# الكسكسة ، الكشكشة kaskasa, kashkasha



## SofiaB

Some dialects use kaskasa/kashkasha especially for the seond person feminine. k becomes sh in parts of Yemen, ts in parts of KSA, ch in parts of Iraq, Kuwait and UAE. So my question is which areas use which version? I am also interested in the aforementioned places as to which areas use what. Is this a pre-Islamic feature or a later development?


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## WadiH

The answer is complex and can't be answered solely on the basis of geography but also on a tribal basis:

*Kashkasha (k=sh)*: this feature is associated with southern Arabia (Yemen, southwestern KSA, and Oman --- though not all dialects there use it!).  Most tribes of southwestern KSA have it, e.g. the 'Asir of Abha, and the Yam of Najran.  The Qahtan are divided: some use "k=sh" and some use "k=ts."  I'm not sure about the other tribes like Shahran (this is Ayed's department ).  The 'Ijman tribe, which is found in northeastern Arabia uses it also, and their cousins, the Al Murra (eastern KSA, Qatar, and UAE) both use it even though they live far away from Yemen.  The reason is that the 'Ijman and Murra broke off from Yam around 3 centuries ago.  "Kashkasha" is *only* used for the second person female singular pronoun.

*Kaskasa* (k=ts): this is a feature associated with Hejaz and Najd, except that in Hejaz it is only used by the bedouins, not the urban population.  When heard outside Najd, it is almost always from tribes with a connection to Najd and Hejaz (e.g. among some of the beduoins of the Iraq, Syrian, and Jordanian desert who are of recent Najdi origin).  The bedouin section of Qahtan, who straddle Najd and southwestern Arabia, use kaskasa as far as I know.  The Bani Hajar of eastern Arabia also use it (or reportedly k=s instead of k=ts), even though they are immigrants from the southwest, and so do the Shammar of northern Najd who originated from Yemen.  The Bani Khalid of eastern Arabia also use it (b/c they probably came form Najd).  The difference between Najd and Hejaz, however, is that in Hejaz it tends to be restricted to pronouns, whereas in Najd it (historically) was used for other instances of 'k' as well (e.g. kalb=tsalb, for "dog," kan=tsan, etc.), though there are "phonetic environments" where this is not allowed ("yikrah" is rarely pronounced "yitsrah").

*K=ch*: I don't know if there's a word for this, but as you know you find this among the sedentary poulations of the the Gulf littoral (from northern Oman to Kuwait and including Al-Hasa in KSA), and you find it in most (all?) of Iraq, and among the Arabs of Ahwaz in Iran.  You also find it in rural Palestine, and among some of the bedouin tribes of Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine (the ones that have been in those areas for a long time, rather than the more recent immigrants from Najd and Hejaz).  As you probably know, it's not restricted to pronouns, and its use is much more extensive than that of "k=ts" in Najd.

I don't know anything about situation the among the bedouins of Sinai, Egypt, or North Africa, but I'd love to know if they have this sort of phenomenon.



> Is this a pre-Islamic feature or a later development?



The classical grammarians are the ones who gave us the terms "kaskasa" and "kashkasha", and have given us examples of several variations of these, and not all these variations are found today (e.g. they record "k=ks" and "k=ksh").  So, in principle, these phenomena predate Islam, but not used in exactly the same form or the same way.  The use of "kaskasa" outside of pronouns is probably a later development.  There's no record of "k=ch" as far as I know.

There is an analogous phenomenon that occurs to [g], but only occurs in Najd ([g] = dz under certain conditions -- a voiced kaskasa?), and the Gulf littoral, Iraq, and Ahwaz ([g] = j).  [g]=j is so extensive that its speakers are often not even aware of its presence (e.g. most people don't know that جاسم is just an affricated form of قاسم).  I know these features are not recorded by the old grammarians.


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## Mahaodeh

Regarding the ch; I'm guessing that it's origin is kashkasha; the reason of this guess is that when you say tsh fast in normal speech it would sound very close to ch; so I'm guessing that through the years it turned into ch.


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## WadiH

^I think it probably developed independtly of كشكشة.  كشكشة doesn't operate exactly the same way as you Iraqis and Gulfies use k=ch.  You guys say _minnich_, _3annich_, etc., whereas in kashkasha dialects they say _minsh_, _3ansh_, etc.  Also, it seems you confused kaskasa with kashkasha.  Kaskasa includes a 't' sound (k=ts), but in kashkasha there is no 't' (k=sh, not k=tsh).

The question of where k=ch comes from that requires a bit more research, and I haven't found any modern scholarship on it yet.


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## clevermizo

Wadi Hanifa said:


> The question of where k=ch comes from that requires a bit more research, and I haven't found any modern scholarship on it yet.


The fact that k>ch in Arabic is more sweeping that pronouns in the dialects that possess it sounds to me like you are right that it is independent of kaskasa and kashkasha. I don't know much about these dialects to be fair, but my initial guess is that Damma and long uu block the occurrence of k>ch (in other words: chalb, but not *chuwayt for Kuwait).


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## djara

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I don't know anything about situation the among the bedouins of Sinai, Egypt, or North Africa, but I'd love to know if they have this sort of phenomenon.



This is not a feature of Tunisian Arabic whether bedouin or urban.


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## SofiaB

Thanks for the very detailed responses.


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## MarcB

This [Eiman M. Mustafawi, AN OPTIMALITY THEORETIC APPROACH TO VARIABLECONSONANTAL ALTERNATIONS IN QATARI ARABIC] by might be of interest about Qatari.


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## SofiaB

The article supplied by Marc, says kashkasha is also the source of k = ch.
What do you think Wadi Hanifa and Ayed and Mahaodeh?


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## WadiH

^Where does it say this?


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## MarcB

Page 21. Wadi go to "find" function,enter kashkasha and click find next in current document. By the way this is interesting for other dialects and historical references. Now that Arabian Prince is here his input would be interesting also.


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## WadiH

She's not saying that "k=ch" developed from kashkasha.  She's saying that "k=ch" existed all along, and that when the grammarians spoke of "kashkasha" they were describing both "k=sh" and "k=ch."  She cites some scholars who think that when the grammarians spoke of the variant -كش (which they always distinguished from straight k=sh, though both were covered by the term "kashkasha"), they were really referring to "k=ch," but lacked the adequate orthography to describe it.  That's what she means when she says k=ch is related to what the old grammarians called kashkasha.  Personally, I always suspected k=ch to be just as ancient as k=sh and k=ts, but is there a way to prove this, or to prove that k=كش is really just k=ch?


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## clevermizo

Wadi Hanifa said:


> but is there a way to prove this, or to prove that k=كش is really just k=ch?



I doubt there is, especially if they were using ش to represent [ch]; then anything written about it would be ambiguous.

However, I don't think there's any reason to believe that k>ch would need k>sh to happen first. By analogy, k>ch has occurred in the Romance languages as well and I'm sure other languages around the world, independently. It's a well established phenomenon. In the Romance languages we find k>ch, k>ts, and k>s (although I believe k>s descends from k>ts).

Furthermore, it is phonologically unlikely that [sh] would have occurred _before_ [tsh] ("ch") because [tsh] lies higher in a typical lenition hierarchy. These are usually:
plosive>affricate>fricative>approximant>vowel or nothing. This tends to describe how lenition processes work and is qualitatively a depiction of the amount of "effort" required for each class of sound. Thus we would expect k>ch>sh if they were to be related at all, more so than *k>sh>ch.


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## WadiH

^ ^ ^ جميل.

I think the geographic distribution and the historical movements of tribes and peoples also makes it unlikely that k=ch developed from k=sh, but your explanation is obviously more elegant and more convincing to linguists I imagine.


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## ayed

Agree with Wadi.

-- Qahtani in the southern region utter the sound"*sha*" instead of "*ki*"when the addressee is female.

-- Qahtani in Najd(who moved from there 400 years ago or more) always utter the sound"*ts*"if the addressee is female and some words if the sound"k" is preceded by _a sound maksor_ as in : mayiftilik(ts)(He is always up to his ears/very busy), moyarick(*ts*)(a sort of sitting just like cross-legged with either leg stretched out as he/she is riding a came).
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Notice: there is also "*Qasqasah*"(*القسقسة*)when the letter "q| *ق* is uttered as "ds" as in "*miqbil*"_a person's name_ or "*qirbah*" a_ water goatskin"._We usually pronounce it so when the letter"qaf" is preceded by maksor or if the letter"qaf" is initially maksor as in "*qirbah*"


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## clevermizo

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I think the geographic distribution and the historical movements of tribes and peoples also makes it unlikely that k=ch developed from k=sh, but your explanation is obviously more elegant and more convincing to linguists I imagine.



Actually, I think it has to include information about the historical distribution and migration of speakers to be convincing, as that is more concrete support. The problem with generalizing about phonology is you can't go back in time with a tape recorder. The best answer combines both of ours.


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## MarcB

Wadi Hanifa said:


> but is there a way to prove this, or to prove that k=كش is really just k=ch?



Just a guess but could not the classical grammarians use تش to represent ch? Tsh is used in some languages to represent that sound if it is not a native sound.


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## Abu Fahm

I am trying to concentrate on Iraqi and Gulf arabic. I have noticed that Iraqi shares "K" as "Cha" with Gulf arabic. I am wondering if many people in Saudi change k to cha (excluding people of al shargiya)


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## WadiH

Not that I know of.  See my detailed post above.


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## WadiH

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Not that I know of.  See my detailed post above.



Just wanted to correct this.  [k] can traditionally turn to [ch] in southwestern Saudi Arabia (among some communities there at least).  I've only learned this recently.

I've also learned that one town in southern Najd, HoTat Bani Tamiim حوطة بني تميم, used to affricate [k] to [ch] but that this feature is rarely heard there nowadays.


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## Hemza

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I don't know anything about situation the among the bedouins of Sinai, Egypt, or North Africa, but I'd love to know if they have this sort of phenomenon.



To my knowledge, this is inexistent across North Africa (Egypt included) but it may exist in Sudan, used by Hijazi tribes which settled there in the 19th century. This makes me wondering to which extent it has been present in Arabia/Syria/Iraq when Arabic started to extend.

I have no idea about Sinai but I guess if it exists in Palestine and Jordan then in Sinai I presume it may be present too (except if it disappeared under Egyptian influence).


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