PDF - Guram Chikovani

The Central Asian dialects – Bukhara and QAD belong to the eastern
group of Arabic dialects. They are spoken in the territory of modern
Uzbekistan. The Bukhara dialect is spoken by the population of the
qishlaqs: JÝgarÚ, ChaghdarÑ, Shohan-beg, Ghijduvan area, Bukhara region,
as well as the qishlaq Arab KhÅna, Wobkend region, whereas QAD is
spoken in the qishlaq Jeynau and Qamashi, Beshkend region, North –
West of Qarshi. According to our observation on the spot, the Bukhara
dialect is spoken by approximately 3000 people in the given qishlaq at
present, whereas up to 1500 people know the QAD. At the same time, the
Arab population in residential areas exceeds greatly number of native
speakers.
Important studies were devoted to Central Asian Arabic dialects by
Acad. G.Tsereteli and Prof. I.Vinnikov. Special mention should be made
of “A Description of the language of Central Asian Arabs “ (in Russian)
by G. Tsereteli, published in the proceedings of the second session of the
Arabists Association in Leningrad, in 1941; “Central Asian Arabic
Dialects, the Bukhara Arabic Dialect” (in Georgian), major work by the
same author, Tbilisi, 1956; “ The Language and Folklore of Bukhara
Arabs” by I. Vinnikov, Moscow, 1969; “A. Dictionary of the Language of
Bukhara Arabs” by the same author, published in “Палестинский сборник”
in 1962, etc. The above listed studies are foundational work by Acad. G.
Tsereteli and Prof. I. Vinnikov, which have contributed to the level of
study of Central Asian Arabic.
“ The Bukhara Arabic Dialect”, monograph by Prof. V. G. Akhvlediani
was published in 1985. It deals with the analysis of the phonological and
morphological structure of the Bukhara dialect. N. Yushmanov, H. Niberg,
V. Fisher also devoted significant works to Central Asian Arabic. G.
Juraev, O. Yastrov, K. Versteegh and others.
The works by these scholars are largely devoted to the study of the
Central Asian Bukhara dialect. This, in the present writer’s view, is due to
the existence of rich dialectological material reflective of Bukhara Arabic
in scholarly use, the credit for which goes to Acad. G. Tsereteli and Prof.
I. Vinnikov.
Acad. G. Tsereteli and Prof. I. Vinnikov laid the foundation for the
study of the QAD. In 1954 G. Tsereteli and in 1963 I. Vinnikov published
examples of speech of the Qashqa-daryÁ Arabs. Materials of the Grammar
of the Qashqa-daryÁ dialect by I. Vinnikov were published in Bratislava in
1965. In spite of this, the QAD is little known in scholarly circles.
Materials of this dialect have not been published to an extent that would
enable specialists to carry out thorough linguistic analysis of the dialect.
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