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Appendix D — Modifying sca to sound like a vernacular dialect
sca is not typically used in informal settings. Rather Arabs use their native modern vernacular dialects in everyday settings. For the student of Arabic, in order to fit in, and not seem overly formal in these settings, it’s not a bad idea to learn a vernacular dialect. Which vernacular dialect you should learn can depend on where you think you would be using your spoken Arabic. The Egyptian, Levantine, and Urban Hijāzi dialects cover a wide strata of the Arab population and, in our opinion, learning any one of these would be useful.
But if you don’t find yourself having enough time to learn both sca and a dialect, you can water down your spoken sca to sound more like a vernacular. Here are some tips to do this:
Soften the semi-vowels. Examples:
Word pronunciation in exact sca pronunciation in watered down sca بَيْت bayt beyt Replace middle and end hamzahs by their seat letters. Examples:
Drop the case endings. Example:
The ن of the u-state plural masculine stateful verb is also a case ending so it too is dropped.
Drop also the final fathah of the singular masculine perfect verb.
Use only ين īn instead of ūna/īna for the sound masculine plural.
For stateful verbs where the second letter has a sukoon, convert yaf3al to yif3al and taf3al to tif3al.
Use only ما and لا for negation, never لم or ليس.
Use the plural masculine verb instead of the dual verbs and the feminine plural verb.
Drop أَنْ before the a-state stateful verb.
Learn the vernacular words for:
- The verb to go
- The verb to want
- The verb to bring
- The question nouns: