SHAWI

SHAWI is a cooperation project led by Stephan Procházka (University of Vienna). The ACDH-CH is associated research partner. The project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, P-33574) started on 1 February 2021 and investigates the Arabic dialects of the so-called Shawi type. These dialects are spoken by small cattle breeding Bedouin tribes in various regions of Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Compared to the sedentary dialects of the region, the number of studies providing linguistic data on Shawi dialects is still relatively small and there is no comprehensive grammar or dictionary for any particular variety.  

The SHAWI project focuses on the minority Arabic variety spoken in the Harran-Urfa region of south-eastern Turkey. Linguistic data is also collected from speakers in neighbouring regions. The project aims to provide three main contributions: (1) a text corpus based on audio recordings, (2) a comprehensive grammar, and (3) a digital dictionary. All three language resources will be based on new data collected in the field.