Scholars use "Levantine Arabic" to describe the continuum of mutually intelligible dialects spoken across the Levant. Other terms include "Syro-Palestinian", "Eastern Arabic", "East Mediterranean … See more

Dialects
Levantine is spoken in the fertile strip on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean: from the Turkish coastal provinces of Adana, See more

Pre-Islamic antiquity
Starting in the 1st millennium BCE, Aramaic was the dominant spoken language and the language of writing and administration in the Levant. Greek was the language of administration of the Seleucid Empire (in … See more

Diglossia and code-switching
Levantine is not recognized in any state or territory. MSA is the sole official language in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria; it has a "special status" in Israel under the Basic Law. French is also recognized in … See more

Levantine phonology is characterized by rich socio-phonetic variations along socio-cultural (gender; religion; urban, rural or Bedouin) and geographical lines. For instance, in urban varieties, interdentals /θ/, /ð/, and /ðʕ/ tend to merge to stops or fricatives [t] ~ [s]; … See more

Until recently, Levantine was rarely written. Brustad and Zuniga report that in 1988, they did not find anything published in Levantine in Syria. By the late 2010s, written Levantine was used in many public venues and on the internet, especially social media. There … See more

VSO and SVO word orders are possible in Levantine. In both cases, the verb precedes the object. SVO is more common in Levantine, while Classical Arabic prefers VSO. Subject-initial order indicates topic-prominent sentences, while verb-initial order … See more