Table Of ContentThe Fundamentals of
Lebanese Grammar
The Fundamentals of Lebanese Grammar provides a comprehensive guide to the
grammar of the spoken language of Lebanon.
I t presents the fundamentals and complexities of the Lebanese variety of Arabic in
a practical and organized way. This guide also utilizes side-by-side transliterations
in both the Arabic script and the Latin alphabet in the way that they are used
by native speakers. The explanations of the grammar concepts are presented in
English and are made to be easily understandable for everyone, regardless of prior
linguistic knowledge. Special features of this text include endnotes on culture,
expressions, and an entire chapter dedicated to regional varieties of Lebanese.
T his book is an essential tool for all learners of the Lebanese variety of Arabic,
and it is a useful resource for every stage of the language learning process, from
beginner to advanced.
R ichard A. Kline was born and raised in California. Growing up, he was fascinated
by language and spent much of his time learning different languages while attending
the University of California, Berkeley, and the American University of Beirut.
The Fundamentals of
Lebanese Grammar
Richard A. Kline
D esigned cover image: stock_colors via Getty Images
F irst published 2023
b y Routledge
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a nd by Routledge
6 05 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
R outledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Richard A. Kline
The right of Richard A. Kline to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
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Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-27370-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-27369-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-29241-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003292418
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword viii
1 Introduction 1
2 The writing system 3
3 Adjectives 10
4 Nouns 16
5 Sentence structure 25
6 Adverbs 28
7 Pronouns 39
8 Prepositions 48
9 The genitive construct 55
10 Ken and its sisters 60
11 The verb system 74
12 Simple past tense 95
13 Present indicative tense 100
14 Future tense 105
vi Contents
15 Auxiliary and modal verbs 107
16 Continuous tense 120
17 Active participles 122
18 Perfect tenses 133
19 Passive participles and passive voice 139
20 Gerunds 146
21 Conditionals 153
22 Imperfect tense and the subjunctive voice 157
23 Imperative voice 161
24 Quantifiers 167
25 Numbers 171
26 Accusative of circumstance 177
27 Exclusion and exception 179
28 Exclamation 183
29 Conjunctions 186
30 Vocatives and discourse markers 188
31 Diminutive 191
32 Regional variation 193
Index 200
Acknowledgments
The process of bringing this project to life would not have been successful had it
not been for the friendships and professional connections that came into my life
over the past ten years. I owe a great deal of thanks to those who actively helped
me in my language learning journey, and special gratitude to those who simply
communicated with me in Lebanese, acting as teachers without realizing it.
I would like to thank Jihad Loutfi, Maya Bader, Simon Hall, Sara Zein, Ziad
Othman, and many others too numerous to name for actively supporting and assist-
ing in the process of giving life to this project. In addition, I would like to thank
my spiritual teacher, Jana Sharaf Khalifa, for providing me with tools to help me
realize my soul’s mission.
I would also like to thank Ali Hajj Diab for countless hours of assistance in peer-
editing this text. Ali is a natural-born teacher with an eye for detail, and the final
product of this text is in large part thanks to his skills. In addition, I would like to
thank Patricia Masri for generously providing her graphic design skills in creating
the diagrams on page 7, as well as Bassel Bou Karroum and Mohammed Kassem
Ayoub, for informational support on regional variation.
Finally, I owe a special thanks to Marie-Thérèse Labaki, who was my first
formal instructor of the Lebanese variety of Arabic and the greatest inspiration for
me in terms of making an academic contribution to the pool of language resources
for Lebanese.
Foreword
I am humbled and honored to present this text as the culmination of a ten-year
passion project. The process of seeing this from start to finish included learning
a language with very limited resources, documenting learning experiences, and
cataloguing structural language patterns along the way. It was a combination of
personal and academic motivations that led me to embark upon this journey.
A s a descendant of the Lebanese diaspora who did not grow up with the lan-
guage, I experienced a sense of urgency to learn about this particular part of my
heritage when I began my university studies as a young adult. I pressed on to learn
the Lebanese variety of Arabic for two main reasons. The first reason is a general
love of language and linguistics. There are few experiences as exciting and enrich-
ing as learning and using a new language to communicate and connect with others.
The second reason is that I believed it could help me connect more to myself and
to a part of my heritage that I felt had gone dormant long before I was born due to
the assimilative practices that were commonplace for Lebanese and Syrian immi-
grants in the early half of the twentieth century in the United States. Nevertheless,
I have been fortunate to have the privilege to study and attend university and find
an opportunity to move to Lebanon to fulfill a dream. For this I am deeply grateful.
G iven the limited resources available to those who wish to learn the Lebanese
variety of Arabic, my hope is that this humble contribution will help fill a gap in
the field of Semitic and Arabic linguistics that I believe is well overdue for atten-
tion. In addition, I hope that this work inspires others, as I have been inspired, to
improve and build upon what is available.
L ast, and as a disclaimer, I do not assume that this work is necessarily complete,
as all academic works in language studies are liable to be improved and revised
as interest grows and more scholarship in the field is produced. However, it is a
starting point and an encouragement for all to share what they have received to
those who seek. Furthermore, I see my work on this project as watering an acorn
seed that I’ve planted. Its growth depends on many factors, and even if it dies at
any point, at least it can provide some nutrients for the ground so that other life
can emerge. Much of what happens next is out of my hands. But to be certain, the
only seed that is sure never to offer anything at all is the seed that is never planted.
1 Introduction
The corpus of literature available on Arabic linguistics is vast. The academic field,
like any other, continues to develop as new thought informs linguistic theory and
terminology. There are, of course, ongoing debates within various facets of the
discipline. One of the categorical challenges that pose an ongoing debate among
linguists in the field of Arabic linguistics is how to think about and where to place
Arabic language varieties within the domain. R egister, d ialect , a ccent , slang, and
p atois are some of the terms that one can find used to describe vernacular varieties
of Arabic. In addition to those, fewer sources may refer to vernacular varieties of
Arabic as languages in their own right. This text refers to Lebanese as a language
variety.
U ntil now, there is no substantiated evidence that spoken Lebanese is absent of
its own grammar. If this were the case, it would not be possible to write a book on
it. With that said, this text is not written with the intention of engaging in a politi-
cal debate over whether or not Lebanese is a language variety; rather, it is written
as documentation of what is observable and documentable. The primary goal is to
present Lebanese grammar in an organized and practical way to serve as a refer-
ence guide for language learners.
T here are two liberties that have been taken in regard to this text. The first
is invented terminology, which is intended to aid the learner in understanding
observable phonological, morphological, and philological phenomena. The two
invented terms that are used in this text stem from the verb forms lebanize and
sukunify . In essence, to l ebanize something means to make it Lebanese. Regarding
language, lebanization occurs when a foreign word is used following the Leba-
nese phonological inventory and/or morphed in any way that adheres to Lebanese
morphological rules. An example of this would be pluralizing b ank ﻚﻨﺑ as bnouk
كﻮﻨﺑ , or turning the English verb save into the Lebanese verb sayyev ﭫّﯿﺳ so that it
accords with Lebanese verb declination. The other invented term, sukunify , stems
from the Arabic noun s ukun ( نﻮﻜﺳ ), which is the term for the diacritic mark that
is used to indicate that there is no short vowel between two consonants. Therefore,
sukunification is the process of deleting or near deleting a short vowel between two
consonants where it might remain fully in tact in other varieties. An example of
this would be the deletion of sound between the S ad and the ghayn in the Standard
Arabic word Sa8ir ﺮﯿﻐﺻَ , lending to the l ebanized renditionS8ir (z8ir) ﺮﯿﻐﺻْ , as
DOI: 10.4324/9781003292418-1
