Jebli Arabic

Jebli (Arabic: جبلية, romanized: Jebeliyyah; lit. 'of/from the mountain') is a pre-Hilalian Arabic dialect spoken in the Jebala region, a mountainous region in northwestern Morocco.^[1][2] It is considered a sedentary rural variety of Moroccan Arabic.^[3]

It is mainly spoken in the western Rif by tribes of Riffian, Berber, and Morisco descent, including by the Jebala people and eight Ghomara tribes, seven out of whom are fully Jebli-speaking. Three of the twelve Senhaja Srair tribes (Targuist, Aït Bouchibet, and Aït Gmil)^[4] and four out of twenty Riffian tribes also speak Jebli Arabic. Jebli is also spoken in the cities of Larache and Ouazzane.^[3] Although not belonging to the same ethnolinguistic group, the pre-Hilalian dialects spoken by the tribes of Zerhoun (Zerahnas) and Sefrou (Kechtala, Behalil, and Yazgha) are sometimes classified as belonging to the same macro-family (westernmost pre-Hilalian village dialects) as Jebli. The dialect of Tetouan is an urban non-Hilalian dialect which is distinct from Jebli, but the later has been spoken there since the 20th century due to migrations from nearby rural areas.^[5]

The dialect developed out of the Arabization of Berber tribes in the region during the 10th century AD.^[6] Jebli vocabulary and grammar is influenced by Berber;^[6] most of the words are Arabic, but the vocabulary is highly influenced by Spanish.