University of Bucharest

Romanian Pidgin Arabic
13
Andrei A. Avram
University of Bucharest
Romania
1. Introduction
The present paper describes an Arabic pidgin used in the 1980s by Romanian
and Arab (Egyptian and Iraqi) oil workers in Iraq 1 . An additional aim of this paper
is to assign this pidgin to the various types of pidgin suggested in the literature.
The description is based on fieldwork carried out in 1984 and 1985. All
examples from Romanian Pidgin Arabic are rendered in the system of
transliteration for Arabic. Examples from other pidgins are transcribed as in the
sources mentioned. The following abbreviations are used: 1 = first person; 2 =
second person; Ar. = Arabic; DEM = demonstrative; E. = English; Eg. Ar. =
Egyptian Arabic; Ir. Ar. = Iraqi Arabic; lit. = literally; NEG = negator; NHJE =
New Hebrides Jargon English; Norw. = Norwegian; O = object; PREP =
preposition; Rom. = Romanian; Rus. = Russian; S = subject; SG = singular; SPPE
= Samoan Plantation Pidgin English; V = verb.
The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 I sketch the main
characteristics of the phonology of Romanian Pidgin Arabic. Section 3 focuses on
its morphology. The syntax is outlined in section 4. In section 5 I discuss the
lexicon. The findings are summarized in section 6.
2. Phonology
The phonology of Romanian Pidgin Arabic is characterized by significant
inter-speaker variation, due to the influence of the speakers‘ first languages 2 , i.e.
Romanian, Egyptian Arabic and Iraqi Arabic.
Consider first some characteristics typical of speakers with Romanian as
their first language. Thus, the distinction between short and long vowels is lost,
both in lexical items of Arabic origin and in those from English:
(1) a. lazim ‗must‘ < Ar. lāzim
1 See also Avram (1997).
2 Inter-speaker variation of this type is attested in other pidgins, e.g. Chinook Jargon (Thomason
1981).