Re: questions about Arabic

En réponse à MGreenlee@AOL.COM:

> I am working on a conlang which is based on Anglo-Saxon adapted to
> Arabic
> phonology, and I have a few questions for anyone who knows about Arabic
> linguistics.
>
Well, since I'm working on an Arabo-Romance conlang and bothered so much the
list asking information about Arabic, I think I can at least help you a little.
:)

> Firstly, what form was Arabic in when English was in the early Old
> English
> stage? Was it essentially the same as Modern Standard Arabic in
> phonology?
>
Indeed, Modern Standard Arabic is a highly conservative language (being mainly
the written language of the Koran). So except for vocabulary (which had to adapt
to modern life) and pronunciation, it didn't change very much since the time of
Mahomet (except for the irregular verbs like kaana: to be which used to be
*kawana). The phonemic distribution of Modern Standard Arabic was essentially
the same in the time of Old English as now. As for the phonetic value, the
differences mustn't have been very much. My conlang asks for me to have the
phonemic and phonetic charts for 1st century Arabic, and with what I arrived to,
in agreement with other people on the list (especially Basilius), 1st century
Arabic was different from Modern Standard Arabic mainly for the value of the
emphatic consonnants and of the lateral consonnants which hadn't become yet
fricatives. For sure, the vowels were pronounced mostly the same as now, as well
as most of the stops and of the back vowels. The only important change I would
think of is that /Z/ must still have been /g/ at that time.

> Also, what sort of sound changes usually occur from Classical Arabic to
> the
> dialects? I'm planning to use those sound changes for my conlang, but I
> can't
> find much information on Arabic sound change.
>
Be aware that sometimes dialects are more conservative as for phonology than
Modern Standard Arabic. For instance, Egyptian kept until today the /g/ value
for the letter jîm (while MSA has /Z/ for it), and uses a special letter (a jîm
with three dots instead of one) for the /Z/ sound it uses only with loan-words
(like /gara:Z/).

I hope it helps.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr