Arabic-L:LING:Query about possible Gulf Arabic localism

[Dilworth Parkinson]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Mon 30 Jun 2014
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to
listserv at byu.edu with first line reading:
           unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject: Query about possible Gulf Arabic localism

-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------
1)
Date: 30 Jun 2014
From: David Wilmsen <david.wilmsen at gmail.com>
Subject: Query about possible Gulf Arabic localism

I'm working with a grad student who is analyzing code-switching and
interdialectal communication in Arabic using the critique segments of Arab
Idol, when the international panel of judges offer comments on the
performances to contestants who come from all parts of the Arab world.

In one of those, the singer Ahlam, whose mother is from Bahrain (we don't
know whether of the Bahraini or Baharna) and whose father is Emirati and
who is married to a Qatari says to a contestant from Saudi Arabia, whose
performance she is praising, 'جدوري ', spoken as an isolated utterance.

The contestant then answers her in pure Gulf Arabic. This is just the thing
we are looking for, but we are not sure about Ahlam's assertion.

We are working under three hypotheses.

1. It is a borrowing from the French j'adore
2. It is a borrowing from Persian چطور , which means 'how' but may have
been reanalyzed into local Gulf Arabic to mean 'good'. In Arabic syntax,
the Persian
  حالِ شما چطور است  could be seen to be saying حالك طيب ؟
3. It is a localism.

Option 3 does not rule out either 1 or 2.

Does anyone have any insights into what  جدوري may mean?



David Wilmsen
Professor of Arabic
Chair, Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages
American University of Beirut
Bliss Street, Hamra
Beirut, Lebanon
1107 2020
tel:  +961-1-350000 ext. 3850/1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Arabic-L: 30 Jun 2014
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/arabic-l/attachments/20140630/97ee1e52/attachment.htm>