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Andalusi Arabic or Andalusian Arabic () was a variety or varieties of Arabic spoken mainly from the 8th to the 15th century in Al-Andalus, the regions of the Iberian Peninsula under the Islamic history.
Arabic spread gradually over the centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia, primarily through conversion to Islam, although it was also learned and spoken by Christians and Jews. Arabic became the language of administration and was the primary language of literature produced in al-Andalus; the Andalusi vernacular was distinct among medieval Arabic vernaculars in that it was used in poetry, in zajal and the of Muwashshah.
Arabic in al-Andalus existed largely in a situation of Multilingualism with Andalusi Romance (known popularly as Mozarabic) until the 13th century. Arabic in Iberia was also characterized by diglossia: in addition to standard written Arabic, spoken varieties could be subdivided into an urban, educated idiolect and a register of the less-privileged masses.
After the Granada War in 1492, the Catholic rulers suppressed the use of Arabic, persecuting its speakers, passing policies against its use (such as the , which led directly to the Rebellion of the Alpujarras), and expelling the Moriscos in the early 17th century, after which Arabic became an extinct language in Iberia. An Andalusi variety of Arabic continued to be spoken to some degree in North Africa after the expulsion, and it was notably preserved in Andalusi classical music traditions in North Africa. Andalusi speakers influenced the speech of those communities into which they fled and assimilated.
Spoken Andalusi Arabic had distinct features. It is unique among colloquial dialects in retaining from Standard Arabic the internal passive voice through vocalization. Through contact with Andalusi Romance, spoken Andalusi Arabic adopted the phonemes and . Like the other Iberian languages, Andalusi lacked vowel length but had stress instead (e.g. Andalusí in place of Andalusī). A feature shared with Maghrebi Arabic was that the first-person imperfect was marked with the prefix n- (نلعب nalʿab 'I play') like the plural in Standard Arabic, necessitating an analogical imperfect first-person plural, constructed with the suffix -ū (نلعبوا nalʿabū 'we play'). A feature characteristic of it was the extensive imala that transformed alif into an /e/ or /i/ (e.g. al-kirā ("rent") > al-kirē > Spanish " alquiler").
Unlike the Visigothic conquest of Hispania, through which Latin remained the dominant language, the Muslim conquest brought a language that was a "vehicle for a higher culture, a literate and literary civilization."
Of the approximately 600 known secular Arabic Muwashshah, there about 50 with in Andalusi Romance or containing some Romance words or elements. (2026). 9781139177870, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139177870
The influence of Romance on Andalusi Arabic was especially pronounced in situations of daily Arabic-Romance Language contact. For example, an Arabic letter written by a Valencian Morisco in 1595 contained constructions such as ('do what is possible,' constructed with the Arabic verb تعمل 'you do,' the Arabic definitive article الـ 'the' and the Romance cognate of English 'possible') and ('at a cost to me,' with the Romance 'at a cost' and the Arabic personal possessive متاعي 'my').
The influence of Arabic on Spanish resulting from this linguistic contact has been thoroughly studied, but Romance also reciprocally influenced Andalusi Arabic. Dialectical features of Andalusi Arabic owing to Arabic-Romance bilingualism and contact include of the adoption of the phonemes and ; the substitution of the traditional Arabic vowel length for the Iberian syllabic stress (e.g. Andalusí in place of Andalusī); and the change of gender of some nouns to corresponding the gender in Romance, such as the feminine Arabic nouns ʿayn (عين 'eye') and shams (شمس 'sun'), which became masculine in al-Andalus, matching ojo and sol.
| +Vowel phonemes of Andalusi Arabic ! rowspan="2" | ! colspan="2"Short ! colspan="2" | Long |
| +Andalusi Arabic consonant phonemes ! colspan="2" rowspan="2" | ! rowspan="2"Labial consonant ! rowspan="2" | Dental consonant ! colspan="2" | Denti-alveolar ! rowspan="2" | Palatal ! rowspan="2" | Velar consonant ! rowspan="2" | Uvular consonant ! rowspan="2" | Pharyngeal ! rowspan="2" | Glottal |
The phoneme represented by the letter ق in texts is a point of contention. The letter, which in Classical Arabic represented either a voiceless pharyngealized velar stop or a voiceless uvular stop, most likely represented some kind of post-alveolar affricate or velar plosive in Andalusi Arabic. Federico Corriente presents the case that ق most often represented , sometimes , and marginally based on a plethora of surviving Andalusi writings and Romance transcriptions of Andalusi Arabic words.
The vowel system was subject to a heavy amount of fronting and raising, a phenomenon known as imāla, causing to be raised, probably to or and, particularly with short vowels, in certain circumstances, particularly when i-mutation was possible.
Contact with native Romance speakers led to the introduction of the phonemes , and, possibly, the affricate from .
Monophthongization led to the disappearance of certain such as and which were leveled to and , respectively, though Colin hypothesizes that these diphthongs remained in the more registers influenced by the Classical language. Alternatively in higher registers, and were only allophones of and respectively, while diphthongs were mostly resistant to monophthongization. However, could turn into or via imāla. In the presence of velar or pharyngeal contour, was backed into and sometimes even rounded into or , or even . This is evidenced by occasional Romance or even local Arabic transcription of as or .
There was a fair amount of compensatory lengthening involved where a loss of consonantal gemination lengthened the preceding vowel, whence the transformation of عشّ ("nest") into عوش .
New phonemes introduced into Andalusi Arabic, such as and were often written as geminated بّ and جّ respectively. This would later be carried over into Aljamiado, in which and in Romance languages would be transcribed with the above letters, each containing a shadda.
| + ! colspan="3" | Active (مبنى للمعلوم) ! colspan="3" | Passive (مبنى للمجهول) | |||
| تَرْجَم | tarjam | (he) translated | تُرْجِم | turjim | (it) was translated |
| يِتَرْجَم | yitarjam | (he) translates | يُتَرْجَم | yutarjam | (it) is translated |
There were about twenty suffixes from Romance that were attached to Arabic bases. The which, in Classical Arabic, marked a noun as indefinite accusative case (see nunation), became an indeclinable conjunctive particle, as in ibn Quzmān's expression .
The unconjugated prepositive negative particle developed out of the classical verb .
The derivational morphology of the verbal system was substantially altered. One example is the initial n- on verbs in the first person singular, a feature shared by many Maghrebi varieties. Likewise the form V pattern of (تَفَعَّلَ) was altered by epenthesis to (أتْفَعَّل).
Andalusi Arabic developed a contingent/subjunctive Grammatical mood (after a protasis with the conditional particle ) consisting of the imperfect (prefix) form of a verb, preceded by either or (depending on the register of the speech in question), of which the final was normally assimilated by preformatives and . An example drawn from Ibn Quzmān will illustrate this:
| (underlying form: kīn tarānī) | You would not see me if I were not still moaning |
Substantial material on late Granadan Arabic survives in the work of Pedro de Alcalá—the Vocabulista aravigo en letra castellana and Arte para ligeramente saber la lengua araviga, both published in 1505 to explain the language of the conquered to the conquerors following the Granada War.
Its last documents are a few business records and one letter written at the beginning of the 17th century in Valencia.
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