As we embark on this modest explanation of the Lebanese language, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

Arabic is a literary language. While it is uniformly used throughout the Arabic-speaking world for written documents and literature, most populations do not actually use it in daily spoken language – they use local languages that can differ wildly from each other (and from the written Arabic) not only in vocabulary and grammar, but also in pronunciation. These languages have a history of their own, rooted in local languages that were in use before Arabic came about in those areas. They are often filled with words borrowed from the languages of people who dominated them for a while, which is not the case of Arabic as it has been preserved as purely as possible since the establishment of its final form. (1)

I know that some people, upon reading the above paragraph, will accuse me of denying that the languages of the so-called Arab World are dialects of Arabic. These people have a superficial knowledge of the nature of language. My position is that of the world's linguists, as expressed by the following statement:

"One should not think that a dialect is a "badly spoken" language: it is indeed a full-fledged language, with a specific grammar and lexicon. If however it is said today that Italian, Spanish or French are languages, it is not because they are richer, handsomer or better structured than Leonese, Napolitan or Picard, but because they have acquired more prestige by becoming literary and official languages for constituted States. The idioms that were the starting points of these three languages, respectively the Tuscan dialect of Florence, the Castillan dialect and the dialect of the Ile-de-France, were themselves, originally, but dialects spoken on a reduced geographical area."
Henriette Walter, in L'aventure des langues en Occident, p132.

In short, we do not have a "proper" language (Arabic) and a series of local dialects derived from it. What we have is a family of languages that formed when the Semitic language known today as Arabic rose to a position of importance and from there radically altered all the different languages it touched. Some of these languages were Semitic as well, and their alteration was so smooth that the unaware speaker today has no inkling of their history.

By now you understand that I am not going to teach you Arabic at all, but Lebanese (there are actually several variants of Lebanese, but they're sufficiently close for me not to separate them). Ourselves, we use the word "Arabic" to designate both, because we know by habit which of the two is being referred to – at most we use the qualifier na7awe ("grammarian") to mean Arabic and dérej ("current, vulgar") to mean Lebanese. However, on these pages I will make a sharp distinction between the two in order not to confuse the foreign reader. Anytime I use the word Arabic, I am referring to the official, written language that is never used in conversation (the news, official speeches and some soap operas are the only places you'll hear it). The word Lebanese refers to the daily language that is the subject of this introduction. Lebanese is not supposed to be written as its phonetic system is rendered only awkwardly by the Arabic script, and its spelling is not fully conventionalised. Yet the use of Arabic for informal situations is so unnatural that advertising billboards, for instance, write out their slogans in Lebanese. It doesn't look any less weird, but at least it speaks to the viewer in a friendly language. Using the Latin alphabet to write Lebanese is not uncommon, especially now in the age of the Internet: while chatting, people find it much easier to type with Latin characters, even if their conversation is in Lebanese. It is in chatrooms that the newest convention for romanized Lebanese took shape, based on English phonetics.

I am dividing this introduction/tutorial into 20 chapters. These, though not lessons per se, are cumulative and had better be approached in order. They are intended for those who have an interest in linguistics and in actually learning the basics of the language. Aside these, a series of reference pages including a lexicon, frequently-used terms etc will allow visitors to pick up a few words without going through the whole learning process.

Before you start, keep in mind the following difference between Lebanese and English. English is a language where words stand alone. Every element has its own place in the sentence and its form neither affects nor is affected by that of the words around it. In Lebanese on the other hand, words that are neither nouns nor verbs lead a fragile existence and more often than not find themselves reduced to a suffix form. Sentences are therefore much shorter, sometimes puzzlingly so, because all the grammatical elements have been compressed and attached to the subject, object and verb.

This is a labour of love. Suggestions for improvement will be duly noted, but ignorant and reactionary emails will be ignored.

If you are interested in finding out about another dialect of Arabic, check out Lameen's page on Algerian darja.

Now we may begin!

Chapters
1. Pronunciation guide 2. Word order 3. The Noun 4. The Article 5. Demonstratives 6. Pronouns 7. Possessives 8. Relatives 9. Adjectives (in progress) 10. Comparative and Superlative	11. Interrogation 12. Exclamation and Interjection 13. Numbers 14. Indefinition and Negation (in progress) 15. Adverbs (in progress) 16. Prepositions 17. Conjunctions (in progress) 18. The Verb 19. A few locutions 20. Solutions to the exercises
Other references
Lexicons: Basic lists, Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs Frequently used words "Libanismes" in French	Lebanized Western words Lexical differences with Arabic

(1) This happened when the Qur'ân was written and the dialect of Muhammad's people was "nailed down" in writing. (back)

Tutorials and articles © Joumana Medlej