🚨Arabic Language Nerd Alert🚨
I am in Mardin (southern Turkey) and completely nerding-out over the Mardin Arabic dialect!! It’s nothing like I’ve ever heard before: a mix of Syrian/Iraqi dialects with some Fusha and Turkish.
Here are the main dialectal characteristics I have encountered during my first day.
A. This first group is quite random and I never heard anything similar before:
1. This one is crazy and I only encountered one guy speaking like this but the (ث) turned into a (ف)! The number 33 turning into فلافة وفلافين, number 2 into افنين, etc. This one was quite hard to get at first.
2. The (ك) turned into a Gaf (hard G). The word Kbir turned into Gbir. Other dialects would generally turn the (ق) into a hard G.
3. To say “there is”, they use fiyou (فيو؟؟) and not Fi (في)
B. For the following, I guess that this is what they kept from the Fusha:
1. They don’t use (شاف/يشوف) for the verb to see, but rather stick with the Fusha (رأى/يرى). So, Ara, Tra, yira, and so on.
2. They don’t use (ب) to conjugate with the present tense. It’s احب and not بحب.
3. They keep the final vocalization that is usually dropped when conjugating the past tense. Thus, “I understood” turns into Fahmtou (فهمتُ) and not Fahmt (فهمتْ).
As for Eastern Syria/Iraq characteristics (as far as I know), I noted the following:
1. Turning (ض) into (ظ). This is quite common in other dialects. The word ضيعة turned into طبعة.
2. To express similarity/comparaison, it’s زي instead of مثل/متل.
C. Finally, the most amazing for me is the integration of Turkish words/grammar structures into their Arabic. However, I guess this would vary significantly from one individual to another.
1. I noticed that they do percentage using the Turkish format which is like this: %100. In English that would be “on one hundred, hundred” or “yüzde yüz” in Turkish. So the guy told me in Arabic بالمية مية instead of مية بالمية.
2. The conjunction “but” turned into “اما” in Arabic instead of بس, which is a direct copy of “ama” in Turkish.
3. They seem to be saying the numbers in Turkish when speaking Arabic.
4. (This is the best thing ever) Of course they use some Turkish words… but they also decline them using Arabic declension. For instance the verb “to close” in Turkish is “kapatmak” with the root being “kapat”. So to this that something “is closed”, they would say it using the مفعول form “مفعّل” so basically “mkappat”!! So “the door is closed” turned into “al-bab mkappat”! This is similar to how some other dialects decline words from French or English.
5. Then there are of course a bunch of words such as “karşı” to say “in front”, “peçete” to say “napkins”, and many others used in daily life that they kept from Turkish.
This is what I got today. Let’s hope I stumble upon some other gems tomorrow!
DISCLAIMER: I am not a linguist nor have I studied linguistics ever. These are just some field observation from someone who learned Arabic and is currently learning Turkish and is passionate about languages. Sorry if I offend any linguists by speaking like a novice.