Miscellaneous Darja notes, 2024

When I wrote my paper on the Arabic dialect of Dellys a couple of decades ago, I described it as using the participle "going (to)" - ṛayəħ رايح (m.) / ṛayħa رايحة f. / ṛayħin رايحين pl., depending on the gender/number of the subject - to form the future. In more recent years, I've started to notice women speakers reducing feminine ṛayħa and plural ṛayħin to ħa حا and ħin حين respectively. On this trip, I heard a young woman say waš ħa-yəqṛa? واش حايقرا؟ "what will he study?", with ħa unmistakeably generalised even to the masculine, as in Egyptian.

Another probable innovation in progress is the spread of -ti- as a possessive linker between CCaC nouns and pronominal suffixes. I was already familiar with forms like ṣbaʕ-ti-k صباعتيك "your fingers", but ṛwaħ-ti-na رواحتينا for "ourselves" and even šɣal-ti-hŭm شغالتيهُم "their tasks" (alongside šɣalat شغالات "tasks"!) are harder to motivate.

I alluded in my last post to a sort of possessive perfect construction; the reference was to ʕənd- ma..., meaning "have Xed plenty". It can quantify the event, as in ʕənd-u ma lbəs-hŭm عندهُ ما لبسهُم "he's worn them plenty", or the object, as in ʕənd-u ma lbəs عندهُ نل لبس "he's worn plenty", or ʕənd-u ma šaf عندهُ ما شاف "he's seen a lot".

The usual "whatchamacallit" filler word in this region is laxŭṛ لاخُر "the other (thing)". I heard one example showing that it can follow the passive prefix, and therefore substitute for verb roots as well as full stems: yə-t-laxŭṛ - yə-t-rigla يتلاخُر - يتريڨلا "get whatsited - fixed".

As in Standard Arabic, the past imperfective is regularly formed with kan "be" plus the imperfective. It's worth noting, however, that either of the two verbs can be negated: yəmma kanət ma tŭxrəj-ši يمّا كانت ماتُخرجشي "Mom used to not go out".

Codeswitches always raise the question of complement selection. In siṛaṛ win nərgŭd سيرار وين نرڨُد "rarely do I fall asleep", the loan c'est rare would take the complementiser que "that" in French, but shows up here with win "where" instead, corresponding not to French but to the construction normally used with the corresponding Arabic word, qlil قليل "few".

From an elderly aunt, I heard a double-object form that intuitively seems completely impossible in Darja to me: ila ma tḏəkkəṛnihaš إيلا ما تذكّرنيهاش "if you don't remind me of it". I think it's a religious classicism (unusually, she's literate despite having grown up before the Revolution), but noting it here in case more examples turn up.

There's a lot to be said about feminine -a in plurals. Usually it corresponds to final nisba -i in the singular, but it consistently shows up in the plural of family names (e.g. ṣwawga صواوڨة "Souags"), and I noticed it on a non-nisba profession noun: šifuṛ شيفور "driver", pl. šwafṛa شوافرة, where one might otherwise have expected *šwafəṛ. I don't recall hearing any of these words in the construct state, but for "brothers" (xiwa خيوة or xawa خاوة), forms like xiwətna خيوتنا "our brothers" seem to confirm that this really is morphologically identical to the feminine singular ending, rather than just being a different morpheme with the same vowel.

Conflicting evidence on the phonological representation of the French loanword ṣak صاك "purse, bag": "my bag" is ṣakki, with a geminate, but "bags" is (or can be) ṣikạn صيكان, with no geminate, and with an unexplained emphatic [ɑ] in the second syllable.

Secondary gemination in central Algerian Arabic is too large a topic to cover here - I have a draft paper on it I really ought to publish - but I was amused to hear it applied to the English loanword bəznəs "do business (esp. shady)": 3pl. impf. ibəzzənsu يبزّنسوا "they do business".

A couple of idioms: ma tkəssəṛ-š ṛaṣ-ək ما تكسّرش راصك "don't bother yourself, don't go to the trouble" (lit. "don't break your head"); ma fiha walu ما فيها والو "no problem, it's not an issue" (lit. "there's nothing in it"). "Easier than easy" isn't an idiom as such, but a construction worth attention: əlqur'an sahəl fuq əsshuliyya u waʕər fuq əlwʕuriyya القرآن ساهل فوق السهولية وواعر فوق الوعورية "the Qur'an is easier than easy and harder than hard."

Some proverbs: duga duga təbbəʕ əṭṭṛig əlməgduda دوڨا دوڨا تبّع الطريڨ المڨدودة "little by little, follow the level path"; kŭll ṯqil fəlmizan xfif كُلّ ثقيل في الميزان خفيف "any load is light in the balance"; ərrʷgad ṣəlṭan الرّڨاد صلطان "sleep is a despot". A few Darja words I've learned this summer - etymologically obscure, except the last:

• gŭrgab ڨُرڨاب - fishing-ground, spot in the sea with lots of fish.
• ẓəṛtiṭa زرطيطة - grape stalk (pedicel), subset of ʕənqud عنقود "cluster"; also refers to the last grapes of the season
• mčəʕčək متشعتشك - (of hair) tangled, messy
• ṭəṛṛaħ طرّاح - mattress maker