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Turku Arabic

Not to be confused with the Anatolian Arabic of Turkey.
Turku Arabic
Native toChad
Arabic-based creole
  • Turku Arabic
Early form
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologturk1244

Turku Arabic or simply just Turku is an extinct variant of Bimbashi Arabic that served as a lingua franca in Chad.[1] It's the ancestor to Bongor Arabic[2] and potentially other Arabic pidgins spoken in Chad today, but since they have not been described, it is unclear whether they are direct descendants of Turku.[3]

History

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Turku emerged as a regional variant of Bimbashi Arabic when Bimbashi-speaking enslaved soldiers were forced to relocate from Sudan to Chad after the abolition of slavery in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1979.[2] The primary lexifier of Turku is Sudanese Arabic, and it's also heavily influenced by Sango and Sara-Bagirmi languages, from which most of its loanwords originate.[2] Although not much is known about Turku, a dictionary and a phrasebook were published in 1926.[4]

Grammar

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Turku had at least 2 tense/aspect markers: gahed (a continuous aspect particle) and bi- (a future tense particle). Similar particles are also found in Juba Arabic and Nubi.[5]

Vocabulary

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Turku[2] Origin[2] English
adinbang From Bagirmi ádim mbàŋ eunuch
gao From Sar gáw hunter
ngari From Mbay ngàrì manioc
kay From Sango kâî paddle
itenan From French lieutenant lieutenant
pfil From Arabic فيل‎ fīl elephant

References

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  1. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Turku". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ^ a b c d e Manfredi, Stefano; Lucas, Christopher (2019). Arabic and Contact-induced Change. Language Science Press. pp. 323–325. ISBN 9783961102518.
  3. ^ Thomason, Sarah Grey (January 1997). Contact Languages: A Wider Perspective. John Benjamins. ISBN 9027252394.
  4. ^ Ansado, Umberto; Meyerhoff, Miriam (2021). The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Routledge. p. 37. ISBN 9781000221480.
  5. ^ Sartori, Nanuel; Giolfo, Manuela E.B.; Cassuto, Phelippe (2016). Approaches to the History and Dialectology of Arabic in Honor of Pierre Larcher. Brill. p. 453. ISBN 9789004325883.