Arabic in North Africa

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NICE-LADY

Member
ARABIC
I was wondering about the situation of Standard Arabic in North Africa. I mean is it the only written form of Arabic? One of my teachers who recently visited in Tunisia told me that his understanding is differnet. From what he saw there, they write their dialects, as an official type of language. I am not sure he got the picture right, since he's an English native, and knows very few Arabic. I hope you understand what I am trying to say. My main question is, is the vernacular Arabic of North Africa really being written? 'cuz if so, this means a situation where a vernacular is slowly replacing the written, don't you think?
 
    • hi nice lady .. am not quite aware of what it's like there in north africa .. but i can assure u that standard arabic is the most common form of writtin language in the arab world .. so if there r some writings in dialects i guess it's so limited and of course not used in formal fields ..

    hope i was a help for u and plz excuse my english :)
     
    a7War_aL_6arF said:
    hi nice lady .. am not quite aware of what it's like there in north africa .. but i can assure u that standard arabic is the most common form of writtin language in the arab world .. so if there r some writings in dialects i guess it's so limited and of course not used in formal fields ..

    hope i was a help for u and plz excuse my english :)
    Click to expand...
    Thanks very much A7war. The truth is I know of some very serious ideological attempts which called to the replacement of standard Arabic by dialectal ones. So for example, this was the case in Lebanon with Sa'eeid 'Aql who claimed a Phonecian identity. He claims that Lebanese are not Arabs, and their vernacular is not Arabic. The same attempts are also found in Egypt with Salama Musa. In fact, I do not know of such voices in the Gulf, and of-course not in North Africa. The truth is I donot know of any sociolinguist who researched the situation there, except for Palyfreman(hope not to be mistaken) who related to the situation there. If anyone can direct me to any help in the subject, I would really appreciate it. Thnx...
     
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