جنفاص
North Levantine Arabic
Alternative forms
- جِنفيص (jinfayṣ, jinfēṣ)
Etymology
Borrowed from Old French chenevas (“canvas”) during the Crusades. Old French ch was an affricate /t͡ʃ/, while medieval ج (j) was also an affricate /d͡ʒ/, making it a close match (compare قِجّة (ʔijje, “piggy bank”)). When Old French ch shifted to /ʃ/ in the 13th century, at the same time as the Fall of Acre,[1] جنفاص (jinfāṣ) may have preserved one of the last traces of the affricate.
This is the only secure Crusader loan still in use outside of proper names like Lake Bardawil. Other loans such as فَصَل (faṣal, “vassal”) and بُرْجَاسِيَّة (burjāsiyya, “bourgeoisie”) are now obsolete.
Dictionaries also record Iraqi Arabic چُنفَاص (čunfāṣ) beside the common Iraqi Arabic جُنْفَاص (junfāṣ, “jute, canvas, sackcloth”). The former preserves voiceless /t͡ʃ/, directly matching Old French ch. Since the Crusader states never extended to Mesopotamia, the form's transmission is uncertain.
- Medieval Levantine Arabic may have temporarily kept /t͡ʃ/, allowing traders to transmit both variants.
- Mesopotamian traders may have acquired چُنفَاص (čunfāṣ) directly from French in the Levant.
- The form may reflect sporadic devoicing of جُنْفَاص (junfāṣ) without connection to Old French.
Options 1 and 2 assume /t͡ʃ/ existed in Mesopotamian Arabic a millennium ago, and option 1 assumes the same for medieval Levantine Arabic. Both remain uncertain.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ʒinˈfaːsˤ/, [-ɑːsˤ]
Noun
جنفاص • (jinfāṣ) m (collective, singulative جنفاصة f (jinfāṣa) or جُنفيصة f (junfayṣa))
Derived terms
- جَنْفَص (janfaṣ, “to become coarse”)
References
- ^ Ali Tifrit, Laurence Voeltzel (2016), “Revis(it)ing French palatalization”, in Glossa: a journal of general linguistics (in English), page 2: “[…] in the 13th century, affricates are simplified into a fricative (e)”
- "(e)" refers to a column of Table 1, which indicates the stage at which /tʃ/ → /ʃ/ occurred.