Palestinian Arabic

Palestinian Arabic is a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by most Palestinians in Palestine, Israel and in the Palestinian diaspora.

The Arabic dialects spoken in Palestine and Transjordan are not one more or less homogeneous linguistic unit, but rather a wide diversity of dialects belonging to various typologically diverse groupings due to geographical, historical, and socioeconomic circumstances. In two dialect comparison studies, Palestinian Arabic was found to be the closest Arabic dialect to Modern Standard Arabic, mainly the dialect of the people in Gaza Strip. Further dialects can be distinguished within Palestine, such as spoken in the northern West Bank, that spoken by Palestinians in the Hebron area, which is similar to Arabic spoken by descendants of Palestinian refugees living in Jordan and south-western Syria.

Palestinian dialects contain layers of languages spoken in earlier times in the region, including Canaanite, Hebrew (Biblical and Mishnaic), Aramaic (particularly Western Aramaic), Persian, Greek, and Latin. As a result of the early modern period, Palestinian dialects were also influenced by Turkish and European languages. Since the founding of Israel in 1948, Palestinian dialects have been significantly influenced by Modern Hebrew.