# Secondary diphthongs in Eastern Arabic



## Arabus

Hi,

In Gulf Arabic:

'antay geltay "thou hast said" to a woman
'antaw geltaw "ye have said" to men



Can we also say "saahay" for صاحي and "baagay" for باقي or are those diphthongs limited to pronouns?
Are such diphthongs found in dialects other than the Gulf Arabic (e.g. Najd? Iraq? Yemen?).
Thanks,


----------



## Mahaodeh

1. I think you have to first look at where the word came from. أنتِ became 'intay (never heard it 'antay, but I may be wrong); أنتُم beame first أنتُ then finally 'intaw. Now you have صاحي, in fus7a it's صاحِيَة and صَاحُون / صاحِين; so I'd have to say no, it's a different case. Even if you meant only for the male singular صاحي, it also remains the same except that it's fixed, i.e., you do not omit the yaa' depending on the location in the sentence simply because it's a different case.

Although it is indeed a matter of sound, but it's a sound AND grammar, so you have to keep that in mind.

Having said all that, I also have to add that no, it's not limited to pronouns, it's pronouns and verbs: 'intay giltay, sawwatay, ri7tay, jeetay, Si3adtay, nizaltay...etc. but it's Saa7i, baagi, naadi, haadi, 3aadi ...etc.

2. In Iraq you find that only in some rural areas in the south of Iraq; but in most of Iraq both rural and city it's generally 'inti gilti and 'intu giltu. I don't know about Najd and Yaman.


----------



## Arabus

Thank you.

Let me remind you of ضمائر الرفع المتصلة , all the examples you cited are pronouns 

I think that words like صاحي sound _saahi _with a terminal _short _vowel, despite the transcription. So I don't see a difference between _('in)ti >_ _('in)tay_ and a supposed _saahi >_ _saahay._ In fact, the second shift would be more logical given the presence of a guttural before the vowel.

Based on your testimony, these /aj/ and /aw/ diphthongs occur only in the following:


'inti > 'intay
'intu > 'intaw
-ti > -tay
-tu > -taw
-u > -aw (قالوا)
Is there other examples than these?

If there is none, this makes me wonder about the reason.


----------



## WadiH

Arabus said:


> Hi,
> 
> [*]Are such diphthongs found in dialects other than the Gulf Arabic (e.g. Najd? Iraq? Yemen?).
> [/LIST]
> Thanks,



Yes, they do exist in Najdi Arabic, but not in the same positions as in Gulf Arabic.  I'll be back later to explain in more  detail.


----------



## Arabus

Thanks. Looking forward to the details.


----------



## WadiH

Ok, well bear in mind that this is my own personal analysis, so take it for all it's worth.  I never noticed these diphthongs until a friend who grew up in Jeddah pointed them out to me and asked me why I didn't use them uniformly.  Here are my conclusions (or "testimony" if you prefer) based on what I observed from my own speech and that of the people around me :

[1] 2nd Person Singular Female Imperative (صيغة الأمر)
(a) The verb is terminated with a diphthong when the perfect form of the verb is of the form فعل and includes a "radical" in the medial position (by perfect I mean صيغة الماضي):

راح --> روحَيْ
جاب --> جـِيبـَيْ
تعالَ --> تعالَيْ (special case where the root has more than 3 letters)
طاع --> طيعَيْ
قال --> قولَيْ
صام --> صومَيْ

(b) Also, when the verb has the following forms تفعّلي, تفاعلَيْ

تراهن --> تراهنَيْ
توّلم --> تولّمَيْ
تعلّم --> تعلّمَيْ

[2] 2rd Person Plural Male Imperative

Same rules as [1] above.

راح --> روحَوْ
جاب --> جـِيبـَوْ
تعالَ --> تعالَوْ
طاع --> طيعَوْ
قال --> قولَوْ

تراهن --> تراهنَوْ
توّلم --> تولّمَوْ
تعلّم --> تعلّمَوْ

[3] 3rd Person Plural Male Perfect 

Always (as far as I can tell).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In all cases, once you attach the verb to a pronoun or a prepositional phrase using بـ or لـ, the verb is no longer "terminated" by the vowel, and so the vowel is no longer a diphthong (Najdi speakers perceive a verb attached to a prepositional phrase with بـ or لـ as one word, as evidenced by their writings, e.g. جيبيله, ودّيله, تولّميلهم, قولوبه, BUT قولَيْ عنه, تعلّمَوْ عليه, etc.).  So for example:

جيبيله is pronounced _jeeb*ei*lah_ ("ei" is like how an Egyptian would say عين)
تعلّموبه is pronounced ta3allam*o*bah


----------



## WadiH

Of course, diphthongs appear in Najdi Arabic where you would expect to find them in other Arabic dialects as well, namely in some diminutive forms (e.g. صغيّر), and words like
ضَوّ ("fire," derived from CA ضوء)
حيّ (neighborhood or subsection of a tribe)
حيّ ("alive")
جوّ ("weather," and also "valley")

By the way, why do you refer to these diphthongs as "secondary"?


----------



## Arabus

Because they supposedly evolved from plain vowels i(i) > ay, u(u) > aw (they are not original). However, the picture I am perceiving here is that this is a case special to pronouns (whether suffixed or independent), which makes me think of a another explanation.

Thank you for the valuable input.


----------



## WadiH

Arabus said:


> Because they supposedly evolved from plain vowels i(i) > ay, u(u) > aw (they are not original). However, the picture I am perceiving here is that this is a case special to pronouns (whether suffixed or independent), which makes me think of a another explanation.
> 
> Thank you for the valuable input.



Well, don't forget to let us know what you come up with.


----------



## Mahaodeh

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Ok, well bear in mind that this is my own personal analysis, so take it for all it's worth.


 
I'd like to make the same statement; this my personal analysis not something I read in a book .



Arabus said:


> Let me remind you of ضمائر الرفع المتصلة , all the examples you cited are pronouns


 
Yes, you are right I missed that part; but I also forgot that in the male plural past tense the same diphthong is used in Iraq, and actually almost all over Iraq although it's not used with the pronoun:

قالوا = galaw; but قلتوا = giltu, قالت = gaalet, قلتِ = gilti (Baghdad accent)
It applies to all verbs, when the verb ends with a long vowel it becomes even more complicated: سَوَّو = saw-waw; استووا = istiwaw.

I have no idea why but that's how it is.



Arabus said:


> I think that words like صاحي sound _saahi _with a terminal _short _vowel, despite the transcription. So I don't see a difference between _('in)ti >_ _('in)tay_ and a supposed _saahi >_ _saahay._ In fact, the second shift would be more logical given the presence of a guttural before the vowel.


 
Yes, I know and I agree that they sound identical, but the words are used differently that's why I don't see why they should evolve in the same way. They may, but many times they don't.


----------



## Arabus

I have found several examples of such diphthongs in non-demonstratives:

الله يهداك (yihday-k > yihdaa-k)
ما فاه شي (fay-h > faa-h)


----------



## WadiH

Arabus said:


> I have found several examples of such diphthongs in non-demonstratives:
> 
> الله يهداك (yihday-k > yihdaa-k)
> ما فاه شي (fay-h > faa-h)



I didn't know those were considered diphthongs.  I thought diphthongs were things like MSA عين and عون.  

If this is one of the things you're looking for then among the bedouins of Nejd and Hejaz (particularly, Utayba and the western Mutayr) you'll often hear:
عليك --> علاك
تبي --> تبا
... and so forth.


----------



## Arabus

These are not diphthongs, but they obviously come from ones:
3alay-k > 3alaa-k
tabay > tabaa

This ay > aa shift is usual in Arabic.


----------



## WadiH

Arabus said:


> These are not diphthongs, but they obviously come from ones:
> 3alay-k > 3alaa-k
> tabay > tabaa
> 
> This ay > aa shift is usual in Arabic.



Actually, it's tabi (not "tabay") --> taba (stress on the first syllable; it means "you want").

Isn't it more likely that it went: 3alayk --> 3aleik --> 3alaak?

Isn't it also possible that there dialects of Arabic in the 7th century that didn't employ diphthongs at all (so that it was always "3aleik" that was most prevalent?)


----------



## Arabus

Yes; *tabay is a probable ancestor of tabaa but it is not found today.

Why would an ei > aa shift be more possible than an ay > aa one? The second is regular in Arabic and it is called إعلال or something.


----------



## WadiH

Arabus said:


> Yes; *tabay is a probable ancestor of tabaa but it is not found today.



What makes you say that?  That's a very odd pattern for an Arabic verb; I can't think of any example in MSA or in any dialect.

I think taba/tabi comes from تبغى/تبغي.  There is evidence of this in the speech of the urban Hedjaz, where the غ in تبغى is elided, leading to something like تبى.



> Why would an ei > aa shift be more possible than an ay > aa one? The second is regular in Arabic and it is called إعلال or something.



Well, "3aleik" is the same pronunciation in most Arabic dialects; did that pass through "3alaak" as well?  Did "3ein" for eye pass through "3aan"?  I'm more inclined to think that "3alaak" is a peculiarity of these two tribes ('Utayba and Mutayr).


----------

