Imāla


Imāla is a vowel shift exhibited in many dialects of Arabic where the open vowel, whether long or short, is raised to or even in certain morphological or phonological contexts. Imāla occurs in modern colloquial as well as classical variants of Arabic, including several qirāʾāt of the Quran. As a very noticeable phenomenon, imāla is often one of the most distinguishing features in the dialects that have it, such as Lebanese Arabic.

Classical Arabic

Historically and anciently, imāla was a feature of the ancient dialects of Najd and Tamim, which had it in both verbs and inflected nouns. There are many cases for which imāla is appropriate; some of the most common are outlined below:

Morphological reasons

Many qirāʾāt of the Quran implement imāla at least once. Some, like those of Hafs or Qalun, use it only once, but others, like those of Hamzah az-Zaiyyat and Al-Kisa'i, use it regularly. In the latter, imāla affects hundreds of words because of a general rule of a specific qirāʾa or as a specific word prescribed to undergo imāla. Warsh's qirāʾa, from the way of Al-Azraq, implements minor imāla regularly but major imāla in only one instance.

Effect on other languages

The accent of Andalusia in Moorish Spain had imāla, and many Arabic loan words and city names in Spanish still do so. Its largest city, Seville, has a name that is a notable example of imāla.