Question:
But what is the situation in egyptian ? On third syll. from the end
(if the second is not long)? How egypt. say katabata:(they two
write).With acc. on first or on second syll.(`katabata: or
ka`tabata:)?
Answer:
My 1976 edition of Teach Yourself Colloquial Arabic, by T.F. Mitchell,
which other than the title would specify, is about Egyptian Arabic,
has an over two pages explanation of what it calls the promiment
syllable. In fact the author means accented or stressed syllable, as
he says himself.
It's too much to summarise or type here, also due to the non-standard
transcription characters. Maybe I could make a photocopy tomorrow, and
then a scan (my scanner cannot scan book pages), and put it on my
website.
it's unclear whether this is "high register" or "low register" but
see Comrie "World's Major Languages" article "Arabic" by Alan S. Kaye
which uses that word as an example to illustrate recitation
differences. accent on first syllable is Iraqi, second is "others"
third is egyptian, fourth is "many syrians and lebanese"
"the third syllable from the beginning is stressed according to the
egyptian standard of recitation of classical arabic"
I dunno what the saudi academy recommends, neither do I know about the
stress patterns for the colloquials of saudi arabia. there is no single
"bedouin dialect" and no "bedouin language academy".
Rabin "Ancient West Arabian" posits a variable stress depending on the
use of a word in a sentence for his "ancient west arabian" based on
soem contemporary yemeni colloquials and other very scanty evidence.
