University of Bucharest

As for speakers with Egyptian or Iraqi Arabic as their first language, a typical
feature is the replacement of /p/ and /v/ by /b/:
(9) bibul ‗people‘ < E. people
3. Morphology
Nouns are invariant in form:
(10) Sadik la ani work la sonda.
friend PREP 1SG work PREP rig
‗My friend works / my friends work on the rig.‘
As shown in the translation of the example above, the singular vs. plural
interpretation relies on the context, given the absence of overt plural markers.
Plurality may also be indicated by the occurrence of a cardinal numeral:
(11) talata sadik
three friend
‗three friends‘
Another possibility is the use of tumač ‗much, many‘(< E. too much) 4 :
(12) Aku sadik tumač la ani.
be friend many PREP 1SG
‗I have many friends.‘
Finally, plurality may also be expressed by kulu-kulu ‗all‘:
(13) sayara kulu-kulu
car all
‗cars‘
As for the dual, it is replaced by structures with the cardinal numeral itnen
‗two‘ followed by the noun 5 :
4
Cf. plural formation with dewaya ‗much‘ in pidginized Hausa (Manessy 1995).
5
As in e.g. pidginized Gulf Arabic (Smart 1990).
15