Arabische Dialektgeographie: Eine Einfuhrung.

• Author: Kaye, Alan S.
• Position: Book review

Arabische Dialektgeographie: Eine Einfuhrung. By PETER BEHNSTEDT and MANFRED WOIDICH. Leiden: BRILL, 2005. Pp. xviii + 269, maps. $133.

This book has long been a desideratum--an encyclopedic reference work on Arabic dialect geography written by two eminently qualified Arabic dialectologists, who have accomplished much field-work in the Arab world over long and distinguished (and far from completed) careers. Although the volume is subtitled "an introduction," it really is much more than that. It is more in the way of a handbook that summarizes the present state of our knowledge in the field of Arabic dialectology. It amalgamates the research efforts of older as well as of more contemporary scholarship. Chapter two, for example, discusses some published works relied upon by the authors. In addition to their own extensive publications, considerable use is made of the pioneering investigations of G. Bergstrasser, J. Cantineau, W. Arnold, O. Jastrow, and R. De Jong, not to mention the project of Behnstedt, Jastrow, and the late R. Talmon on Arabic dialects in northern Israel, and the Atlas linguistique Tunisien of Taieb Baccouche. A perusal of the rich bibliography (pp. 219-37) demonstrates the authors' concern for thoroughness and exacting detail. However, the following errors are evident in this section: many of the capital letters of English prepositions and conjunctions are inappropriate--see, e.g., p. 219; under the listing for Werner Arnold, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam is misspelled (p. 220); the name of the main editor of the Ferguson Festschrift (2 vols.) is Joshua A. Fishman (p. 228); the name of Chaim Rabin's classic book is Ancient West-Arabian (London, 1951) (p. 232); and Judith Rosenhouse's (1998) publication should be listed before her (1995) one (pp. 232-33).

The most valuable pages of this large volume are the wonderful maps, especially those of chapter thirteen, "Wortgeographie." Let me single out just two for commentary: map 97 (p. 205) shows the distribution of the verb "go down" throughout the Arab world: nzl, hdr, hwd, hbt, hwl, wt', dly, hwy, twh, trj, ndr, hwf, qdd, drdh, hny; map 89 (p. 193) lists "nose": 'nf, xsm, nxr, xnfr, xnn, xtm, txm, nngrt, njrg, p/buz. The most widespread root (Spain, Uzbekistan, Chad, Mali, etc.) for the first is, as one might have expected, nzl (= Modern Standard Arabic [MSA]), and for the second: ?nf (Spain, Uzbekistan, Khorasan, Yemen, etc.; = MSA as well). However, it is important...