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This book is the first coursebook to deal with the Modern South Arabian language, Mehri. Focussing on Mehri as spoken in Central Dhofar, Oman, the work results from several years' close collaboration with four native speakers of Mehri. The book is multimodal, supported by a large number of audio and audio-visual texts from the Mehri archive housed at the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. It comprises twenty lessons and a glossary of all terms occurring in the lessons. Dialogues within the lessons focus as far as possible on aspects of the traditional culture of the Mahrah, thus introducing the student not only to the language, but also to issues of cultural importance.
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This article investigates the use and functions of the active and passive participial forms in the Omani vernacular spoken in al-'Awābī district, in al-Bāṭina region of northern Oman. This dialect was first described by Carl Reinhardt in 1894. No sections of his work, however, deal with the analysis of functions of participial forms in the dialect, although they are common in his texts. The data presented in this article aim to show the uses of the active participle in the everyday speech of my participants living in al-'Awābī district and the different syntactic and semantic functions it conveys. The syntactic functions of the participle in Arabic linguistics has long been debated since it is neither completely a verbal form nor a nominal. This article fits into this discussion as it brings new data and analysis of active and passive participles in Arabic dialectology with regard to the Omani vernacular spoken in al-'Awābī district.
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The article consistently examines the phonetic, grammatical and lexical features of Omani Arabic as a dialect strongly contrasting the literary variant ( al-fuṣḥā ) compared to other dialects of the Arabian Peninsula. For the first time the authors propose a thesis that the basic factors of Omani Arabic formation were associated with the key historical events that occurred in this part of the Arabic world in the last centuries - from the settlement of the genuine Arabic tribes in the Arabian Peninsula to migration waves to Oman from the Asian region. The authors show the uniqueness of Omani Arabic, which easily assimilates lexical units borrowed from the non-European languages and emphasize the relevance and incompleteness of this process.
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This paper seeks to clearly outline the features that distinguish Ruʾūs al-Jibāl Arabic (also called Šiḥḥī Arabic, Musandam Arabic) spoken on the Omani peninsula from surrounding dialects. Comparison with nearby Arabic varieties yields a few areal features (in segmental phonology) that establish a dialect continuum from the coasts of northern Oman to Musandam. A large number of phonological similarities between Ruʾūs al-Jibāl Arabic and Dhofari Arabic are then documented here for the first time. This robust but discontinuous link re-frames many of the peculiarities of Ruʾūs al-Jibāl Arabic as vestiges of a coastal southern Arabian dialect group. This finding fits a wellknown ancient pattern of northward population movements out of south Arabia, and allows for a more effective delineation of innovations unique to Ruʾūs al-Jibāl . It also offers a direction forward for an expanded framework for the classification of the Arabic dialects of southeastern Arabia, incorporating Oman's peripheries at Dhofar and Musandam.
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The present contribution examines the form and function of the apophonic ("internal") passive (AP) in an Arabic dialect of northern Oman. The AP is one of several features common to all the dialects of Oman, having been retained in dialects of both the "Bedouin" (B) and "sedentary" (S) types. In a study of the AP in dialects of Oman and eastern Arabia, Clive Holes (1998) showed that this category survives as a functioning marker of the passive voice in Omani S dialects mostly in the historically isolated interior of the country, albeit in verbs belonging to a restricted set of syntactic and lexicosemantic categories. The purpose of the present study is to determine whether the same process of recession has taken place in a B dialect of the Omani interior. Results of the study reveal that in the B dialect of the Hidyīwī tribe, whose dīra is located in the hinterland of Muḍaybi in northern Oman, the AP is significantly more productive than in the S dialects described by Holes. This contrast corresponds with certain socio-historical factors which distinguish the different speech communities of the interior. In particular, the Hidyīwī community is significantly more isolated from outsider contact and maintains a more homogeneous, tight-knit social structure than towns in which the S dialects are spoken.
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[Continuing with the theme of the Arabic-speaking world, here’s a post originally published in June 2012] Much attention in the conventional media has been focused on the “Arab Spring” events of the past year and a half. However, not all Arab countries have participated in the turmoil. One notable exception is Oman, currently one of […]
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In compiling the following vocabulary of 'Omanee words, the principal aim has been to give only such words as exhibit the dialectical peculiarities mentioned in the preceding Part, and not to furnish a complete list of words in common use in O'mán. Technical words, or words employed in agriculture, trade, arts, manufactures, etc., have been intentionally omitted, as they would be beyond the scope and extent of the present paper. Most of the words, it will be seen, are of Arabic origin, and the dialectical sense, wherever it differs from the original, is either metaphorical or an extension of the sense conveyed by the original root.
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