Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

Jebli Arabic

Arabic dialect of northern Morocco From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jebli Arabic
Remove ads

Jebli (Jebelia) is a pre-Hilalian Arabic dialect spoken in the mountains of northwestern Morocco.[1][2]

Quick Facts Native to, Ethnicity ...

The historical development of this Moroccan dialect is unclear.

The word jebli means "of/from the mountain". It is mainly spoken in the western Rif by tribes of Sherifian, Berber and Morisco descent over the past ten centuries.

  • Jbalas: all its 44 tribes speak Jebli Arabic;
  • Ghomaras: out of nine tribes, seven are fully Jebli-speaking, the two remaining are partially Jebli-speaking, with a significant Ghomara Berber-speaking community;
  • Sanhajas de Srayr: two Jebli-speaking tribes – Ketama and Aït Seddat – out of ten tribes, the remaining (eight) speak Sanhaja Berber;
  • Riffians: out of twenty tribes, six are fully or partially Arabophone; among them, five speak Mountain Arabic − Targuist, Aït Itteftf, Aït Boufrah, Mestasa and Metioua − while the last one (Settout) speak Hilalian Arabic;
  • Tribes of Zerhoun (Zerahnas) and the neighborhood of Sefrou (Kechtala, Behalil and Yazgha): although not belonging to the same ethno-linguistic group than Jebalas, their pre-Hilalian dialects are sometimes classified as belonging to the same macro-family (westernmost pre-Hilalian village dialects) as Jebli.

Jebli is influenced by Berber; most of the words are Arabic but the vocabulary is highly influenced by Spanish.

Remove ads

Examples of Jebli

More information English translation, Source language/etymology ...
Remove ads

See also

References

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads