1. IntroductionFootnote 2
Both Arabic and Berber varieties in Libya are among the least studied of their respective linguistic groups. Although numerous works on Arabic and Berber were published during the Italian occupation, from that period until the early 2000s only a single monograph-length scholarly publication appeared on any variety of either Arabic or Berber in Libya. Even now, despite a marked increase in the number of scholars who devote linguistic attention to Libya, the documentation and study of language in Libya still lags behind that of neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, this state of affairs can largely be attributed to the fact that Libya has been very inaccessible for non-Libyan scholars over the past several decades. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Libyan students who studied linguistics abroad did not publish their work. In fact, we have found a total of 38 PhD theses on Libyan Arabic (37) or Berber (1) by Libyan students in European and American universities, as well as about a dozen MA dissertations, all unpublished. This fact speaks, perhaps, both to the difficulty of Libyan scholars finding work in the West and to conditions in Libya which financially supported education abroad, but restricted research and knowledge production at home.
The reasons for compiling the present bibliography are twofold. First, bringing together references for whatever material exists for the study of these two languages and their varieties will benefit interested scholars. In this way, we intend this work to be a first step in the eventual compiling of Arabic and Berber dialectological atlases for Libya – a project, however, that will require much future fieldwork. Second, while we certainly aim to highlight the comparatively small amount of published work on Libyan Arabic and Berber, we also intend to draw attention to the unpublished studies of numerous Libyan graduate students abroad, as well as to relatively inaccessible works published in Libya. Though we have aimed to give as exhaustive a list as possible of the publications that do exist, we do not intend to comment on every one, but rather to give a general idea of the most important sources and studies while pointing out others which could be of use in further research. In this way, we hope that the main and numerous gaps in research may be seen and future avenues identified. Initially, we had also intended to compile a bibliography containing works on all languages of Libya – perhaps overly ambitious given the paucity of work on Arabic – but were unable to locate even a single work about Libyan varieties of Hausa or Tebu, or anything about the variety of Greek still spoken by the Grītlīya community in eastern Libya.
2. Libyan Arabic
2.1 General
A few publications discuss the linguistic situation in Libya from a general perspective, among which are four main articles. Owens (Reference Owens1983) was the first to give an overview of multiple Arabic dialects in Libya; his short account was fieldwork-based and proposed a tentative classification of Libyan dialects into western, eastern and transitional varieties. It was not until the 2000s that new publications on languages in Libya appeared: Larcher (Reference Larcher2001) gives a historical overview of the different languages used in the territory which constitutes modern-day Libya, while Quitout (Reference Quitout2004) similarly traces the linguistic situation in Libya throughout history, giving attention to the position of foreign languages such as English, Italian and French. Pereira (Reference Pereira2007) provides the latest overview of Arabic dialects in Libya, written from a dialectological point of view and emphasising comparatively more the description of Arabic.
Larcher, Pierre. 2001. Les Langues de la Libye: passé et présent. La Revue des Deux Rives 2: 43–51.
Owens, Jonathan. 1983 [1987]. Libyan Arabic dialects. Orbis 32.1–2: 97–117.
Pereira, Christophe. 2007. Libya. In Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Vol. III Eg–Lan. Brill, Leiden: 52–58.
Quitout, Michel. 2004. La Situation linguistique en Libye. Folia Orientalia 40: 313–26.
2.2 Tripoli
The dialect of Tripoli is by far the best-documented variety of Arabic in Libya, be it in linguistic descriptions (the earliest being Stumme Reference Stumme1898, as well as many Italian authors such as Cesàro, Griffini and Trombetti in the first half of the twentieth century) or works of historical, ethnological or anthropological focus (notably those of Cerbella, Chiauzzi and Rossi; see also section 2.7) which provide numerous corpora (poetry, proverbs, songs, sayings, riddles, etc.) that can be used by linguists. Italian researchers were productive during the Italian occupation of Libya, and were as a result of it able to publish works such as language manuals for military officers (see section 2.7) dictionaries (Griffini Reference Griffini1913), language textbooks (Farina Reference Farina1912) and finally grammars and transcribed texts of a more linguistic approach (Cesàro Reference Cesàro1939; Trombetti Reference Trombetti1912). The end of Italian influence in Libya also meant that Italian scholarship on Libya decreased (the main exception being Gioia Chiauzzi, who carried out fieldwork from the 1960s to the 1990s). Studies on Libyan Arabic slowly started to appear again in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to some doctoral theses by Libyan students in the USA (especially Abdu Reference Abdu1988; Elfitoury Reference Elfitoury1976; Elgadi Reference Elgadi1986), and they have continued to pick up pace as Libyan students complete MAs (e.g. Al-Ageli Reference Al-Ageli1995; Algryani Reference Algryani2010–14; Laradi Reference Laradi1972; Reference Laradi1983) and PhDs (see further section 2.7) abroad. Unfortunately, as we have already mentioned, nearly all of these theses remain unpublished and most such students returning to Libya do not continue to be active in the field.
The most substantial fieldwork in recent decades has been that of Christophe Pereira, who has carried out fieldwork in Tripoli since the early 2000s, culminating with the publication of a grammatical sketch of Tripoli Arabic (Pereira Reference Pereira2010a). His corpus of recordings obtained from young men have also allowed for the expansion of Libyan Arabic research into the areas of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology (Pereira Reference Pereira2007, Reference Pereira2009b; Reference Pereira2010b; Pereira et al., forthcoming). Now, thanks to the work of Najah Benmoftah (Benmoftah Reference Benmoftah2016; Benmoftah and Pereira, Reference Benmoftah, Pereira, Grigore and Biţuna2016), recordings obtained from women have also been brought into the available corpus of Tripoli Arabic.
Abdu, Hussein Ramadan. 1988. Italian loanwords in colloquial Libyan Arabic as spoken in the Tripoli region . PhD thesis, University of Arizona, Tucson. 327 pp.
Aït-Oumeziane, Ramdane. 1986. Le Statut de la fonction sujet dans deux parlers arabes: Constantine et Tripoli. La Linguistique (Revue de la Société de Linguistique Fonctionnelle) 22.1: 81–92.
Al-Ageli, Hussein M. 1995. Syllabic and metrical structure in Tripolitanian Arabic: a comparative study in standard and optimality theory (Libya). PhD thesis, University of Essex. ix + 264 pp.
Algryani, Ali. 2010. Preposition stranding in Libyan Arabic sluicing. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 16: 1–22.
Algryani, Ali. 2011. VP ellipsis in Libyan Arabic. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 17: 1–22.
Algryani, Ali. 2011–12. Sluicing in Libyan Arabic. Al-ʿArabiyya 44.45: 41–63.
Algryani, Ali. 2012a. Stripping and negative contact in Libyan Arabic. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 18: 1–23.
Algryani, Ali. 2012b. The syntax of ellipsis in Libyan Arabic: a generative analysis of sluicing, VP ellipsis, stripping and negative contrast . PhD thesis, Newcastle University. 175 pp.
Algryani, Ali. 2013. On the syntax of stripping in Libyan Arabic. International Journal of Linguistics 5.5: 156–74.
Algryani, Ali. 2014. Emphasis spread in Libyan Arabic. International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature 2.12: 30–38.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1911. Notizie sul dialetto arabo di Tripoli. Rivista d'Africa (December): 681–84.
Benmoftah, Najah. 2016. Des ligateurs de cause: étude contrastive entre l'arabe parlé à Tripoli et le français parlé à Paris . Propriétés syntaxiques et fonctionnements pragmatico-discursifs. PhD thesis, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris-3. 330 pp.
Benmoftah, Najah, and Pereira, Christophe. 2016. Des connecteurs de cause en arabe de Tripoli (Libye). In Grigore, George and Biţuna, Gabriel (eds), Proceedings of the 11th AIDA Conference. University of Bucharest: 107–18.
Benshenshin, Marwa. 2016. Les Interrogatifs šǝn, šǝnu et šǝni dans le parler arabe de Tripoli (Libye). In Grigore, George and Biţuna, Gabriel (eds), Proceedings of the 11th AIDA Conference. University of Bucharest: 127–36.
Bocquet, André. 1980. Grammaire de l'Arabe en usage à Tripoli.
Borsley, Robert D., and Krer, Mohamed. 2012. An HPSG approach to negation in Libyan Arabic. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 61.2: 1–24.
Cerbella, Gino. 1949. Le Feste musulmane in Tripoli: Appunti Etnografici. Tipografia Commerciale Fratelli Barbiera, Tripoli.
Cesàro, Antonio. 1939. L'arabo parlato a Tripoli: grammatica, esercizi, testi vari. Grammatiche e lessici delle lingue dell'Africa Italiana. Mondadori, Rome. 292 pp. Footnote 3
Cesàro, Antonio. 1954. Racconti in dialetto tripolino. Annali di Istituto Universitario di Napoli 6: 49–59.
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 1983. La spedizione di Napoli contro Tripoli d'occidente secondo il cronista tripolino Ḥasan Al-Faqīh Ḥasan Traduzione e osservazioni linguistiche. Studi Magrebini 15: 75–153.
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 1984. La spedizione di Napoli contro Tripoli d'occidente secondo il cronista tripolino Ḥasan Al-Faqīh Ḥasan Traduzione e osservazioni linguistiche. Studi Magrebini 16: 91–178.
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 1985. La spedizione di Napoli contro Tripoli d'occidente secondo il cronista tripolino Ḥasan al-Faqīh Ḥasan Traduzione e osservazioni linguistiche. Studi Magrebini 17: 57–96.
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 1986. La spedizione di Napoli contro Tripoli d'occidente secondo il cronista tripolino Ḥasan al-Faqīh Ḥasan Traduzione e osservazioni linguistiche (Parte II: Indice italiano delle voci considerate nelle schede lessicali). Studi Magrebini 18: 69–90.
D'Anna, Luca. Forthcoming. Italian loanwords in Western Libyan Arabic: phono-morphological analysis and semantic considerations. In Manfredi, Stefano, Tosco, Mauro and Banti, Giorgio (eds), Arabic in Contact. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Elfitoury, Abubaker Abdalla. 1976. A descriptive grammar of Libyan Arabic . PhD thesis, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. 292 pp.
Elgadi, Abdalla Salem. 1986. Tripolitanean Arabic phonology and morphology: a generative approach . PhD thesis, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. 252 pp.
Farina, Giulio. 1912. Grammatica araba per la lingua letteraria con un'appendice sul dialetto tripolino. Giulio Groos, Bologna.
Geist, Stephen. 1980. Esquisse du parler Arabe de Tripoli (Libye) . MA dissertation, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris-3. 136 pp.
Geist, Stephen. 1981. La Situation linguistique à Tripoli (Libye) . DEA dissertation, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris-3. 46 pp.
Grand'Henry, Jacques. 1985. Un texte arabe de Tripoli (Libye). In Mélanges à la mémoire de Philippe Marçais. Adrien Maisonneuve, Paris: 67–73.
Griffini, Eugenio. 1913. L'arabo parlato della Libia: cenni grammaticali e repertorio di oltre 10.000 vocaboli, frasi e modi di dire raccolti in Tripolitania; con appendice: primo saggio di un elenco alfabetico di tribù della Libia italiana. Ulrico Hoepli., Milan. [Reprint Cisalpino-Goliardica, Milan, 1985.]
Hoenerbach, Wilhelm. 1959. Das nordafrikanische Schattentheater. Rheingold Verlag, Mainz. [Includes a study of shadow plays in Tripoli, with some transcribed and translated texts in Tripoli Arabic, pp. 87–165.]
Laradi, Widad J. 1972. Negation in colloquial Tripoli Arabic . MA dissertation, University of Leeds. 44 pp.
Laradi, Widad J. 1983. Pharyngealization in Libyan (Tripoli) Arabic: an instrumental study. PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh. 362 pp.
Laria, Massimo. 1992. Some phonological and phonetic features of the definite article in the spoken Arabic of Tripoli (Libya). Quaderni di dipartimento di linguistica 3: 71–75.
Pavlovic, Ena. 2015. Osnovne odlike zapadnih libijskih dijalekata: dijalekat Tripolija [Basic characteristics of western Libyan dialects: the dialect of Tripoli] . MA dissertation, University of Belgrade. [In Serbian.]
Pereira, Christophe. 2001. L'Arabe de Tripoli (Libye): état des lieux et nouvelle approche. MA dissertation, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris. 139 pp.
Pereira, Christophe. 2003. Le parler arabe de Tripoli (Libye): etat des lieux d'après les travaux de Hans Stumme, Antonio Cesàro, Eugenio Griffini. Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí 7: 7–57.
Pereira, Christophe. 2004. A propos du parler arabe de Tripoli. In Ferrando, Ignacio and Sandoval, Juan Jose Sánchez (eds), Aida 5th Conference Proceedings. Universidad de Cádiz: 431–43.
Pereira, Christophe. 2006. Eléments de description du parler arabe de Tripoli. In Mejri, Salah (ed.), L'Arabe dialectal: enquêtes, descriptions, interprétations. Actes d'Aida 6. Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Economiques et Sociales, Tunis: 371–85.
Pereira, Christophe. 2007. Urbanization and dialect change: the Arabic dialect of Tripoli (Libya). In Miller, Catherine, Al-Wer, Enam, Caubet, Dominique and Watson, Janet C. E. (eds), Arabic in the City: Studies in Dialect Contact and Language Variation. Routledge, London: 77–96.
Pereira, Christophe. 2008a. Le parler arabe de Tripoli (Libye): phonologie, morphosyntaxe et catégories grammaticales . PhD thesis, INALCO, Paris. 621 pp.
Pereira, Christophe. 2008b. Aperçu du système aspecto-temporel du parler arabe de Tripoli (Libye). In Procházka, Stephan and Ritt–Benmimoun, Veronika (eds), Between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans Studies on Contemporary Arabic Dialects: Proceedings of the 7th AIDA Conference, held in Vienna from 5–9 September 2006. LIT Verlag, Vienna: 329–48.
Pereira, Christophe. 2009a. Tripoli Arabic. In Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Vol. IV Q–Z. Brill, Leiden: 548–56.
Pereira, Christophe. 2009b. Processus de grammaticalisation et innovations dans le parler arabe de Tripoli (Libye). Revue d’Etudes Berbères 2009/1. Available at: bit.ly/1So0X0x.
Pereira, Christophe. 2010a. Le parler arabe de Tripoli (Libya). Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo (IEIOP), Zaragoza.
Pereira, Christophe. 2010b. Les Mots de la sexualité dans l'arabe de Tripoli (Libye): désémantisation, grammaticalisation et innovations linguistiques. L'Année du Maghreb 6: 123–45.
Pereira, Christophe. 2012. Tripoli Arabic corpus. ANR CorpAfroAs: A Corpus for Afro-Asiatic Languages (dir. Amina Mettouchi). Available at: http://corpafroas.tge-adonis.fr/Archives/.
Pereira, Christophe, Barontini, Alexandrine, Manfredi, Stefano, Caubet, Dominique, and Vicente, Ángeles. 2013. Arabic dialects within CorpAfroAs. In Durand, Olivier, Langone, Angela and Mion, Giuliano (eds), Alf lahğa wa lahğa: Proceedings of the 9th AIDA Conference. LIT Verlag, Berlin: 32–46.
Pereira, Christophe, Caron, Bernard, Lux, Cécile, and Manfredi, Stefano. 2015. The intonation of topic and focus: Zaar (Nigeria), Tamasheq (Niger), Juba Arabic (South Sudan) and Tripoli Arabic (Libya). In Mettouchi, Amina, Vanhove, Martine and Caubet, Dominique (eds), CorpAfroAs: A Corpus for Afro-Asiatic Languages. Vol. I: Data Analysis. John Benjamins, Amsterdam: 63–115.
Pereira, Christophe, Moïse, Claudine, Vicente, Ángeles, and Ziamari, Karima. Forthcoming. La Construction socio-langagière du genre: jeunes hommes libyens, jeunes femmes marocaines et rapport à la masculinité. In Gasquet-Cyrus, Médéric, Pereira, Christophe, Trimaille, Cyril and Ziamari, Karima (eds), D'une rive de la Méditerranée à l'autre: approche comparée des parlers jeunes en milieu urbain (Maroc – Libye – Espagne – France). ELLUG, Grenoble.
Rossi, Ettore. 1924–25. Poesia popolare della Tripolitania: Canti storici I. Rivista della Tripolitania 1.4: 229–43.
Rossi, Ettore. 1925–26a. Poesia popolare della Tripolitania: Canti storici II. Rivista della Tripolitania 2.2: 91–97.
Rossi, Ettore. 1925–26b. Poesia popolare della Tripolitania: III Canti di battaglia, competizione di tribù, elegie. Rivista della Tripolitania 2.3: 169–76.
Rossi, Ettore. 1925–26c. Poesia popolare della Tripolitania: III Canti di battaglia, competizione di tribù, elegie. Rivista della Tripolitania 2.4: 237–47.
Rossi, Ettore. 1925–26d. Esplicazione dei vocaboli tripolini contenuti nel precedente articolo (note a Les arts tripolitains). Rivista della Tripolitania 2.5: 292–93.
Rossi, Ettore. 1925–26e. Poesia popolare della Tripolitania: I cavalli: La vita del deserto. Rivista della Tripolitania 2.6: 387–401.
Rossi, Ettore. 1931. La poesia popolare araba della Tripolitania. In Atti del primo Congresso di Studi Coloniali (Firenze, 8–12 aprile 1931), vol. 4: 191–201.
Rossi, Ettore. 1935. Vocaboli stranieri nel dialetto arabo della città di Tripoli. In Migliorini, B. and Pisani, V. (eds), Atti del III Congresso internazionale dei linguisti (Roma, 19–26 settembre 1933). F. Le Monnier, Florence: 186–93.
Salam, Fathi. 2012. Espace acoustique et patrons coarticulatoires: les voyelles de l'arabe libyen de Tripoli en contexte pharyngalisé. PhD thesis, Université de Franche-Comté (Besançon). 2 vols, xviii+370 pp.; 256 pp.
Shitaw, Abdurraouf Elhashmi. 2014. An instrumental phonetic investigation of timing relations in two-stop consonant clusters in Tripolitanian Libyan Arabic. PhD thesis, University of Leeds. 570 pp.
Stumme, Hans. 1894. Tripolitanisch-tunesische Beduinenlieder. J. C. Hinrich'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig. 153 pp. [Only about 100 verses can be attributed to western Tripolitania, territory of the Maḥāmid, according to Rossi.]
Stumme, Hans. 1898. Märchen und Gedichte aus der Stadt Tripolis in Nordafrika. Sammlung transkribierter prosaischer und poetischer Stücke in arabischen Dialekt der Stadt Tripolis nebst Übersetzung, Skizze des Dialekts und Glossar, vols 1–2. Hinrich'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig.
Suwayd, ʿAbdallah. 1977. Al-Ḫawāṣṣ al-tarkībiyya li-lahjat ṭarābulus. Dār al-ʿUlūm, Cairo.
Suwayd, ʿAbdallah. 1981. Ordering and directionality of iterative rules in the Tripoli dialect of Libyan Arabic. Al-ʿArabiyya 14: 38–50.
Suwayd, ʿAbdallah. 1984. Luġat al-ʾišāra al-ʿarabiyya: luġat al-ṣumm. Al-Manšaʾa al-ʿĀma, Tripoli.
Trombetti, Alfredo. 1912. Manuale dell'arabo parlato a Tripoli: Grammatica, letture e vocabolario. L. Beltrami, Bologna.
Vaccari, Alberto. 1912. L'Arabo scritto e l'arabo parlato in Tripolitania: Grammatica elementare pratica. G. B. Paravia & C., Turin.
Wagnon, Adrien. 1894. Chants des bédouins de Tripoli et de la Tunisie, traduits d'après le recueil du Dr. H. Stumme. Ernest Leroux, Paris. [Translation of selected texts from Stumme 1894.]
2.3 Tripoli Jewish
The Jewish community of Tripoli, which unfortunately now exists only in diaspora, spoke an urban (‘pre-Hilali’) dialect, distinct from that spoken by Muslims by features such as the retention of *q as [q] and the realisation of *t as [č] (where the Muslim dialect has [g] and [t] respectively). Initial descriptive overviews were made by the anthropologist Harvey Goldberg (Reference Goldberg1974; Reference Goldberg1983); Cohen (Reference Cohen1928) contains some transcribed texts in Judaeo-Arabic and Simon (Reference Simon1989) contains some sociolinguistic observations. The most detailed, and indeed authoritative, study of this dialect is Sumikazu Yoda's (Reference Yoda2005) monograph based on fieldwork undertaken among the diaspora in Israel, which includes a lexicon and one transcribed text.Footnote 4 Yoda continues to publish research on aspects of the dialect (Reference Yoda2012; Reference Yoda2013; Reference Yoda2015). Also needed is research on Judaeo-Arabic documents produced in Tripoli over the past hundred years. Yoda (Reference Yoda2004) offers a few comments on written texts. An archive of both Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew documents was kept in Tripoli until recently, as some researchers have informed us, and were even known to the orientalist Sylvestre de Sacy, who cited a Judaeo-Arabic manuscript from Tripoli in his Grammaire arabe.Footnote 5 The Arabic varieties that were once spoken by other Jewish communities in Libya, including that of the second-largest community in Benghazi, have remained completely undocumented. Fieldwork with elderly members of the diaspora communities is urgently needed.
Cohen, Mordekhai. 1928. Gli Ebrei in Libia. Usi e costume. Tradotto e annotato da Martino Mario Moreno. Sindicato Italiano Arti Grafiche, Rome.
Goldberg, Harvey E. 1974. A pilot study of the culture and language of Tripolitanian Jewry. Lešonenu 38: 137–47. [In Hebrew.]
Goldberg, Harvey E. 1983. Language and culture of the Jews of Tripolitania: a preliminary view. Mediterranean Language Review 1: 85–102.
Simon, Rachel. 1989. Language change and sociopolitical transformations: the case of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Libyan Jews. Jewish History 4.1: 101–21.
Yoda, Sumikazu. 2004. Notes on the literary idiom of Tripolitanian Jewish Arabic. Kansai Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 4: 63–75. [In Japanese.]
Yoda, Sumikazu. 2005. The Arabic Dialect of the Jews of Tripoli (Libya): Grammar, Text and Glossary. Semitica Viva 35. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.
Yoda, Sumikazu. 2012. The Arabic dialect of the Jews of Tripoli (Libya). In Survey of the African Languages. Osaka: 109–21. [In Japanese.]
Yoda, Sumikazu. 2013. Judeo-Arabic, Libya, Hebrew component in. In Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, vol. 2. Brill, Leiden: 393–97.
Yoda, Sumikazu. 2015. Negation in modern Tripolitanian Judaeo-Arabic. Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 13: 63–85. [In Japanese.]
2.4 Western dialects
Compared with the dialect of the city of Tripoli, documentation and studies scarcely exist for Arabic varieties spoken in the region of Tripolitania or western Libya. The few existing works mainly provide linguistic descriptions of the vernaculars of urban centres such as Misrata (D'Anna, Reference D'Annaforthcoming; Elramli Reference Elramli2012), Al-Khums (Benmoftah and Pereira, Reference Benmoftah, Pereira and Ritt-Benmimounforthcoming) on the Tripolitanian coast, as well as inland towns such as Zliten (Abumdas Reference Abumdas1985) and Jadu (Pereira Reference Pereira2012). Thanks to Ras Ali (Reference Ras Ali2015), who is currently preparing a PhD about the Misrata dialect based on a corpus of female consultants (under the direction of Christophe Pereira), a study of the speech of women – an area entirely unstudied until very recently (see Benmoftah Reference Benmoftah2016; Benmoftah and Pereira, Reference Benmoftah, Pereira and Ritt-Benmimounforthcoming, in section 2.2) – will be available. The brief description of Jadu Arabic was possible thanks only to the texts published by Gioia Chiauzzi (Reference Chiauzzi1971). Some new data has come to light based on work with informants resident in Europe: Klimiuk (Reference Klimiuk and Ritt-Benmimounforthcoming) treats a comparative topic and includes data from the dialect of Msallata near Tripoli, while D'Anna (Reference D'Annaforthcoming) is based on data from the Misrata dialect. Of great necessity are studies on Arabic–Berber language contact in Zwara and the Nafusa mountains, as well as further documention of rural and urban varieties from this area, especially that of Misrata, Libya's third-largest city.
Abumdas, Abdul Hamid Ali. 1985. Libyan Arabic phonology . PhD thesis, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. ix+300 pp. [Discusses the variety of Zliten in western Libya.]
Benmoftah, Najah, and Pereira, Christophe. Forthcoming. Preliminary remarks on the Arabic spoken in Al-Khums (Libya). In Ritt-Benmimoun, Veronika (ed.), Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects: Common Trends, Recent Developments, Diachronic Aspects. IEIOP, Zaragoza.
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 1971. Intervista nel Nefûsa. Oriente Moderno 51: 834–53.
D'Anna, Luca. Forthcoming. Two texts in the Arabic dialect of Miṣrāta, with preliminary notes and observations. Mediterranean Language Review.
Elramli, Yousef Mokhtar. 2012. Assimilation in the phonology of a Libyan Arabic dialect: a constraint-based approach . PhD thesis, University of Newcastle. xi+187 pp. [Misrata dialect.]
Elramli, Yousef. 2012. Phonological assimilation of the prefix /t-/ in Misrata Libyan Arabic. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 18: 38–51. [Based on data from Misrata.]
Harrama, Abdulgialil Mohamed. 1993. Libyan Arabic morphology: Al-Jabal dialect . PhD thesis, University of Arizona, Tucson. 251 pp. [Data from an unspecified village in the Nafusa mountains.]
Klimiuk, Maciej. Forthcoming. The particle rā- in Libyan Arabic dialects. In Ritt-Benmimoun, V. (ed.), Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects: Common Trends, Recent Developments, Diachronic Aspects. IEIOP, Zaragoza.
Pereira, Christophe. 2012. L'Arabe de Žâdů̄ (Žébel Nefûsa) d’après Gioia Chiauzzi. In Barontini, Alexandrine, Pereira, Christophe, Vicente, Ángeles and Ziamari, Karima (eds), Dynamiques langagières en Arabophonies: variations, contacts, migrations et créations artistiques. Hommage offert à Dominique Caubet par ses élèves et collègues. IEIOP, Zaragoza: 164–99. [Dialectological analysis of the data presented in Chiauzzi 1971.]
Ras Ali, Hawa. 2015. L'Arabe de Misurata (Libye). MA dissertation, INALCO, Paris. 107 pp.
2.5 Benghazi and eastern dialects
The first study of the Arabic dialect of Benghazi was that of the Italian scholar Ester Panetta, whose fieldwork in the 1930s and 1940s led to a grammatical sketch (Panetta Reference Panetta1943a) and was the basis for a later attempt at an Italian–Benghazi Arabic dictionary (Panetta Reference Panetta1958–80), which only reached the letter E. Meanwhile, her contemporary Elpidio Iannotta provided a description of a rural variety of eastern Libya near al-Bayda (Iannotta Reference Iannotta1933). Both were classical descriptive works in that they provided a grammar, transcribed texts and lexicon material. The next fieldwork untertaken was that of T. F. Mitchell among Bedouin near Shahhat (Mitchell Reference Mitchell1952; Reference Mitchell1957; Reference Mitchell1960). In the 1970s, Jonathan Owens’ fieldwork in Benghazi resulted in the most recent grammar of an eastern Libyan variety (Owens Reference Owens1984) – although referring to ‘Eastern Libyan Arabic’ in the title, the variety described is more representative of Benghazi than of rural dialects. The only recent fieldwork in Benghazi has been carried out since 2010 by Adam Benkato, who gives accounts of the dialect within the framework of Maghrebi dialectology (Benkato Reference Benkato2014; Reference Benkato and Ritt-Benmimounforthcoming). This dialect is then treated in a comparative study of mutual intelligibility, the first of its kind, in Čéplö et al. (Reference Čéplö, Bátora, Benkato, Milička, Pereira and Zemánekforthcoming). Finally, if not for a few PhD theses by Libyan authors – Abdunnabi (Reference Abdunnabi2000) for the Jabal Akhdar and Aurayieth (Reference Aurayieth1982) for Derna – we would have no other data from eastern Libyan dialects. As it is, documentation of both rural and urban speech throughout eastern Libya would be a great boon for Arabic dialectology, and sociolinguistic and gender analyses for the Benghazi dialect are completely lacking.
Abdunnabi, Awad Wanis. 2000. A descriptive grammar of Libyan Arabic (a structural approach) . PhD thesis, University of Exeter. 2 vols. [On the Arabic variety of the Jabal Akhdar region in eastern Libya, providing the only recent data from that region.]
al-Ašhab, Badriya. 2008. Muʿjam al-mufradāt al-binġāziyya. n.p., Benghazi.
Angoujard, Jean-Pierre. 1981. Une lecture prosodique du Cyrénaique. Etudes Arabes-Analyses. Théorie III: 23–35.
Aurayieth, Abdulhamid. 1982. The phonology of the verb in Libyan Arabic. PhD thesis, University of Washington, Seattle. 184 pp. [Provides data on the dialect of Derna, eastern Libya, and is the only known data from Derna.]
Benkato, Adam. 2014. The Arabic dialect of Benghazi (Libya): historical and comparative notes. Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 59: 57–102.
Benkato, Adam. Forthcoming. Vowels in Benghazi Arabic: Maghrebi or Bedouin? In Ritt-Benmimoun, Veronika (ed.), Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects: Common Trends, Recent Developments, Diachronic Aspects. IEIOP, Zaragoza.
Čéplö, Slavomír, Bátora, Ján, Benkato, Adam, Milička, Jiří, Pereira, Christophe, and Zemánek, Petr. Forthcoming. Mutual intelligibility of spoken Maltese, Libyan Arabic and Tunisian Arabic functionally tested: a pilot study. Folia Linguistica.
D'Anna, Luca. 2010. Per un profilo linguistico di Bengasi e della Cirenaica. MA dissertation, Università degli Studi di Napoli. 125 pp.
D'Anna, Luca. 2016. Agent speaker-oriented modality in the Arabic dialect of Benghazi (Libya). Romano-Arabica 16: 25–43.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1946. Topographical terms in common use among the Bedouin of Cyrenaica. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 76: 177–88.
Fteita, Fawziyya. 1971. Stress and vowel quality of the verb in Libyan Arabic. Diploma, University of Reading. 45 pp.
Fteita, Fawziyya. 1973. Some aspects of the phonology of the Libyan Arabic of Benghazi . MA dissertation, University College of North Wales. 67 pp.
Grand'Henry, Jacques. 2000. Deux textes arabes de Benghazi (Libye). Oriente Moderno 19: 47–57.
Grand'Henry, Jacques. 2005. Un texte de Benghazi (Libye) en arabe mixte. In Aguadé, Jorge, Vicente, Ángeles and Abu-Shams, Leila (eds), Sacrum Arabo-Semiticum. Homenaje al Profesor Federico Corriente en su 65 Aniversario. IEIOP, Zaragoza: 171–79. [Both this and the preceding reference are based, according to the author, on recordings made in Benghazi in the 1970s.]
Iannotta, Elpidio. 1933. L'arabo parlato in Cirenaica: nozioni di grammatica, vocaboli vari, saggio di composizioni beduine in prosa e in versi. Litografia del Governo, Governo della Cirenaica, Ufficio Studi, Tip. Pavone, Benghazi.
Iannotta, Elpidio. 1939. Al-Risāla al-tamhīdiyya fī maʿrifat al-lahja al-barqāwiyya. Al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿAṣriyya, Cairo.
Larcher, Pierre. 2001. Le parler des arabes de Cyrénaïque vu par un voyageur Marocain du XIIIe siècle. Arabica 48.3: 368–82.
Laria, Massimo. 1993. Classi morfologiche del verbo nel dialetto della Cirenaica. Quaderni di Studi Arabi 11: 107–15.
Laria, Massimo. 1996. Some characteristic features of Cyrenaican Arabic. In Cremona, Joe, Holes, Clive and Khan, Geoffrey (eds), Proceedings of the Second International Conference of l'Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe (AIDA), University of Cambridge, 10–14 September 1995. University Publications Centre, Cambridge: 123–32.
Matera, G. 1914. Dialetto arabo della Cirenaica. C. Nani, Como.
Mitchell, Terence F. 1952. The active participle in an Arabic dialect of Cyrenaica. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 14.1: 11–33.
Mitchell, Terence F. 1957. The language of buying and selling in Cyrenaica. Hespéris 44: 31–71.
Mitchell, Terence F. 1960. Prominence and syllabification in Arabic. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 23.2: 369–89. [Treats eastern Libyan and Egyptian Arabic.]
Owens, Jonathan. 1980. The syllable as prosody: a reanalysis of syllabification in eastern Libyan Arabic. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43.2: 277–87.
Owens, Jonathan. 1984. A Short Reference Grammar of Eastern Libyan Arabic. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.
Owens, Jonathan. 1993. Imâla in eastern Libyan Arabic. Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 25: 251–59.
Panetta, Ester. 1940. Pratiche e credenze popolari libiche: Testi in arabo bengasino tradotti e annotati. Istituto Per L'Oriente, Rome.
Panetta, Ester. 1941. Proverbi, modi di dire, e indovinelle arabi di Bengasi. Rivista degli Studi Orientali 19: 249–81.
Panetta, Ester. 1943a. L'arabo parlato a Bengasi. I Testi con traduzione e note. II Grammatica. Grammatiche e lessici delle lingue dell'Africa italiana. 2 vols. Libreria dello Stato, Rome.
Panetta, Ester. 1943b. Forme e soggetti della letteratura popolare libica. Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, Milan.
Panetta, Ester. 1956. Poesie e canti popolare arabi. Guanda, Parma.
Panetta, Ester. 1958. Vocabolario e Fraseologia dell'arabo parlato a Bengasi. Lettera A. Annali Lateranensi (Annali del Pontificio Museo Missionario Etnologico) 22: 318–69.
Panetta, Ester. 1962a. Vocabolario e Fraseologia di Bengasi (continuazione del XXII, 1958). Annali Lateranensi (Annali del Pontificio Museo Missionario Etnologico) 26: 257–90.
Panetta, Ester. 1962b. Vocabolario e Fraseologia dell'arabo parlato a Bengasi. Lettera B. Studi Orientali 5 (A Francesco Gabrieli. Studi orientalistici offerti nel sessantesimo compleanno dai suoi colleghi e discepoli): 195–216.
Panetta, Ester. 1964a. Vocabolario e Fraseologia dell'arabo parlato a Bengasi. Lettera C. Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 13.1: 27–91.
Panetta, Ester. 1964b. Vocabolario e Fraseologia dell'arabo parlato a Bengasi. Lettera D. Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 14.1 (Scritti in onore di Laura Veccia Vaglieri): 389–413.
Panetta, Ester. 1980. Vocabolario e Fraseologia dell'arabo parlato a Bengasi. Lettera E. Oriente Moderno 60.16 (Studi in memoria di Paolo Minganti): 197–213.
Steita, Fathiya. 1970. Clusters in grammatical categories in Cyrenaican Arabic. MA dissertation, University of Leeds.
Türkmen, Erkan. 1988. Arapça'nın Libya lehçesindeki Türkçe kelimeler / Turkish words in the Libyan dialect of Arabic. Erdem 4–10: 211–25 [Turkish]; 227–43 [English].
Vella, Joseph. 1970. A comparative study in Maltese and Libyan (Benghazi dialect) . Phonetics, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. MA dissertation, Royal University of Malta.
Weaver, John. 1970. Diglossia in Cyrenaica: an exemplification. MA dissertation, University of Leeds. 100 pp.
Widłaszewski, Ryszard. 2012. Wst ȩp do arabskiego dialektu libijskiego Cyrenajki [Introduction to the Arabic Dialect of Cyrenaica]. Poland (self-published). [In Polish.]
2.6 Dialects of the Fezzan and southern regions
Numerous varieties of Arabic, all largely undocumented, are spoken in the southern regions of Libya, usually referred to as the Fezzan. The main resource for Arabic in this region is the text collection of renowned Arabist Philippe Marçais (Reference Marçais2001), which was published posthumously but contains work done between the 1940s and 1970s. It contains a number of transcribed and translated texts representing different nomadic and sedentary varieties, but lacks a substantial grammatical analysis. The wealth of material provided therein has formed the basis for all recent studies of Arabic in the Fezzan; see Caubet (Reference Caubet, Haak, de Jong and Versteegh2004) for a dialectological analysis and Bettini (Reference Bettini and Bauden2004), Caubet (Reference Caubet and Ritt-Benmimounforthcoming) and D'Anna (Reference D'Anna and Ritt-Benmimounforthcoming) for analysis of specific aspects of grammar and morphology. Finally, Nikolova (Reference Nikolova2003) is based on fieldwork in the Sokna-Houn-Waddan group of oases.
Bettini, Lidia. 2004. Remarques sur les parlers Arabes du Fezzân (Libye). In Bauden, Frédéric (ed.), Mélange de langue arabe et d'islamologie offerts à Aubert Martin. Peeters: Leuven and Paris: 11–28.
Borg, Alexander. 2005. Orality, language and culture in Arabic juridical discourse. Appendix to: Aharon Layish. Sharī'a and Custom in Libyan Tribal Society: An Annotated Translation of Decisions from the Sharī'a Courts in Ajdābiya and Kufra. Studies in Islamic Law and Society 24. Brill, Leiden: 317–51.
Botagga, M. F. 1991. A generative phonetic feature analysis of the vowel development of native Arabic speakers learning English as a second language . PhD thesis, Cardiff University. [The Arabic data is from the dialect of Sebha.]
Caubet, Dominique. 2004. Les parlers arabes nomades et sédentaires du Fezzān, d'après William et Philippe Marçais. In Haak, Martine, de Jong, Rudolf and Versteegh, Kees (eds), Approaches to Arabic Dialects: A Collection of Articles Presented to Manfred Woidich on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics 38. Brill, Leiden: 67–95.
Caubet, Dominique. Forthcoming. A tentative description of aspect and modality in the Fezzan through the texts collected by William and Philippe Marçais (1944–1953). In Ritt-Benmimoun, Veronika (ed.), Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects: Common Trends, Recent Developments, Diachronic Aspects. IEIOP, Zaragoza.
D'Anna, Luca. Forthcoming. On the development of conditional particles in the Arabic dialects of the Fezzān. In Ritt-Benmimoun, Veronika (ed.), Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects: Common Trends, Recent Developments, Diachronic Aspects. IEIOP, Zaragoza.
D'Anna, Luca. Forthcoming. On verbal negation in the Arabic dialects of the Fezzan. Al-ʿArabiyya.
Layish, Aharon. 1998. Legal Documents on Libyan Tribal Society in Process of Sedentarization. Part I: The Documents in Arabic. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.
Lethielleux, Jean. 1948. Le Fezzan, ses jardins, ses palmiers: notes d'ethnographie et d'histoire. Publications de l'Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes 12. Imprimerie Bascone & Muscat, Tunis. [Contains a good deal of transcribed texts, including poems and proverbs. This work collects a series of articles published between 1945 and 1948 in the journal of the Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes (IBLA vols. 9–11) in Tunis.]
Marçais, Philippe. 2001. Parlers arabes du Fezzân: textes, traductions et éléments de morphologie rassemblés et présentés par Dominique Caubet, Aubert Martin et Laurence Denooz. Librairie Droz, Geneva.
Marçais, William. 1945. Les parlers arabes du Fezzân. In Travaux de l'Institut de recherches sahariennes vol. 3. Ernest Imbert, Algiers: 186–88.
Nikolova, Viara. 2003. Fonetichni i morfologichni osobenostina libiyskiya dialekt [Phonetic and morphological characteristics of the Libyan dialect]. MA thesis, Université Saint Kliment Ohridski, Sofia (Bulgaria). [In Bulgarian.]
2.7 Miscellaneous
Finally, we devote a ‘miscellaneous’ section to collect further works for the sake of completeness. Some of these works are linguistic studies which describe ‘Libyan Arabic’ without specifying any variety, and as such are less useful for dialectological research, but may nevertheless be useful for their approaches (e.g. Ahmed Reference Ahmed2008; Gaber Reference Gaber2012; Gaddafi Reference Gaddafi1990; Kriba Reference Kriba2010). Others here are written for general audiences, are too generic to be used in research, or are textbooks which are outdated or impossible to find, again citing ‘Libyan Arabic’ while mixing forms and idioms from different varieties. The two most recent textbooks are Dickinson (Reference Dickinson2004) and Le Quellec (Reference Le Quellec2003) – pedagogy is yet another area where new materials are an urgent desideratum. A number of proverb collections also exist: see Abdelkafi Reference Abdelkafi1968; Ali Reference Ali2001; Ashiurakis Reference Ashiurakis1975; Chambard Reference Chambard2002; Elmaamri Reference Elmaamri2013; al-Miṣrātī Reference al-Miṣrātī2002; Quitout Reference Quitout2006. Chambard's work especially provides 1957 proverbs transcribed and translated, along with a lengthy French–Arabic glossary. Brief linguistic analyses of some of Qaddafi's speeches can be found in Larcher (Reference Larcher1997) and Mazraani (Reference Mazraani1997). We mention again that works such as those of Cerbella, Chiauzzi, and Rossi (see section 2.2) in particular provide, in their works of primarily ethnological or anthropological focus, corpora in various varieties of Libyan Arabic. The most important resource in this regard, however, may be the 42-volume ‘Encyclopedia of Accounts of the Jihād’ (Mawsūʿat riwāyāt al-jihād) published between 1983 and 2002 by the Libyan Studies Center in Tripoli, containing several thousand pages of transcribed interviews with participants in the resistance against the Italian occupation and representing a number of older and previously unrecorded varieties of Libyan Arabic.
Abdelkafi, Mohamed. 1968. One Hundred Arabic Proverbs from Libya. Vernon & Yates, London.
Abugassa, Muhammad. 1966. A Glossary and Phrase Book of Libyan Arabic. Princeton University Peace Corps Training Center.
Abukhattala, Ibrahim, and Hmaid, Yaseen. 2011. ESL, internet and globalization in Arab countries: with a specific reference to Libya. Majallat al-Bāḥit 9: 67–84.
Abulgasem, Munsef. 1982. L'Emprunt lexical en arabe Libyen . DEA dissertation, Université Paris-Sorbonne-4. 67 pp.
Ageli, Nuri R. 1989. Tense and aspect in the English of Libyan Arabic-speaking students: a contrastive/error analysis study with pedagogical implications . PhD thesis, University of Wales, College of Cardiff. xxi+381 pp.
Ahmed, Albashir Abdulhamid Muftah. 2008. Production and perception of Libyan Arabic vowels . PhD thesis, University of Newcastle. xv+277 pp.
Ahmed, Khadeja Mujtaba. 2014. The uses of ‘bahi’ as a discourse marker in the daily Libyan Arabic conversation. International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies 2.1: 171–81.
Ahnaïba, Adel. 2006. Les Verbes supports en arabe classique, arabe moderne et arabe libyen: le cas de ‘akhadha / ittakhadha (prendre) . PhD thesis, Université Paris-Sorbonne-4.
al-Any, Riyadh S. 1968. Libyan Arabic. n.p. 124 pp.
Albakoosh, Esmaeil. 2010. Arabic phonetic modeling from speech recognition perspective . MA dissertation, Universiti Utara Malaysia.
al-Būjdīdī, Muḥammad. 2006. Al-Muṣṭalaḥāt al-juġrāfiyya al-lībiyya bayn al-fuṣḥā wa al-ʿāmiyya. Markaz Jihād al-Lībiyīn li-l-Dirāsāt al-Tāriḫiyya, Tripoli.
al-Ḫarīf, ʿAwēša M. 2012. Al-Būgālāt al-ṭarābulusiyya. Dār al-Nubalāʾ, Cairo.
Ali, Mohamed Khalid. 2001. The translation of idiomatic texts: the case of Libyan proverbs. PhD thesis, University of Leeds.
Alesawe, Ahmed Altahr. 2015. A comparison of tense, aspect and voice systems of English, Modern Standard Arabic and Libyan dialects and the possible implications for the learning and using of English tense, aspect and voice by Libyan university students . PhD thesis, University of Leeds, School of Education. xi+298 pp.
al-Seghayar, Mohamed. 2006. Patterns of lexical variation in vocative kinship terms in Libyan Arabic. In Saleh Mejri (ed.) L’arabe dialectal: enquêtes, descriptions, interpretations (Actes d’AIDA 6).Travaux offerts au Professeur Taïeb Baccouche. Cahiers du C.E.R.E.S., Tunis: 27–45.
al-Šammāḫī, Karīma. 2007. Al-Bugāla fi al-mawrūṯ al-šaʿbī al-lībī. Dār Hānībāl, Benghazi.
Altubuly, Sara. 2009. Phonological development in Libyan Arabic speaker children: a case study . MA dissertation, University of Essex.
Applegate, Joseph. 1968. Libyan Arabic. Howard University, Washington, DC. 191 pp.
Ashiurakis, Ahmed M. 1972. Spoken Arabic Self-Taught (Libyan Vernacular). Libyan Press, Tripoli.
Ashiurakis, Ahmed M. 1975. Libyan Proverbs. Dar al-Farjani, Tripoli.
Ashiurakis, Ahmed M. 1976. How to Speak Arabic in Libya: A Complete Course. Mukhtar, Tripoli.
Ashiurakis, Ahmed M. 1977a. Modo pratico per imparare l'arabo parlato in Libia. Dar al-Farjani, Tripoli.
Ashiurakis, Ahmed M. 1977b. A Complete Course of How to Speak Arabic in Libya. 1st edition. Mukhtar Bookshop, Malta. [2nd edition. 1985. al-Dar al-Jamahiriya for Publishing, Distribution, and Advertising, Misrata.]
Banks, P., and Beheri, M. 1960. Manual of Cyrenaican Colloquial Arabic, Part 1: Elementary. BP Exploration Co., Benghazi.
Benedict, W. C. 1959. Cyrenaican Arabic. n.p., Washington, DC.
Ben Taher, Mohamed M. 2006. Natural morphology in Standard Arabic and Libyan Arabic. Majallat al-Sātil: The 7th October University: 9–48.
Bevilacqua, Giuseppe. 1912. Manualetto pratico-teorico per imparare senza maestro l'arabo volgare che si parla in Tripolitania e Cirenaica. Tipografi Domenico Vena, Palermo. 123 pp.
Bradburne, C. P. 1962. Basic Tripolitanian Arabic: A Course for Beginners in the Spoken Arabic of North-Western Libya. Middle East Export Press, Lebanon (designed and written for Mobil International Oil Company).
Bresse, P. Francesco. 1930. L'arabo parlato in Egitto, in Siria e nella Tripolitania, ossia manuale di grammatica, nomenclatura fraseologia e conversazione in arabo egiziano colle differenze e modificazioni dell'arabo siriano e tripolino. Tipografia dei Francescani, Jerusalem. viii+131 pp.
Bushwereb, A. K. 1978. Colloquial Arabic for Doctors in Libyan Arab People's Socialist Jamhiriya. General Publishing Co., Tripoli.
Cerbella, Gino. 1953a. Caratteristiche della società musulmana libica. Libia 1: 7–81.
Cerbella, Gino. 1953b. Il tè nella vita, nella poesia e nelle tradizioni del popolo libico. Libia 4: 53–62.
Cerbella, Gino. 1954a. I colori della bandiera libica nella storia e nella letteratura Arabo-musulmama. Libia 1: 45–76.
Cerbella, Gino. 1954b. Canti di marinai Tripolini. Libia 3: 21–24.
Cerbella, Gino. 1954c. Il tè nella vita, nella poesia e nelle tradizioni del popolo libico. Il tè nella vita sociale. Libia 1: 83–94.
Cerbella, Gino. 1954d. Il tè nella vita, nella poesia e nelle tradizioni del popolo libico. Il tè nella confezione praticata in Libia. Libia 2: 67–72.
Cerbella, Gino. 1954e. Il tè nella vita, nella poesia e nelle tradizioni del popolo libico. Benefici e malefici del tè nelle credenze popolari. Libia 3: 57–76.
Cerbella, Gino. 1954f. Il tè nella vita, nella poesia e nelle tradizioni del popolo libico. Legende sul caffè nell'oriente musulmano. Libia 4: 51–71.
Cerbella, Gino. 1955a. Mare e marinai in Libia. Libia 1: 5–54.
Cerbella, Gino. 1955b. Mare e marinai in Libia (continuazione e fine). Libia 2: 3–34.
Cerbella, Gino. 1955c. Il Gārāgûz in Libia e nell'Oriente. Libia 3: 3–43.
Cerbella, Gino. 1955d. Ġûma, poeta e patriota libico, nella storia e nella legenda. Libia 4: 3–23.
Cerbella, Gino. 1956. Poesie e canti popolari arabi. n.p., Tripoli.
Cesàro, Antonio. 1935. Le caratteristiche fonetiche dei linguaggi Arabi e Berberi della Libia nei riguardi della trascizione ufficiale Italiana e della cartografia. Atti del secondo Congresso di Studi Coloniali (Napoli 1–5 ottobre 1934), vol. 4. Olschki, Leo S., Florence: 164–69.
Chambard, Roger. 2002. Proverbes libyens recueillis par Roger Chambard, édités par Gilda Nataf et Barbara Graille avec la collaboration d'Aziza Boucherit. Karthala, Paris.
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 1971. Alcune cantilene relative a ceremonie e ricorrenze libiche. Studi Magrebini 4: 77–111. [Chiauzzi's corpus was gathered in several regions, including the Tripolitanian coast, in Ghadames, and in the Fezzan (Sebha, Tadrart Akakus, and the extreme south-west near the Algerian and Tunisian border).]
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 1972. Materiali per lo studio dei riti agrari in Libia. Africa 27.2: 193–230.
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 1974. Materiali per lo studio dell'abligliamento in Libia. Studi Magrebini 6: 73–128.
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 2004 [2005]. Cibi che han fame: šešibâni, Úmmuk zeinûba e Nâga. Ediz. italiana e araba. Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale, Dipartimento di Studi del Mondo Classico e del Mediterraneo Antico, Naples (Bollettino dell'AGAM 2 = Quaderni di AIΩN, Nuova serie 9). [The corpus of texts forming the basis of this study were gathered mainly in the Fezzan.]
Chiauzzi, Gioia. 2007. Stato moderno e culture locali. Palme in parata. Sahara 1974. Studi Magrebini 5: 75–83.
Crawford, Kenneth P. 1966. A Short Course in Libyan Arabic. Princeton University Press, Libya Peace Corps Program. 153 pp. with cassettes.
Crawford, Kenneth P. n.d. The Spoken Arabic of Tripoli, Libya. n.p., Washington, DC.
Curotti, Torquato. 1933. Il Dialetto Libico. Grammatica, Conversazione, Dizionario. Plinio Maggi, Tripoli. 431 pp.
Deikna, Yousef M. 2011. Imaala in Libyan Arabic . MA dissertation, Ball State University, Muncie, IN. 52 pp.
Deryabin, Victor. 2007. Russko-Libiyskiy razgovornik (Libiyskiy Dialekt) [Russian–Libyan Conversation (Libyan Dialect)]. Sapport ST, Moscow. [In Russian.]
Dickinson, Eerik. 2004. Spoken Libyan Arabic. Dunwoody Press, Springfield, VA.
Di Tucci, Raffaele. n.d. [1912 ?] Dizionario italiano-arabo con elementi di grammatica. Societa Editrice Sonzogno, Milan. [Data provided is of Tripoli Arabic.]
Ducati, Bruno. 1913. Grammatica pratica della lingua araba parlata in Tripolitania e compresa dovunque si parli arabo. Cooperativa Tipografica Azzoguidi, Bologna.
Ebert, Gerlinde, and Ebert, Hans-Georg. 1987. Zu einigen Aspekten der Sprach-situation und -politik in der SLAVJ (Libyen) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Italienischen. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 40.3: 381–90.
Edzard, Lutz. 2003a. Linguistic contexts between the Romance and the Semitic languages: the cases of Libya and the Horn of Africa. In Pellitteri, Antonino (ed.), Maǧāz: Culture e contatti nell'area del Mediterraneo. Il ruolo dell'Islam. n.p., Palermo: 219–29.
Edzard, Lutz. 2003b. Externe Sprachgeschichte des Italienischen in Libyen und Ostafrika. In Ernst, Gerhard, Gleßgen, Martin-Dietrich, Schmitt, Christian and Schweickard, Wolfgang (eds), Romanische Sprachgeschichte. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Geschichte der romanischen Sprachen, vol. 1. De Gruyter, Berlin and New York: 966–72. [Both this and the above reference actually contain little discussion relating to Libya, despite their titles.]
Elmaamri, Sedigh. 2013. Etude parémiologique comparée des proverbes français et des proverbes en dialecte libyen. PhD thesis, Université Stendhal-Grenoble 3.
Faldun, Vittorio. 1936. Impariamo un po’ d'arabo. Conversazione e Vocabolario Italiano-Arabo. Libreria Editrice Vittorio Faldun, Benghazi.
Foreign Service Institute. 1959. Cyrenaican Arabic Basic Course: Units 1–24. US State Department, Washington, DC.
Foreign Service Institute. 1966. Tripolitanian Arabic: PLP-100 Courses. US State Department, Washington, DC, and Beirut.
Gaber, Gaber Meftah. 2012. An optimality theory account of the non-concatenative morphology of the nominal system of Libyan Arabic, with special reference to the broken plural . PhD thesis, Durham University.
Gaddafi, Ahmed Mohamed. 1990. Study of discourse markers in spoken Libyan Arabic . PhD thesis, Birkbeck University.
Holes, Clive. 1994. Libya: language situation. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 4. Pergamon Press, Oxford: 2207. [Contains very little information.]
Jankovec, Martin, and Stratilová, Marta. 1999. Libyjská hovorová arabština [Libyan Colloquial Arabic]. Karolinum, Prague. [In Czech.]
Keller, Karel. 1972. Slovník a gramatika libyjské hovorové arabštiny se zaměřením pro geologii [A Dictionary and Grammar of Libyan Colloquial Arabic with Special Focus on Geology]. Geoindustria, Prague. [In Czech.]
Kriba, Hussin Abdulrazaq. 2010. Acoustic parameters of emphasis in Libyan Arabic . PhD thesis, University of Newcastle.
Larcher, Pierre. 1997. Les mots du kadhafisme. Petite contribution linguistique à la politologie arabe. In Le Contrôle social du sens. Publications de l'Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence: 137–53.
Le Quellec, Jean-Loïc. 2003. Yalla! Méthode d'arabe libyen (Tripolitaine et Fezzân). L'Harmattan, Paris.
Levi, Eugenio. 1912. L'arabo parlato senza maestro: Metodo pratica per l'italiano in Tripolitania. n.p., Milan.
Li, Wei, and Mayouf, Mayouf Ali. 2009. The effects of the social status of the elderly in Libya on the way they institutionally interact and communicate with younger physicians. Journal of Pragmatics 41.1: 136–46.
Macaluso, M. 1913. L'arabo parlato in Libia. n.p., Naples.
Maitaq, Tariq. 2013. A phonetic study of emphasis in Libyan Arabic . PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh.
Malyarow, Ju. I. 1976. Kratkiy russkko-arabskiy razgovornik (Libiyskiy Dialekt) [A Brief Russian–Arabic Phrasebook]. ВИ МО, Moscow. [In Russian.]
Malyarow, Ju. I., and Miszkurow, E. N. 1980. Uchebnik arabskogo dialektnogo jazyka Livyi [A textbook of the Arabic dialect of Libya]. Voyenniy Krasnoznamenny Institut, Moscow. [In Russian.]
Manopulo, Michele E. 1913. L'arabo parlato in Libia. Cimmaruta, Naples.
Mazraani, Nathalie. 1997. Form and function in the Libyan data. In Aspects of Language Variation in Arabic Political Speech Making. Routledge, London and New York: 143–88.
Mayouf, Mayouf Ali. 2004. Social construction of the elderly in Libya: perception, communication and discourse. PhD thesis, Newcastle University. xviii+257 pp.
Meto, Salah Masoud Abdul-Salem. 1999. Issues in the introduction of new technical vocabulary in Arabic, with special reference to Libya. PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies.
Misallem, Mohammed Dawi Arbi. 1963. Tripolitanian Phrase Book. Poligrafico Libico, Tripoli.
al-Miṣrātī, ʿAlī Muṣṭafā. 2002. Al-Taʿābīr al-šaʿbiyya al-lībiyya: dalālāt nafsiyya wa ijtimāʿiyya. ʿArḍ wa dirāsa. Dār al-Jamāhīriyya, Misrata.
Nallino, Carlo Alfonso. 1915. Norme per la trascrizione italiana e la grafia araba dei nomi propri geografici della Tripolitania e della Cirenaica. Casa Editrice Italiana di C. De Luigi (per il Ministero delle Colonie), Rome.
Newman, Francis William. 1936. Nomenclatura elementare ed espressioni nelle lingue amharica, galla, araba (dialetto tripolino): oltre 1400 parole e 400 frasi. Istituto Coloniale Fascista, Rome.
Nydell, Margaret K. 1993. From Modern Standard Arabic to the Maghrebi Dialects (Libyan and Tunisian): Conversion Course. DLS Press, Arlington, VA.
Omran Al Zawan, Khaled. 2009. Refranes, proverbios y expresiones fraseológicas del árabe de carácter dialectal en Libia (de sentido irónico). In Huerta, Pedro Mogorrón and Mejri, Salah (eds), Fijación, desautomatización y traducción / Figement, défigement et traduction. Universidad de Alicante: 109–130.
Osman, A. 1974. The Libyan Language. Osman Series Spoken Arabic Grammar 2. Osman Arabic Centre, London.
Quitout, Michel. 2006. Bouquet de proverbes libyens. L'Harmattan, Paris.
Quitout, Michel 2007. Paysage linguistique et enseignement des langues au Maghreb des origins à nos jours: L'Amazighe, l'arabe et le français au Maroc, en Algérie, en Tunisie et en Libye. L'Harmattan, Paris.
Rackow, Ernst. 1943. Das Beduinenkostüm in Tripolitanien dargestellt am Beispiel des Nuâil-Stammes. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin.
Scialhub, Giuseppe. 1913. Grammatica italo-arabe con i rapporti e le differenze tra l'arabo letterario e il dialetto libico. Hoepli, Milan.
Shagmani, Abulgasem Muftah. 2002. The structure of Libyan Arabic discourse as depicted in two Arabic intwerviews [sic] recorded by the Libyan Jihād Studies Centre in Tripoli. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow. 585 pp. [Material provided almost unreadable due to an ad hoc transcription system.]
Sirāj, Rāmī Ḫayrī. 2010. Muʿjam min faṣīḥ al-ʿāmma wa daḫīli-hi: ʿarḍ li-faṣīḥ lahjat ṭarābulus wa mā daḫala-hu min ġarīb al-alfāẓ. Fusayfisāʾ, Tripoli.
Suwayd, ʿAbdallah, and Salmān, Maḥmūd. 1990. Al-Uṣūl al-ʿarabiyya al-faṣīḥa li-alfāẓ al-lahjat al-lībiyya fī ḍawʾ ilmay al-dalāla wa al-muʿjam. Dār al-Jamāhīriyya, Misrata.
Torrisi, Michelangelo. 1912. Piccolo manuale dell'arabo parlato in Tripolitania e Cirenaica. Catania, Monaco and Mollica.
Warit, Muḥammed Aḥmad. 2003. Amṯāl al-fuṣḥā wa taʾṯīr ḫaṣāʾiṣi-hā fī amṯāl al-ʿāmmīya al-lībīya. Turāṯ al-šaʿb 1–2.49–50: 9–22.
White, Edward C. 1969. Libyan Arabic. US Peace Corps, Bisbee.
Zanīn, Mūsā Muḥammad. 2003. Uṣūl min al-fuṣḥā fī al-lahja al-lībīya. Turāṯ al-šaʿb 1–2.49–50: 34–40.
al-Zayyāt, Muḥammad Ḥasan ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (ed.). 2007. Al-Lahja al-lībiyya fī faḍāʾihā bayna al-Mašriq wa al-Maġrib. 2 vols. Majmaʿiyyāt–Nadawāt 3. Majmaʿ al-Luġa al-ʿArabiyya, Tripoli.
n.a. 1900. Piccolo dizionario della lingua araba parlata in Tripoli di Barberia ad uso degli italiani. Imprimerie Orientale, Tripoli.
n.a. 1911. Manualetto per l'ufficiale in Tripolitania. Carte e schizzi topografici. Comando del Corpo di Stato Maggiore. Laboratorio foto-litografico d'artiglieria, Rome.
n.a. 1911. Manualetto per l'ufficiale in Tripolitania (ristampa). Comando del Corpo di Stato Maggiore.
n.a. 1926. Piccolo dizionario della lingua araba parlata in Tripoli di Barberia, ad uso degli italiani. Ditta T. Villani, Naples.
n.a. 1941. Un pó di arabo tripolino. Manuale pratico di nomenclatura e fraseologia italiana-araba-tripolina. Con pronunzia figurata. Edizioni Guide turistiche. Novi Ligure (S.A. Arti grafiche Panetto & Petrelli, Spoleto).
n.a. 1990. Dalīl muṣawwar li baʿḍ al-asmāk al-iqtiṣādīya bi-miyāh al-Jamāhīrīya al-ʿArabīya al-Lībīya aš-šaʿbīya al-ištirākīya al-ʿuẓmā [An Illustrated Guide to Types of Fish in Libya.] Manšūrāt Markaz Buḥūṯ al-Aḥyāʾ al-Baḥrīya. Dar Adfra, Paris.
n.a. n.d. Tripolitanian Arabic. Petroleum Companies Language Training Center of Libya.
3. Libyan Berber
Languages of the Berber (or Tamazight) family, indigenous to northern Africa, are spoken throughout Libya by a small percentage of the population. The number of Berber speakers in Libya is difficult to estimate, and there are no reliable figures. The most numerically significant, as well as vibrant, Berber-speaking communities are those of Zwara along Libya's north-west coast and the Nafusa mountains in the west. Other communities include Ghadames and the Tuareg in south-western Libya, and the oases of Sokna, El-Foqaha, and Awjila in the central Sahara. It will be noticed that new fieldwork is a necessity for every variety of Libyan Berber.
3.1 Berber in Libya: general and comparative
The following are studies which deal with general aspects of the Berber language in Libya or which include significant Libyan Berber data in a comparative study.
Ashour, Abdulaziz. 2014. Code switching between Tamazight and Arabic in the first Libyan Berber news broadcast: an application of Myers-Scotton's MLF and 4M Models . MA dissertation, Portland State University.
Asker, Adel, and Martin Jones, Marilyn. 2013. ‘A classroom is not a classroom if students are talking to me in Berber’: language ideologies and multilingual resources in secondary school English classes in Libya. Language and Education 27.4: 343–55.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1914. L'area linguistica berbera. Ministero delle Colonie, Rome.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1930. Per gli studi di toponomastica libico berbera. In Atti dell'XI Congresso Geografico Italiano, vol. 3. Naples: 243–47.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1934. A proposito di Arabi e Berberi in Libia. Africa Italiana, n.n.: 1–2.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1935. Studi linguistici nel Fezzân. Bollettino della Reale Società Geografica Italiana 12: 660–65.
Brugnatelli, Vermondo. 1983. Lo stato dei nomi in berbero orientale. Atti del Sodalizio Glottologico Milanese 24: 4–14.
Brugnatelli, Vermondo. 2010–2011. Les Péripéties du verbe dire en berbérie orientale. Etudes et Documents Berbères 29–30: 85–95.
Kossmann, Maarten. 1999. Cinq notes de linguistique historique berbère. Etudes et Documents Berbères 17: 131–52.
Souag, Lameen. 2013. Sub-Saharan lexical influence in North African Arabic and Berber. In Lafkioui, Mona (ed.), African Arabic: Approaches to Dialectology. De Gruyter, Berlin: 211–36. [Lexical items of a number of Libyan Arabic and Berber varieties discussed.]
3.2 Zwara
Commensurate with its status as one of the Libyan Berber varieties with the most speakers, the variety of Zwara (Zwari tawilult ‘Zwaran’) has also been the subject of comparably numerous studies. The English scholar T. F. Mitchell carried out fieldwork there in the 1940s and managed to bring informants to London for further work; two studies were published while he was alive (Mitchell Reference Mitchell1953; Reference Mitchell1957), and his texts were collected and published as monographs posthumously (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2007; Reference Mitchell2009). In the 1960s, the Italian scholar Luigi Serra also carried out fieldwork and has published a number of studies focusing on the Zwaran lexicon and its relationship with other Berber varieties. Both Paradisi (Reference Paradisi1964) and Serra (Reference Serra1990) discuss the festival of Awussu.
Galand, Lionel. 2005. Quelques traits du parler berbère de Zouara (Libye). Studi Magrebini 3 (Scritti in onore di Luigi Serra): 187–96.
Hamp, Eric P. 1959. Zuara Berber personals. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 21: 140–41.
Mitchell, Terence F. 1953. Particle–noun complexes in a Berber dialect (Zuara). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 15.2: 375–90.
Mitchell, Terence F. 1957. Some properties of Zuara nouns with special reference to those with consonant initial. In Mémorial André Basset. Maisonneuve, Paris: 83–96.
Mitchell, Terence F. 2007. Ferhat: An Everyday Story of Berber Folk in and Around Zuara (Libya). Berber Studies 17. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne.
Mitchell, Terence F. 2009. Zuaran Berber (Libya): Grammar and Texts. Berber Studies 26. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne.
Paradisi, Umberto. 1962. I pescatori berberi della penisola di Fàrwa (Tripolitania). L'Universo (Istituto Geografico Militare) 42: 293–300.
Paradisi, Umberto. 1964. I tre giorni di Awússu a Zuara (Tripolitania). Annali: Nuova Serie 14: 415–19.
Serra, Luigi. 1964. Testi berberi in dialetto di Zuara. Annali dell'Istituto Orientale di Napoli 14: 715–26.
Serra, Luigi. 1967. Su alcune costumanze dei Berberi ibaditi di Zuara (Tripolitania). Atti del Terzo Congresso di Studi Arabi e Islamici (Ravello 1966). Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples: 623–32.
Serra, Luigi. 1968a. Due racconti in dialetto berbero di Zuara (Tripolitania). Studi Magrebini 2: 123–28.
Serra, Luigi. 1968b. Quelques remarques comme suite aux premiers textes en dialecte berbère de Zuara (Tripolitaine). Annali Istituto Universitario Orientale 18: 444–47.
Serra, Luigi. 1970a. A proposito della terminologia marinaresca zarina (Immagini comuni ad altre zone del Mediterraneo e prestiti italiani). Bollettino dell'Atlante Linguistico Mediterraneo 10–12: 231–45.
Serra, Luigi. 1970b. L'ittionimia e la terminologia marinaresca nel dialetto berbero di Zuara (Tripolitania). Studi Magrebini 3: 21–53.
Serra, Luigi. 1970c. A proposito dei berberi attuali della Tripolitania. Atti della Settimana Magrebina: 29–46.
Serra, Luigi. 1971. Gli uomini piu venerati dai Berberi Ibaditi di Zuara (Tripolitania). Studi Magrebini 4: 65–75.
Serra, Luigi. 1973. Le Vocabulaire berbère de la mer. In Actes du 1er Congrès d’Etudes et Cultures d'Influences Arabo-Berbère, vol. 1. SNED, Algiers: 111–20.
Serra, Luigi. 1976. Concordanze dialetti italiane con voci arabe e berbere e voci italiane in un dialetto berbero tripolitano. Bollettino dell'Atlante Linguistico Mediterraneo 13–15: 433–48.
Serra, Luigi. 1978. Le Lexique commun aux dialectes berbères orientaux. In Actes du 2ème Congrès International d’Etudes des Cultures de la Méditeranée Occidentale, vol. 2. SNED, Algiers: 227–32.
Serra, Luigi. 1979. I ‘nomina actionis’ in un dialetto berbero orientale (Zuara-Tripolitania). Aiōn: Annali del Seminario di Studi del Mondo Classico, Sezione Linguistica 1: 213–55.
Serra, Luigi. 1985. A propos de la mer et de la fête d'Awussu chez une population berbère: notes d'information. In Galley, Micheline and Sebai, Leila Ladjimi (eds), L'Homme méditerranéen et la mer. Actes du IIIe Congrès International d'Etudes des Cultures de la Méditerranée Occidentale (Jerba, avril 1981). Tunis: 499–506.
Serra, Luigi. 1990. L'Awussu à Zouara (Tripolitaine). In Encyclopédie Berbère, vol. 8: 1199–200.
Serra, Luigi. 1993. Sul possessivo nel dialetto berbero di Zuara (Tripolitania). In À la croisée des études Libyco-berbères: mélanges offerts à Paulette Galand-Pernet et Lionel Galand. Paul Geuthner, Paris: 247–54.
3.3 Jabal Nafusa
The Nafusa mountains (Ar. žabal nafūsa, Nafusi adrar n ǝnfusǝn) contain a chain of towns and villages, many, but not all, of which are Berber-speaking. Little is currently known about the exact distribution of speakers and the status of the different dialects, though some information has come to light recently via social media outlets, and more fieldwork is an urgent desideratum.Footnote 6 The northernmost Berber-speaking town seems to be Yefren, the variety of which is undocumented save for a few words. Moving southwards, the variety of Jadu has been the subject of the majority of published works (Buselli Reference Buselli1921; Reference Buselli1924; Cesàro Reference Cesàro1949; Provasi Reference Provasi1973), including Beguinot (Reference Beguinot1931), the standard reference grammar for ‘Nafusi’ Berber. The southernmost varieties, also undocumented, of the Nafusa mountains seem to be the towns of Nalut near, and Wazzin on, the Libyan–Tunisian border. Ghadghoud (Reference Ghadghoud2013) seems to be the most recent fieldwork-based study of a Nafusi variety.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1917–18. Il gergo dei Berberi della Tripolitania. In Annuario del Istituto Napoli Orientale. Giannini & Figli, Naples: 107–12.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1925. Saggio di fonetica del Berbero Nefûsi di Fassâṭo. Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei 6.1: 304–30.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1926. Note sulle popolazioni del Gebel Nefûsa. L'Africa Italiana: 234–44.
Beguinot, Francesco. 1931. Il Berbero Nefûsi di Fassâṭo: Grammatica, testi raccolti dalla viva voce, vocabolarietti. Istituto per l'Oriente, Rome. [2nd edition revised, 1942.]
Buselli, Gennaro. 1921. Testi berberi del Gebel Nefûsa. L'Africa Italiana, bollettino della Società Africana d'Italia fasc. 1: 26–34.
Buselli, Gennaro. 1924. Berber texts from Jebel Nefûsi (Žemmari dialect). Journal of the African Society 23: 285–93.
de Calassanti-Motylinski, Gustave Adolphe. 1898. Le Djebel Nefousa. Transcription, traduction française et notes avec une étude grammaticale. Ernest Leroux, Paris.
Cesàro, Antonio. 1949. Due racconti berberi in linguaggio nefûsi. Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 3: 395–404.
Grimal de Guiraudon, Th. 1893. Dyebayli vocabulary, from an unpublished MS. A.D. 1831. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 669–98.
Ferkal, Masin. 2012. Nefoussa: langue et revolution (témoignage). In Encyclopédie Berbère, vol. 33. Peeters, Leuven: 5369–79.
Ghadghoud, Khawla M. 2013. Jespersen's Cycle in Libyan Arabic and Nafusi Berber. MA dissertation, University of Manchester.
Naït-Zerrad, Kamal. 2012. Nefoussa: langue. In Encyclopédie Berbère, vol. 33. Peeters, Leuven: 5363–69.
Provasi, Elio. 1973. Testi berberi di Žâdu. Istituto Orientale di Napoli 33: 501–30.
van Putten, Marijn. 2015. Reflexes of the proto-Berber glottal stop in Nefusa and Ghadames. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 105: 303–14.
Vycichl, Werner. 1954. Der Umlaut im Berberischen des Djebel Nefusa in Tripolitanien. Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale 6: 145–52.
Vycichl, Werner. 1972. Berberische Nomina Actoris im Dialekt des Djebel Nefusa (Tripolitanien). Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 67.11/12: 533–35.
3.4 Ghadames
The oasis of Ghadames (Ar. ġadāmis, Ghadamsi ‘ademəs), home to about 10,000 people, is located near where Libya, Tunisia and Algeria meet. Famed for its unique vernacular architecture, it is also home to a unique variety of Berber. The language was already known to the early Berberologist Calassanti-Motylinski (Reference de Calassanti-Motylinski1903 and Reference de Calassanti-Motylinski1904; for discussion of earlier mentions of the oasis, see Reference de Calassanti-Motylinski1904, 171–312), who based his work primarily on written materials. The first extensive in situ study of Ghadamsi was that of Jacques Lanfry, a Catholic missionary who stayed in Ghadames in 1944–45 and produced an ethnographic and linguistic sketch (Lanfry Reference Lanfry1968) and a lexicon of about 2,000 words (Lanfry Reference Lanfry1973). All subsequent work, including Kossmann's (Reference Kossmann2013) detailed grammatical sketch, is based on Lanfry's materials, with one exception. A hitherto overlooked resource for Ghadamsi is the thesis by Yedder (Reference Yedder1982), containing nearly one hundred transcribed texts, detailed ethnological information and a number of unique colour photographs. Finally, Hārūn (Reference Hārūnn.d.) provides an account of the language in Arabic, along with 484 sayings and prayer formulas.
Aymo, J. 1959. Notes de sociologie et de linguistique sur Ghadames [Libye]. Bulletin de Liaison Saharienne 10.34: 129–57.
Aymo, J. 1959. Les cris de Ghadames. Bulletin de Liaison Saharienne 10: 21–26.
Basset, André. 1945. A propos du parler berbère de Ghadames. In Travaux de l'Institut de recherches sahariennes. Ernest Imbert, Algiers.
de Calassanti-Motylinski, Gustave Adolphe. 1903. Note sur la mission dans le Souf pour y étudier le dialect berbère de R'adamès. Journal Asiatique 2: 157–62.
de Calassanti-Motylinski, Gustave Adolphe. 1904. Le Dialecte berbère de R'edamès. Publications d'Ecole des Lettres d'Alger, Paris.
Despois, J., Lanfry, J., and Prasse, Karl-G. 1998. Ghadamès. Encyclopédie Berbère, vol. 20. Édisud, Aix-en-Provence: 3067–82. Available at: http://encyclopedieberbere.revues.org/1913.
Hārūn, Abu Bakr. n.d. Al-Sahl wa al-masīr fī taʿallum al-luġa al-amāzīġiyya bi-lahjat ġadāmis. Dar al-Firjani, Tripoli.
Kossmann, Maarten. 2000. La Futur à Ghadamès et l'origine de la conjugaison verbale en berbère. In Chaker, S. and Zaborski, A. (eds), Etudes berbères et chamito-sémitiques: mélanges offerts à Karl-G. Prasse. Peeters, Leuven: 237–62.
Kossmann, Maarten. 2001. The origin of the glottal stop in Zenaga and its reflexes in the other Berber Languages. Africa und Übersee 84: 61–100. [Mostly about Ghadames, with comparative data from other Berber languages.]
Kossmann, Maarten. 2013. A Grammatical Sketch of Ghadames Berber (Libya). Berber Studies 40. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne.
Lanfry, Jacques. 1957. Deux notes grammaticales sur le berbère de Ghadamès. In Mémorial André Basset. Maisonneuve, Paris: 57–60.
Lanfry, Jacques. 1968. Ghadamès I: étude linguistique et ethnographique. n.p., Algiers. [Reprinted with corrections in 1971.]
Lanfry, Jacques. 1972. Deux notes sur le berbère de Ghadamès. Comptes rendus du Groupe Linguistique d'Etudes Chamito-Sémitiques 16: 175–84.
Lanfry, Jacques. 1973. Ghadamès II: glossaire (parler des Ayt Waziten). n.p., Algiers.
Lanfry, Jacques. 2011. Dictionnaire de berbère libyen (Ghadamès). Editions Achab, Tizi-Ouzou. [Reprint of Lanfry 1973.]
Prasse, Karl-G. 1984. The origin of the vowels O and E in Tuareg and Ghadamsi. In Bynon, J. (ed.), Current Progress in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics: Papers of the Third International Hamito–Semitic Congress. John Benjamins, Amsterdam: 317–26.
Rohlfs, Gerhard. 1872. Die Zahlzeichen der Rhadamser. Ausland 29: 695–96.
Vycichl, Werner. 1952. Das berberische Ziffernsystem von Ghadames und seine Ursprung. Rivisti di Studi Orientali 27: 81–83.
Vycichl, Werner. 1966. Etude sur la langue de Ghadames. Geneve-Afrique 5.2: 248–60.
Yedder, Abdurahman M. 1982. The oral literature associated with the traditional wedding ceremony at Ghadames. PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
3.5 Sokna and El-Foqaha
The oases of Sokna and El-Foqaha are located in central Libya. Sokna belongs to a cluster of three oases, the other two being the more populous Houn and Waddan, which lies approximately 250 km from both the Mediterranean coast to the north and Sebha to the south. In the nineteenth century, European travellers through the Libyan desert stopped by the oasis of Sokna and gathered a few word lists: Lyon (Reference Lyon1821) contains a list of about 142 words constituting the oldest published source, while the vocabularies of Richardson made in 1850 were never published and were only recently rediscovered and analysed by Souag (Reference Souagforthcoming a; Reference Souagforthcoming b). The first, and to-date only, linguistic fieldwork to have been conducted on the Sokni language was that of the Italian military ophthalmologist Tommaso Sarnelli in the 1920s. Sarnelli, working with an informant in Tripoli, published six texts, all folk literature, in a detailed though idiomatic phonetic transcription with Italian translation, along with an Italian–Sokni word list of some 500 items (Sarnelli Reference Sarnelli1924). Later sketches of Sokni (Prasse Reference Prasse1982) are based on this material. Recently, a Berber speaker from Yefren travelling to Sokna was able to gather a word list of about 200 items from an elderly resident, many of which agree with those in Sarnelli (S‘id n Yunes 2010a; 2010b).
Lyon, George Francis. 1821. A Narrative of Travels in Northern Africa in the Years 1818, 19, 20. John Murray, London. [Sokni words on pp. 314–16.]
Prasse, Karl-G. 1982. Sokni (Fezzan). In Encyclopédie Berbère, vol. 31. Edisud, Aix-en-Provence: 1–3.
Sarnelli, Tommaso. 1924. Il dialetto berbero di Sokna: materiali lessicali, testi manoscritti in caratteri arabi, con trascrizione e traduzione. Supplemento all'Africa Italiana: 1–43. [The only published description of the language of Sokna.]
Souag, Lameen. Forthcoming a. Sokna re-examined: two unedited Sokna Berber vocabularies from 1850. Quaderni di Studi Berberi e Libico-berberi No. 3: Hommages Francesco Beguinot.
Souag, Lameen. Forthcoming b. Le parler berbère de Sokna (Libye) à la lumière de nouvelles données. Etudes et Document Berbères.
Sʿid n Yunes. 2010a. Tutlayt Tmaziɣt n Sukna (1). Tawalt. Available at: www.tawalt.com/?p=5047.
Sʿid n Yunes. 2010b. Tutlayt Tmaziɣt n Sukna (2). Tawalt. Available at: www.tawalt.com/?p=5390.
El-Foqaha is an oasis about 200 km to the south of Sokna. Only in 1934 did the Italian orientalist Francesco Beguinot find out that a Berber language was spoken there; working with a woman from El-Foqaha living in Zighen (a town near Sebha), he gathered a short word list on the basis of which he suggested the language's proximity to Sokni (Beguinot Reference Beguinot1935 in section 3.1). However, no further research was carried out until 1960, when Umberto Paradisi was able to meet two speakers residing in Tripoli. His fieldwork resulted in the publication of five transcribed folk tales with an Italian–Berber lexicon (Paradisi Reference Paradisi1961) and a grammatical sketch (Paradisi Reference Paradisi1963). He reports that only three people could speak Berber effectively at that time, with ten or so more being able to understand it. Paradisi also provided a brief comparison with Sokni material, confirming the proximity of the two (Reference Paradisi1961: 296–302). Prasse (Reference Prasse1996) is based on Paradisi's material.
Paradisi, Umberto. 1961. El-Fógǎha, Oasi Berberofona del Fezzân. Rivista degli Studi Orientali 36: 293–302.
Paradisi, Umberto. 1963. Il Linguaggio Berbero di El-Fóğăha (Fezzân). Istituto Orientale di Napoli 13: 93–126.
Prasse, Karl-G. 1996. El-Foqahā. In Encyclopédie Berbère, vol. 19. Édisud, Aix-en-Provence: 2886–89. Available at: http://encyclopedieberbere.revues.org/1953.
3.6 Awjila
The oasis of Awjila (Ar. awjila, Awjili ašal n awilǝn) in eastern Libya, about 250 km south of Ajdabiya, is home to the easternmost Berber language spoken in Libya. The language was known to early researchers (Basset Reference Basset and Marçais1935; Reference Basset1936; Zanon Reference Zanon1932), but the first extensive work on the language did not appear until Umberto Paradisi's fieldwork in the late 1950s, which resulted in an Italian–Berber lexicon (Paradisi Reference Paradisi1960) and 15 transcribed texts with Italian translation (Paradisi Reference Paradisi1961). More recently, Marijn van Putten compiled an extensive grammatical description of the language based on the materials collected by Paradisi (van Putten Reference van Putten2014a). The language is certainly still in use, primarily by those middle-aged and older (see van Putten and Souag, Reference van Putten and Souag2015), but it has been difficult to estimate the number of speakers since recent fieldwork has not been possible.
Basset, André. 1935. Siwa et Aoudjila, problème verbal berbère. In Marçais, William (ed.), Mélanges offerts à Gaudefroy-Demombynes par ses amis et anciens élèves. Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, Cairo: 279–300.
Basset, André. 1936. Siwa, Aoudjila et Imeghran à propos d'un rapprochement. Annales de l'Institut d’Études Orientales de la Faculté des Lettres de l'Université 2: 119–27.
Basset, André. 1949. Sur une notation berbère de G. F. Lyon. Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 3: 379–81.
von Beurmann, Carl Moritz. 1862. Brief des Herrn von Beurmann an Professor Fleischer. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 16: 563–65. [Contains notes about Awjila with a few words.]
Brugnatelli, Vermondo. 1985. Il problema verbale di Siwa e Augila. Atti del Sodalizio Glottologico Milanese 26: 8–11.
Müller, Frédéric. 1827. Vocabulaire du langage des habitants d'Audjelah. In Jean-Raimond Pacho (ed.), Relation d'un voyage dans la Marmarique, la Cyrénaïque et les oasis d'Audjelah et de Maradeh. Firmin-Didot, Paris: 317–57.
Paradisi, Umberto. 1960. Il Berbero di Augila, Materiale Lessicale. Rivista Degli Studi Orientali 35: 157–77.
Paradisi, Umberto. 1961. Testi Berberi di Augila (Cirenaica). Annali Istituto Univeritario Oriente di Napoli 10: 79–91.
Paradisi, Umberto 1963. Sul nome del ‘topo’ nel Berbero di Augila e una voce Libica citata da Erodoto. Rivista degli Studi Orientali 38: 61–65.
van Putten, Marijn. 2013 [2014]. Some notes on the development of Awjila Berber vowels. Nordic Journal of African Studies 22.4: 236–55.
van Putten, Marijn. 2014a. A Grammar of Awjila Berber (Libya): Based on Paradisi's Work. Berber Studies 41. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag: Cologne.
van Putten, Marijn. 2014b. Some notes on the historical consonantism of Awjila. Folia Orientalia 51: 257–74.
van Putten, Marijn, and Benkato, Adam. Forthcoming. The Arabic strata in Awjila Berber. In AlJallad, Ahmad (ed.), Arabic in Context. Brill, Leiden.
van Putten, Marijn, and Souag, Lameen. 2015. Attrition and revival in Awjila Berber: Facebook posts as a new data source for an endangered language. Corpus 14: 23–58.
Vycichl, Werner, and Prasse, Karl-G. 1989. Augila. In Encyclopédie Berbère, vol. 7. Edisud, Aix-en-Provence: 1950–55. Available at: http://encyclopedieberbere.revues.org/1220.
Zanon, Fernando. 1932. Contributo alla conoscenza linguistico-etnografica dell'oasi di Augila. Bollettino della Società Africana d'Italia 50.4: 259–76.
3.7 Libyan Tuareg
The Tuareg language, a variety of Berber, is spoken throughout south-western Libya. While varieties outside of Libya have received comparatively greater attention, Tuareg in Libya is scarcely documented and the only published accounts (Krause Reference Krause1884; Nehlil Reference Nehlil1909) are over a hundred years old. These focus on the variety of Tuareg spoken in Ghat (Ar. ġāt), a city of about 20,000 inhabitants near Libya's border with Algeria. The Tuareg live in many other cities of the region as well, such as Ghadames, Ubari and Murzuq, but linguistic studies have never been carried out in those locations and the number of Tuareg speakers cannot be ascertained. Estimates are further complicated by the fact that many Tuareg move across the borders. Regarding Ghat it should also be noted, as Ines Kohl kindly informs us, that Hausa is widely spoken. Finally, Brulard (Reference Brulard1958) gives a few lexical items but is mostly an ethnological study, while the Encyclopédie Berbère entry on Ghat contains only historical information (linguistic information on Tuareg in general is included under the entry ‘Ajjer’).
Brulard, M. 1958. La Musique et la danse à Ghat. Bulletin de Liaison Saharienne 9: 37–48.
Encyclopédie Berbère . 1998. Ghât (Rhat). Vol. 20: 3101–7. Available at: http://encyclopedieberbere.revues.org/1921.
Krause, Gustav A. 1884. Proben der Sprache von Ghat in der Sahara: mit haussanischen und deutscher Übersetzung. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig.
Nehlil, Mohammed. 1909. Etudes sur le dialecte de Ghat. Leroux (Publications de l’Ecole des Lettres d'Alger, Bulletin de Correspondance Africaine), Paris.
