The Arabic Dialect of the Jews of Wad-Souf (Saharan Algeria): Phonology and Morphology

Abstract

The Jewish dialect of Wad-Souf is an Arabic variety originally spoken in Eastern Algeria, near the Tunisian border. Similarly to other provincial varieties of Algerian Judaeo-Arabic, it has not attracted scholarly attention previously. This paper is based on the author’s fieldwork among the last speakers of the Jewish community of Wad-Souf, who currently live in Israel. It contains two types of transcribed primary data: a narrative and a folktale. Linguistic analysis follows, focusing primarily on phonology and verb morphology. As is demonstrated, Jewish Wad-Souf has a number of features, which are traditionally attributed to Bedouin dialects, like the velar realization of etymological /q/, preservation of interdentals, and prefix-conjugation plural forms of 3rd radical weak in stem I ending with /-u/. By analysing various linguistic features, this paper attempts to situate Jewish Wad-Souf on the dialectological map of North Africa.