“The Spoken Arabic of the Jews of Egypt”.
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ABSTRACT : “The Spoken
Arabic of the Jews of Egypt”.
The Arabic spoken by the Jews of Egypt contains phonetic, morphological and
lexical elements which do not exist in non-Jewish Egyptian Arabic. Their
vocabulary contains words and phrases used only by Jews, many of which come
from Hebrew, at times with modifications in either form or meaning; other
components come from Aramaic and some European languages. There are many
innovative mixed expressions containing both Hebrew and non-Hebrew components.
To a large extent, this lexicon represents the local culture of Egyptian Jews.
A part of the vocabulary has also been used as a secret language. The paper
will demonstrate many examples of the Jewish usage.
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Professor Gabriel M. Rosenbaum is Head of the Department of Arabic Language and
Literature at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main fields of scholarly
interest are modern Egyptian literature, language, drama, culture and folklore
as well as the spoken Arabic of Egyptian Jews. He has published extensively on
these subjects, and also writes fiction. His book on the language of Egyptian
Jews is forthcoming in 2006.
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Contact
details:
Professor Gabriel M. Rosenbaum
Head, Dept. of Arabic Language and Literature
The Hebrew University
Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905
ISRAEL