Linguistic Nuances of Arabic Spoken in the Irbid Region, Jordan

This paper delves into the linguistic characteristics of Arabic spoken in the Irbid region of Northern Jordan, focusing on its unique phonological, morpho-syntactic, and sociolinguistic features. It contrasts Irbid Arabic (Fallahi variety) with Standard Jordanian Arabic (Al-Fusha and Madani), highlighting differences in syllable structure, stress assignment, and the presence of specific consonants and vowels. The study examines the influence of sociolinguistic factors such as gender and education on phonological variations, as well as the impact of language contact with neighboring languages and the influx of Syrian refugees. The analysis draws on existing research to identify key distinctions and provide a comprehensive understanding of Irbid Arabic as a distinct dialect with its own set of linguistic rules and cultural influences.

Running head: LINGUISTIC NUANCES OF ARABIC SPOKEN IN THE IRBID REGION OF
NORTHERN JORDAN
LINGUISTIC NUANCES OF ARABIC SPOKEN IN THE IRBID REGION OF NORTHERN
JORDAN
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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LINGUISTIC NUANCES OF ARABIC SPOKEN IN THE IRBID REGION OF
NORTHERN JORDAN
Table of Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................6
1. Phonological features in Irbid Arabic..........................................................................................6
1.1 Characteristic Differences......................................................................................................6
1.2 Vowels and Consonants .........................................................................................................8
1.3 Syllable Structure..................................................................................................................10
1.4 Stress in Irbid Arabic............................................................................................................10
2. Sociolinguistic impact on phonological variables of Irbid Arabic............................................11
2.1 Phonological variables influenced by sociolinguistic factors...............................................11
2.2 Role of gender in choice of phonological variant ................................................................14
2.3 Role of educational setting in justifying the speech variation .............................................16
3. The morpho-syntactic features in Irbid Arabic – borrowing from neighbouring and globally
predominant languages..................................................................................................................18
Summary and conclusion ..............................................................................................................27
References......................................................................................................................................29

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Abstract
All major languages in the world have minor, categorical counterparts known as dialects.
Although there exists one standardized version of the language, the dialects share features with
that language that are common and some which are distinctly different. This paper talks about
the linguistic dynamic extant amongst the population in the North Jordanian city of Irbid.
Through a phonological, morpho-syntactic analysis of their speech in contrast with the so called
standardized Jordanian, This paper attempts to discover certain feature distinctions in the North
Jordanian speech and more specifically in the Arabic Spoken in the Irbid region.
Keywords
Jordanian Arabic, Irbid Arabic, Fallahi, Al – Fusha, Standardized Arabic, Arabic Phonology,
Morpho-syntax, Sonority sequencing principle.

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LINGUISTIC NUANCES OF ARABIC SPOKEN IN THE IRBID REGION OF
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Introduction
Arabic is a Semitic language, originally spoken by the nomads of Arabia. Owing to the
Islamic expansion that took place in the 7th century, the language too expanded, incorporating
various elements from the nearby countries through language contact, sociocultural influence and
immigration. The classical Arabic has elaborate inflectional and derivational systems, however,
Arab speakers do not make much distinction between the early Islamic Arabic and modern
Arabic (Versteegh 2014). The variety is most commonly known as ‘Al-Arabiyya Al-Fusha’, and
will hereafter be referred to as Al-Fusha. At the end of the 7th century, the Islamic population
migrated and thus the language spread to places in Northern Africa like Syria, Jordan, Lebanon
and Palestine, collectively termed as the Levant. There the languages settled, and gradually over
the period of centuries through contact with the natives settled in the region as well as the
neighbouring nations, it evolved incorporating distinctive features in terms of phonology,
morphology and syntax. Through a gamut of socio-cultural factors, the specific features of the
language currently stand portraying an array of differences and nuances that are specific to the
dialectal versions and some even challenge the existing predominant norms and regulations of
linguistic rules
While in Jordan, the language came in contact with that of the native Jordanians, forming
a pidgin which later morphed into a creole with certain identifiable similarities with Al-Fusha.
Currently, Jordanian Arabic incorporates many regional varieties like the urban Madani, The
rural Fallahi and the Bedouin Badawi (Zuraiq and Zhang 2006). While in Irbid Township,

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Madani is the most commonly used language, Fallahi finds extensive use in the rural context in
the Irbid villages. A big part of places like Ajloun and Jerash also fall under this categorization.
The objective of this paper is to provide an analytical understanding of the Fallahi variety
which would also be termed as Irbid Arabic in some parts of the paper. From phonological,
morpho-syntactic and sociolinguistic aspects, elaboration of the differences and specific
characteristics of the Fallahi variety in contrast with the Al-Fusha and more specifically, the
Madani variety has been attempted.
In order to reach the objectives of the paper, three main studies have been considered,
analysed critically and referred to for instances that signify the various features that help in
answering a certain set of questions. Apart from them, many other studies have also been
extensively considered in order to gain a thorough understanding of specific features. The studies
considered are –
1. “The Syntax-prosody Interface of Jordanian Arabic (Irbid Dialect)” - Abedalaziz
Jaradat (2018)
2. “Foreign Words in Jordanian Arabic among Jordanians Living in Irbid City: The
Impact of Foreign Languages on Jordanian Arabic” – Ibrahim Abushihab (2016)
3. “An experimental Sociolinguistic study of Language Variation in Jordanian Arabic” -
Mohammed Nahar Al-Ali and Heba Isam Mahmoud Arafa (2010)
Other notable studies -
4. “Rural and urban dialects in contact in Jordan: the case of [tʃ] de-affrication in the
rural dialect of Irbid suburbs” - Sharif Alrabab’ah (2018)

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5. Assessing Al-Koura Rural Dialect Archaic Vocabulary Among the Young Generation
- Amer Radwan Humeidat (2018)
6. The linguistic status of the modern Jordanian dialects – Ahmad Khalaf Sakarna
(2005)
The questions that this paper attempts to answer are
A. What are some of the specific characteristics of Irbid Arabic that stand out when we
compare this variety to the standardized Arabic, in terms of specific phonological
nuances?
B. Are there certain socio-cultural factors that inadvertently determine the choice in the use
of certain phonological principles? If yes what are they and how do they materialize?
C. Are there instances in Irbid Arabic that stand out in terms of features provided due to
language contact? If yes, what are the instances?
This paper is divided into three major categories exploring the phonological aspect of the
language, the sociolinguistic aspect of the language and the morpho-syntactic aspect of the
language. These aspects are correlated with one another in the sense that all of these aspects
eventually talk about Irbid Arabic as a variety of Standardized Arabic or Al-Fusha, and how they
differ on certain specific key factors pertaining to the phonology, morpho-syntax and
sociolinguistic parameters of the standard language in contrast with the dialect.

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Discussion
1. Phonological features in Irbid Arabic-
Irbid Arabic has been noted to express instances where certain phonological features of the
dialect stand out as significantly different from Al-Fusha in terms of maintaining relation with
the phonological rules and regulations generally accepted for standardized languages. While
some rules are broken, some are kept intact while the standardized language breaks them.
1.1Characteristic differences
Concerning Jordanian Arabic, the three aforementioned varieties namely Madani, Fallahi and
Badawi are the ones that most inhabitants learn and use on a daily context. The three varieties
pertain to the Urban, Rural and Bedouin languages respectively (Sakarna 2005). Officially, the
language that children learn is Al-Fusha. This is also used for governance, news and
entertainment media. Fallahi as a dialect differs from Al-fusha on various grounds. The most
notable ones are discussed as follows –
One of the components that make Fallahi different from Al-Fusha is the syllable structure of
the language (Broselow 2017). In Fallahi, the complex onsets exist while in Al-Fush they are

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omitted. Even in case of complex codas, it is only possible in the Fallahi variety and not in Al-
Fusha, since in the former, it maintains the Sonority Sequencing Principle (Tamimi & Shboul
2013). Morpho-syntactic markers like case markers in Al-Fusha are subjected either to paradigm
leveling or dropping. The genitive and accusative masculine plural case ‘-i:n’ in Al-Fusha for
example, is converted to the nominative case in Fallahi. An important hypothesis that can be
derived here is that most varieties of Jordanian Arabic are influenced strongly by the
neighbouring languages and not descended directly from Al-Fusha (Vesteegh 1984).
Another important feature of Fallahi that distinguishes it from Madani is the recurrence of
discontinuous negation marker (Lafkioui 2013). An example is given as follows –
“He did not say that”
Fallahi- ma : ga : l - iʃ
Madani- ma : ga : l
Pharyngealization, or the articulation of vowel or consonants in the form of a glottal
constriction, is another feature that distinguishes Fallahi from Madani, as exemplified below
(Alwabari 2013).
“He said”
Madani – g a : l
Fallahi - g ʕ a : ʕ l ʕ
The presence of Alveo-palatal affricate in the place of standard K, is another
distinguishing feature of Fallahi (Sabir & Alsaeed 2014). For example k - [tʃ] - ammal (Finish).

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Besides, in Madani, /g/ is pronounced in the form of a glottal stop but not in Fallahi (Al-
Ani 2014). There are numerous word level, phrasal and structural nuances that are not present in
other dialects of Jordanian Arabic.
Language contact affects Fallahi Arabic to a certain extent (Rouchdy 2013). Rural
women for example, tend to code mix Fallahi with Madani in their dialect, using glottal stops
and avoiding the alveo-palatal variant of k and instead revealing a strong tendency towards using
the marked variant [tʃ], an allophone of /k/ (Alrabab’ah 2018). The growth of Syrian refugees in
the north of Jordan has also influenced the mixing of Syrian words in the Fallahi dialect.
1.2 Vowels and Consonants
Jaradat (2018) has highlighted the consonants and vowels of Fallahi spoken in Irbid in the
consecutive tables as illustrated below –
Consonants
Plosive Nasal Tap Fricative Affricate Approximant Lateral
Labial b m f w
Inter-dental θ ð ðʕ
(Post)alveol
ar
t tʕ d n ɾ s sʕ ʃ z d ʒ l
Palatal j

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LINGUISTIC NUANCES OF ARABIC SPOKEN IN THE IRBID REGION OF
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Velar k g
Uvular x ɣ
Pharyngeal ħ ʕ
Glottal ʔ h
(Jaradat 2018)
Vowels
Front Central Back
Short Long Short Long Short Long
High i i: u u:
Mid e: o:
Low a a:
(Jaradat 2018)
The tables validate the previous assertion of the presence of Velar /g/ in Fallahi along with
the alveo-palatal variant /tʃ/ instead of k.

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Diphthongs in Fallahi are also found to be absent. Therefore a word like ‘saif’ in Al-Fusha is
changed to sound like s e : f in Irbid Arabic (Jaradat 2018).
1.3 Syllabic structure in Irbid Arabic
A feature of Irbid Arabic or more specifically Fallahi is the presence of complex onsets when
they are followed by long vowels (Altakhaineh 2016).
Sba : ħa (CCV : CV) - Swimming
Wla : d (CCV:C) – Children
This also shows that Fallahi tends to maintain the Sonority Sequence Principle, which says
that the nucleus of a syllable structure, the vowel, forms the peak of the syllable sonority and is
preceded as well as succeeded by a cluster of consonants with the coda gradually decreasing the
sonority (Clements 1990). This exists in direct contrast with the Modern Standard Arabic which
possesses structures that violate Sonority Sequence Principle (Selkirk 1984).
1.4 Stress in Irbid Arabic
Stress assignment in Arabic dialects vary in terms of syllable weight and relative position
according to other syllables (Saeigh-Haddad & Hekin-Roitfarb 2014). The way the stress
structure materialises in Fallahi is depicted as follows
Final superheavy syllable is stressed
Taħ. ˈsiin (developing)
If final syllable is not superheavy, then the stress falls on the heavy penultimate

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is. ˈtaf. Sar (ask about)
For a light penultimante, the antepenultimate receives the stress
ˈiʃ. ta. ra (he bought)
Morphological structure of Fallahi affects assignment of stress (Al-Ani 2014). In the
word ‘Maktabeh’ (Library), the stress falls on the antepenultimate because of the absence of a
superheavy ultimate syllable. However on affixation of – hum, the stress shifts to the heavy
penultimate.
ˈmak. ta. be-[h] → mak. ta. ˈbe-[t] - hum
Zuraiq (2005) has also found that Irbid Arabic tends to lengthen the stressed syllables in contrast
with the Al-Fusha counterpart.
2. Sociolinguistic impact on phonological variables of Irbid Arabic
Around 88 km to the north of Amman, lies the Governorate of Irbid. With Al-Fusha being
considered the official urban dialect, the localized dialects are often considered inferior, as
happens with most cases of language standardization (Zuraiq and Zhang 2006). This motivates
the local speakers to adopt more of the urban dialects it the cost of their own (Abd-el-Jawad
1986).
This section of the paper considers the phonological variables /θ/, /dʒ/ and /ð/ since they are the
most subject to change when the local speakers are considered.
2.1Phonological variables influenced by sociolinguistic factors