Languages
Native
Tunisian Arabic (Tounsi)
98%
Secondary languages
French
60%
English
20%
Language Samples
أشنو أخبارك؟
Ashnu akhbarak?
What's your news? / How are you? (Tounsi dialect)
لاباس، يعيشك.
Labas, y'aishek.
Fine, may you live long (thanks).
واحد، زوز، تلاتة، أربعة، خمسة، ستة، سبعة، تمانية، تسعة، عشرة.
Wahd, zouz, tlata, arb'a, khamsa, stta, sb'a, tmania, ts'a, 'ashra.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
Tunisia was the heartland of ancient Carthage, a Phoenician (and thus Semitic) civilisation that rivalled Rome. After Carthage's fall, Latin and then Byzantine Greek dominated before Arab armies arrived in the 7th century. Tunisian Arabic (Tounsi) shows influences from Berber, Punic Latin, Turkish (from Ottoman rule), Italian, and French. France controlled Tunisia as a protectorate from 1881 to 1956, giving French a prominent role in education and official life that persists today. Malta's language, Maltese, is descended partly from a Tunisian-Sicilian Arabic dialect, making Tunisian and Maltese distant linguistic cousins.
Similar Languages
Hebrew
58%
Tamazight (Berber)
14%
Amharic
22%
Maltese
30%
Media
Ruins of ancient Carthage near modern Tunis — once the capital of a Semitic Phoenician empire
Photo: Amy Keus · CC BY-SA 2.0
Did You Know
01
Maltese — the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet and an official EU language — traces its Arabic roots to a dialect closely related to Tunisian Arabic.
02
The Tunisian greeting 'y'aishek' (may you live) reflects an ancient Semitic formula of blessing found also in Hebrew and Aramaic.
03
Tunisia was the first Arab country to abolish slavery in 1846, and has one of the highest French-proficiency rates in the Arab world.