translated by dr. Lemmia Shamat
What is meant here by Sudanese Arabic dialect (Darja) is the colloquial Arabic dialect prevalent in central Sudan, specifically around Greater Khartoum. Sudan has several Arabic dialects, but the central dialect has expanded its usage due to its connection with the political and administrative center of the country. Factors that helped spread it include official media, the concentration of higher education in the center for a long time, and the economic ties of the regions to the capital. Regional schools and markets are among the places where the central Sudanese dialect is spoken.
Since this dialect is a form of Arabic, it naturally has links to the ancient Arabic dialects that originated from the Arabian Peninsula. Given that the vocabulary of the Arabic dialects that formed the lexicon of central Sudanese colloquial Arabic has been extensively studied, especially by the late Awn al-Sharif Qasim, this lecture focuses on the aspects of syntax and phonetics because they clarify its relationship with the African languages surrounding this dialect.
One of the features of Sudanese Arabic is that it exists in the middle of the country, away from neighboring Arab countries. To the north are the Nubian languages, which separate Sudanese Arabic from the Upper Egyptian dialects, and to the east are the Beja languages, which separate Sudanese Arabic from the Arabian Peninsula. For this reason, the central Sudanese dialect has been greatly influenced by the sounds of the Nubian languages. Among the non-Arabic sounds in central Sudanese colloquial Arabic are: "ch" (تش), "ny" (ني), and "ng (نق)
It also has two forms of the "lam" sound: one light and one emphatic, as well as the "ra" sound. Stress plays a functional role in this dialect, meaning it changes the meaning of words—a phenomenon not found in any other Arabic dialect. Stress also has a grammatical function in sentence structures. These characteristics are borrowed from the Sudanese African languages surrounding Arabic, especially the Nubian, Beja, and Fur languages.