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Dialect: A Badge of Honour or a Stigma
Yet in Khartoum and other major cities, this linguistic diversity can sometimes lead to division. Dialects can become a source of exclusion. Those who speak with different accents may be mocked, their education questioned and their intelligence doubted to create a feeling of marginalisation and exclusion.
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Dialect Between Belonging and Exclusion
When people refer to "the Sudanese dialect," they often mean the voice of Khartoum and its surrounding areas which has become known as Standard Sudanese Arabic. However, Sudan is not a single voice; it encompasses a rich tapestry of dialects including Nubian (Northern Sudan along the Nile), Fur (Darfur, Western Sudan), Zaghawa (Darfur and across into Chad), Beja (Eastern Sudan along the Red Sea coast), Massalit (Western Sudan, Darfur near the Chad border) and many others. Each dialect carries within it the treasures of ancient cultures, its proverbs, songs, laughter, and threads of oral history.
Yet in Khartoum and other major cities, this linguistic diversity can sometimes lead to division. Dialects can become a source of exclusion. Those who speak with different accents may be mocked, their education questioned and their intelligence doubted to create a feeling of marginalisation and exclusion.
I remember a friend from eastern Sudan whose use of the feminine plural suffix ‘nun’ in her speech was noticeable from our very first meeting. It was seamlessly woven into every phrase—even jokes and casual remarks and she never reverted to fuṣḥā, the formal Arabic that is often described as rigid. Her nun was there in nearly every sentence and would sometimes appear in the wrong place, according to classical Arabic, such as when describing or addressing a male. I never once questioned her about it, but I was aware that others around us found it distasteful and would sometimes imitate her mockingly as if there was a complicit agreement to accept the ‘white dialect’ of Khartoum as the proper one.
For me, her nun was a sign of beauty that enriched the language. But for her, it sometimes led to feelings of alienation; a clash with a world that preferred not to celebrate difference. Over time, I noticed her nun fading away and with it, other aspects of her distinctive dialect. Yet these beautiful sounds would quickly return when we visited her family during Eid. This tension, the oscillation between pride in one’s dialect and the pressure to abandon it, highlights how linguistic differences and all the authentic cultural heritage they embody can be turned into tools of exclusion.
Dialect as a Tool of Resilience
Despite the pressure to abandon them, Sudanese dialects, in the broadest sense, have endured as acts of resistance against cultural erosion. Many insist on speaking in their own languages and dialects, passing them on to their children, weaving them into poetry, music, theatre and everyday conversation. Some of these dialects are now symbols of resilience in the face of marginalisation and a way to cling on to their identity in an age marked by upheaval.
This is true even in exile. Displaced Sudanese continue to talk in their own dialects, recreating their own small homeland, imagining their world through their language. In interviews with the growing number of Sudanese women who migrated from Khartoum to Cairo and who are family friends, I noticed the same pattern. At the beginning of our conversation they would be cautious, but would gradually relax when they realised that their dialect was safe and accepted here, and that I was only encouraging them to open up to express themselves as a form of testimonial and not as in an attempt of undercover surveillance against them.
Some of the women would start off by expressing gratitude to the Egyptians for hosting them, but the more we talked, the more they would admit that they were sometimes forced to use the local dialect to navigate their daily life. Others described funny situations or linguistic nuances they came across when they encountered the Egyptian dialect and which they would share for a laugh with their families and friends to lighten the impact of displacement. A phrase that surfaced again and again was ‘communicating in the general sense.’ This referred to the shift from their local dialect to fuṣḥā in specific situations. It showed that maintaining one’s dialect was not always an act of rebellion and that at times, it was a flexible choice and a way of balancing identity with the need to adapt to a new environment.
I caught myself wondering the same thing and how I had myself resorted to ‘code switching’ when I first arrived in Cairo five years ago.
While conducting the above interviews I was faced with the same questions but from a different angle. Why did I immediately resort to code-switching when I first arrived in Cairo even though I had never done so before and despite not having any close ties with Egypt?
I thus entered a new stage of my research and began asking my Sudanese friends who, like me, had been born and raised in the Gulf, why they avoided speaking Sudanese Arabic here. The questions were informal, more like friendly banter than any proper interview, but our table was silent. Around us, the hiss and hum of coffee machines filled the space, until one of my friends finally murmured ‘madri’, meaning ‘I don’t know’, in a Gulf dialect. And in a way, that was my answer. From childhood, we had learned to switch to another dialect the moment we stepped outside our homes, a habit shaped by our upbringing in the Gulf. This habit then accompanied us where we migrated, where we tried to make ourselves understood by the people of different nationalities whom we dealt with every day.
The Influence of Egyptian Media
Why is it that we managed to speak local Arabic so fluently and to communicate effectively with the Egyptians, even for those who had never set foot in Egypt? The answer lies in our childhood living rooms, filled with endless Egyptian films broadcast via satellite channels and soap operas spanning multiple seasons shown at specific times every year. Over time, the voices of actors, lilts of their conversations and even the jokes they made all became part of our daily lexicon. It made switching to an Egyptian ‘white dialect’ practically instinctive rather than a conscious choice. This invites a broader question: if this strong influence has made a foreign dialect so familiar to us, what effect could similar commercial pieces that are presented in a Sudanese dialect do?
A Future for Sudanese Voices
Television productions are particularly effective at spreading dialects beyond their native regions particularly if they are long-running, family-oriented and widely distributed. When characters in popular productions use a specific dialect, that dialect starts to weave its way into the shared cultural fabric, becoming understood and embraced across different nations. We have seen this with Levantine, Egyptian and Gulf dialects, which have reached households all over the Arab world through the influence of media. If Sudanese dialects were given the same platform, they would no longer be perceived merely as a local variation but rather as representations of Sudan’s diversity, changing how the Arab world views Sudanese identity. In such a future, Sudanese speakers would feel less pressure to translate their speech into fuṣḥā or to modify their accents in order to be understood. Instead, they could communicate in their own voices and be truly heard.
Cover picture taken by Isam Hafiz
Dialect Between Belonging and Exclusion
When people refer to "the Sudanese dialect," they often mean the voice of Khartoum and its surrounding areas which has become known as Standard Sudanese Arabic. However, Sudan is not a single voice; it encompasses a rich tapestry of dialects including Nubian (Northern Sudan along the Nile), Fur (Darfur, Western Sudan), Zaghawa (Darfur and across into Chad), Beja (Eastern Sudan along the Red Sea coast), Massalit (Western Sudan, Darfur near the Chad border) and many others. Each dialect carries within it the treasures of ancient cultures, its proverbs, songs, laughter, and threads of oral history.
Yet in Khartoum and other major cities, this linguistic diversity can sometimes lead to division. Dialects can become a source of exclusion. Those who speak with different accents may be mocked, their education questioned and their intelligence doubted to create a feeling of marginalisation and exclusion.
I remember a friend from eastern Sudan whose use of the feminine plural suffix ‘nun’ in her speech was noticeable from our very first meeting. It was seamlessly woven into every phrase—even jokes and casual remarks and she never reverted to fuṣḥā, the formal Arabic that is often described as rigid. Her nun was there in nearly every sentence and would sometimes appear in the wrong place, according to classical Arabic, such as when describing or addressing a male. I never once questioned her about it, but I was aware that others around us found it distasteful and would sometimes imitate her mockingly as if there was a complicit agreement to accept the ‘white dialect’ of Khartoum as the proper one.
For me, her nun was a sign of beauty that enriched the language. But for her, it sometimes led to feelings of alienation; a clash with a world that preferred not to celebrate difference. Over time, I noticed her nun fading away and with it, other aspects of her distinctive dialect. Yet these beautiful sounds would quickly return when we visited her family during Eid. This tension, the oscillation between pride in one’s dialect and the pressure to abandon it, highlights how linguistic differences and all the authentic cultural heritage they embody can be turned into tools of exclusion.
Dialect as a Tool of Resilience
Despite the pressure to abandon them, Sudanese dialects, in the broadest sense, have endured as acts of resistance against cultural erosion. Many insist on speaking in their own languages and dialects, passing them on to their children, weaving them into poetry, music, theatre and everyday conversation. Some of these dialects are now symbols of resilience in the face of marginalisation and a way to cling on to their identity in an age marked by upheaval.
This is true even in exile. Displaced Sudanese continue to talk in their own dialects, recreating their own small homeland, imagining their world through their language. In interviews with the growing number of Sudanese women who migrated from Khartoum to Cairo and who are family friends, I noticed the same pattern. At the beginning of our conversation they would be cautious, but would gradually relax when they realised that their dialect was safe and accepted here, and that I was only encouraging them to open up to express themselves as a form of testimonial and not as in an attempt of undercover surveillance against them.
Some of the women would start off by expressing gratitude to the Egyptians for hosting them, but the more we talked, the more they would admit that they were sometimes forced to use the local dialect to navigate their daily life. Others described funny situations or linguistic nuances they came across when they encountered the Egyptian dialect and which they would share for a laugh with their families and friends to lighten the impact of displacement. A phrase that surfaced again and again was ‘communicating in the general sense.’ This referred to the shift from their local dialect to fuṣḥā in specific situations. It showed that maintaining one’s dialect was not always an act of rebellion and that at times, it was a flexible choice and a way of balancing identity with the need to adapt to a new environment.
I caught myself wondering the same thing and how I had myself resorted to ‘code switching’ when I first arrived in Cairo five years ago.
While conducting the above interviews I was faced with the same questions but from a different angle. Why did I immediately resort to code-switching when I first arrived in Cairo even though I had never done so before and despite not having any close ties with Egypt?
I thus entered a new stage of my research and began asking my Sudanese friends who, like me, had been born and raised in the Gulf, why they avoided speaking Sudanese Arabic here. The questions were informal, more like friendly banter than any proper interview, but our table was silent. Around us, the hiss and hum of coffee machines filled the space, until one of my friends finally murmured ‘madri’, meaning ‘I don’t know’, in a Gulf dialect. And in a way, that was my answer. From childhood, we had learned to switch to another dialect the moment we stepped outside our homes, a habit shaped by our upbringing in the Gulf. This habit then accompanied us where we migrated, where we tried to make ourselves understood by the people of different nationalities whom we dealt with every day.
The Influence of Egyptian Media
Why is it that we managed to speak local Arabic so fluently and to communicate effectively with the Egyptians, even for those who had never set foot in Egypt? The answer lies in our childhood living rooms, filled with endless Egyptian films broadcast via satellite channels and soap operas spanning multiple seasons shown at specific times every year. Over time, the voices of actors, lilts of their conversations and even the jokes they made all became part of our daily lexicon. It made switching to an Egyptian ‘white dialect’ practically instinctive rather than a conscious choice. This invites a broader question: if this strong influence has made a foreign dialect so familiar to us, what effect could similar commercial pieces that are presented in a Sudanese dialect do?
A Future for Sudanese Voices
Television productions are particularly effective at spreading dialects beyond their native regions particularly if they are long-running, family-oriented and widely distributed. When characters in popular productions use a specific dialect, that dialect starts to weave its way into the shared cultural fabric, becoming understood and embraced across different nations. We have seen this with Levantine, Egyptian and Gulf dialects, which have reached households all over the Arab world through the influence of media. If Sudanese dialects were given the same platform, they would no longer be perceived merely as a local variation but rather as representations of Sudan’s diversity, changing how the Arab world views Sudanese identity. In such a future, Sudanese speakers would feel less pressure to translate their speech into fuṣḥā or to modify their accents in order to be understood. Instead, they could communicate in their own voices and be truly heard.
Cover picture taken by Isam Hafiz
