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Project Details:
Principal Investigators on this project:
Carnes, Jeff
Iverson, Gregory K.
Arabic Dialect Identification and Recognition
"What Kind of Arabic is That?" Making the Switch from Modern Standard Arabic to a Spoken Dialect
Project Objective: To help government linguists become familiar with Arabic dialects that they have not studied, recognize these dialects when they hear them, and correctly identify the dialect being used in any given sample of spoken Arabic.
Project Definition: The term "Arabic dialect" covers a large number of variants of Arabic spoken from northwestern Africa through the Middle East. The dialects covered in this project include those of central Yemen, western Saudi Arabia (the Hijaz), Jerusalem (Israel/Palestine), the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait.
Project Importance:
- Cross-training: Linguists who have mastered expressions in Modern Standard Arabic or Egyptian Arabic can find equivalent expressions in six colloquial dialects, as well as information about verb conjugations and pronunciation in these dialects.
- Triage: A speech sample that is full of difficult local idioms and vocabulary should be given to a translator who specializes in that particular dialect and understands those idioms. To make the correct assignment, the dialect heard in the sample must be correctly identified.
- Identification of speaker origin: A speaker who claims to be Egyptian but who speaks with a Yemeni "accent" is probably lying. Linguists can use the AVIA to determine that such a person's speech is really Yemeni rather than Egyptian.
Project Background:
- There are so many Arabic dialects. Each of the 20 countries where Arabic is widely spoken has a distinct dialect, and most of these countries have more than one distinct dialect.
- Most Americans have learned Modern Standard Arabic, which is the variety used only in radio and TV broadcasts and in very formal speeches; they are not accustomed to the informal dialects that Arabs use when speaking among themselves.
Project Products:
- "The Arabic Variant Identification Aid" (AVIA) is a short job aid that briefly lists the distinctive characteristics of six Arabic dialects - for quick reference.
- "The AVIA Reference Manual" describes the six dialects in great detail, giving examples of each dialect's unique features.
Project Reports: "Report describing the distinctive characteristics of the Arabic dialect spoken in the United Arab Emirates."
Project Activities: We used recorded authentic conversations in an Arabic dialect, and our own knowledge and that of native speakers to transcribe the recordings and translate the transcripts into English. We identified the features that distinguish each dialect from others and noted how the dialect differs from Modern Standard Arabic. We provide voice cuts with the best illustrations of these distinctive features from our transcripts.
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