A Comparative Glossary of Cypriot Maronite Arabic: With an by Alexander Borg

By Alexander Borg

Cypriot Arabic, an unwritten language and mom tongue of a number of hundred bilingual (Arabic/Greek) Maronites from Kormakiti (N.W. Cyprus), developed from a medieval Arabic colloquial dropped at the island by way of Christian Arab migrants (probably from Asia Minor and Syria). It represents the result of a different linguistic and cultural synthesis drawing on Arabic, Aramaic, and Greek; its Arabic part additionally exhibits a hybrid areal profile combining larger Syrian features with formal positive factors standard of the modern S.E.Anatolian-Mesopotamian dialectal continuum. a couple of infrequent Aramaic substratal components in Cypriot Arabic recommend a comparatively early separation of its mother or father dialect from mainstream Arabic. This lexicon surveys approximately 2000 Cypriot Arabic phrases opposed to the heritage of intensive comparative fabric from the Arabic dialects, outdated Arabic, and colloquial and literary kinds of Aramaic. Many Cypriot Arabic phrases are the following mentioned with illustrative examples and ethnographic statement the place appropriate. Cypriot Arabic is an endangered language; the current thesaurus is the main accomplished lexical checklist of this scientifically interesting number of peripheral Arabic. it really is essentially meant for orientalists and linguists focusing on comparative Semitics and Arabic dialectology.