Arabic-L:LING:Egyptian Arabic 'to laugh' query

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 15 April 2011
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Egyptian Arabic 'to laugh' query

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1)
Date: 15 April 2011
From: Farzan Zaheed <farzanzaheed at yahoo.com>
Subject: Egyptian Arabic 'to laugh' query

Interaction between Egyptian Arabic Verb meaning/pronunciation

Dear All,
I am working on a qualifying paper in Linguistics at UT Austin and writing on Egyptian Arabic verb meaning. I’ve become intrigued by the verb ‘to laugh’ (diHik/daHak) in the Egyptian dialect after a friend from Cairo told me that there is a difference beween the pronunciation of of the verb depending on if it is used with the meaning ‘to laugh at something’ or ‘to trick/fool somebody’. From what I understand, for my Cairene friend, the pronunciation in is ‘diHik’ (with kasra vowels) when it is used to mean ‘laugh’ and ‘daHak 3ala’ (with fatHa vowels) when it is used with the meaning ‘to trick or fool someone’.

I’m wondering if other native speakers on here also have the same feeling about this pronunciation difference, or if this is just my friend’s idiolect. Or has any non-native speaker noticed any difference in pronunciation along this line? I’ve seen the verb written with both kasra and fatHa vowels and have always thought that it was a sort of random variation.

I’m using capital H to mean the aspriated letter ‘Haa’ (the one that comes after ‘geem’).

If you would prefer to send me your thoughts directly to my email, I will summarize it and send it to the list.

On another note if anyone knows any work on the distinction between FiMiL versus FaMaL Form I verb templates in Egyptian Arabic or any other variety, I’d love to know about it.

Alf Shukr!
Farzan Zaheed
PhD Student
Department of Linguistics
UT Austin

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