Hassaniya Arabic
Language · official in 1 country
Hassaniya Arabic is named after the Beni Ḥassān, Bedouin tribes of Yemeni origin who extended their rule over most of Mauritania and Western Sahara between the 15th and 17th centuries. Their Maghrebi Arabic replaced the Berber languages of the region. It is written in Arabic script and is one of Mali's national languages.
The language on record
- Own name
- حسانية
- ISO 639-3
- MEY
- Script
- Arabic
- Family
- Maghrebi Arabic
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Hassaniya Arabic is official
Mali is the only country whose record makes Hassaniya official. Mauritania had 2,770,000 speakers in 2006 against 175,800 to 210,000 in Mali in 2000.
Official beside Hassaniya Arabic
About Hassaniya Arabic
What Hassaniya borrowed from its neighbours
Hassaniya is a western Arabic dialect but stands some way from the other Maghrebi varieties. Contact with Zenaga Berber gave it an extra emphatic consonant, zˤ, and Niger-Congo languages to the south gave it a whole palatal series, c, ɟ and ɲ. Some speakers distinguish p from b through French loans, or Spanish loans in Western Sahara. Counting the marginal sounds, it has 43 consonant phonemes. G. S. Colin found traces of South Arabian in the Hassaniya spoken between Rio de Oro and Timbuktu.
How old Arabic sounds survive in it
Like other Bedouin dialects it keeps the interdental consonants and turns classical q mostly into g. Yet many words keep both forms side by side: θaqiːl means heavy in mind and θɡiːl heavy in weight. The classical glottal stop has mostly gone, so ʔams, yesterday, becomes jaːməs.
Where Mali's speakers live
In Mali, Arabic is spoken in the western part of the Sahara. Ethnologue put the number of Hassaniya speakers there at 175,800 to 210,000 in 2000. Educated speakers often switch between Hassaniya and French, while in Western Sahara the second language is Spanish. Senegal adopted a Latin script for Hassaniya by a decree of 21 October 2005.
Common questions
Questions about Hassaniya Arabic
Where is Hassaniya Arabic spoken?
In Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Burkina Faso.
Is Hassaniya the same as Moroccan Arabic?
No. Both are Maghrebi Arabic, but Hassaniya is relatively distant from the other Maghrebi varieties and has absorbed sounds from Zenaga Berber and from Niger-Congo languages.
Which script is Hassaniya written in?
Normally the Arabic script. Senegal is the exception: a government decree of October 2005 adopted the Latin alphabet for it.