urban dialects of the main cities (such as Damascus, Beirut, and Jerusalem) have much more in common with each other than they do with the rural dialects of their respective countries. The sociolects of two different social or religious groups within the same country may also show more dissimilarity with each other than when compared with their counterparts in another country.

The process of linguistic homogenization within each country of the Levant makes a classification of dialects by country possible today. Linguist Kees Versteegh classifies Levantine into three groups: Lebanese/Central Syrian (including Beirut, Damascus, Druze Arabic, Cypriot Maronite), North Syrian (including Aleppo), and Palestinian/Jordanian. He writes that distinctions between these groups are unclear, and isoglosses cannot determine the exact boundary.

The dialect of Aleppo shows Mesopotamian influence. The prestige dialect of Damascus is the most documented Levantine dialect. A "common Syrian Arabic" is emerging. Similarly, a "Standard Lebanese Arabic" is emerging, combining features of Beiruti Arabic (which is not prestigious) and Jabale Arabic, the language of Mount Lebanon. In Çukurova, Turkey, the local dialect is endangered. Bedouin varieties are spoken in the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula, areas of transition between Levantine and Egyptian. The dialect of Arish, Egypt, is classified by Linguasphere as Levantine. The Amman dialect is emerging as an urban standard in Jordanian Arabic, while other Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic dialects include Fellahi (rural) and Madani (urban). The Gaza dialect contains features of both urban Palestinian and Bedouin Arabic.

Ethnicity and religion

The Levant is characterized by ethnic diversity and religious pluralism. Levantine dialects vary along sectarian lines. Religious groups include Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Jews. Differences between Muslim and Christian dialects are minimal, mainly involving some religious vocabulary. A minority of features are perceived as typically associated with one group. For example, in Beirut, the exponent ‏تاع‎ tēʕ is only used by Muslims and never by Christians who use ‏تبع‎ tabaʕ. Contrary to others, Druze and Alawite dialects retained the phoneme /q/. MSA influences Sunni dialects more. Jewish dialects diverge more from Muslim dialects and often show influences from other towns due to trade networks and contacts with other Jewish communities. For instance, the Jewish dialect of Hatay is very similar to the Aleppo dialect, particularly the dialect of the Jews of Aleppo. It shows traits otherwise not found in any dialect of Hatay. Koineization in cities such as Damascus leads to a homogenization of the language among religious groups. In contrast, the marginalization of Christians in Jordan intensifies linguistic differences between Christian Arabs and Muslims.

Levantine is primarily spoken by Arabs. It is also spoken as a first or second language by several ethnic minorities. In particular, it is spoken natively by Samaritans and by most Circassians in Jordan, Armenians in Jordan and Israel, Assyrians in Israel, Turkmen in Syria and Lebanon, Kurds in Lebanon, and Dom people in Jerusalem. Most Christian and Muslim Lebanese people in Israel speak Lebanese Arabic. Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, and Turkish Jews from Çukurova are native Levantine speakers; however, most moved to Israel after 1948. Levantine was spoken natively by most Jews in Jerusalem, but the community shifted to Modern Hebrew after the establishment of Israel. Levantine is the second language of Dom people across the Levant, Circassians in Israel, Armenians in Lebanon, Chechens in Jordan, Assyrians in Syria and Lebanon, and most Kurds in Syria.

Speakers by country

In addition to the Levant, where it is indigenous, Levantine is spoken among diaspora communities from the region, especially among the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian diasporas. The language has fallen into disuse among subsequent diaspora generations, such as the 7 million Lebanese Brazilians.

History

Pre-Islamic antiquity

Starting in the 1st millennium BCE, Aramaic was the dominant spoken language and the language of writing and administration in the Levant. Greek was the language of administration of the Seleucid Empire (in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE) and was maintained by the Roman (64 BCE–475 CE), then Byzantine (476–640) empires. From the early 1st millennium BCE until the 6th century CE, there was a continuum of Central Semitic languages in the Arabian Peninsula, and Central Arabia was home to languages quite distinct from Arabic.

Because there are no written sources, the history of Levantine before the modern period is unknown. Old Arabic was a dialect continuum stretching from the southern Levant (where Northern Old Arabic was spoken) to the northern Hijaz, in the Arabian Peninsula, where Old Hijazi was spoken. In the early 1st century CE, a great variety of Arabic dialects were already spoken by various nomadic or semi-nomadic Arabic tribes in the Levant, such as the Nabataeans—who used Aramaic for official purposes, the Tanukhids, and the Ghassanids. These dialects were local, coming from the Hauran—and not from the Arabian Peninsula— and related to later Classical Arabic. Initially restricted to the steppe, Arabic-speaking nomads started to settle in cities and fertile areas after the Plague of Justinian in 542 CE. These Arab communities stretched from the southern extremities of the Syrian Desert to central Syria, the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, and the Beqaa Valley.

Muslim conquest of the Levant

The Muslim conquest of the Levant (634–640) brought new groups of Arabic speakers from the Arabian Peninsula who settled in the Levant. Arabic became the language of trade and public life in cities, while Western Aramaic languages continued to be spoken at home and in the countryside. Arabic gradually replaced early Medieval Greek as the language of administration in 700 by order of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. The language shift from Aramaic to vernacular Arabic was a long process over several generations, with an extended period of multilingualism, especially among non-Muslims. Christians continued to speak Syriac for about two centuries, and Syriac remained their literary language until the 14th century. In its spoken form, Aramaic nearly disappeared, except for a few Western Neo-Aramaic-speaking villages, but it has left substrate influences on Levantine.

Different Peninsular Arabic dialects competed for prestige in the Levant, including the Old Hijazi Arabic of the Umayyad elites. These Peninsular dialects mixed with ancient Levantine forms of Arabic. By the mid-6th century, the Petra papyri show that the onset of the article and its vowel seem to have weakened. The article is sometimes written as /el-/ or simply /l-/. A similar, but not identical, situation is found in the texts from the Islamic period. Unlike the pre-Islamic attestations, the coda of the article in 'conquest Arabic' assimilates to a following coronal consonant. According to Pr. Simon Hopkins, this document shows that there is "a very impressive continuity in colloquial Arabic usage, and the roots of the modern vernaculars are thus seen to lie very deep".

Medieval and early modern era

The Damascus Psalm Fragment, dated to the 9th century but possibly earlier, sheds light on the Damascus dialect of that period. Because its Arabic text is written in Greek characters, it reveals the pronunciation of the time; it features many examples of imāla (the fronting and raising of /a/ toward /i/). It also features a pre-grammarian standard of Arabic and the dialect from which it sprung, likely Old Hijazi. Scholars disagree on the dates of phonological changes. The shift of interdental spirants to dental stops dates to the 9th to 10th centuries or earlier. The shift from /q/ to a glottal stop is dated between the 11th and 15th centuries. Imāla seems already important in pre-Islamic times.

Swedish orientalist Carlo Landberg writes about the vulgarisms encountered in Damascene poet Usama ibn Munqidh's Memoirs: "All of them are found in today's spoken language of Syria and it is very interesting to note that that language is, on the whole, not very different from the language of ˀUsāma's days", in the 12th century. Lucas Caballero's Compendio (1709) describes spoken Damascene Arabic in the early 1700s. It corresponds to modern Damascene in some respects, such as the allomorphic variation between -a/-e in the feminine suffix, while the insertion and deletion of vowels differ.

From 1516 to 1918, the Ottoman Empire dominated the Levant. Many Western words entered Arabic through Ottoman Turkish as it was the main language for transmitting Western ideas into the Arab world.

20th and 21st centuries

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century reduced the use of Turkish words due to Arabization and the negative perception of the Ottoman era among Arabs. With the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon (1920–1946), the British protectorate over Jordan (1921–1946), and the British Mandate for Palestine (1923–1948), French and English words gradually entered Levantine Arabic. Similarly, Modern Hebrew has significantly influenced the Palestinian dialect of Arab Israelis since the establishment of Israel in 1948. In the 1960s, Said Akl—inspired by the Maltese and Turkish alphabets— designed a new Latin alphabet for Lebanese and promoted the official use of Lebanese instead of MSA, but this movement was unsuccessful.

Although Levantine dialects have remained stable over the past two centuries, in cities such as Amman and Damascus, language standardization occurs through variant reduction and linguistic homogenization among the various religious groups and neighborhoods. Urbanization and the increasing proportion of youth constitute the causes of dialect change. Urban forms are considered more prestigious, and prestige dialects of the capitals are replacing the rural varieties. With the emergence of social media, the amount of written Levantine has also significantly increased online.

Status and usage

Diglossia and code-switching

Levantine is not recognized in any state or territory. MSA is the sole official language in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria; it has a "special status" in Israel under the Basic Law. French is also recognized in Lebanon. In Turkey, the only official language is Turkish. Any variation from MSA is considered a "dialect" of Arabic. As in the rest of the Arab world, this linguistic situation has been described as diglossia: MSA is nobody's first acquired language; it is learned through formal instruction rather than transmission from parent to child. This diglossia has been compared to the use of Latin as the sole written, official, liturgical, and literary language in Europe during the medieval period, while Romance languages were the spoken languages. Levantine and MSA are mutually unintelligible. They differ significantly in their phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax.

MSA is the language of literature, official documents, and formal written media (newspapers, instruction leaflets, school books). In spoken form, MSA is mostly used when reading from a scripted text (e.g., news bulletins) and for prayer and sermons in the mosque or church. In Israel, Hebrew is the language used in the public sphere, except internally among the Arab communities. Levantine is the usual medium of communication in all other domains.

Traditionally in the Arab world, colloquial varieties, such as Levantine, have been regarded as corrupt forms of MSA, less eloquent and not fit for literature, and thus looked upon with disdain. Because the French and the British emphasized vernaculars when they colonized the Arab world, vernaculars were also seen as a tool of colonialism and imperialism. Writing in the vernacular has been controversial because pan-Arab nationalists consider that this might divide the Arab people into different nations. On the other hand, Classical Arabic is seen as "the language of the Quran" and revered by Muslims who form the majority of the population. It is believed to be pure and everlasting, and Islamic religious ideology considers vernaculars to be inferior. Until recently, the use of Levantine in formal settings or written form was often ideologically motivated, for instance in opposition to pan-Arabism. Language attitudes are shifting, and using Levantine became de-ideologized for most speakers by the late 2010s. Levantine is now regarded in a more positive light, and its use in informal modes of writing is acknowledged, thanks to its recent widespread use online in both written and spoken forms.

Code-switching between Levantine, MSA, English, French (in Lebanon and among Arab Christians in Syria), and Hebrew (in Israel) is frequent among Levantine speakers, in both informal and formal settings (such as on television). Gordon cites two Lebanese examples: "Bonjour, ya habibti, how are you?" ("Hello, my love, how are you?") and "Oui, but leish?" ("Yes, but why?"). Code-switching also happens in politics. For instance, not all politicians master MSA in Lebanon, so they rely on Lebanese. Many public and formal speeches and most political talk shows are in Lebanese instead of MSA. In Israel, Arabic and Hebrew are allowed in the Knesset, but Arabic is rarely used. MK Ahmad Tibi often adds Palestinian Arabic sentences to his Hebrew speech but only gives partial speeches in Arabic.

Education

In the Levant, MSA is the only variety authorized for use in schools, although in practice, lessons are often taught in a mix of MSA and Levantine with, for instance, the lesson read out in MSA and explained in Levantine. In Lebanon, about 50% of school students study in French. In most Arab universities, the medium of instruction is MSA in social sciences and humanities, and English or French in the applied and medical sciences. In Syria, only MSA is used. In Turkey, article 42.9 of the Constitution prohibits languages other than Turkish from being taught as a mother tongue and almost all indigenous Arabic speakers are illiterate in the Arabic script unless they have learned it for religious purposes.

In Israel, MSA is the only language of instruction in Arab schools. Hebrew is studied as a second language by all Palestinian students from at least the second grade and English from the third grade. In Jewish schools, in 2012, 23,000 pupils were studying spoken Palestinian in 800 elementary schools. Palestinian Arabic is compulsory in Jewish elementary schools in the Northern District; otherwise, Jewish schools teach MSA. Junior high schools must teach all students MSA, but only two-thirds meet this obligation. At all stages in 2012, 141,000 Jewish students were learning Arabic. In 2020, 3.7% of Jewish students took the Bagrut exam in MSA.

Films and music

Most films and songs are in vernacular Arabic. Egypt was the most influential center of Arab media productions (movies, drama, TV series) during the 20th century, but Levantine is now competing with Egyptian. As of 2013, about 40% of all music production in the Arab world was in Lebanese. Lebanese television is the oldest and largest private Arab broadcast industry. Most big-budget pan-Arab entertainment shows are filmed in the Lebanese dialect in the studios of Beirut. Moreover, the Syrian dialect dominates in Syrian TV series (such as Bab Al-Hara) and in the dubbing of Turkish television dramas (such as Noor), famous across the Arab world.

As of 2009, most Arabic satellite television networks use colloquial varieties in their programs, except news bulletins in MSA. The use of vernacular in broadcasting started in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War and expanded to the rest of the Arab world. In 2009, Al Jazeera used MSA only and Al Arabiya and Al-Manar used MSA or a hybrid between MSA and colloquial for talk shows. On the popular Lebanese satellite channel Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI), Arab and international news bulletins are only in MSA, while the Lebanese national news broadcast is in a mix of MSA and Lebanese Arabic.

Written media

Levantine is seldom written, except for some novels, plays, and humorous writings. Most Arab critics do not acknowledge the literary dignity of prose in vernacular. Prose written in Lebanese goes back to at least 1892 when Tannus al-Hurr published Riwāyat aš-šābb as-sikkīr ʾay Qiṣṣat Naṣṣūr as-Sikrī, 'The tale of the drunken youth, or The story of Nassur the Drunkard'. In the 1960s, Said Akl led a movement in Lebanon to replace MSA as the national and literary language, and a handful of writers wrote in Lebanese. Foreign works, such as La Fontaine's Fables, were translated into Lebanese using Akl's alphabet. The Gospel of Mark was published in Palestinian in 1940, followed by the Gospel of Matthew and the Letter of James in 1946. The four gospels were translated in Lebanese using Akl's alphabet in 1996 by Gilbert Khalifé. Muris 'Awwad translated the four gospels and The Little Prince in 2001 in Lebanese in Arabic script. The Little Prince was also translated into Palestinian and published in two biscriptal editions (one Arabic/Hebrew script, one Arabic/Latin script).

Newspapers usually use MSA and reserve Levantine for sarcastic commentaries and caricatures. Headlines in Levantine are common. The letter to the editor section often includes entire paragraphs in Levantine. Many newspapers also regularly publish personal columns in Levantine, such as خرم إبرة xurm ʾibra, lit. '[through the] needle's eye' in the weekend edition of Al-Ayyam. From 1983 to 1990, Said Akl's newspaper Lebnaan was published in Lebanese written in the Latin alphabet. Levantine is also commonly used in zajal and other forms of oral poetry. Zajal written in vernacular was published in Lebanese newspapers such as Al-Mashriq ("The Levant", from 1898) and Ad-Dabbur ("The Hornet", from 1925). In the 1940s, five reviews in Beirut were dedicated exclusively to poetry in Lebanese. In a 2013 study, Abuhakema investigated 270 written commercial ads in two Jordanian (Al Ghad and Ad-Dustour) and two Palestinian (Al-Quds and Al-Ayyam) daily newspapers. The study concluded that MSA is still the most used variety in ads, although both varieties are acceptable and Levantine is increasingly used.

Most comedies are written in Levantine. In Syria, plays became more common and popular in the 1980s by using Levantine instead of Classical Arabic. Saadallah Wannous, the most renowned Syrian playwright, used Syrian Arabic in his later plays. Comic books, like the Syrian comic strip Kūktīl, are often written in Levantine instead of MSA. In novels and short stories, most authors, such as Arab Israelis Riyad Baydas and Odeh Bisharat, write the dialogues in Levantine, while the rest of the text is in MSA. Lebanese authors Elias Khoury (especially in his recent works) and Kahlil Gibran wrote the main narrative in Levantine. Some collections of short stories and anthologies of Palestinian folktales (turāṯ, 'heritage literature') display full texts in Levantine. On the other hand, Palestinian children's literature is almost exclusively written in MSA.

Internet users in the Arab world communicate with their vernacular language (such as Levantine) more than MSA on social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, or in the comments of online newspapers). According to one study, between 12% and 23% of all vernacular Arabic content online was written in Levantine depending on the platform.

Phonology

Levantine phonology is characterized by rich socio-phonetic variations along socio-cultural (gender; religion; urban, rural or Bedouin) and geographical lines. For instance, in urban varieties, interdentals /θ/, /ð/, and /ðˤ/ tend to merge to stops or fricatives [t] ~ [s]; [d] ~ [z]; and [dˤ] ~ [zˤ] respectively. The Classical Arabic voiceless uvular plosive /q/ is pronounced [q] (among Druze), [ʔ] (in most urban centers, especially Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem, and in Amman among women), [ɡ] (in Amman among men, in most other Jordanian dialects and in Gaza), [k] or even /kˤ/ (in rural Palestinian).

Vowel length is phonemic in Levantine. Vowels often show dialectal or allophonic variations that are socially, geographically, and phonologically conditioned. Diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ are found in some Lebanese dialects, they respectively correspond to long vowels /eː/ and /oː/ in other dialects. One of the most distinctive features of Levantine is word-final imāla, a process by which the vowel corresponding to ة tāʼ marbūṭah is raised from [a] to [æ], [ɛ], [e] or even [i] in some dialects. The difference between the short vowel pairs e and i as well as o and u is not always phonemic. The vowel quality is usually i and u in stressed syllables. Vowels in word-final position are shortened. As a result, more short vowels are distinguished.

In the north, stressed i and u merge. They usually become i, but might also be u near emphatic consonants. Syrians and Beirutis tend to pronounce both of them as schwa [ə]. The long vowel "ā" is pronounced similar to "ē" or even merges with "ē", when it is not near an emphatic or guttural consonant.

Syllabification and phonotactics are complex, even within a single dialect. Speakers often add a short vowel, called helping vowel or epenthetic vowel, sounding like a short schwa right before a word-initial consonant cluster to break it, as in ktiːr ǝmniːħ, 'very good/well'. They are not considered part of the word and are never stressed. This process of anaptyxis is subject to social and regional variation. They are usually not written. A helping vowel is inserted:

Before the word, if this word starts with two consonants and is at the beginning of a sentence,

Between two words, when a word ending in a consonant is followed by a word that starts with two consonants,

Between two consonants in the same word, if this word ends with two consonants and either is followed by a consonant or is at the end of a sentence.

In the Damascus dialect, word stress falls on the last superheavy syllable (CVːC or CVCC). In the absence of a superheavy syllable: