Lebanese

Lebanese
𐤃𐤁𐤓𐤉𐤌 𐤋𐤁𐤍𐤉𐤌 dabarīm labonīm
Pronunciation	[/da.ba.ˈriːm la.boː.ˈniːm/]
Created by	Raistas
Setting	Parallel Earth
Native to	Lebanon
Native speakers	4.81 million (2015)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Canaanite Lebanese Lebanese
Early forms	Proto-Semitic Old Phoenician

The Lebanese language (Lebanese: 𐤃𐤁𐤓𐤉𐤌 𐤋𐤁𐤍𐤉𐤌‎‎, dabarīm labōnīm) is a Northwest Semitic language, native to and spoken primarily in Lebanon. Lebanese and Hebrew are the only Canaanite languges still spoken. Modern Lebanese is the official language of the Lebanese Republic, however other languages like Arabic and Western Aramaic have a special status as regional languages with their native speakers speaking Lebanese as a second language. Since a majority of the Lebanese people are bilingual or trilingual, it is not uncommon for them to mix Lebanese, Arabic, English or French into their daily speech.

Lebanese is descended from the Phoenician language originally spoken in the coastal region of Levant called 𐤐𐤕̇ Pūt. Phoenician had almost ceased to be a written language somewhere between 900 and 1400 CE, being slowly replaced by Arabic. With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, it was revived as a literary language, becoming modern standard Lebanese.

Etymology

The modern name "Lebanese" comes from the word 𐤋𐤁𐤍 labōn, meaning "white", apparently from its snow-capped peaks of the Mount Lebanon range (𐤄𐤓𐤉 𐤄̄𐤋𐤁𐤍𐤅𐤍 horē hallabōnūn). The name was introduced in the 19th century, however, some occurences of this name have been found in the 17th century texts, though it is unclear whether the name referred to the Lebanese language or one of its dialects. Before that the language was called Phoenician (𐤐𐤕̇𐤉𐤌 pūttīm) or simply Canaanite (𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍𐤉𐤌 kanaʿanīm). The etymology of these names is uncertain.

History

Lebanese belongs to the Canaanite group, which itself is a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages. Its direct ancestor is called the Phoenician language. In its widest sense, Old Phoenician refers to the spoken language of Northern Levant in a wide range between the 10th century BCE and the turn of the 7th century CE, when it was being replaced by other local languages, mostly by Arabic.

From a traditional linguistic perspective, Phoenician was composed of a variety of dialects. However, the insufficient records of the time make it unclear whether Phoenician formed a separate and united dialect or was a part of a broader language continuum. Punic colonisation spread Phoenician to the western Mediterranean, where the distinct Punic language (𐤃𐤁𐤓𐤉𐤌 𐤐𐤍𐤉𐤌 dabarīm pōnnim) developed. It underwent some phonological and lexical changes as it spread among the North-African peoples. Most notable changes were the loss of laryngeals (/ħ/, /ʕ/, /ʔ/ and /h/) and the coalescence of sibilants into /s/. In the Roman period Punic remained the spoken language of the majority of the African population and other regions nearby. Punic died out, it seems to have survived into the 9th century AD. Today there are a number of common Berber words that descend from it.

Old Phoenician

The Phoenicians were the first state-level society that had an extensive use of the Semitic alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is the oldest verified consonantal alphabet, or abjad. The Phoenician alphabet is generally believed to be at least the partial ancestor of almost all modern alphabets.

In Phoenician writing, unlike that of abjads such as those of Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew and Arabic, even long vowels remained generally unexpressed, regardless of their origin (even if they originated from diphthongs, as in 𐤕𐤁 /beːt/ (modern /beːθ/, "house"). Eventually, writers began to implement systems of marking of vowels by means of matres lectionis. In the 3rd century BC appeared the practice of using final "𐤀" ('ālp) to mark the presence of any final vowel and, occasionally, of "𐤉" (yōd) to mark a final long [iː] and "𐤅" (wāw). for [uː].

Both in Punic and in Old Phoenician the voiceless stop consonants started developing fricative allophones (probably under the influence of Aramaic for Phoenician and the influence of Berber for Punic), and these sounds eventually became phonemic in Phoenician. Those were likely parallel processes since the contact between the two varieties was weak during this period. A simialr process occured in Hebrew, but it involved voiced stops as well.

Middle Age Phoenician

Since the 3rd century AD Western Aramaic has started being spoken in the region. Following the early Muslim conquests of the 7th century and the cultural and linguistic Arabization of the Levant, Arabic gradually started displacing Phoenician (and Aramaic) as the first language of most people. Despite this, Phoenician have survived for a relatively long time in many villages of the Mount Lebanon area. In fact, up until the seventeenth century, travelers to the Lebanese cities still reported a few Phoenician speakers there, even though people in the cities spoke almost exclusively in Arabic. In the 11th century the Crusades were launched in Western Europe to reclaim the former Byzantine Christian territories. These crusader states made a lasting impact on the region as many Phoenicians became Christians and many religion related loanwords entered their language during this period. The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts motivated Phoenician to borrow terminology from from Latin and Greek as well as other languages. Also during this time many Phoenisians started settling on Malta and Greek islands, bringing their language with them. These communities were later assimilated, however they had an impact on the Maltese language.

Modern Lebanese

The name "Phoenician" became being used more and more to refer to the Christian population of Lebanon. Approximately during the 19th century the nationalist movements began in the region and the Phoenician people wanted to establish an independent state and the Phoenician language started being revived. Several attempts were made to standardize the language and in the 20th century when Lebanon became a French territory, the language was first officially recognized as Lebanese. This name quickly received popularity among the nationalists because of its neutrality (Lebanon has already been the most religiously diverse territory in the Middle East, though it became largely a Christian territory during the French rule).

On the 22 of November, 1943 Lebanon declared its independence and the Lebanese language became the official language of the country along with Arabic, however a few years later both Arabic and Western Neo-Aramaic received a regional language status. This lead to a conflict with the Arabic-speaking population and more than a 100 thousand Levantine Arabs fled to other countries. In 1950 a few changes were made in the language that introduced words for new concepts and organised the rules of accurately representing foreign words.

Standard Lebanese (𐤇𐤃𐤔‎ 𐤃𐤁𐤓𐤉𐤌 dabarīm ḥados) was based on the Central Lebanese dialect. However, the speakers of other dialects and different languages introduced some calques, borrowings and phono-semantic matchings of international words. Currently, about 69% of the population speaks Lebanese as a native language, while most of the rest speak it fluently.

Phonology

Old Phoenician had a typical Semitic consonant inventory, with pharyngeals, a series of "emphatic" consonants (possibly ejective, but this is debated), and in early stages also a lateral fricative /ɬ/, and uvular /χ/ and /ʁ/ sounds. /χ/ and /ʁ/ merged into /ħ/ and /ʕ/ respectively while /ɬ/ merged into /ʃ/. Later in some dialects of Old Phoenician /ʃ/ became indistinguishable from /s/ and /p/, /t/ and /k/ became aspirated [pʰ], [tʰ] and [kʰ], which was represented in Ancient Greek and later in Latin texts. These sounds later changed further into fricatives, this process did not involve voiced stops, unlike in Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew.The vowel system underwent a Canaanite shift - the process, partly shared by Biblical Hebrew, but going further in Phoenician (for example: 𐤓𐤔 rūs, "head", Tiberian Hebrew rōš, ראש).

A special reading tradition, called the "religious reading" (𐤒𐤓𐤀𐤕 𐤒𐤃𐤅𐤔𐤕 qirī'oth qadūsoth), has been preserved in liturgical use. In it the emphatic consonants are usually realized as pharyngealized, 𐤒 is a uvular [q], 𐤏 is always pronounced clearly (as [ʕ]), 𐤔 is [ʃ] and voiceless fricatives are often pronounced as aspirated stops in all positions (the latter is not compulsory, however). Nowadays this tradition is slowly dying out, especially among the Catholics, who now always use a regular pronunciation.

Modern Lebanese pronunciation developed from a mixture of the different dialects, generally tending towards the Central Lebanese and the dialect of Bêrūth. According to it, emphatic consonants have shifted to their ordinary (but unaspirated) counterparts, /b/ has an allophone [β] before other consonants, and [ɣ] and [ð] are not present. Most Lebanese native speakers still have a contrastive gemination of approximants and nasals, while the gemination of stops is lost almost everywhere, except for the religious pronunciation. Many speakers, whose first language is Aramaic, have [β] and [ɣ] in their speech, but only some people in rural areas have [ð].

Consonants

		Labial	Dental		Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasals		m	n
Stops	asirated	pʰ	tʰ				kʰ
	unasirated	p	t				k~q			ʔ
	voiced	b	d				g
Fricatives	voiceless	f	θ	s	(ʃ)		x~χ		ħ	h
	voiced	(β)	(z)						ʕ
Affricates	voiceless		t͡s
	voiced		d͡z
Approximants		w	l			j
Trill			r

Voiceless aspirated stops lenite between vowels and before another consonant and become fricatives:

Letter	Plain	Lenited	Example	Pronunciation
𐤊 kōf	kʰ	x	lakhūn "it might be"	[la.ˈxuːn]
𐤐 pī	pʰ	f	sifer "zero"	[ˈsɪ.fer]
𐤕 tāw	tʰ	θ	lathittīn "she may give"	[la.θɪ.ˈtʰiːn]

Lenition is not marked. If the consonant doesn't lenite in a typical position, a line (similar to a macron) is placed above it ( ̄ ). Sometimes a dot ( ̇ ) is placed instead, both are equally correct and the different use is due to artistic preferences.

Native Lebanese words lack the phoneme [ʃ] even though it is represented with a letter "𐤔" (only North Lebanese still keeps the old pronunciation - 𐤔𐤋𐤌 is often pronounced as [ʃo.ˈluːm] or [ʃu.ˈluːm] instead of the standard [sɔ.ˈluːm]). It is the well-known shibboleth, once used to distinguish speakers of other dialects, though nowadays native Lebanese speakers can pronounce this sound easily, in fact many loanwords that contain it are pronounced with [ʃ].

Vowels

All short vowels in modern Lebanese have long counterparts, but their phonetic values do not exactly match up with each other with the short vowels being centralized. The vowel length itself is not distinctive in modern speech and native Lebanese speakers tend to distinguish them by their qualities instead. Two vowels, spelt as "ê" and "ô" vary greatly among different speakers and are not present in most dialects, where they merge into [iː] (or with [ɛː] into a mid [eː]) and [uː] respectively even in the formal speech. In other speakers, who still distinguish them, these phonemes vary from true mid to close-mid vowels.

	Front		Back
	short	long	short	long
Close	ɪ (i)	iː (ī)	ʊ (u)	uː (ū)
Mid		eː (ê)		oː (ô)
Open-mid	ɛ (e)	ɛː (ē)	ɔ (o)	ɔː (ō)
Open	a (a) aː (ā)*

• Historically /a/ could only be a short vowel, because it's long counterpart was lost. In the modern language [aː] appeared from the contraction of [aʕa] after the weakening of /ʕ/ (not indicated in writing), from compensatory lengthening after the loss of [ʔ] in some words (𐤕𐤔̄𐤀 tissā "you take"), new borrowings (𐤊𐤓𐤕 kārt, plural karahūth, "credit card") and in some words (wāw - the name for the letter "𐤅", however the variant wô can often be found in the old texts).

There are 12 vowel phonemes in total. They often alternate with each other when the stress shifts or while declining words. In the North Lebanese dialect "ô" merges into "ū" and (along with the Tyrian dialect) "ê" merges into "ī" (thus words, like 𐤌𐤌 mêm "water", are pronounced [miːm]). In Sidonian, however, "ē" typically merges "ê", and "ō" - into "ô". Thus, in general, only 10 distinct phonemes are present in most dialects. Arabic speakers typically also merge short "e", "o" and "a" into a single phoneme that varies from [æ] to [ɒ] depending on its environment. Many North Lebanese speakers also often merge short "e" and "o" into "i" and "u", but it only occures in a colloquial speech, especially when speaking fast.

Stress

Stress is mobile in Lebanese. There are two frequent patterns of lexical stress: on the last syllable and on the penultimate syllable. Final stress is usually more frequent, than other types. Contrary to the prescribed standard, some words exhibit stress on the antepenultimate syllable or even further back, usually in loanwords, e.g. 𐤐𐤅𐤋𐤉𐤈𐤉𐤒𐤀 (polīṭiqa - "politics") /pʰɔ.ˈliː.tɪ.ka/. The stress pattern is typically predictable, depending on syllable weight (that is, vowel length and whether a syllable ended with a consonant): 𐤔𐤌𐤌 samêm /sa.ˈmeːm/ ("sky"), 𐤀𐤕̄𐤊̄ ettekki /ʔɛ.ˈtʰɛ.kʰɪ/ ("I give to you").

Grammar

Modern Lebanese is partly analytic, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than morphological cases (a few dialects still retain the old accusative case in some words, but generally the accusative form became the same as the nominative one). On the other hand, Lebanese is also a fusional synthetic language: inflection plays a role in the formation of verbs and nouns (displaying non-concatenative morphology) and pronominal suffixes. For example, 𐤀𐤁-𐤍𐤌 abū-nom "father-3stPerson.Plural.Possessive", "their father". Like other Semitic languages, Lebanese morphology (the way words are formed) is based on the consonantal root. The root generally consists of two or three consonants and has a basic meaning, for example, 𐤊𐤕𐤁 k-t-b has the meaning of "writing". This is then modified by the addition of vowels and other consonants to create different nuances of the basic meaning:

• 𐤊𐤕𐤁𐤕 kithōbith, handwriting, script;
• 𐤊𐤕𐤁𐤉𐤌 kathōbīm, inscriptions;
• 𐤊𐤅𐤕𐤁 kūthīb, writer;
• 𐤊𐤕𐤁𐤕 kathavti, I wrote;
• 𐤀𐤊𐤕𐤁 'ekhtab, I shall write;
• 𐤋𐤊𐤕𐤁 'likhtōb, he shall write;
• 𐤉𐤊𐤕𐤁𐤀 'yikhtuba, may he write.

Nouns and adjectives

Lebanese nouns and adjectives are inflected to show gender, number, case and state, though in a common speech cases (of which modern Lebanese preserves only two: nominative and genitive) are often dropped. Old Phoenician also had a third case for nouns in singular number - the accusative, but it has already been dropped in Phoenician.

There are two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. The feminine gender is often marked by the ending 𐤕- -th, while nouns ending in other letters are masculine, with an exception of a few "defective" nouns, like 𐤎𐤌𐤋𐤕 simloth "statue". There is a very strong tendency toward natural gender for nouns referring to people and animals. Such nouns generally come in pairs, one masculine and one feminine; for example, 𐤀𐤔 is means "man" and 𐤀𐤔𐤕 ist means "woman", but when discussing mixed-sex groups, the plural of the masculine noun is used.

Nouns can be either singular or plural, but an additional dual number exists for some nouns that usually come in pairs. The dual number gradually disappeared in Old Phoenician over time and is still present as relics in some dialects. In the Standard it is treated as a form of plural. Masculine nouns generally form their plural by adding the suffix 𐤉𐤌- -īm to the stem (𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤌 - 𐤀𐤇 aḥ - aḥīm, "brother" - "brothers"). the two-syllable masculine nouns accented on the penultimate syllable also undergo a vowel change in the plural: (𐤇𐤃𐤓𐤉𐤌 - 𐤇𐤃𐤓 ḥíder - ḥadarīm, "room" - "rooms", the stress also shifts to the last syllable). Feminine nouns ending in -oth simply change the ending to -ūth (with a few exceptions: 𐤔𐤍𐤅𐤕 - 𐤍̄𐤕 sat - sanūth, "year" - "years"). Nouns ending in -t have -hūth in their plural: 𐤃𐤋𐤄𐤅𐤕 - 𐤃𐤋𐤕 delt - dalahūth, "door" - "doors". For nouns that end in -īth/-ē, the plural ending is -iyūth: 𐤔𐤃𐤉𐤅𐤕 - 𐤔𐤃𐤄 sadē - sadiyūth, "field" - "fields"). A few nouns show irregular plural: 𐤌𐤋𐤊𐤉𐤅𐤕 - 𐤌𐤋𐤊𐤕 milkoth - milkiyūth, "queen" - "queens", 𐤀𐤋𐤌 ilīm "god, goddess" has two plurals, both irregular: 𐤀𐤋𐤍𐤉𐤌 allōnīm, "gods" and 𐤀𐤋𐤍𐤅𐤕 allōnūth, "goddesses". Nouns can also attach possessive suffixes in order to indicate possession. These suffixes are represented below:

singular
"brother"	isolated	1st sg.	2st sg.		3st sg.		1st sg.	2st sg.		3st sg.
		common	masculine	feminine	masculine	feminine	common	masculine	feminine	masculine	feminine
absolute	𐤀𐤇 aḥ	𐤀𐤇𐤉 aḥī	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤊 aḥūkha	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤊𐤉 aḥūkhī	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤉𐤀 aḥūyo	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤉𐤀 aḥūya	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤍 aḥūn	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤊𐤌 aḥūkhom	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤊𐤉𐤌 aḥūkhīm	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤍𐤌 aḥūnom	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤍𐤌 aḥūnam
construct	𐤀𐤇𐤅 aḥū-	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤉 aḥūyī
genitive	𐤀𐤇𐤉 aḥī	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤀 aḥīya			𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤅 aḥīw	𐤀𐤇𐤉 aḥi
plural
absolute	𐤀𐤇𐤌 aḥīm	𐤀𐤇𐤉 aḥay	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤊 aḥêkha	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤊𐤉 aḥêkhī	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤉𐤀 aḥêyo	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤉𐤀 aḥêya	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤍 aḥên	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤊𐤌 aḥêkhom	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤊𐤉𐤌 aḥêkhīm	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤍𐤌 aḥênom	𐤀𐤇𐤉𐤍𐤌 aḥênam
construct	𐤀𐤇𐤅 aḥê-
genitive	𐤀𐤇𐤅𐤌 aḥêm

Lebanese nouns and adjectives can exist in one of two states. To a certain extent, these states correspond to the role of cases in the Indo-European languages:

• The absolute state is the basic form of a noun. It expresses indefiniteness, comparable to the English indefinite article "a(n)" (for example, 𐤎𐤐𐤓 sīfer, "a book"), and can be used in most syntactic roles. To nouns in this state (and also to attributive adjectives) a definite article can be added, which is traditionally considered to be an actual part of the definite noun. However, in modern use, the definite article is taken as a clitic, attaching to a noun. For example, the term for school is 𐤁𐤕־𐤎𐤐𐤓‎ (bês-sīfer, “house-of book”); “the school” is 𐤄𐤁̄𐤕־𐤎𐤐𐤓 (heb-bês-sīfer, “the-house-of-book”). The article triggers gemination (in this example /b/ is techically geminated, but the word is actually pronounced [hɛ.beːs.ˈsiː.fɛr]. Here the assimilation of the final "th" into /s/ occurs).
• The construct state is a form of the noun used to make possessive constructions (for example, 𐤌𐤒𐤌 𐤔𐤉𐤁𐤕𐤉 muqōm sivti, "the place of his residing", where muqōm is the construct state of the noun maqōm. In dialects muqōm sivto can often be heard due to the absence of the genitive case in them). In the masculine singular the form of the construct is often the same as the absolute, but it may undergo vowel reduction (usually into /u/). Unlike a genitive case (often dropped entirely), which marks the possessor, the construct state is marked on the possessed. This is mainly due to Lebanese word order: possessed[const.] possessor[abs./gen.] are treated as a speech unit, with the first unit (possessed) employing the construct state to link it to the following word.

Adjectives agree with their nouns in number and gender. Predicative adjectives are in the absolute state regardless of the state of their noun. Below is an example of a typical adjectival declension:

"good"	masc. sg.	fem. sg.	masc. pl.	fem. pl.
absolute	𐤍𐤏𐤉𐤌 naˁīm	𐤍𐤏𐤉𐤌𐤕 naˁīmoth	𐤍𐤏𐤉𐤌𐤉𐤌 naˁīmīm	𐤍𐤏𐤉𐤌𐤅𐤕 naˁīmūth
construct		𐤍𐤏𐤉𐤌𐤕 naˁīmat(h)-	𐤍𐤏𐤉𐤌𐤉 naˁīmê-
"happy"	masc. sg.	fem. sg.	masc. pl.	fem. pl.
absolute	𐤁𐤓𐤊 barīkh	𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤕 birīkhoth	𐤍𐤏𐤉𐤌𐤉𐤌 naˁīmīm	𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤅𐤕 birīkhūth
construct	𐤁𐤓𐤊 birīkh-	𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤕 birīkhat(h)-	𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤉 birīkhê-