1. General

The Arabic spoken in Tunis is by nature something of a contact variety, given the vast population influx from all over Tunisia during the 20th century. What is described here is the Muslim variety spoken by the majority of those who now live in Tunis, a koineized variety, which Singer (1984:28) describes as the “allgemeine stadttunisische Koiné” (general koine of the town of Tunis), rather than the somewhat similar traditional dialect of th…