North Levantine Arabic
North Levantine Arabic is a subdivision of Levantine Arabic, a variety of Arabic.
It stems from the north in Turkey, specifically in the coastal regions of the Adana, Hatay, and Mersin provinces, to Lebanon, passing through the Mediterranean coastal regions of Syria as well as the areas surrounding Aleppo and Damascus. It is also known as Syro-Lebanese Arabic, though that term is sometimes used to mean all of Levantine Arabic.
With over 24 million native speakers worldwide as of 2015, Northern Levantine Arabic is used for daily speech mainly in Lebanon and Syria, while most of the written and official documents and media use Modern Standard Arabic. Its dialect continuum has been described as one of the two "dominant dialect centres of gravity for Spoken Arabic".Dialects
- Syria: The dialect of Damascus and the dialect of Aleppo are well-known.
- Lebanon: North Lebanese, South Lebanese, North-Central Lebanese, South-Central Lebanese, Standard Lebanese, Beqaa, Sunni Beiruti, Saida Sunni, Iqlim-Al-Kharrub Sunni, Jdaideh
- Çukurova, Turkey: Cilician/Çukurovan
