Siwi language


Siwi is the easternmost Berber language, spoken in Egypt by an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people in the oases of Siwa and Gara, near the Libyan border.
Siwi is the normal language of daily communication among the Egyptian Berbers of Siwa and Gara, but because it is not taught at local schools, used in the media nor recognised by the Egyptian government, its long-term survival may be threatened by contacts with outsiders and by the use of Egyptian Arabic in mixed marriages; nearly all Siwis today learn to speak Egyptian Arabic as a second language from an early age.
Siwi has been heavily influenced by Arabic, notably Egyptian and Bedouin, but also earlier stages of Arabic.
Siwi is the only Berber language indigenous to Egypt and is natively spoken further east than any other Berber variety of North Africa. Within Berber, it stands out for a number of unusual linguistic features, including the collapse of gender distinctions in the plural, the absence of dedicated negative forms of the verb, the use of full finite agreement on the verb in subject relativisation, the use of la for sentential negation and the borrowing from Arabic of a productive comparative form for adjectives. Siwi also shows a typological feature that is strikingly rare, not only regionally but also worldwide: addressee agreement on demonstratives.

Classification

Siwi was traditionally associated with the Zenati subgroup of Berber, following the 15th century historian al-Maqrizi, and Destaing treated it as part of a "groupe du Nord" including Zenati, on the basis of similarities in the verbal system. Vycichl notes that it shares the feature of prefix vowel reduction with Zenati. Aikhenvald and Militarev, followed by Ethnologue placed Siwi in an Eastern Berber group, along with Awjila and Sokna in eastern and central Libya. Kossmann links it with Sokna and the Nafusi dialect cluster of western Libya and Tunisia, but not with Awjila. Souag similarly argues, based on shared innovations, that Siwi emerged from a dialect continuum stretching between Nafusi and Sokna that excluded Awjila, and went on to have some influence on Awjila after this dialect continuum's breakup.
The "Endangered Languages Project" classifies the Siwa language as vulnerable to extinction, listing a 20% certainty based on compiled evidence.

Phonology

As analysed by Naumann, Siwi has a total of 44 phonologically distinctive segments, 38 consonants and 6 vowels.

Consonants

The Siwa language contains 38 consonants, each of which can appear either short or long.
;Notes
The transcription of these consonants differs somewhat from source to source. Naumann proposes a practical Latin-based transcription inspired by common practice in other Berber languages: pharyngealised consonants are transcribed with an underdot, postalveolars are written with a hacek, semivowel as y, uvular fricatives as corresponding velars and epiglottals as ḥ, ɛ. However, the epiglottals are often instead transcribed as corresponding pharyngeals ħ, ʕ, avoiding the danger of mistaking <ɛ> for a vowel, while the voiced postalveolar affricate/fricative is often written as j or ž. All sources transcribe the glottal fricative as h.

Vowels

Siwi has six phonemic vowels:. The mid vowels and are excluded from word-final position, and is rare. The presence of mid vowels is unusual for a Berber language, and largely reflects Siwi-specific sound changes as well as borrowing from dialectal Arabic; before these changes, the proto-Berber distinction between *i and *e had been neutralized in every environment except before word-final.

Grammar

The basic word order of Siwi is subject-verb-object, as in:
Prepositions precede the noun phrase. Within the noun phrase, numerals precede the noun quantified, while other modifiers follow the head noun. Demonstratives always follow adjectives or possessive suffixes, and may even follow relative clauses, e.g.:

Nouns

Siwi nouns are specified for gender and number. Most nouns incorporate a fixed prefix, usually a- for masculine singular, i- for masculine plural, ta- for feminine singular, ti- for feminine plural. Arabic loans often start with invariant l-, usually assimilating to a following coronal, e.g. ləqləm "pen", ddhan "oil". Many nouns also incorporate a suffix, usually feminine singular -t, masculine plural -ən, feminine plural -en, as seen above; Arabic loans often show a feminine singular suffix -ət or -a, and a feminine plural suffix -at or -iyyat, e.g. ɣṛaḅa "raven" vs. ɣṛaḅiyyat "ravens". Pluralization is often also marked on the stem itself by internal changes, e.g. azidi "jackal" vs. izida "jackals", ašṭiṭ "bird" vs. išəṭṭan "birds".
In a noun either the last syllable or the second-to-last is stressed, depending on context. The factors determining stress in the noun remain a matter of debate. According to Souag, stress depends essentially on definiteness: definite nouns receive penultimate stress, while indefinites are stressed on the last syllable. Schiattarella argues that the situation is somewhat more complicated: notably, locatives and right detached nouns receive accent on the last syllable, while left detached nouns are stressed on the penultimate.
Unlike most larger Berber languages, Siwi has no state distinction: a noun takes the same form whether used as subject or as object.

Adjectives

Siwi adjectives agree with their heads in gender and number, using a subset of the same affixes given above for nouns; for example:
smallmute
m.sg.aħəkkikləbkəm
f.sg.taħəkkəkttləbkəmt
m.pl.iħəkkikənlbəkmən
f.pl.tiħəkkikentəlbəkmen

However, agreement is not always complete. Feminine plural nouns often show masculine plural agreement.
Adjectives may be marked with a suffix -a, whose function, possibly aspectual, has not yet been conclusively established.
Gradable adjectives with no more than three root consonants form an invariant comparative based on the consonantal template CCəC, originally borrowed from Arabic: thus aħəkkik "small" yields əħkək "smaller", agzal "short" yields gzəl "smaller", aẓəy "bitter" yields ẓya "more bitter". Adding a suffix -hŭm to this in turn yields the superlative.

Demonstratives

Demonstratives agree with their referent in number and, if singular, in gender; medial demonstratives also agree with the addressee, a typologically unusual type of allocutive agreement. The pronominal demonstratives are as follows:
When a demonstrative modifies a noun phrase, it takes a prefix da-. To form a presentative, it instead takes a prefix ɣ-. Placeholders use the singular distal forms plus -in.
Demonstrative adverbials are based on the same series minus referent agreement markers: proximal -a / -aya, medial -ok / -om / -erwən, distal -ih. Locative adverbs prefix to these gd-, while adverbs of manner prefix ams-.

Personal pronouns

Siwi personal pronouns distinguish number and gender.
Siwi is a pro-drop language, so the use of independent forms is relatively limited; instead, agreement markers or referential suffixes usually suffice to make pronominal reference unambiguous. The following table gives the system:
IndependentDirect objectObject of preposition / possessor of kinship termIndirect objectPossessiveObject of "because of"Subject agreementImperative subject agreement
1sg.niš-iV-ø / C-i-innəw-i-ax / -a / -ɣ- / -ʕ-
2sg.m.šəkk-ek-k-aknnək-ăk-aṭ / -ṭ-ø
2s.f.šəmm-em-m-amnnəm-ki-aṭ / -ṭ-ø
3sg.m.nətta-a / Aff-t-s-asnnəs-ăhy-
3sg.f.ntatət-et / Aff-tət-s-asnnəs-hat-
1pl.nišni / nični-anax-nax-anaxnnax-nan-
2pl.nknəṃ-ewən-wən-awənnwən-kŭm-m-wət / -m-
3pl.ntnən-en / Aff-tən-sən-asənnsən-hŭmy-...-n

Some subject agreement markers take different forms before indirect object agreement markers, indicated above with dashes on both sides. 3rd person direct object suffixes take different forms depending on whether they follow another affix or directly follow the stem. After 1Sg subject agreement, second person direct objects are expressed with the corresponding independent pronouns. The special series for "because of" is borrowed from Arabic.

Verbs

Siwi verbs agree in person, number, and gender with their subjects and their indirect objects, and take suffixes marking pronominal objects. The verb "open", for example, is conjugated in the perfective as follows:
In some cases, plural nouns trigger feminine singular agreement.
The order of pronominal affixes on the verb is as follows: -stem---, e.g. y-uš-as-t i talti "he gave it to the woman".
Siwi verbs are also marked for aspect and mood. The basic stem is used in the imperative and in the irrealis/aorist; the latter normally takes a prefix ga-, or da- for suggestatives. The perfective form is identical to the stem for most verbs, but in a few is marked by a variable suffixed vowel. The imperfective is formed from the stem by a variety of morphological strategies, including gemination of the second consonant, t prefixation, and insertion of an a. A special perfect/resultative is formed from the perfective by suffixing -a to a fully conjugated perfective verb including any suffixes, changing ə in the last syllable to i; the same procedure, applied to an imperfective verb, yields the meaning "while". Thus, for example, from the verb ukəl "walk" Siwi derives:
Unlike many Berber languages, Siwi has no special verbal morphology for negation; in all aspects and moods, verbs are simply negated with the preverbal particle la. The prohibitive, however, uses the imperfective form of the verb, unlike the imperative which uses the basic stem.

Numerical system

The Siwi numerical system is almost entirely borrowed from Arabic; speakers have only retained two traditional Berber numerals, one and two, which are used rather consistently for qualifying nouns but compete with Arabic equivalents for the purpose of counting. The numerals 3-10 have the same form whether used for counting or for qualifying nouns. Numbers 11-19 are described by Naumann as having two separate forms for counting and qualifying nouns. The table that follows is from Naumann, and uses IPA rather than practical transcription.
1. 22.
2. 23.
3. 24.
4. 25.
5. 26.
6. 27.
7. 28.
8. 29.
9. 30.
10. 40.
11. , 50.
12. , 60.
13. , 70.
14. , 80.
15. , 90.
16. , 100.
17. , 200.
18. , 1000.
19. , 2000. ??? * not attested

Some speakers preserve a feminine form for inherited "two", ssnət
A further complication in the numeral system is the systematic use of duals and special bound forms of numerals with units of measurement borrowed from Arabic; thus from ssənt "year" we get sənt-en "two years" rather than using sən or tnen, and from ssbuʕ "week" we get təlt sbuʕ-at.

Literature

Siwi is not a written language, in the sense that Siwi people normally write in Standard Arabic. It is, however, the vehicle of a little-documented oral literature. Among the relatively few materials published, four genres are conspicuous: song lyrics or poems, fairy tales, riddles, and proverbs.

Verse

Siwi verse is written in rhyme, and is usually associated with song. Sung poetry, or adyaz, is performed mainly in bachelors' gatherings and tends to relate to love, whereas religious poetry is recited. Malim distinguishes songs, led by one man, from poems, shorter verse works recited antiphonally by groups at weddings; both are accompanied by the music of drums and horns. In previous centuries these songs appear to have been of great symbolic importance to Siwi young men: a civil war in the oasis in 1712 was apparently terminated by a treaty including the stipulation that:
The earliest Siwi lyrics to be published are those gathered by Bricchetti-Robetti ; others have been published in Jawharī and Souag, while Abd Allah and Malim provide several songs and poems in translation. The songs were also studied from a musicological perspective by Schiffer. The following extract from a love song may give an idea of the genre:
nəjʕə́l niráwa akəḅḅíWe thought we had born a boy;
nəssəlsíya af̣andíWe dressed him up as a gentleman;
wə́n géyfəl nə́ṃṃas ʕə́ẓẓṃasWhoever passed by, we would tell him to salute him.
yáma iṣáṛi fəllasHow much has happened to me because of him,
landál d uli asəllásThe mean one with a dark heart!

Tales

A Siwi tale uses a specific opening formula:
and closes with the formula:
They were typically told by old women to children on evenings to entertain and perhaps to educate them. Since the arrival of television in the oasis, this practice has largely disappeared. Apart from humans and animals, a common character in such tales is the ogre or ogress. The first Siwi tales to appear in print were four short fables gathered from men in Laoust. Malim gives two Siwi folk tales in English translation. Schiattarella transcribes and translates fourteen tales, gathered from women.

Riddles

Malim describes riddles as "once the preferred pastime of Siwi women", who would meet at night to exchange them, but notes that they have largely been superseded by watching television. Few Siwi riddles have been published; Malim gives some twenty, while Schiattarella records four, including:
itákəl g əlqášš,It walks in the straw
l-itə́ṃṃəl xáššand it doesn't rustle.
Answer: tláThe shadow

Proverbs

Among existing publications on Siwi, only Malim discusses proverbs in any detail, drawing a distinction between "morals", timeworn advice in proverbial form, and proverbs proper. Examples of the former include "Wear clothes that others prefer, but eat and drink what you prefer"; of the latter, "A man who sells a cow, and asks for more money for the insect on it", mocking excessive concern about small sums.

Writing samples

The thumbnail picture at the following link contains a list of pronouns and typical greetings first written in Siwi, then with the English pronunciation and translation, and ending with a description of the word in Arabic.