The Wortatlas der arabischen Dialekte / Word Atlas of Arabic Dialects (WAD)
intends to provide an unprecedented survey of the lexical richness and
diversity of the Arabic dialects as spoken from Uzbekistan to Mauretania and
Nigeria, from Malta to Sudan, and including the Ki-Nubi Creole as spoken in
Uganda and Kenya. The multilingual word atlas will consist of three volumes in
total with some 500 onomasiological maps in full colour. Each map presents a
topic or notion and its equivalents in Arabic as collected from the
dialectological literature (dictionaries, grammars, text collections,
ethnographic reports, etc.), from the editors´ own field work, from
questionnaires filled out by native speakers or by experts for a certain
dialect region, and also from the internet. Polyglot legends in German,
English, French, Spanish, Italian accompany the maps to facilitate further
access. Each map is followed by a commentary in German, providing more details
about the sources and the individual forms, and discussing semantic and
etymological issues. All quotations are in their original language. The maps
mainly show lexical types, detailed and concrete forms are given in the
commentaries. An introduction is provided in both German and English and an
index of all lexemes in the atlas will be available. The first volume Band I:
Mensch, Natur, Fauna und Flora / Volume 1: Mankind, Nature, Fauna and Flora
contains subjects such as ´family members´, ´professions´, ´human qualities´.
The second volume will deal with material culture (´house´, ´utensils´, ´food´,
´clothing´, ´vehicles´, etc.) and the third and final volume will focus on
verbs, adjectives and function words. The atlas will be indispensable for
everyone interested in the modern spoken Arabic language, as well as for
dialectologists and for semanticists.
