South Levantine Arabic (Arabic: اللهجة الشامية الجنوبية) was defined in the ISO 639-3 international standard for language codes as a distinct Arabic variety, under the ajp code. It was reported by Ethnologue as being spoken in the Southern Levant: Palestinian Territories (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip), Israel, and most of Jordan (in the ‘Ajlun, Al Balqa’, Al Karak, Al Mafraq, ‘Amman, Irbid, Jarash, and Madaba governorates).[1][2]

In 2023, South Levantine Arabic and North Levantine Arabic were merged into a single Levantine Arabic,[3] based on the high mutual intelligibility between Arabic varieties spoken by sedentary populations across the Levant and the lack of clear distinctions between variants along national borders.[4]

References

  1. ^ Jordan and Syria in Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2022). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (25th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
  2. ^ South Levantine Arabic at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  3. ^ "Glottolog 4.8 - South Levantine Arabic". glottolog.org. Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  4. ^ "Request for Change to ISO 639-3 Language Code" (PDF). iso639-3.sil.org.
Levantine Arabic test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Levantine Arabic
For a list of words relating to South Levantine Arabic, see the South Levantine Arabic language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Categories