Chadian Arabic
Shuwa
لهجة تشادية
Native to	Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria[1]
Speakers	L1: 2.3 million (2005–2023)[1] L2: 70,000 (2013)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic African Arabic Chadian Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	shu
Glottolog	chad1249
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Chadian Arabic (Arabic: لهجة تشادية), also known as Shuwa Arabic,^[a] Western Sudanic Arabic, or West Sudanic Arabic (WSA),^[2] is a variety of Arabic and the first language of 1.6 million people,^[3] both town dwellers and nomadic cattle herders. Most of its speakers live in central and southern Chad. Its range is an east-to-west oval in the Sahel. Nearly all of this territory is within Chad and Sudan. It is also spoken elsewhere in the vicinity of Lake Chad in the countries of Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. Finally, it is spoken in slivers of the Central African Republic. In addition, this language serves as a lingua franca in much of the region. In most of its range, it is one of several local languages and often not among the major ones.

Naming and classification

This language does not have a native name shared by all its speakers, beyond "Arabic". It arose as the native language of nomadic cattle herders (baggāra, Standard Arabic baqqāra بَقَّارَة, means 'cattlemen', from baqar^[4]).

In 1913, a French colonial administrator in Chad, Henri Carbou, wrote a grammar of the local dialect of the Ouaddaï highlands, a region of eastern Chad on the border with Sudan.^[5] In 1920, a British colonial administrator in Nigeria, Gordon James Lethem, wrote a grammar of the Borno dialect, in which he noted that the same language was spoken in Kanem (in western Chad) and Ouaddaï (in eastern Chad).^[6] Since its publication,^[7] this language has become widely cited academically as "Shuwa Arabic"; however, the term "Shuwa" was in use only among non-Arab people in Borno State, Nigeria. Around 2000, the term "Western Sudanic Arabic" was proposed by a specialist in the language, Jonathan Owens.^[8] The geographical sense of "Sudanic" invoked by Owens is not the modern country of Sudan, but the Sahel in general, a region dubbed bilad al-sudan, 'the land of the blacks', by Arabs as far back as the medieval era. In the era of British colonialism in Africa, colonial administrators too used "the Sudan" to mean the entire Sahel.

Based on population movements and shared genealogical histories, Sudanic and Egyptian varieties of Arabic have traditionally been classified into a larger Egypto-Sudanic grouping. However, alternative analysis of linguistic features supports the general independence of Sudanic Arabic varieties from Egyptian Arabic.^[9]

Distribution and varieties

Dialects

Two clear subdialects of Western Sudanic Arabic are discernable:^[10]

• Bagirmi Arabic - spoken from eastern Nigeria to Chad in the southern fringe of the area. Characterized by syllable final stress in forms such as katáb “he wrote”
• Urban varieties of Chad - spoken in Ndjamena and Abbeche, and characterized by simplification tendencies.

Speakers by country

Chad

The majority of speakers live in southern Chad between 10 and 14 degrees north latitude. In Chad, it is the local language of the national capital, N'Djamena, and its range encompasses such other major cities as Abéché, Am Timan, and Mao. It is the native language of 12% of Chadians. Chadian Arabic's associated lingua franca^[11] is widely spoken in Chad, so that Chadian Arabic and its lingua franca combined are spoken by somewhere between 40% and 60% of the Chadian population.^[12][13]

Sudan

In Sudan, it is spoken in the southwest, in southern Kordofan and southern Darfur, but excluding the cities of al-Ubayyid and al-Fashir.

Nigeria

In Nigeria, it spoken by 10% of the population of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno,^[14] and by at least 100,000 villagers elsewhere in Borno.

Other

Its range in other African countries includes a sliver of the Central African Republic, the northern half of its Vakaga Prefecture, which is adjacent to Chad and Sudan; a sliver of South Sudan at its border with Sudan; and the environs of Lake Chad spanning three other countries, namely part of Nigeria's (Borno State), Cameroon's Far North Region, and in the Diffa Department of Niger's Diffa Region. The number of speakers in Niger is estimated to be 150,000 people.

History

How this Arabic language arose is unknown. In 1994, Braukämper proposed that it arose in Chad starting in 1635 by the fusion of a population of Arabic speakers with a population of Fulani nomads.^{[15] [4]} (The Fulani are a people, or group of peoples, who originate at or near the Atlantic coast but have expanded into most of the Sahel over centuries.)

During the colonial era, a form of pidgin Arabic known as Turku^[16] was used as a lingua franca. There are still Arabic pidgins in Chad today, but since they have not been described, it is not known if they descend from Turku.^[17]

Phonology

Notes:

• Old Arabic */ġ/ > /q/, /x/
• Old Arabic */ḥ/ > /h/
• Old Arabic */ʿ/ > /ʾ/ ([ʔ])
• Old Arabic */ṭ/ > /ɗ/ ([ɗˤ])

It is characterized by the loss of the pharyngeals [ħ] and [ʕ], the interdental fricatives [ð], [θ] and [ðˤ], and diphthongs.^[20][21] But it also has /lˤ/, /rˤ/ and /mˤ/ as extra phonemic emphatics. Some examples of minimal pairs for such emphatics are /ɡallab/ "he galloped", /ɡalˤlˤab/ "he got angry"; /karra/ "he tore", /karˤrˤa/ "he dragged"; /amm/ "uncle", /amˤmˤ/ "mother".^[20] In addition, Nigerian Arabic has the feature of inserting an /a/ after gutturals (ʔ,h,x,q).^[20]

Grammar

A notable feature is the change of Standard Arabic Form V from tafaʕʕal(a) to alfaʕʕal; for example, the word taʔallam(a) becomes alʔallam. The first person singular perfect tense of verbs is different from its formation in other Arabic dialects in that it does not have a final t. Thus, the first person singular of the verb katab is katáb, with stress on the second syllable of the word, whereas the third-person singular is kátab, with stress on the first syllable.^[20]

Vocabulary

The following is a sample vocabulary:

The two meanings of īd stem from formerly different words: *ʔīd "hand" < Classical yad vs. *ʕīd "festival" < Classical ʕīd.

In Classical Arabic, chicken (singular) is dajaja, and collectively dajaj.