Revue Maghrébine des Langues
Volume 1, Numéro 1, Pages 55-64
2002-12-31

On Subject/verb Agreement In Educated Spoken Arabic In Algeria

Authors : Benali-mohamed Rachid .

Abstract

Algeria which is a multilingual speech community1is characterised by a sharp diglossia as far as the Arabic language is concerned. The communicative gap between the H variety and the L one is so big that it is very hard, not to say impossible, for an AA (Algerian Arabic) speaker to understand a piece of language in SA (Standard Arabic) if he had not been initiated to it either through school, the mosque or any other means. However, as Ferguson (1959) puts it, the communicative tensions between H and L can be reduced by the use of the middle language “al lua lwua” which is more commonly called Educated Spoken Arabic.

Keywords

Educated Spoken Arabic (ESA), ALGERIA