Mujam al-Dakhil fi al-Lugha al-Arabiya al-Haditha wa Lahajatiha
- Author died
- 1445 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Qalam
Mujam al-Dakhil fi al-Lugha al-Arabiya al-Haditha wa Lahajatiha (Dictionary of Loanwords in Modern Arabic and Its Dialects) is an etymological lexicon of foreign borrowings in Modern Standard Arabic and contemporary regional vernaculars, authored by the Indian-born linguist F. Abd al-Rahim (d. 1445 AH / 2023 CE) .
Background and Scope
The dictionary represents an expanded version of the author's earlier work, al-Dakhil fi al-Lugha al-Arabiya al-Haditha wa Lahajatiha, published in 1393 AH with approximately 800 entries . Nearly forty years later, Abd al-Rahim expanded the material into a comprehensive dictionary containing over 1,600 loanwords, published by Dar al-Qalam in Damascus in 1432 AH / 2011 CE .
The work documents terms borrowed into Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects of the Arab East, particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, and the Levant (Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine), while rarely addressing loanwords in the Gulf, Iraq, or North Africa . Most entries trace modern borrowings from European languages (such as English, French, and Italian), Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Urdu, and Greek . The dictionary also includes selected older borrowings, such as Syriac and Roman calendar month names, owing to their frequent modern usage and their absence from classical loanword treatises .
Methodology and Structure
Abd al-Rahim compiled his material from contemporary books, reference works, mass media, public signage, and spoken usage observed during his residence in Egypt, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as his interactions with speakers from the Levant . The dictionary adheres to several structural principles:
- Arrangement: Entries are ordered alphabetically, with the tāʾ marbūṭah treated as an independent letter following hāʾ. Morphological derivatives are subsumed under primary headwords or cross-referenced .
- Vocalization: Phonetic values are described in words (ḍabṭ bi-l-ḥarf) rather than diacritics alone, accommodating foreign vowel sounds that lack native Arabic orthographic symbols .
- Orthography: The author documents spelling variations arising from vowel length or dialectal rendering of foreign consonants, such as the voiced velar plosive /g/ rendered with jīm in Egypt, qāf in Saudi Arabia, and ghayn or kāf in Lebanon .
- Etymology: Each entry traces the word to its source language, providing the foreign etymon in Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Syriac, or Ottoman Turkish script, and identifying transmission paths, such as Italian and Persian words mediated through Turkish, or scientific terms derived from Greek .
- Dialect labeling: Region-specific words are marked in parentheses (e.g., al-Ḥijāz, Miṣr, al-Shām), whereas unmarked entries denote words common to Modern Standard Arabic or widely used across eastern dialects .
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