- Official language in
- Tunisia
- Script
- Arabic
Where it's spoken
Article 6 of the constitution that bears the date of Tunisia's referendum says that the official language is Arabic.
A paper by researchers at the University of Sfax and Columbia University describes Tunisian Arabic as the primary dialect spoken in Tunisia, and says that Modern Standard Arabic is the official language of the government, media and education. According to the paper, the two exist on a continuum dominated by mixed forms. The paper lists several regional varieties of Tunisian Arabic, including the Tunis, Sahil and Sfax dialects, and says that Tunisians often code-switch in daily conversation, particularly from French, using expressions such as "ça va", "désolé" and "rendez-vous" without adapting them to the phonology.
Sources
- Tunisia's Constitution of 2022 — Article 6 (official language); Article 141 (date of the referendum)
- Zribi, I., Boujelbane, R., Masmoudi, A., Ellouze, M., Belguith, L. and Habash, N. (2014). A Conventional Orthography for Tunisian Arabic. LREC 2014 — Abstract; Introduction; Section 3 (regional varieties, code-switching)
Script & pronunciation
The paper says Tunisian Arabic has neither a standard orthography nor large collections of written text and dictionaries. The Derja.Ninja dictionary site likewise says: "There is no one standardized way to write in Tunisian Derja." The paper adds that dialect writers are often inconsistent, writing words either as they sound or in deference to the Modern Standard Arabic form, and Derja.Ninja says that when in doubt it wrote a word as it would be written in Standard Arabic.
The paper proposes a conventional orthography that writes the letter ق for both the sound /q/ and the sound /g/, and gives the word for "cow", pronounced /bagra/, as an example. This app's card "Cow" instead writes it بڨرة (bagra), and its note says that the letter ڨ stands for the sound /g/. The app's card "Do you speak English?" likewise writes the language name with it, تحكي إنڨليزية؟ (tḥki inglīziyya?).
The paper says Tunisian Arabic elides many short vowels in unstressed contexts. This app's romanization of the card ما نفهمش ("I don't understand"), mā nfehm-sh, shows n and f side by side with no vowel between them. The paper also says Tunisian Arabic seems to have more Modern Standard Arabic-like pronunciations than Egyptian Arabic, for example for ذ /ð/, and this app's romanization writes the sound of ذ as dh, as in the card هاذا ("This"), hādhā.
Sources
- Zribi, I., Boujelbane, R., Masmoudi, A., Ellouze, M., Belguith, L. and Habash, N. (2014). A Conventional Orthography for Tunisian Arabic. LREC 2014 — Abstract; Sections 4.1, 4.3, 5.2.2
- Derja.Ninja. About — Spelling conventions
Grammar essentials
The paper describes a negation circum-clitic ma+ +š that Tunisian Arabic uses where Modern Standard Arabic has several different negative particles, and says that the negative form of a verb without the negation particle does not make sense in Tunisian Arabic. This app writes the suffix as -sh, as in its card "I don't understand", mā nfehm-sh, whose note says that negation wraps the verb as a two-part negative. The card "I don't have a reservation", ما عنديش حجز (mā ʿandi-sh ḥajz), has the same pattern with the word for "I have".
According to the notes on this app's cards, bāsh followed by a present-tense verb makes the future: the card "I will arrive a little late", باش نوصل مخر شوية (bāsh nūṣel mkhar shwiyya), and the card "How many nights will you stay?", قداش من ليلة باش تقعد؟ (qaddāsh men līla bāsh teqʿod?), are both explained this way.
Two of the app's cards put the question word at the start of the sentence: "Where do I pick up my luggage?", وين ناخذ الباڨاج؟ (wīn nākhodh l-bāgāj?), and "How many nights will you stay?" above. The note on the card "Do you speak English?" says that a question keeps the word order and is shown by rising tone.
Sources
- Zribi, I., Boujelbane, R., Masmoudi, A., Ellouze, M., Belguith, L. and Habash, N. (2014). A Conventional Orthography for Tunisian Arabic. LREC 2014 — Section 4.2; Section 5.2.3 (separated clitics)
Politeness & etiquette
The paper says Tunisian Arabic lost the singular and plural feminine in verbal conjugation. Consistent with this, the note on this app's card "Do you speak English?" says that the second-person present does not mark gender, and the card "You", إنت (ent), says that it addresses one person and is the same for a man or a woman. The card "Please", من فضلك (min faḍlek), notes that the ending -ek is "your" for both genders.
For greetings, this app's cards give the courteous السلام عليكم (s-salām ʿalīkum), whose fixed reply is وعليكم السلام (w-ʿalīkum s-salām), and the everyday one-word hello عسلامة (ʿaslāma). To the question لاباس؟ (lābās?), meaning "How are you?", the card "Fine, thank God" gives the reply لاباس، الحمد لله (lābās, l-ḥamdu lillāh).