Arabic, Tunisian Spoken Language

Tunisian Arabic is a Maghrebi dialect of the Arabic language, spoken by some 11 million people. It is usually known by its own speakers as Darija, to distinguish it from Standard Arabic, or as Tunsi, which means Tunisian. It is spoken all over Tunisia, and merges, as part of a dialect continuum, into similar varieties in eastern Algeria and western Libya. Its morphology, syntax, pronunciation and vocabulary are quite different from Standard or Cl... more

Tunisian Arabic is a Maghrebi dialect of the Arabic language, spoken by some 11 million people. It is usually known by its own speakers as Darija, to distinguish it from Standard Arabic, or as Tunsi, which means Tunisian. It is spoken all over Tunisia, and merges, as part of a dialect continuum, into similar varieties in eastern Algeria and western Libya. Its morphology, syntax, pronunciation and vocabulary are quite different from Standard or Classical Arabic. Tunisian Arabic is hardly intelligible to Arabic-speaking Middle Easterners (including Egyptians), but much more readily understood by other Arabic-speaking North Africans such as Algerians, Libyans and Moroccans. Tunisian is also closely related to Maltese, which is not considered to be a dialect of Arabic for sociolinguistic reasons. Almost all literate speakers of Tunisian also understand and can speak some Standard Arabic. Most Tunisians do not view Tunisian Arabic as a language in its own right, but as a corrupted form of... less