Tunisian Arabic

Also known as Tunisian Darija, Tunisian

Arabic dialect spoken in Tunisia

Key facts

Pronunciation: [ ˈtuːnsi ]
Native to: Tunisia
Ethnicity: Tunisian Arabs
Speakers: 13 million (2024)
Language family: Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Maghrebi Tunisian Arabic
Writing system: Arabic script
Signed forms: Tunisian Sign Language
Recognised minority language in: As a variety of Maghrebi Arabic on 7 May 1999 (Not ratified due to several Constitutional Matters):
Iso 639 3: aeb
Glottolog: tuni1259

via Wikipedia infobox

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Encyclopedic overview

Tunisian Arabic, or simply Tunisian (Arabic: تونسي, romanized: Tūnsi), is a variety of Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It is known among its 13 million speakers as Tūnsi, [ˈtuːnsi] "Tunisian" or Derja (Arabic: الدارجة; meaning "common or everyday dialect") to distinguish it from Modern Standard Arabic, the official language of Tunisia. Tunisian Arabic is mostly similar to eastern Algerian Arabic and western Libyan Arabic.

As part of the Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum, Tunisian merges into Algerian Arabic and Libyan Arabic at the borders of the country. Like other Maghrebi dialects, it has a vocabulary that is predominantly Semitic and Arabic with a Berber, Latin and possibly Neo-Punic substratum. Tunisian Arabic contains Berber loanwords which represent 8% to 9% of its vocabulary. However, Tunisian has also loanwords from French, Turkish, Italian and the languages of Spain and a little bit of Persian.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Tunisian Arabic” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.