Tunisian Arabic

Tunisian Arabic, called Tunsi or Derja by its own speakers, meaning the common or everyday dialect, is the variety of Arabic spoken across Tunisia, distinct from the Modern Standard Arabic that serves as the country's official language. It is native to Tunisia and forms part of the broader Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum, blending into Algerian and Libyan Arabic near the national borders. About 12.5 million people speak it as their primary language. Its phonology is relatively conservative, keeping older pre-Hilalian features such as the q sound and interdental fricatives, while its grammar includes innovations such as a progressive verb form built from the participle qa'id, originally meaning sitting, and future tense markers such as mash or bash placed before a verb, functioning much like English will. Roughly eight to nine percent of its vocabulary comes from Berber, with further borrowings from French, Turkish, Italian, and Spanish; linguists classify it as predominantly Hilalian Maghrebi Arabic with some pre-Hilalian elements, partly intelligible with neighboring Maghrebi dialects but largely unintelligible to speakers of Eastern Arabic varieties.