Middle Arabic and Mixed Arabic

Linguists specializing in Semitic generally or Arabic specifically explore varieties of Arabic that combine features of classical Arabic--used for all official business and most writing--and colloquial Arabic--which people speak in daily life and sometimes use for popular literature. This field of study is new, and the 17 essays here are from the third international conference on it, held in Amsterdam in October 2007. Among the topics are linguistic and cultural features of an Iraqi Judeo-Arabic text of the qisas al-'anbiya' genre, The Story of Zayd and Kahla folk tale in a Judaeo-Arabic manuscript, comparing spoken contemporary Mixed Arabic and (pre)modern written Middle Arabic, Middle Arabic in Moshe Dar'i's Judaeo-Arabic poems, and Damascus Arabic according to the 1709 Compendio of Lucas Caballero. Six of the papers are in French. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

E.W.A. (Liesbeth) Zack, PhD (2009), is Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Her main research interests are: historical sources of the Egyptian Arabic dialects, Middle Arabic, and modern Egyptian Arabic.Arie Schippers, PhD (1988), Semitic and Romance languages student (1966-74) and researcher (1974-76) at Leiden University, taught Hebrew at Nijmegen University (1976-77), and Arabic at the University of Amsterdam (1977-2012). He has published on Arabic and Hebrew literatures in connection with Romance literatures.