Central Asian Arabic

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Central Asian Arabic
Jugari Arabic
Native toAfghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan
Speakers(16,000 cited 1992–2023)[1]
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
abh – Tajiki Arabic
auz – Uzbeki Arabic
Glottologcent2410
Enclaves in Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan where Central Asian Arabic is still spoken. In brackets, after the name of each region, is the number of villages with Arabic-speaking inhabitants.

Central Asian Arabic or Jugari Arabic (in Arabic: العربية الآسيوية الوسطى) refers to a set of four closely-related

Arabic currently facing extinction and spoken predominantly by Arab communities living in portions of Central Asia. These varieties are Bactrian (or Bakhtiari) Arabic, Bukhara (or Buxara) Arabic,[2] Qashqa Darya (or Kashkadarya) Arabic,[3] and Khorasani Arabic
.

The Central Asian Arabic varieties are markedly different from all other

Arabic language varieties, especially in their syntax and to a lesser extent, morphology, which have been heavily influenced by the surrounding Western Iranian and Turkic languages.[2][3] They are, however, relatively conservative in their lexicon and phonology.[2] While they bear certain similarities with North Mesopotamian Arabic
, they constitute an independent linguistic branch of Arabic, the Central Asian family.

Along with

monolinguals remaining. Many, if not most self-identified ethnic Arabs in these communities do not speak the language at a native level, and report other languages as their mother tongues.[4]

These varieties are estimated to be spoken by an estimated 6,000 people total in Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, but declining in number; in all four of thrse countries, Arabic is not an official language.[4]

History

It was once spoken among

Dari and Uzbek.[6]

With the establishment of the

1959 census, only 34% of Soviet Arabs, mostly elderly, spoke their language at a native level. Others reported Uzbek or Tajik
as their mother tongue.

Varieties

Giorgi Tsereteli and Isaak Natanovich Vinnikov were responsible for the first academic studies of Central Asian Arabic, which is heavily influenced by the local languages in phonetics, vocabulary and syntax.

The Jugari Arabic comprises four varieties: Bakhtiari Arabic (also called Bactrian Arabic), Bukhara Arabic (also called Buxara Arabic), Kashkadarya Arabic and Khorasani Arabic. The first three have their speakers spread across Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Khorasani came to be considered by scholars as part of the Central Asian Arabic dialect family only recently.

It is reported to be spoken in 5 villages of

Khorasan, Iran) as part of the Central Asian Arabic family, and found that it was closely related to Qashqadaryavi.[11]

Numbers

  • wahid > fad
  • ithnaân > isnen
  • thalatha > salaâs
  • arba’a > orba’

See also

References

  1. ^ Tajiki Arabic at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Uzbeki Arabic at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ .
  3. ^ .
  4. ^ .
  5. ^ Prof. Dr. Aydın Usta, Türkler ve İslamiyet, Yeditepe Yayınevi, 1. Baskı, March 2020, s. 56-57 (using the Turkish translation of el-Kamil fi't-Tarih by Ibn Al-Athir as a source)
  6. ^ Peter R. Blood, ed. Afghanistan: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 2001
  7. ^ (in Russian) Ethnic Minorities of Uzbekistan: Arabs Archived February 5, 2007, at the Wayback Machine by Olga Kobzeva
  8. ^ (in Russian) Ethnic Minorities of Tajikistan: Arabs Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine
  9. .
  10. .
  11. ^ Ulrich Seeger, On the Relationship of the Central Asian Arabic Dialects (translated from German to English by Sarah Dickins)

Bibliography

  • Versteegh, Kees. The Arabic Language. — Edinburgh University Press, 2014. — 410 p. — .