# to stay



## willg

Hi everyone, I would like to know how to say "to stay" in colloquial arabic. I've heard something like "Doll" but I'm not sure. 

Thank you


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## Mahaodeh

Doll? What was the dialect? You probably heard Dall which is the way it's pronounced in Levantine dialects, elsewhere it would be DHall. However, there is also baqia (MSA; buga, buqa, ba2a, ba2i...etc. colloquial). We need more context to know exactly what you need.


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## willg

Yes that was it, levantine dialect. How do you write it in arabic and how do you conjugate it??


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## dkarjala

Mahaodeh said:


> Doll? What was the dialect? You probably heard Dall which is the way it's pronounced in Levantine dialects, elsewhere it would be DHall. However, there is also baqia (MSA; buga, buqa, ba2a, ba2i...etc. colloquial). We need more context to know exactly what you need.



Maybe the 'o' was there because he was imitating an emphatic _fatHa_ and not an o/u sound from Arabic itself?

And when you say elsewhere it would be DHall, do you mean Zall as well? As far as I know, very few dialects actually pronounce _DHaa _as and interdental.


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## Mahaodeh

By DH I mean ظ.


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## dkarjala

Mahaodeh said:


> By DH I mean ظ.



Right, I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I'm curious, from your perspective, how different dialects you are aware of pronounce this. As far as I know, a lot of people pronounce DH _behind_ the teeth and not _between _the teeth as in fusHa. That's why I called it Zaa.


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## clevermizo

dkarjala said:


> Right, I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I'm curious, from your perspective, how different dialects you are aware of pronounce this. As far as I know, a lot of people pronounce DH _behind_ the teeth and not _between _the teeth as in fusHa. That's why I called it Zaa.



Actually ظ is pronounced as an interdental by a large number of dialects. I'd assume Bedouin dialects everywhere, plus the dialects of the Peninsula except maybe the Hejaz (I'm not sure about this, Wadi Hanifa would know more). In any case, there was a merger of ض and ظ. Those that pronounce it as an interdental pronounce both as an interdental. Those that pronounce it as D pronounce both as D, but use the Z pronunciation for "higher" vocabulary/later borrowings from Fus7a.

The pronunciations D/Z rather than Dh occur in urban varieties in the Levant, Egypt and perhaps parts of North Africa. Rural varieties often maintain interdentals.


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## dkarjala

clevermizo said:


> Actually ظ is pronounced as an interdental by a large number of dialects. I'd assume Bedouin dialects everywhere, plus the dialects of the Peninsula except maybe the Hejaz (I'm not sure about this, Wadi Hanifa would know more). In any case, there was a merger of ض and ظ. Those that pronounce it as an interdental pronounce both as an interdental. Those that pronounce it as D pronounce both as D, but use the Z pronunciation for "higher" vocabulary/later borrowings from Fus7a.
> 
> The pronunciations D/Z rather than Dh occur in urban varieties in the Levant, Egypt and perhaps parts of North Africa. Rural varieties often maintain interdentals.



Certainly all the interdentals are preserved in many bedouin dialects, but I'm curious whether dialects without regular interdentals ث، ذ actually have an interdental pronunciation for ظ ?


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## WadiH

clevermizo said:


> Actually ظ is pronounced as an interdental by a large number of dialects. I'd assume Bedouin dialects everywhere, plus the dialects of the Peninsula except maybe the Hejaz (I'm not sure about this, Wadi Hanifa would know more).



It's pronounced interdentally in the Hejaz as well, except among the speakers of the traditional urban dialect of Jeddah/Mecca/Medina/Yanbu (as opposed to those who moved to those cities from the countryside in recent decades).  I've noticed that rural and bedouin people who move to these cities assimilate a lot of the Urban Hejazi speech but will always retain the interdentals.  It's become almost a shibboleth there.

In the city of Al-Qatif on the east coast (and its surrounding villages), the ظ is pronounced as [D] (ذ is pronounced [d] and ث is often pronounced ف).

In the northern reaches of Yemen, I know that the interdental ث is pronounced ت (the Houthis call themselves "Houtis"), but I don't know if this extends to the other interdentals.

Outside of the Peninsula, all bedouin or bedouin-descended dialects pronounce it interdentally of course, as well as in Iraq, Ahwaz, and possibly in the rural Euphrates region of Syria (hopefully someone can confirm).

I think the interdentals might be retained in Tunisia and parts of Libya, but I'm not sure.


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## clevermizo

dkarjala said:


> Certainly all the interdentals are preserved in many bedouin dialects, but I'm curious whether dialects without regular interdentals ث، ذ actually have an interdental pronunciation for ظ ?



No, they do not to my knowledge. Dialects that have interdental pronunciations for ث and ذ pronounce *both* ض and ظ as an interdental ظ. Dialects that do not have interdental ث and ذ pronounce *both* ض and ظ as ض (or Z in some vocabulary). It's just important to note that it is not only Bedouin dialects that preserve interdentals, and furthermore that ض and ظ have essentially merged everywhere. The D vs. Z that you find in the Levant and Egypt, for example, does not map onto ض and ظ, but rather onto individual vocabulary items containing either ض or ظ. (For example: Zann from root ظ ن ن, but biZ-Zabt from root ض ب ط, and likewise Dall from ظلّ and 2aaDi/qaaDi from قاضي).

In other words if you hear the Z sound, the dialect also has the D sound for the same ظ etymologically.


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## dkarjala

clevermizo said:


> No, they do not to my knowledge. Dialects that have interdental pronunciations for ث and ذ pronounce *both* ض and ظ as an interdental ظ. Dialects that do not have interdental ث and ذ pronounce *both* ض and ظ as ض (or Z in some vocabulary). It's just important to note that it is not only Bedouin dialects that preserve interdentals, and furthermore that ض and ظ have essentially merged everywhere. The D vs. Z that you find in the Levant and Egypt, for example, does not map onto ض and ظ, but rather onto individual vocabulary items containing either ض or ظ. (For example: Zann from root ظ ن ن, but biZ-Zabt from root ض ب ط, and likewise Dall from ظلّ and 2aaDi/qaaDi from قاضي).
> 
> In other words if you hear the Z sound, the dialect also has the D sound for the same ظ etymologically.



Ok that makes sense...and yes, the register/lexical variations go without saying. I'd love to see an isogloss map of these somewhere.


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## clevermizo

dkarjala said:


> Ok that makes sense...and yes, the register/lexical variations go without saying. I'd love to see an isogloss map of these somewhere.



The merger must be very old indeed. In Maltese, the modern pronunciation of ض and ظ is _d_ everywhere (they have lost velarization or pharyngealization of emphatic consonants). They do not have interdentals nor a "z"-like pronunciation for higher register borrowing.

For example, _deher_ from ظهر which is Zuher/Ziher/Zəher in the Levant. 

This indirectly shows that the pronunciation Z is actually a fus7a influence on dialects later on. Since the Arabs left Malta and Sicily in the 11th century, it stands to reason that they were thereafter uninfluenced by fus7a. Also we might hypothesize that the Z pronunciation we see elsewhere is only as old as the 11th or 12th century.


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## dkarjala

clevermizo said:


> The merger must be very old indeed. In Maltese, the modern pronunciation of ض and ظ is _d_ everywhere (they have lost velarization or pharyngealization of emphatic consonants). They do not have interdentals nor a "z"-like pronunciation for higher register borrowing.
> 
> For example, _deher_ from ظهر which is Zuher/Ziher/Zəher in the Levant.
> 
> This indirectly shows that the pronunciation Z is actually a fus7a influence on dialects later on. Since the Arabs left Malta and Sicily in the 11th century, it stands to reason that they were thereafter uninfluenced by fus7a. Also we might hypothesize that the Z pronunciation we see elsewhere is only as old as the 11th or 12th century.



Farsi/Urdu pronunciation as _z_ also makes it a pretty antique feature, no? Especially those z's originating from _Daad_?


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## Mahaodeh

How long have the Farsi/Urdu pronunciation been around? They could have changed after the Arabic change, or they could have changed it before.


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## clevermizo

dkarjala said:


> Farsi/Urdu pronunciation as _z_ also makes it a pretty antique feature, no? Especially those z's originating from _Daad_?



Good point. However that might a separate phenomenon.

This is my working hypothesis:

Originally we have ض as a voiced lateral fricative (as described by Sibawayh) and ظ as an voiced interdental fricative. Since they are both fricatives with similar articulation, they thus merge.

1. Merger of ض and ظ into _Dh_ 

2a. Pronunciation of Arabic interdental fricatives _Dh_, _th_ and _dh_ as stop consonants in certain regions (D, t, d).
------i. Maltese is cut off from Fus7a influence in the 11 century-----------
2b. Pronunciation of Arabic interdental fricatives as alveolar fricatives in Urdu/Farsi borrowings (_z, s, z_). 

3. Pronunciation of fus7a loan idioms and vocabulary in Arabic dialects as alveolar fricatives in certain regions (_Z, s, z_). 

My question is ض ever pronounced as _d_ in Farsi or Urdu borrowings? (Apparently not according to this.)

Note, there must have been significant cross talk between Arabic dialects and Farsi in earlier ages. So the rise of the Z pronunciation could be a cross influence, or at least reinforced by the contact.

The Arabic that arrived and developed in Sicily and Malta had definitely gotten to step 2a above, however, it did not reach step 3 either because this did not happen yet in any Arabic dialects before the Arabs left Sicily/Malta, or because of a lack of Persian or Turkish or other influences. 

Note, _all_ the interdentals are pronounced as stops in Maltese (t for ث, d for ذ and d for ظ or ض). 

I think this might have to be a new topic soon. 

Just as anecdotal evidence, I once had a Turkish classmate in Arabic class. He _always _pronounced هذا as هازا which actually used to throw me off quite a bit listening to him. So I think that it is relatively easy for the alveolar pronunciation of interdental fricatives to develop independently in systems that do not have interdental fricatives. The more interesting bit chronologically to me is when they became _stops_ which based on the Maltese evidence probably happened very early (or perhaps that phenomenon is also independent). It's also incorrect to look at Maltese as some unchanging artifact, which I readily admit. For example, they pronounce _q_ as a glottal stop, however this is completely independent of Levantine or Egyptian trends, and in fact was still being pronounced as _q_ in the 19th century, so it's a relatively recent and independent change.


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## dkarjala

Mahaodeh said:


> How long have the Farsi/Urdu pronunciation been around? They could have changed after the Arabic change, or they could have changed it before.



Well, if a language borrows a word from another language, it uses the sound that is closest to what it hears. If _DHaa _and _Daad_ were different pronunciations in the Arabic, you would expect them to be differentiated from each other somehow in Farsi/Urdu as well. As far as I know, in Farsi, ض، ظ، ذ، ز in Arabic loanwords have always been pronounced the same way...that means the pronunciation of ض/ظ  could _maybe _be traced back to very early...7th/8th century. Perhaps someone more familiar with the history of Persian could help.

In any case, if ض was pronounced as a stop, you would expect them to use a _d_ or something.


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## dkarjala

clevermizo said:


> I think this might have to be a new topic soon.



haha. we killed the thread. whoops!

And my post was written at the same time as yours so it's redundant, alas. I'm still on the fence about the original pronunciation of ض but I think your version is at least the starting point for the main changes.


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## clevermizo

dkarjala said:


> haha. we killed the thread. whoops!
> 
> And my post was written at the same time as yours so it's redundant, alas. I'm still on the fence about the original pronunciation of ض but I think your version is at least the starting point for the main changes.



Well ض is believed to have originally been a lateral fricative by linguists, and Sibawayh describes it as having been voiced as well. It was not originally a stop in Classical Arabic, but I'm mystified as to how the stop pronunciation became the standard.

Just my last comment before this gets too wildly off topic. Mods feel free to split this off or lock it.


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## WadiH

Mizo,
With regards to the loss of interdentals in Maltese, I think all these conversions from interdentals to stops occurred independently.  You find this in English as well.  People from certain linguistic backgrounds find it hard to adapt to interdentals for some reason.



dkarjala said:


> Well, if a language borrows a word from another language, it uses the sound that is closest to what it hears. If _DHaa _and _Daad_ were different pronunciations in the Arabic, you would expect them to be differentiated from each other somehow in Farsi/Urdu as well. As far as I know, in Farsi, ض، ظ، ذ، ز in Arabic loanwords have always been pronounced the same way...that means the pronunciation of ض/ظ  could _maybe _be traced back to very early...7th/8th century. Perhaps someone more familiar with the history of Persian could help.
> 
> In any case, if ض was pronounced as a stop, you would expect them to use a _d_ or something.



Then why is it that, even in modern times, in Syria and Egypt, both ض and ظ become an emphatic ز in MSA borrowings, without any distinction between the two, even though they sound different in MSA?


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## Ali Smith

Are there no dialects that use مَكَثَ يَمْكُثُ (or some variant thereof), which, as far as I know, is the only way of saying "to stay" in classical Arabic?


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