Impuesto predial

Out of the 53 borrowings, there were 29 (55%) non-cognate instances in which the speakers replaced their dialectal words with MSA equivalents that do not share the

same lexical root. Some of these were considered MSA because they are used in elevated speech such as the verb bastaḳdim “I use” in example (3) above which according to Hinds & Badawi - in their dictionary of Egyptian Arabic - is used mainly in formal and elevated speech rather than the more common Egyptian equivalent bastaʕmil (Hinds and Badawi, 1986). This was also the only example observed in this study of the hybridisation mechanism of using a dialectal affix with an MSA verb, as the initial b in the word bastaḳdim is used only in dialectal present tense and not in MSA. Table 4.3 below presents all the non-cognate borrowings, the equivalents in the speakers’ dialects, their English meanings and the topics in which they occurred.

Table 4.3: The borrowed MSA non-cognates, their dialectal equivalents and the topics in which they occurred

The participant Their MSA borrowing The dialectal equivalent Meaning in English The topic

1 SdiN1 nanḓur ʔilā nšūf we see/look at dialectal differences 2 Egy1 b-astaḳdim b-astaʕmil I use topic of PhD study

3 Lib1 baʕḍ šwayya some dialectal differences

4 Lib2 alʔān tawwa now place of study

5 ʔaṣbaḥat gaʕadit became how they like Leeds

6 bāhiḓat al-

maṣārīf

ġālya expensive life in London

7 lā tuqfal ma-tsakkir-š does not close holiday story 8 Alg1 ʔumm-i yammāt-i my mother introducing oneself

9 ʔaḏhab ʔarūḥ I go plans for the day

10 yaštaġil yaḳdim He works A friend’s work

11 yaḏhab yrūḥ He goes

The participant Their MSA borrowing The dialectal equivalent Meaning in English The topic

13 Lib3 alʔān tawwa now current colleagues

14 Lib4 yarawna yšūfu they see Topic of MA study

15 ṣaḥn ṣūniyya plate recipe

16 faqaṭ bass only holiday story

17 wajadna lagēna we found weekly shopping

18 Tns1 alʔān tawwa now (Throughout the

conversation) 19 liʔann ʕala ḳāṭir because tickets for holiday

20 kaḏālik zāda also Other Omani

students in Leeds

21 kaṯīr barša many

22 yaʕmal yaḳdim he works

23 faqaṭ bark only (Throughout the

conversation)

24 intaqalt jīt came Introduction

25 itnaqalt durt went/moved places to visit in UK 26 laysa ma-huwwā-ši he is not Perception of Jesus

in Islam

27 Omn1 faqaṭ bass only Different faith

perceptions

28 Irq1 alʔān hassa now A new Imam

29 Syr1 muftiqda mištāʔa missing Ramadan rituals

The analysis of the non-cognates presented in table 4.3 showed that 14 (48%) out of their total of 29 instances were MSA words that replaced dialectal words that can be considered very localised to a certain Arabic speaking community and not

very common in other Arabic speaking communities. These 14 localised words included 13 from the North African dialects of Algeria, Tunisia and Libya and 1 word from the Iraqi dialect which is presented in example (6) below. In this Example, Irq1 was talking to Syr1 about the local mosque and Ramadan rituals when she used the MSA word alʔān “now” instead of the equivalent Iraqi word hassa.

(6) Irq1: fīh ʕid-na imām lībī w-alʔān ʔimām ʕrāqi There is at-us Imam Libyan and-now Imam Iraqi ‘We have a Libyan Imam and now an Iraqi Imam’

Example (7) shows an instance from the conversation with Omn1 talking about other Omani people coming to study in Leeds when Tns1 used the MSA word kaḏālik “also” instead of the Tunisian equivalent zāda which is not commonly used in the more eastern Arabic dialects.

(7) Tns1: kan ʕan-na ʔaḳḳ yaʕmal f-id-dukturāh kaḏālik Was at-us brother does/works in-the-doctorate also ‘We had a brother working on the doctorate also’

One observable feature in all the MSA cognate and non-cognate borrowings – which has been also observed in previous studies, was the total absence of the use of the MSA case endings - al-ʔiʕrāb - which according to the prescriptive resources on MSA, are to be used at the end of most nouns, verbs and adjectives16. This can be considered one of the dialectal influences on the MSA borrowings. There were 4 other instances in which the speakers made an MSA borrowing but it was

influenced phonologically or morphologically by the dialects. The first was the hybridisation instance mentioned above in example (1) of the use of the dialectal

16 Not using the case endings has become more accepted by some linguists in the last few decades and is not considered an ungrammatical way of speaking MSA in certain settings (Brustad et al., 2004)(Brustad et al., 2004).

prefix b with the MSA verb (b-astaḳdim). The following three examples show how the MSA borrowings had dialectal influence on them which resulted in words that cannot be totally classified as either MSA or dialect. Example (8) was from the conversation between Syr1 and Irq1 talking about the Ramadan religious rituals that they miss in the UK. Syr1 replaced the Syrian dialectal word mištāʔa “missing” with the MSA equivalent muftaqida but with a couple of changes in the middle vowels giving muftiqda. With the dropping of a vowel, the syllables of the word decreased from four to three. The deletion of a middle vowel and the decrease of the number of syllables is a dialectal feature (Versteegh, 1997). The word muftiqda is not considered a correct MSA adjective, neither is it commonly used in the Syrian dialect of Damascus.

(8) Syr1: fa-ʔana muftiqda ṭabaʕan ha-šši. mā-ʕin-na hōn So-I missing of course this-thing. not-at-us here

‘So I am missing this thing of course. We do not have it here’

Example (9) was from the conversation between Tns1 and Omn1 talking about the move to a city in the UK when Tns1 replaced the Tunisian verb durt “went” with an MSA equivalent but with a dialectal effect itnaqalt which would not be considered as a correct MSA conjugation of the verb. The use of the initial syllable it as in

itnaqalt is a dialectal feature while the correct equivalent of this verb in MSA

would be intaqalt.

(9) Tns1: ʔitnaqalt inta li-hnāk? went/moved you to-there? ‘Did you go/move there?’

Example (10) is the last example here to show how the speaker borrowed

phonological elements from MSA into a dialectal word instead of using the correct MSA equivalent. This was from the conversation between SdiH3 and Alg2 talking about living in a different culture when Alg2 borrowed the hamza sound from MSA in the word marʔa “woman” instead of the Algerian equivalent mara. However, in

MSA the word “woman” has two forms; the definite form is al-marʔa while the indefinite is ʔimraʔa. Therefore a correct MSA phrase here would be ka-ʔimraʔa “as a woman” and not ka-marʔa.

(10) Alg2: inti ka-marʔa muslima w-ʕarabiyya…. You as-woman Muslim and-Arab…. ‘You as a Muslim and an Arab woman…’

Table 4.4 below summarises the observed linguistic features of the cognates and the non-cognates borrowed from MSA and gives the number and the percentage of each feature. It shows that the use of the hamza sound in the cognates that were borrowed from MSA makes the highest number of instances which is 9 (17% of the total of borrowings and 38% of the cognate borrowings). The instances of replacing localised words were observed to make 27% of the total of the MSA borrowings and 48% of the non-cognate borrowings.

Table 4.4: The linguistic features of the cognates and non-cognates borrowed from MSA The type of MSA borrowing Number and Percentage

Their linguistic features Number and percentage Cognates 24 (45%) The use of the qaaf sound 5 (9%)

The use of hamza 9 (17%)

Cognates with multiple phonological differences

5 (9%) Complex cognates with multiple

morpho-phonological differences

5 (9%)

Non-cognates 29 (55%) Localised lexis 14 (27%)

non-localised lexis 15 (28%)