Chadian Arabic · Lablypedia

Naming and classification

This language does not have a native name shared by all its speakers, beyond "Arabic". It arose as the native language of nomadic cattle herders (baggāra, Standard Arabic baqqāra بَقَّارَة, means 'cattlemen', from baqar).

In 1913, a French colonial administrator in Chad, Henri Carbou, wrote a grammar of the local dialect of the Ouaddaï highlands, a region of eastern Chad on the border with Sudan. In 1920, a British colonial administrator in Nigeria, Gordon Lethem, wrote a grammar of the Borno dialect, in which he noted that the same language was spoken in Kanem (in western Chad) and Ouaddaï (in eastern Chad). Since its publication, this language has become widely cited academically as "Shuwa Arabic"; however, the term "Shuwa" was in use only among non-Arab people in Borno State, Nigeria. Around 2000, the academic term "Western Sudanic Arabic" was proposed by a specialist in the language, Jonathan Owens. The geographical sense of "Sudanic" invoked by Owens is not the modern country of Sudan, but the Sahel in general, the West African region Arabs dubbed Bilad al-Sudan "the Land of the Blacks" as far back as the medieval era. In the era of British colonialism in Africa, colonial administrators too used "the Sudan" to mean the entire Sahel.

Based on population movements and shared genealogical histories, Sudanic and Egyptian varieties of Arabic have traditionally been classified into a larger Egypto-Sudanic grouping. However, alternative analysis of linguistic features supports the general independence of Sudanic Arabic varieties from Egyptian Arabic.

5 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

Distribution and varieties

Dialects

Two clear subdialects of Western Sudanic Arabic are discernable:

Bagirmi Arabic – spoken from eastern Nigeria to Chad in the southern fringe of the area. Characterized by syllable final stress in forms such as katáb 'he wrote'.
Urban varieties of Chad – spoken in Ndjamena and Abbeche, and characterized by simplification tendencies.

Speakers by country

Chad

The majority of speakers live in southern Chad between 10 and 14 degrees north latitude. In Chad, it is the local language of the national capital, N'Djamena, and its range encompasses such other major cities as Abéché, Am Timan, and Mao. It is the native language of 12% of Chadians. Chadian Arabic's associated lingua franca is widely spoken in Chad, so that Chadian Arabic and its lingua franca combined are spoken by somewhere between 40% and 60% of the Chadian population.

Sudan

In Sudan, it is spoken in the southwest, in southern Kordofan and southern Darfur, but excluding the cities of al-Ubayyid and al-Fashir.

Nigeria

In Nigeria, it spoken by 10% of the population of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, and by residents elsewhere in Borno State. It is locally known as Shuwa Arabic. As of 2024, a total of 265,000 Chadian Arabic speakers are found in Nigeria.

Other

Its range in other African countries includes a sliver of the Central African Republic, the northern half of its Vakaga Prefecture, which is adjacent to Chad and Sudan; a sliver of South Sudan at its border with Sudan; and the environs of Lake Chad spanning three other countries, namely part of Nigeria's (Borno State), Cameroon's Far North Region, and in the Diffa Department of Niger's Diffa Region. The number of speakers in Niger is estimated to be 12,900 people.

History

How this Arabic language arose is unknown. In 1994, Braukämper proposed that it arose in Chad starting in 1635 by the fusion of a population of Arabic speakers with a population of Fulani nomads.

During the colonial era, a form of pidgin Arabic known as Turku was used as a lingua franca. There are still Arabic pidgins in Chad today, such as Bongor Arabic, however, most of them have not been described, so it is not known if they descend from Turku.

Phonology

Notes:

Old Arabic * > ,
Old Arabic * >
Old Arabic * >
Old Arabic * > (ɗˤ)

It is characterized by the loss of the pharyngeals and , the interdental fricatives , and , and diphthongs. But it also has , and as extra phonemic emphatics. Some examples of minimal pairs for such emphatics are "he galloped", "he got angry"; "he tore", "he dragged"; "uncle", "mother". In addition, Nigerian Arabic has the feature of inserting an after gutturals ().

Grammar

A notable feature is the change of Standard Arabic Form V from tafaʕʕal(a) to alfaʕʕal; for example, the word taʔallam(a) becomes alʔallam. The first person singular perfect tense of verbs is different from its formation in other Arabic dialects in that it does not have a final t. Thus, the first person singular of the verb katab is katáb, with stress on the second syllable of the word, whereas the third-person singular is kátab, with stress on the first syllable.

Vocabulary

The following is a sample vocabulary: