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Why Moroccan Arabic is unintelligible to Gulf speakers? Mariya Chakir. Introduction: Research area. Dialectology. Lexical & phonological. . Aim/justification. Arabs from the Gulf do not understand Moroccan Arabic.
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Why Moroccan Arabic is unintelligible to Gulf speakers?Mariya Chakir
Introduction: Research area • Dialectology. • Lexical & phonological.
Aim/justification • Arabs from the Gulf do not understand Moroccan Arabic. • Studies have been conducted on North African Arabic and Middle Easter Arabic on the pronunciation level. • I want to examine both the lexicon and pronunciation of vowels in Moroccan Arabic and figure out what cause the unintelligibility of Moroccan Arabic.
References • A. Alioua. De la corrélation entre la durée et l’aperture des voyelles brèves en arabe littéral. Travaux de l’Institut de Phonétique de Strasbourg 22 : 1-8, 1992. • Cohen, David 1973. Variante, variétés dialectales et contacts linguistiques en domaine arabe. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique 68 :1.215-248 • ____, & Dominique Caubet.2000-200 “Un questionnaire différentiel pour la dialectologie arabe”. Oriente Moderno 19(80). 1-23 • M. Embarki. Contraste phonémique vs identité acoustique ? L’oxymoron des voyelles en arabe marocain. Revue Parole, 2004. • S. Ghazali. Du statut des voyelles en arabe. InAnalyse Théorie, 2/3, Numéro spécial « Etudes Arabes », Paris XIII, pages 199-219, 1979.
Research questions? • Is Moroccan Arabic unintelligible to people from the Gulf states because of its lexicon, or because of its pronunciation, or because of both? • If Moroccans replace the foreign words in their language by words from the Modern standard Arabic when they speak to Arabs from the Gulf are they going to be understood? • If Moroccans pronounce the short vowels and do not shorten the long vowels are they going to be understood to people from the Gulf?
Methodology • The participants are 10 male and 10 female from the Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab of Emirates, and Oman). They are students at Ohio University. • Materials/Instruments: • A questionnaire • I will record myself speaking Moroccan Arabic and ask them to listen to the record tape and transcribe my speech.
Type of data and analaysis • To test the lexicon, I will record myself saying sentences in Moroccan Arabic and ask the participant to transcribe what I am saying . • Next, I will record myself saying the same sentences but I will change the foreign words in my sentences by words from Modern standard Arabic and ask the participants to transcribe my speech. • To test the pronunciation, I will make the participants listen to a longer stretches of discourse and ask them to transcribe what is said . • Next, I will record myself speaking about my daily life but I will articulate vowels as they should be articulated in Standard Arabic and ask participants to transcribe what I am saying. • In the last stage, I will have a control group from other Arabic speaking countries.
Limitation of the study • The number of participants is small. • Arabic speakers from the Gulf or the Middle East may have an attitude towards the Moroccan Arabic. • There may be other reasons that make Moroccan Arabic not intelligible.
What do I expect to find? • I think that both pronunciation and vocabulary make Moroccan Arabic unintelligible . • I assume that if people from Morocco articulate vowels like in standard Arabic and if they borrow words from Standard Arabic they will be understood.