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 𐤄𐤋𐤁𐤍𐤅𐤍 horē ha-labōnūn). 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
𐤊 kōf	kʰ	x	lakhūn "it might be"
𐤐 pī	pʰ	f	sifer "zero"
𐤕 tāw	tʰ	θ	lathittīn "she may give"

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.