(University of Khartoum -Graduate College, 2013-02)
Khalil Alio
Chadian Arabic was introduced in Chad towards the end of the 14th century. It was brought by wandering Arabs and the Islamic religion, rather than by intellectuals, even though at the courts of the three Chadian kingdoms; namely, Kanem-Bornu Empire, the Wadday Kingdom and the Baguirmi Kingdom, were sitting some intellectuals whose duty was to write letters to the Arab sovereigns. Chadian Arabic has developed into a dialect with its proper linguistic system due to the influence of autochthonous languages with which it has mingled for centuries, in such a way that it ended up creating variants spread all over the Republic of Chad. Chadian Arabic has been adopted and adapted to the linguistic system of each region of Chad so that one is tempted to say that there are as many variants of the Chadian Arabic as there are regions. The aim of the present paper is to analyze the linguistic peculiarities of the dialectal Chadian Arabic in its phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic components and some sociolinguistic features such as code switching and code mixing as well.