Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia, vol. 2: Ethnographic Texts.

Kaye, Alan S.

Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia, vol. 2: Ethnographic Texts. By CLIVE HOLES. Handbook of Oriental Studies, vol. I, 51/2. Leiden: BRILL, 2005. Pp. lxi + 347. $150.

Volume 1 of this work, the Glossary, appeared in 2001; volume 3, a description of the dialects presented in the volume undergoing review is, we are told, forthcoming (p. ix). All three of these publications are based on pioneering fieldwork accomplished by the author on the island state of Bahrain during 1977-78 and in the Sultanate of Oman from 1985-87. The approximately 100 uneducated speakers, aged forty and older at the time of recording, spoke into tape recorders on Bahraini history, marriage, customs, family life, popular culture, agriculture, fishing, and pearl-diving, among other ethnographic topics. The fifty-five excellent published texts of thirty-nine speakers (thirteen 'arab, "indigenous Bahraini Sunnis" and twenty-six Baharna, "indigenous Bahraini Shi'ites") constitute a solid basis for an ethnography of eastern Arabia during the pre-oil era.

To avoid the self-consciousness that is evident when a tape recorder is placed in front of an informant, it was a wise decision on Holes' part not to reveal (to many) that speech was being recorded. Thus, these speakers did not know at the time that they were being recorded (p. x). Holes actually comments on the phenomenon of the "monitor" by describing what he refers to as the "observer paradox": "One can only gather accurate speech data through observation, but the speaker's consciousness that he is being observed changes the nature of the data he produces, and therefore what is observed" (p. xix, n. 2). This paradox notwithstanding, the texts are, in my opinion, authentic transcriptions of natural speech.

In this connection, let me single out chapter eight, the sawalif, "stories, anecdotes, yarns" (pp. 299-328), which truly reflect impromptu speech. The author describes the kind of monologue called salfa, pl. sawalif, related to the verb solaf, "to have a chat; tell a story." Although some of this material has been published previously, it is satisfying to see these data in one convenient work, and in some cases, errors have been corrected (e.g., in the text [pp. 302-4] originally published in Zeitschrift fur arabische Linguistik [1984]). I further applaud Holes' decision not to "clean up" the texts in any way. Thus, they contain the "hesitations, false starts, ungrammatical turns of phrase," etc. (p. xx). Anthropologists and folklorists will particularly profit from a careful scrutiny of the xurafat, "old wives' tales," and hazhwi, "folk tales," published in this volume.

The notes to the texts are particularly valuable. In a comment about the use of the Persian verb hast, "is" (and ma hast, "is not"), for example, we learn that this is common in uneducated Bahraini speech and is replaced in educated speech by fih, well known in other Arabic sedentary dialects, whereas on the Batina coast of Oman, hast comes to mean "many, a lot" (p. 16, n. 115). It seems that the time is now ripe for a comprehensive linguistic investigation of the extent of Persian influence. In another note, one reads that some Bahrainis use aku "there is," and maku, "there is not" (p. 31, n. 201), to be seen, in my view, as Kuwaiti or Iraqi influence.

Let me turn to the bifurcation between Bahama and 'arab dialects on Bahrain. One can immediately spot the former by the interdental to labiodental change in words such as [theta]ala[theta]a, "three" > faldfa, and the shift of the uvular *[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] > [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] whereas older *[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] > [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. The affrication of the voiceless velar stop occurs in back vowel environments, making this phenomenon different from the restricted front vowel environments of other Arabic dialects: duhc, "laughter" < duhk (p. xxxviii). The interdental becoming a labiodental fricative is, typologically speaking, not a rare phenomenon (cf. the change both to bof in African American Vernacular English and of bother to bover in Cockney English). The Baharna village dialects also have some features which are reminiscent of certain Yemeni dialects: e.g., ?ani, "I (fem.)," vs. ?ana, "I (masc.)" (p. xli). They seem to preserve other old features as well, such as the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] vocalism in sirib ~ srib (cf. Classical Arabic sariba for urban sarab, "he drank" (p. xlii).

Let me conclude with a mention of the thorough bibliography (pp. Ivii-lxi). Holes succeeds in explicating the comparison (utilizing his references) of his data with those of other Arabic dialects of the Gulf and eastern Arabia, south Arabia, including Yemen, and central Arabia and Iraq, not to mention other Arabic dialects, such as Egyptian and Classical Arabia, as well as other languages, such as Harsusi, Soqotri, Mandaic, Syriac, and Persian. The only major omission in this section is Hamdi A. Qafisheh, NTC's Yemeni-Arabic English Dictionary (Chicago: NTC Publishing Group, 2000).

This is a well-organized and well-written tome. Any linguist aspiring to produce a detailed and absorbing philological compilation of ethnographic texts along traditional lines as well as a modern linguistic treatise of comparative dialectology will surely profit by examining this sound publication. In conclusion, it is fitting and proper for Holes to have dedicated it (p. xiv) to the "godfather" of this project, the late Professor Thomas M. Johnstone of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, who is rightly referred to as "the pioneer of Arabian Gulf dialectology."

ALAN S. KAYE

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON