the g/|-question in egyptian arabic revisited
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that a certain bias to use graphic symbols in Latin script which can be read as an affricate or a sibilant should be expected. Interpreting this heterogeneity as reflecting faithfully the linguistic situation seems a rather bold statement, and any argumentation based on this type of information has to be scrutinized very carefully. 4. More Evidence for gm Nevertheless, going through some of these accounts by European travellers we shall detect much more evidence for the existence of /g/ than brought forward by Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996). Moreover, there is new evidence for /g/ from Arabic texts as well which was not available yet to Blanc (1981) and Hary (1996). This evidence does not only corroborate the presence of /g/ in the 17th century, but goes even farther back than the 17th century to the 16th, maybe even to the 15th century. Another strong argument for /g/ comes from the dialect geography of the Egyptian Delta which presents geographical forms of its distribution that must go much farther back in time than the 17th century, when according to Hary (1996) the “Rückverschiebung” started. 4.1. European Travellers24 From the Danish expedition, Blanc (1981:191) quotes only one single item with {g} {Igauvis} = /iggawwiz/ “er hat geheyrathet” [he married] which is taken from Forskål’s word list (see Niebuhr 1774/1968:87). Apparently, only this word list was examined by Blanc (1981), but there is much more data for /g/ to be found in Niebuhr’s two accounts. So, only two pages later on p.89, the Upper Egyptian place name {Girge} = /girga/ shows up and gives another piece of evidence for /g/.25 More importantly, in the first volume of 24
For a more detailed research see Woidich (to appear). In three cases Niebuhr writes Calidsg with a {g} at the end for the common Cairo place name xalīǧ, Niebuhr 1774/1968:58,110, and we find it again even on the accompanying map. If it is not a simple printing error, this can only be interpreted as intermediate writing between orthography and phonetics. Niebuhr knew that this word had to be written with a letter w in Arabic, but heard it as a /g/, therefore he mixed it up trying to represent both facts by writing {dsg} instead of {dsj] which he normally uses for transliterating w . Forskål’s plant names have not yet been examined systematically, but there is at least one relevant case qazalgaq = Turkish qyzylǧyq 25