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1. Introduction The term classicism refers here to the incorporation of an item of Classical Arabic into colloquial-based discourse. The term Classical Arabic is used here as the equivalent of al-ʿarabiyya al-fuṣḥā ‘the pure classical Arabic language’. Following the sociolinguistically based stylistic classification of Badawī (1973:90–93), it can be divided into fuṣḥā at-turāṯ ‘the pure Classical Arabic of the legacy’, i.e., traditional Classical Arabic, as defined by medieval grammarians, and fuṣḥā al-ʿaṣr ‘contemporary Classical Arabic’, commonly called Modern St…

1. General remarks Generalizing labels such as ‘ Egyptian Arabic’, ‘Syrian Arabic’, or ‘Moroccan Arabic’ are commonly used to refer to dialect types spoken in the respective countries. In textbook titles and names of courses in Spoken Arabic, they are used for the sake of convenience, although in fact they often refer to the dialects of the capital cities. This is not merely a simplification but, in a sense, it is also justified because of the ongoing trend toward regional standard dialects with the dialects…

Northwest Arabian Arabic is a group of dialects spoken by the Bedouin population of the Sinai Peninsula, the Negev, southern Jordan, and the northwestern corner of Saudi Arabia, an area virtually identical with Arabia Petraea with its eastern and southern extensions. Culturally, the area is relatively homogeneous, representing Bedouin culture of seminomadic, or at times semisedentary, type. The society is based on a tribal system, and the most important means of livelihood are the tending of she…