Catherine Miller
email: miller@mmsh.univ-aix.fr

Juba Arabic as a Way of Expressing a Southern Sudanese Identity in Khartoum

I ntroduction : Language and ethnic identity, a theoretical background.

The relation between language and ethnic identity have been the focus of hundreds of sociolinguistics studies. While a trend tends to emphasize the major role of language in maintaining distinctive collective entity (cf. see below the concept of E.V by [START_REF] Giles | Towards a theory of language in ethnic group relations[END_REF], another trend tends to qualify the role of language according to historical and social context (cf. for example Edwards 1994). [START_REF] Giles | Towards a theory of language in ethnic group relations[END_REF] have defined the concept of Ethnolinguistic Vitality (E.V.) as the sociostructural factors (i.e. demography, status and institutional support) that affect a group's ability to behave and survive as a distinct linguistic entity. The authors suggest a direct interaction between Ethnolinguistic Vitality and maintenance of ethnic boundaries cf. "it was proposed that the more vitality an ethnolinguistic group have, the more likely it will survive and thrive as a collective entity in the intergroup context. Conversely it was suggested that ethnolinguistic groups that have little or no vitality would eventually cease to exist as a distinctive linguistic groups" [START_REF] Harwood | The genesis of vitality theory: historical patterns and discoursal dimensions[END_REF]. However the authors have further to distinguish between what they coin Objective Ethnolinguistic Vitality (OEV) and Subjective Ethnolinguistic Vitality (SEV). The OEV evaluates ethnolinguistic vitality according to the sociostructural factors while SEV reflects the individuals' perception or representation. And in many cases SEV does not match with OEV. The distinction between objective and subjective factors in conceptualizing ethnicity is in fact an old anthropological issue and [START_REF] Barth | Focus article. Ethnolinguistic pluralism and its discontents: a Canadian study, and some general observations[END_REF] clearly pointed out the need to distinguish between the ethnic boundaries and the cultural content of these ethnic boundaries (i.e. members of a group can still claim to belong to a specific group while the cultural and social setup of the group have undergone drastic change). A number of sociolinguistic studies came out with cases of ethnic groups forming distinctive entities in spite of language assimilation (cf. see for example the special issue of IJSL 110). The debate clearly points out that the role of language in shaping collective identity varies according to space, time, type of society etc. The relation between language and collective identity is the output of an historical and social construction and not an universal and permanent feature.

L inguistic policies and the failure of linguistic assimilation.

However our 20th century's conception has been deeply influenced by the linguistic nationalism that prevails in many countries since the second part of 19th century. Many studies have analyzed the emergence of linguistic nationalism in Europe and in many other countries (cf. [START_REF] Baggioni | Langues et Nations en Europe[END_REF], Hobsbawn 1990, etc.) including the Arab world [START_REF] Suleiman | Nationalism and the Arabic Language : A historical overview[END_REF]) and I will not come back to this point. Suffice to say that linguistic nationalism (and the idea that language and ethnic identity are deeply interrelated) have influenced the linguistic policies of many modern Arab states. Those linguistic policies considered that national unity would come about more easily through linguistic unity. Ethnic diversity and multilingualism was perceived as a threat to national unity and Arabization of the non-Arab speaking groups was called upon. As history repeats itself this monolithic policy fueled minorities' claims 1 . From Algeria to Sudan the Arabization policy led to minorities' discontent and political struggle. It failed to secure the awaited assimilation. And language became again a crucial means of identification but this time by minorities feeling threatened by an aggressive Arabization policy. Therefore identity conflicts became more and more expressed in terms of linguistic conflicts. To defend its language means to defend its culture and its ethnic affiliation against the threat of assimilation. However these linguistic conflicts reflect a dualistic view (assimilation versus non-assimilation) and forget a powerful mechanism : that of the linguistic re-appropriation, which enable a group to acquire a former 'foreign' language and adapt it to its cultural and ecological environment. While ideological discourses outline clear boundaries between languages, daily practices show numerous cases of mixing, shifting, melting etc.

In the case of the Sudan that I will briefly describe here, it's clear that the State linguistic and cultural policy failed to erase ethnic identification and on the contrary fueled ethnic claims. But it would be difficult to deny that linguistic Arabization is not taking place. More and more people, especially in the urban setting, are either speaking the dominant language (Arabic), or are code-switching or code-mixing between different languages. If the majority of the people maintain their primary ethnic affiliation, it is also clears that the language change leads or goes hand with hand with the emergence of new kind of supra-ethnic identity, mainly regional-based identities 2 . The fact that Khartoum-based Southern bands and theatrical groups use Juba-Arabic (hand with hand with Southern Sudanese languages) in their artistic creation (drama and songs) could be an indication of such a phenomenon. 1 The term minorities is commonly used in the relevant literature when speaking about the non-Arab groups of the Arab world. It does not express a demographic reality (cf. some of these groups can in fact form the demographic majority of a country) but a political marginalization. I will therefore use the term minority to refer to non-Arab speaking groups without any demographic connotation. 2 I discuss in more details the issue of language change and formation of supra ethnic grouping in the Sudan in an unpublished paper presented at the Third International Sudanese Studies Conference held in Cairo in June 1997. This paper was the output of a common research with A.A. Abu Manga.

Displacement and Language Change

In the last decade and more precisely since 1985, one of the major event affecting the Sudanese society has been the migration and displacement of millions of Southerners and Westerners to the Central Sudan escaping the civil war and/or drought. 3 Migration has always played an important role in the demographic growth of the Sudanese capital (Greater Khartoum) but the regional origin of this migration has shifted. In the 60's migrants were coming mainly from the Northern Provinces, i.e. from region where Arabic was the dominant language. Starting in the 70's but increasing dramatically in the mid 80's the main stream came from Western and Southern Sudan, i.e. from regions where Arabic is far to be the dominant language. These events led to two related phenomena : -the settlement of an increasing number of non-Arab (or non-Arabic Mother Tongue) people within an Arab or Arabic speaking community -the quick arabization of formerly non-Arabic speaking communities. The term non-Arabic speaking population refers here to groups having a non-Arabic language as Mother Tongue or considered as bilinguals (For details on the language situation see Thelwall 1978[START_REF] Miller | Langues et Identité[END_REF]) but most of these groups speak a variety of Arabic as lingua-franca. Arabization means here that these groups are using more and more Arabic as a first language or as Mother Tongue.

The first phenomenon is illustrated by the comparison between the 1956's census and the 1993's census, the only two censuses that provide information on ethnic affiliation and Mother Tongue. The population of Khartoum was estimated to be 96,9% Arabic Mother Tongue in 1956. This figure drop to 85,4% Arabic Mother Tongue in 1993. And in 1993 more than 40% of the Khartoum State claim a non-Arab ethnic affiliation.

The second phenomenon has been illustrated by our own case study [START_REF] Salih | Language Change and National Integration. Rural Migrants in Khartoum[END_REF] Those statistic figures are just mere indication and the data provided by the census suffer from many problems that I will not detail here. But the important point here is that the correlation between ethnic affiliation and language uses (Mother Tongue) is less and less valid. A growing number of people is speaking more and more Arabic due to migration and urbanization. However while linguistic Arabization is spreading, ethnic and cultural activism is also growing.

In the 70's the dominant idea was that the linguistic Arabization will lead to the cultural and social assimilation of the non-Arab groups (cf. i.e. the assimilation of the peripheral groups into the Core North Sudanese Culture was described by the concept of Sudanization). This idea has now been torn apart by the political conflicts and the increasing 'ethnic revival' of the society. The 80's and the 90's witnessed an increasing mobilization and consciousness toward the defense of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Sudan. This movement was always present in the South since the 50's but has spread now to all other so-called peripheral regions. The mobilization cut across all segments of the society from intellectuals, regional-based political parties, associations, churches, local committees etc. and is illustrated by an ongoing lively debate about the cultural roots and cultural future of the Sudan5 . This ethnic revival ranges from folk performance to mobilization for political representation. In the urban context, migration and ethnic revival lead to new form of associations and expressions and to the creation of many cultural groups. Through the example of one of these groups I'll like to show how the relation to language is both a complex issue but is also conceived in a pragmatic way.

T he Kwoto and Orupaap groups 6

A new phenomenon in Khartoum is the presence of South Sudanese musical and cultural groups that appeared following the displacement of a large number of Southerners including students and civil servants who followed the displacement of theirs schools and administration. Most of these groups perform during marriage, funerals, official or religious ceremonies in the suburb of Greater Khartoum where most of the migrants live. Most of them have very limited financial means and restrict themselves to few musical instruments (some drums in the cases of churches' bands, a guitar and an harmonium in the cases of modern bands performing for marriage). The Kwoto Theater group is to my knowledge one of the most singular and ambitious groups. It was created in 1994 by a group of four young Southern men graduating from the Khartoum Artistic Institute and members of the Sudanese Actors Union. As young 'displaced' Southern Sudanese they felt the need to create their own theater group. Each of these men belonged to a specific Southern tribe (Bor, Balanda, Anuak) and they recruited 45 other young non professional actors, all Southern Sudanese displaced students from different ethnic backgrounds. The originality of the group came from the idea of exploiting the ethnic diversity of the actors to create a multi-ethnic group and to speak different Southern vernaculars in the same drama, each member learning the language of the others. Songs and Music played an important role, traditional instruments and melodies were used and worked out as sources of inspiration. Gradually the group shifted from traditional songs to create new songs. References to 'African' tradition was important and the name of the group Kwoto, is itself a Toposa name for a 'sacred stone'. The Theater is not only a place for entertainment. It's conceived as a mean to attain specific objectives. Among the priorities of the group are the wish to strengthen the identity and the consciousness of the displaced Southerners and to fight against the ethnic and political division of the South.

The group started to work first with churches in the displaced quarters but also with Ministry of Social Affairs and they participated in many official gatherings. Sponsored for a time by the Ford Foundation, the met with a real success. From their experience a number of new theater groups started to appears since 1997 in many settlements and quarters of Khartoum. One of the funding member, Stephen Affear Ushala has also created the Orupaap Musical Band in 1987 with both traditional instruments (drums, xylophones) and modern instruments (electric guitar and harmonium). The success of Kwoto indicates that it found an echo among the Khartoum population, especially among the youth (and not only the young Southerners) because it answers a cultural need : the need to keep a link with the 'origin' but also to accommodate to the new urban context. And their language strategy reflects this accommodation by using both African vernaculars and Arabic.

Juba Arabic as a regional language

In both the Kwoto and Orupaap groups, vernacular African languages are used side by side with Arabic, and more specifically with Juba Arabic, the Arabic variety spoken in Southern Sudan. The choice of Juba Arabic appears here as a clearly ideological choice, i.e. Juba Arabic is defined as the regional language, the language of the South 7 . Among urban Southerners (both in South and North Sudan) Arabic appears as de facto the only shared language. Songs or drama in vernaculars have to be translated in Arabic to be understand by everybody. The use of Juba Arabic as the shared language of the South has been already acknowledged by different Radios 8 and Churches. The Churches also published small prayer books written in Juba Arabic (Latin script). Musical bands based in Juba used to sing in both Vernaculars, Lingala and Juba Arabic. The Kwoto and Orupaap experiments is not new in this respect . But they participate to the 'legitimization' of Juba-Arabic as expressing a Southern Sudanese identity within a Northern context. Many Southern students have now been educated in Arabic and are able to speak Northern Sudanese Colloquial Arabic and most of the displaced Southerners may understand if not speaking well colloquial Arabic. Here the choice of Juba Arabic is not only a matter of communicative efficiency it's also a matter of symbolic representation. But in some drama (see text III) Northern Sudanese Colloquial Arabic can be used instead of Juba Arabic. Therefore the Kwoto group does not stick to a rigid linguistic position and uses each language according to the context and the topic of the drama. Vernaculars refer to a specific ethnic origin and culture (Dinka, Toposa etc.), Juba Arabic refers to a more global 'Southern' origin and Colloquial Arabic refers to a more general 'Sudanese context'.

An interesting point is that the drama performed in Juba Arabic have been written in the Arabic script and not in the latin script9 as was the tradition in the Churches. Again the use of the Arabic script reflects here a pragmatic position, i.e. young Southerners have been educated in Arabic and are more at ease to write an oral language in this script. The written version is more 'Arabized' than the oral version, i.e. the written version rends out the Arabic etymological pronunciation while the oral version conforms to the Juba Arabic pronunciation: // rendered as [k], // rendered as [k], // rendered as [s], elision of the ayn, tonal accentuation etc. Sometimes the written version alternate between  and k cf. texte II fu ~ kfu 'to fear' while the oral version sticks to [k].

But the fact of writing these texts in Arabic script does not influence the degree of Arabization of the texts. There is no decreolization trend and the main features of Juba Arabic are preserved : (invariable verbal pattern, no flexion, no gender agreement, analytic genitive construction, reduplication, Juba Arabic lexicon etc.). In fact these texts appear even 'more Juba Arabic' than the daily speech often influenced by colloquial features.

Extracts of Text 1 (a song) and 2 (a children play) given both in Arabic script and transcription provide examples of song and drama in Juba Arabic. The text III, warni is performed and written in Colloquial Arabic and the same actor has no problem in rendering the Colloquial Arabic pronunciation. The topic of the drama is about street children (amma in Khartoum Arabic). The drama was performed in 1997 in the Carthage Festival in Tunisia. Street children being from all Sudanese background (West and South) do speak their own language (not reflected here) but don't speak in Juba Arabic.

B rief Conclusion

The example of the Kwoto group shows that a 'former foreign language' (i.e. Juba Arabic) once used mainly as a lingua-franca became a 'local language' for a displaced and migrant community. Juba-Arabic is now considered as part of the cultural heritage of the South. It has been localized, vernacularized and considered appropriate to symbolize a 'Southern identity'. However, Juba Arabic is not spoken in isolation. Who will consider to marry Suzi, the binuz (?) will come to ask you, the children will come to ask you)

Text II Minu yahu uwa Arnabe : tála lána háa dakal bt tatay de… huwa aba tála uwa kf kofw-ana ma sokol mútu gale bikatul ana wahat rabúna gawona saadu ana Gawona : di hu minu aíb elli gi dakalu buyút ta nás sambála sambála sákit zey di bidún izin kamán… nahár de kúlu arnábe ta'abán ma kurúgu azzu núm azzu ákadu ráha toho asán isim toho bigeder istaal bókra Al-garíb : ána yahu kebír…tewíl…saáb kátar ána al ge kango kango fíl… Arnabe: ana ge káfu sokol káfu káfu dakal isim tay… ya gawona malta ge aral eta káf? (Rabbit : something entered my house, he refused to go out , he make me afraid by saying he will kill me, o by God, frog help me! Frog: Who is this strange person who enters the people' house like this, without permission, ... today the rabbit is tired from cultivation, he wants to sleep, he wants to take his rest for his body to be able to

  work tomorrow the stranger : I'm big, I'm tall, I'm dangerous, I am the one who (kango?) the elephant Rabbit : I'm afraid, the fear enters my body... o frog why are you shivering, are you afraid?) Text III warn M2 : y muwtin inta mutahim bi'innak mil fawa fi-l-ay Al-ami : yani mil iza li ama dl M3 : kullu marra tafra ma usratik u fta amak kabr Al-mi : taak ala kfek M4 : al-fara w-al iik fi bt arma ya ara al-gdi? (M2 : o citizen you are accused of making trouble in the quarter the Assembly it means you are disturbing those people M3 each time you rejoice with your family and open your mouth, your laugh as you want M4 : the happiness and the laugh in my house are a crime o Judge?)

  and also by the 1993's census. Comparison between Ethnic Affiliation and Mother Tongue in the 1993's census give the following figures for Khartoum State 4 :

		Arab	Nubian Nuba	Darfuria	Souther	West A. Beja	Funj
				n	n
	Ethnicit	57,4% 10,6% 9,6%	7,88%	6,7%	3,22% 1,3%	0,30%
	y
	M.T.	85,4%	1,02% 3,97%	2,00%	4,66% 1,69% 0,17% 0,02%

  It has links with both African vernaculars and Colloquial Arabic. All these languages are part of the linguistic environment of the Southern communities. The 'literary' use of Juba Arabic in drama and songs is a new development in the cultural arena of Khartoum. It does not indicate necessarily that Juba Arabic will remain the main Arabic variety spoken by Southerners. In fact daily speeches are far more influenced by Colloquial Arabic. Di tór eríma táni ya Meri eta ge arfa fi dahar ta ahal táki badín Di minu bikáti nu toho bi zowu súzi binúz bia ásalu éta nyerkúk bia ásalu éta (Short Translation : Suzi has spoilt (lakbat, biril,karabu) her face (by using cream), See how is your face, See how is your color, See how is your look, See how is your head, Mother drop this spoiling, Sister drop this mess. Why don't you help your country. See what's remain of your country. Why don't you help your people. This is another crime o Marie that you will carry on the back of your people.

			Text I	Suzi
	Súzi gí lákbat wúsa
	Súzi gí bíril wúsa		Súzi karábu wúsa
	Kéda aínu wúsa táki kéfin	kéda aínu lún táki kéfin
	Kéda aínu sékel táki kéfin	kéda aínu rás táki kéfin
	Mama síbu karába	úkti síbu lakbáta	úkti síbu langába
	Eta málu ma ge saadu béled táki	áinu senu táni fadelu fi béled
	Eta málu ma ge saadu ahal táki	áinu senu táni fedelu fi beled

In Greater Khartoum itself it was estimated in 1990 that displaced people and migrants from Southern and Western Sudan formed about 50% of the population but this figure provided by NGOs seems to be exaggerated.

The figures presented in this table include only the major ethnic and linguistic cluster-groups.

Again the debate about the roots of Sudanese identity is far to be new. But from a debate limited to a restricted circle (the intellectual elite of the 50's-60's) it spread out to become a major issue.

Special thanks to Stephen Afear Ushalla for all the information that he kindly gave to me during my last stay in Khartoum in March 2000.

Practically Juba Arabic was mainly spoken in the Equatoria Region and other Southern regional varieties of Arabic were spoken in Bahr al Ghazal and Upper Nile.

Juba Arabic has been used as a broadcast media by the Radio of Sudan Council of Churches in Juba, by the SPLA Radio (when broadcasting), and by Omdurman Radio (since 1993).

This was for me the first time to come across texts in Juba Arabic written in Arabic script.


Catherine Miller

IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS : ADVOCATING A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION

The meeting of Aida 5 in Cadiz created the opportunity for organizing a panel on Arabic urban linguistics. 1 This panel had two main goals: a) to put together and present some on-going research on Arabic urban vernaculars, and b) to setup a research network of people working on Arab cities, and more specifically on the issue of "migration to the city and evolution of Arabic urban vernaculars". Some of the contributions of the panel are published in these proceedings. In this short paper, I will summarize the reasons for setting up such a researchnetwork and present the main scientific guidelines and perspectives of the network. I will also briefly present a kind of "typological frame" where different types of urban setting can be categorized according to the potential impact of migration on the evolution of urban vernaculars.

THE RELEVANCE OF A RESEARCH-NETWORK ON ARABIC URBAN VERNACULARS

Two main social events have dominated the language setting of the Arab world during the 20 th c. and more precisely since Independence :

-the spread of Education/Mass Media and the teaching of Classical/Modern Arabic leading to increasing contact between Arabic vernaculars and Classical/Modern Arabic -the spread of urbanization and the high rate of in-migration2 leading to increasing dialect contact within the main cities.

The growing contact between Vernaculars and MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) has been relatively well studied. A large part of Arabic sociolinguistic studies has focused on the relationship between 'ammiyya and fusha discussing at length the concepts of diglossia (or its various interpretations in terms of tri-or multiglossia), continuum, Educated Spoken Arabic, etc., and analyzing the various types and rules of code-mixing and/or code-switching between 'ammiyya and fusha in the conceptual frames of either syntactic constraints (applying the model of Sankoff and Poplack) or matrix frame (applying the model of Myers-Scotton).

The linguistic impact of urbanization and in-migration has been far less systematically studied although many authors have pointed out the increasing influence of the main urban vernaculars which have become, or are in the process of becoming, regional or national standards [START_REF] Ferguson | Standardization as a form of language spread[END_REF][START_REF] Holes | Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East[END_REF][START_REF] Ibrahim | Standard and Prestige Language: A Problem in Arabic Sociolinguistics[END_REF], Palva 1982, and many others). The elevated variety of the urban dialects of cities such as Casablanca, Damascus, Cairo are often labeled Moroccan Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, etc. These varieties arose from a more or less important koineization process and stabilized at a more or less early period following the history and rate of urbanization. But the Arab world presents a wide range of urbanization processes and urban sociolinguistic settings. Not all urban vernaculars have expanded or are expanding and some old-city vernaculars have been declining in the face of new koines brought by migrants. Assimilation and homogenization trends seem stronger in some cities than in others, known for the presence of different communal (religious-based or ethnically-based) varieties.

A comparative sociolinguistic analysis, which would take into account the history and social context of each case-city, would lead to a better understanding of the history, development, evolution and transformation of the various Arabic urban linguistic settings. It might help to assess the degree of correlation between types of urban setting and the various evolution patterns of the urban vernaculars. One of the main questions is to analyze the implications of "urbanization" at all linguistic levels (including here language uses but also language attitudes or, to put it in French, "pratiques et représentations") and to examine whether or not there is a clear correlation between social structures and language variables. This has to be done by taking into account the large literature produced in the field of Arab urban studies (including historical, sociological, anthropological, and cultural studies), which have provided much data concerning the social organization of the Arab cities, have discussed notions such as "citadinité vs urbanité", urban models, urban networks, social mobility and have questioned the concept of a specific "Arab Islamic urban model". Most of those urban studies do not include linguistic phenomena in their analyses of urbanization and it will be time that linguists participate more actively in those debates.

A comparative analysis of Arab cities might also help to assess the extent to which the various processes recorded in Arab cities accord with more general sociolinguistic models, which have been predominantly drawn from North American and European urban settings (cf. relevance of gender, age, religion, ethnicity, education, social classes as main factors of variation and change, impact of contact on the various linguistic features, markedness, relation between language and identity, etc.). Arab urban centers might (or might not) show some specificity concerning the issues of standardization, prestige and norms due to the presence of various poles of prestige (Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, Foreign Languages, Urban Vernaculars and sometimes Bedouin vernaculars) and the lack of official standardization of spoken vernaculars.

The idea of developing a comparative analysis is not new and has been already started by a number of researchers and teams. The present time might be appropriate for a hopefully successful enterprise. First, the Aida network has already helped establish contact between various researchers, and the development of the Internet allows easy communication between distant researchers. Second and more important, the last two decades have witnessed the publication of numerous research works on Arabic dialectology and Arabic sociolinguistics and have provided new data that might help a comparative analysis, because a sociolinguistic analysis cannot be undertaken properly without having adequate descriptions of the various dialects/varieties/levels in contact. This is far from being the case in every Arab country but progress has been done. Finally, it is clear that the general global context has changed quite radically in the last decade: globalization, weakening of the State, emergence or reinforcement of regionalism/local nationalism, new technologies of communication (mobiles, internet, channel TVs, etc.) have modified the sociolinguistic context, created new habits and new perceptions that need to be investigated.

IMPACT OF MIGRATION ACCORDING TO TYPES OF URBAN SETTINGS 3

In the Arab world, urban growth has developed considerably since the second part of the twentieth century, due both to in-migration and high fertility rate. In some Arab countries, urban development took place in pre-existing important old urban centers, in other countries it created new urban centers. Urbanization brought various dialects (and/or languages in the case of multilingual Arab countries) into contact and led to various phenomena such as dialectal accommodation, dialect shift, leveling and koineization, decline of some specific urban varieties, coexistence and maintenance of different varieties, dialectal variables becoming social variables, etc… At this point, a number of questions can be raised:

-Does urbanization lead necessarily in the long term to a process of leveling/koineization and to the emergence of new urban vernaculars subverting the former communal distinctions and developing new types of social variants associated with age, gender, education and social classes?

-Is it possible to draw a correlation between types of socio-political urban setting and types of language change? Are there some rules and models that may explain the various types of urban linguistic development?

-Can we find linguistic regularities?, i.e. in case of dialectal accommodation for example, can we find an implicational scale? Do the same linguistic features always function as marked features?

The first two questions imply that we have some knowledge of the historical development of each city in order to analyze the present situation. Various contemporary Arab urban archetypes can be defined with regard to historical depth, degree of urbanization and impact of migration. Here I will isolate five main archetypes but more could be drawn and within each category there are additional differences due to specific historical events and specific social structuring.

1) Old capital-cities with a prestigious and well-established dialect that has became a (unofficial) national standard at least since the early 20 th c. following large population movements. The dialect of the capital city expanded in neighboring areas and cities. At the present time, the migration trend no longer plays a decisive role in the development of the urban vernacular and does not initiate new radical processes of dialect leveling or koineization. The evolution of the urban vernacular is more induced by influence of fuş ā or by internal developments. Gender, age and education appear to be the main factors of variation. Migrants come with their own dialect, keep it during a transitory phase of acquisition and accommodation (the time to acquire the urban standard) or keep it as an intimate home language side by side with the urban standard. This seems to be the situation of cities such as Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and more recently Casablanca (the economic if not political capital-city of Morocco).

However, each city presents an historical specific context and we still have very little information about the linguistic uses/attitudes of the migrant population.

Cairo and Damascus are very old urban centers. Their vernacular developed long ago in a sedentary environment and the historical leveling processes did not seem to have lead to radical structural changes. 4 Today there is still a kind of leveling process in the two cities: a number of lexical words, which were specific to the old urban vernacular before the 1950s, have been dropped and replaced by more common pan-Arabic words but this can be considered as a 'natural development'.

But the degree of homogenization seems weaker in Damascus than in Cairo. Many variables are recorded in Damascus associated to gender, age, place of residence and religious affiliation [START_REF] Lentin | Urbanisation linguistique et dynamique langagières dans la ville de Rabat[END_REF]. This diversity seems to be considered as a 'natural phenomenon' by the speakers and does not impede communication, but it does raise the question of the existence of a shared norm. No specific sociolinguistic studies on the migrant population in Damascus is available, nor on residential variation. In Cairo, religious-based linguistic differences have usually been considered as limited, at least since the early 20 th c. in the case of the Christians, including mainly lexical and idiomatic differences but not grammatical ones.5 Today the assimilation trend seems strong among the second generation (i.e. born in Cairo) of the provincial migrant community. Speakers born in Cairo from non-Cairene parents speak almost exclusively Cairene Arabic, even in family interactions. But there is some indication that Upper Egyptian dialects play an important symbolic role6 for the Upper Egyptian migrant community and that the prestige of Cairo Arabic is quite ambivalent (Miller 1997 and forth coming).

Baghdad is an old urban center that has known some historically dramatic events and a radical transformation of its vernacular around the 18 th century, with the settlement of former Bedouin tribes [START_REF] Blanc | Communal Dialects in Baghdad[END_REF]. This led to the emergence of an urbanized-koinized gilit-type Muslim dialect, which became the present-day dominant Baghdadi vernacular. The non-Muslim religious minorities (Jews and Christians) are/were speaking, in non-public settings, qeltu-type varieties closer to old Baghdadi (cf. see in particular Abu-Haidar 1991). [START_REF] Abu-Haidar | Shifting boundaries: The Effect of Modern Standard Arabic on Dialect Convergence in Baghdad[END_REF] has indicated that the former division between the religious communities is now receding due to the acquisition of pan-MSA features by the members of all communities. However, we have no information about the present situation of the migrant population, their demographic weight and potential linguistic influence.

Casablanca is a more recent town which started to develop in the first decades of the 20 th c. (J. Aguadé 2002); its vernacular emerged as a urban-koinized form of various Bedouin/rural dialects and is now considered the national standard. However, the rate of rural migration to Casablanca is still very high and we are in need of more detailed studies according to residential quarters, regional origin and degree of accommodation. It is not certain that all migrants accommodate with the same rate, particularly regarding people coming from prestigious cities such as Fes (cf. [START_REF] Hachimi | Dialect Contact and Change in Casablanca, Morocco. When Fassi meets Casablanca[END_REF].

To conclude for this type of capital-cites: their vernaculars seem to be well established and have acquired a national status which reflect the economic and political status of these cities. Former communal variables are said to recede due to social-spatial mobility and spread of education. But yet, a number of phenomena deserve more attention and more investigation: the status of the urban socio-linguistic variables, the reallocation phenomena (in Trudgill's terms, i.e. former dialectal variables becoming social variables), the eventual presence of specific sociolinguistic territories within or around the cities, the emergence of new registers, the symbolic function of some varieties. In fact, we know very little about the linguistic models and language uses of the young generation living in the huge new peripheries of these capital-cities. How far do they create new varieties, how far do they play with the dialectal diversity? These are questions that also concern other types of cities.

2) Old-urban centers with a declining old dialect. These centers have known important political and demographic renewals since Independence. Their old urban dialect is associated with the old urban elite; it is no longer prestigious enough to be acquired by new-comers, and is even declining among the young generations of the original urban dwellers. Instead, the new-comers adopt the national urban koine and urban dwellers tend to speak this urban koine in public space, keeping their own vernacular at best for family communication. This is the case in many North African cities like Fes, Tangiers, Tlemcen, and even capital cities such as Rabat and Tunis, where the old urban vernacular has become increasingly restricted to old women and is associated with an effeminate way of speaking [START_REF] Caubet | Etude sociolinguistique des traits préhilaliens dans un dialecte en voie d'urbanisation[END_REF][START_REF] Dendane | Sociolinguistic variation in an Arabic Speech Community: Tlemcen[END_REF][START_REF] Iraqui-Sinaceur | Le dialecte de Tanger[END_REF][START_REF] Jabeur | Women, social change and Linguistic variation in the urban dialect of Tunis[END_REF], Messaouidi 2001& 2002[START_REF] Trabelsi | Les usages linguistiques des femmes de Tunis[END_REF]). The decline of the old-city vernacular has been clearly associated with the decline of the old-city elite and culture, like the « beldi culture» of Tunis [START_REF] Trabelsi | Les usages linguistiques des femmes de Tunis[END_REF]. It is for this type of North African city that the distinction between « citadin and urbain » has been drawn (Messaouidi 2002).

The contemporary situation of these North African cities recalls the historical changes of Baghdad mentioned above when the Muslim Sunni elite got access to power during the late 19 th c. and early 20 th c. It is also the situation recorded in present-day Bahraïn by [START_REF] Holes | Language in a modernising Arab state: the case of Bahrain[END_REF] with the public expansion of the Bedouintype Sunni varieties upon the old-urban Shi'i variety. All these cases exemplify the fact that political changes and demographic renewal can lead to the decline of pre-existent city vernaculars associated with given social urban groups.

The decline of provincial city vernaculars due to the spread of a national standard has been and still is a quite common phenomenon. It is what happened in the early 20t h c. in a city like Alexandria (Egypt) whose population is said to speak Cairo Arabic now except in a few old popular quarters (Wahba 1996).

Here also, Alexandria has witnessed important changes after the 1952s, with the decline of foreign and Jewish communities.

However, the relationship between important provincial cities and capital-cities must still be investigated. We tend to have a very centralized perception of the Arab world and to assume that the vernacular of the main capital-cities will automatically spread to the regional cities. But competition between cities/regions remains important in many countries. In Morocco, the Fasi status is still prestigious even if declining and it seems that Marrakesh keeps its strong linguistic personality. In Algeria, there is no indication that Orani speakers tend to imitate Algiers' speakers (see below for the status of Algiers). In Yemen, the competition between San'ani and Adeni/Ta'izzi appears to be important. In most countries, we need more information about the vernacular of important provincial cities and about the political and identity relationship between the capital and the provincial cities.

3) Cities that have known recent demographic or political upheavals (war) leading to increasing linguistic diversity due to a very high rate of in-migration. This seems to be the cases of capital cities such as Algiers, Beirut, San'a. In these cities, the long-term impacts of recent in-migrations are as yet difficult to assess. It is not sure that migrants will shift to the pre-existing urban dialects. They may keep their own dialects and reinforce dialectal diversity or they may participate in the elaboration of a new urban koine. In San'a [START_REF] Watson | Linguistic behaviour in San'a: Is there an emerging urban standard?[END_REF], mixing between old San'ani citizens and new San'ani citizens is limited and each group keeps its own dialect. But old-San'anis speakers tend to replace specific Sana'i words by a number of pan-dialectal lexical items in public space. In Algiers, [START_REF] Boucherit | Contact et différenciation dialectale a Alger[END_REF][START_REF] Boucherit | L'arabe parlé à Alger. Aspects sociolinguistiques et énonciatifs[END_REF] questions the existence of a single urban norm. More data are needed on Beirut with its post-war residential division. 7 Is there a clear correlation between communal affiliation (Christian, Sunni, Shi'i, Druze, etc.) and linguistic variables? Are there new varieties spreading after the post-war developments? Other noncapital cities have known important demographic or political events, such as the Palestinian city of Bethlehem with its large increase of Muslim population within a former important Christian city [START_REF] Amara | Sociolinguistic transformation of a Palestinian town. The case of Bethlehem[END_REF]. 4) Emerging new cities with a mixed population and koine in the making. Different dialects stand side by side and the weight of the migrant population is important. This was the case of Casablanca in the early 20 th century and is now the case of Amman in Jordan. In this case, the dialectal varieties spoken by the various migrant groups might influence the development of the urban variety and sociolinguistic variation reflects the status of the various groups. In Amman, for example, one notes the coexistence of rural/urban Palestinian dialects and rural/Bedouin Jordanian dialects. Jordanian men are said to keep their Bedouin pronunciation (cf. *q = [g]) and to have a favorable attitude toward it, while urban Palestinian men tend to hide their Palestinian identity and to adopt the Bedouin pronunciation (Abdel Jawad 1986[START_REF] Sawaie | L'arabe véhiculaire parlé en Erythrée sur la côte de la mer Rouge, de Massawa à Rahayta[END_REF]). It may be noted here, however, that maintenance of Bedouin features is recorded only at the phonological level (the famous *q = [g] realization). However, there are some indications that a koinized vocalic system is emerging among the youth of Amman [START_REF] Al-Wer | The focusing of -kum in the dialect of Amman" 5th Aida Conference[END_REF].

Another emerging city is Nouakchott in Mauritania, with the settlement of the former Nomadic Hassaneyya-speaking groups since the 1970s. Dialectal variation is reported to be limited in Hassaneyya (Taine-Cheikh 1994) but the urbanization process might create new urban styles and levels.

These new emerging cities may be viewed as 'open laboratories' to explore processes of urban vernacular formation. 5) Cities in a complex multilingual environment, with a high percentage of non-Arab population. Two types can be distinguished here. Cities such as Khartoum (Sudan), where the non-Arab migrants are national, might stay permanently and speak very different levels of Arabic (from a pidgin-creole type to regional dialectal varieties). [START_REF] Miller | Language change and National Integration, Rural migrants in Khartoum. Readings-Khartoum[END_REF] have indicated that Sudanese non-Arab migrants speak Arabic predominantly but with a large number of nonstandard Khartoum Arabic features. The same non-standard features were also found among their children who were born in Khartoum, a fact that might indicate the development of a non-standard Khartoum urban variety. This phenomenon needs further investigation due to the fact that the main migration wave is still very recent (1980s-1990s), but it is clear that the political context enhances the maintenance of Juba-Arabic as a strong identity marker among the Southern community [START_REF] Miller | Juba Arabic as a way of expressing a Southern Sudanese Identity in Khartoum[END_REF]. Another type of city is found in the Gulf states (Dubai, Kuwait, etc.) with the presence of numerous foreign immigrants. A kind of pidgin Arabic, known as Gulf Pidgin Arabic, is spoken as a lingua franca between native Arab groups and non-native Arabs [START_REF] Smart | Pidginization in Gulf Arabic: a first report[END_REF][START_REF] Wiswall | Gulf Pidgin: An expanded Analysis[END_REF]. How far this type of pidgin Arabic could affect the local urban vernacular remains to be investigated. Finally we have to mention all the cities where Arabic is becoming an important lingua-franca and even an important first language although it is/was not a demographically dominant vernacular. This includes cities such as Juba in Southern Sudan (Miller 1987), Habbeche and Ndjamena in Chad (Jullien de Pommerol 1997[START_REF] Roth | Esquisse grammaticale du parler arabe d'Abbéché[END_REF], Massawa in Eritrea (Simeone-Senelle 2000), the cities of South Yemen and Dhofar [START_REF] Simeone-Senelle | L'arabe parlé dans le Mahra (Yémen)[END_REF]. All these cities are particularly interesting to study processes of vehicularization and vernacularization.

CONCLUSION

As stated above, this rough attempt of categorization and synthesis does not cover all the cases, especially regarding non-capital cities. But it helps to locate case-cities within a kind of typological frame according to its historical depth, history of settlement, degree of dialectal diversity or dialectal homogenization, etc. This brief survey of the various Arab urban sociolinguistic contexts indicates that, for the time being, the homogenization and standardization of the main urban vernaculars is not always achieved. The power relationship between the old urban elite and the new-comers is extremely important for determining the maintenance, spread or decline of a given urban vernacular associated with a given type of urban culture. A point which deserves more analysis is the fact that most historical cases of major dialect shift and dialect leveling (cf. the examples of Baghdad, North Africa, Bahraïn) occurred in areas where groups claiming a Bedouin origin were demographically important. In areas with rural sedentary hinterlands (Northern Egypt/Syria), the impact of migration upon urban vernacular appears less radical.

Today, a number of urban studies point out that former urban models, inherited from the Ottoman period for the Middle East or from the Andalousian models for North Africa, have been subverted not only by Western models inherited from Colonial times, but by a kind of 'tribal model' similar to that of the Gulf cities, brought in by rural migrants (Naciri & Raymond 1997). It would be interesting to see if linguistic data corroborate this perception. Is there still a kind a symbolic Bedouin linguistic prestige? It seems to be somehow the case in an emerging city like Amman. In other cities, is or will tribal/family affiliation lead to some kind of linguistic loyalty, to the maintenance of intra-group vernaculars acting as identity markers? Arabic urban dialectal studies have often been more concerned with religious-based linguistic differences than with tribal/regional based differences. Both are to be found with various degrees in the Arab cities and their respective social and spatial distribution deserves more attention. Today, with globalization trends, development of satellite TVs and the Internet, and also with Islamic political radicalization, special attention must be paid to the cultural and linguistic models of the urban youth, who form the majority of the population.

Many Arabic urban sociolinguistic studies have assessed processes of dialectal accommodation by studying the marked phonological features such as the realization of [q]. If phonological variables are important indices, we need more data on accommodation of other linguistic features, on language attitudes, 8 on speakers' own perception of markedness, on artistic expressions, 9 etc. before being able to draw conclusion on the degree of dialectal accommodation, dialect shift, leveling processes, and development of new urban varieties. In North Africa, development of French/Arabic codeswitching and cultural interaction among North African European-born young generation (particularly through Rap Music) seem to play important roles as symbols or urban identification. In the Mashrek, Educated Spoken Arabic is always described as the prestigious urban code and studies on youth languages, cultural interaction, etc. are extremely limited, and often restricted to cases of English-Arabic lexical mixing in the discourses of young educated speakers [START_REF] Allam | Youngsters and new vocabulary[END_REF]. Movies, songs and literature often address the issues of young people's cultural and linguistic models, but still most sociolinguistic descriptions provide a very conventional and restrictive description of the Arabic urban reality. 8 See for exemple Bennis 2001, 2002 9 See for exemple Caubet 2002, for codeswitching and of humor in Algerian Arabic. 10 More references can be found in the full version of this paper. A Bibliography on Arabic Urban linguistics is also under construction and copy can be asked to the author.

SOME REFERENCES

  10 ABDEL JAWAD, H.R. (1986) "The emergence of an urban dialect in the Jordanian urban centres". International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61: 53-63. ABU-HAIDAR, F. (1991) Christian Arabic of Baghdad. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

Participants were E. Al-Wer, D. Caubet, A. Hachimi, C. Holes, L. Messaouidi, C. Miller, J. Watson.

The term In-migration is used here for the migration trends taking place within a given country (or a given region in the case of Jordan-Palestine for example), i.e. mainly from provincial and rural areas to cities.

This part is a short version of a longer paper entitled « Variation and change in Arabic Urban vernaculars » that is going to appear in a collective publication ed. by K. Versteegh and R. Dejong .

For the leveling processes of Cairo Arabic in the second part of the 19 th c. see[START_REF] Woidich | Cairo Arabic and the Egyptian dialects[END_REF]

The status of the former Jewish Cairo variety has been discussed by various authors who do not agree on this point.(Blanc 1964, Tomiche 1968, and Rosembaun, this conference).

As pointed out by Le Du et le Berre (1987) « les langues ne se rencontrent pas seulement dans la réalité directement observable. Leurs contacts dans l'imaginaire sont également complexes et importants à connaître ».

Naim (1985) provides interesting information of pre-war Beirut. She is currently undertaking new sociolinguistic research on Beirut.