The Arabic Dialect of Benghazi, Libya: Historical and Comparative Notes

The Arabic dialect of Benghazi, Libya is spoken by an estimated half million people, but has hardly attracted the attention of dialectologists. Owing to the lack of recent data on Benghazi Arabic, recent linguistic publications have not been able to take into account certain of its features. Benghazi Arabic can be characterized as a Maghrebi dialect of the Bedouin type, and has historical links to other dialects of Libya and North Africa more broadly. It has a number of conservative features – such as retention of gender distinction in both the singular and plural verb – but also has some unique innovations in morphology and syntax. Influences observable in its lexicon range from sub-Saharan African languages to Turkish and Italian, while there are also interesting syntactic and lexical parallels with the Berber languages of Libya. This article attempts to summarize some features of Benghazi Arabic relevant to Arabic dialectology, discuss particular changes discernable in the dialect over the last century, and contribute to recent scholarship on Libyan Arabic dialects. It is based mainly on the author's own fieldwork in Benghazi during 2010–11.