Nabataean Arabic was the dialect of

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

spoken by the

Nabataeans The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; Arabic language, Arabic: , , singular , ; compare grc, Ναβαταῖος, translit=Nabataîos; la, Nabataeus) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabian Pe ...

in antiquity. In the 1st century AD, the Nabataeans wrote their inscriptions, such as the legal texts carved on the façades of the monumental tombs at Mada'in Salih, ancient Ḥegrā, in

Nabataean Aramaic Nabataean Aramaic is the Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataeans of the East Bank of the Jordan River, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula. Compared to other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for the occurrence of a number of loa ...

. It is probable, however, that some or all of them, possibly in varying proportion depending on the region of the Nabataean Kingdom where they lived, spoke Arabic.

Phonology

Consonants

: These consonants were probably voiceless, in contrast with

Old Higazi Old Hijazi, or Old Higazi, is a variety of Old Arabic attested in Hejaz (the western part of Saudi Arabia) from about the 1st century to the 7th century. It is the variety thought to underlie the Quranic Consonantal Text (QCT) and in its later ...

, where they may have been voiced It is clear that in southern Syria the two sounds had not merged and that they remained voiceless. The evidence from Nessana, on the other hand, suggests that both reflexes were voiced, and that they had possibly merged to . : There is evidence that had deaffricated and pharyngealized to .

Vowels

In contrast with Old Higazi and Classical Arabic, Nabataean Arabic may have undergone the shift < * and < *, as evidenced by the numerous Greek transcriptions of Arabic from the area. This may have occurred in Safaitic as well, making it a possible Northern Old Arabic isogloss. Nabataean א in دوسرا (''dwsrʾ'') does not signal ; it would seem that *ay# collapsed to something like . Scribes must have felt that this sound was closer to א when the spelling conventions of Nabataean were fixed. In Greek transcription, this sound was felt to be closer to an e-class vowel, yielding Δουσαρης.

Grammar

Proto-Arabic nouns could take one of the five above declensions in their basic, unbound form. The definite article spread areally among the Central Semitic languages and it would seem that Proto-Arabic lacked any overt marking of definiteness. Final short vowels were lost, then nunation was lost, producing a new set of final short vowels. The definite article /ʾal-/ entered the language shortly after this stage. The ʿEn ʿAvdat inscription shows that final had been deleted in undetermined triptotes, and that the final short vowels of the determined state were intact. The reconstructed text of the inscription is as follows: #''pa-yapʿal lā pedā wa lā ʾaṯara'' #''pa-kon honā yabġe-nā ʾal-mawto lā ʾabġā-h'' #''pa-kon honā ʾarād gorḥo lā yorde-nā'' Translation: "And he acts neither for benefit nor favour and if death claims us let me not be claimed. And if an affliction occurs let it not afflict us". In JSNab 17, All Arabic triptotes terminate in ''w'' regardless of their syntactic position or whether they are defined.

References

External links

{{Semitic languages Arabic languages Extinct languages of Asia Languages attested from the 4th century BC Languages extinct in the 1st century Nabataea