Tunisian Arabic

Tunisian Arabic
تونسي Tounsi
Pronunciation	[tu:nsi]
Native to	Tunisia, North-eastern Algeria
Ethnicity	Maghrebis
Native speakers	11.2 million native (2014 census)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Maghrebi Arabic Tunisian Arabic
Writing system	Arabic script, Latin script
Signed forms	Tunisian Sign Language
Official status
Recognised minority language in	As a variety of Maghrebi Arabic on 7 May 1999 (Not ratified due to several Constitutional Matters): France
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	tuni1259

Tunisian Arabic, or Tunisian, is a set of dialects of Maghrebi Arabic spoken in Tunisia. It is known by its 11 million speakers as Tounsi [ˈtuːnsi] (تونسي) "Tunisian" or Derja "everyday language" to distinguish it from Modern Standard Arabic, the official language of Tunisia.

As part of a dialect continuum, Tunisian merges into Algerian Arabic and Libyan Arabic at the borders of the country. Tunisian Arabic's morphology, syntax, pronunciation, and vocabulary are quite different from Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Like other Maghrebi dialects, it has a vocabulary that is mostly Arabic with a significant Berber substratum. However, Tunisian has also a significant Latin component, as well as many loanwords from French,Turkish,Italian and the languages of Spain.

Tunisian Arabic is mostly intelligible to speakers of other Maghrebi dialects but is hard to understand or is unintelligible for speakers of Middle Eastern Arabic.Multilingualism within Tunisia and in the Tunisian diaspora makes it common for Tunisians to code-switch, mixing Tunisian with French, English, Standard Arabic or other languages in daily speech. Within some circles, Tunisian Arabic has thereby integrated new French and English words, notably in technical fields, or replaced old French and Italian loans with standard Arabic words.