Turku Arabic

Turku Arabic or simply just Turku is an extinct variant of Bimbashi Arabic that served as a lingua franca in Chad. It is the ancestor to Bongor Arabic and potentially other Arabic pidgins spoken in Chad today, but since they have not been described, it is unclear whether they are direct descendants of Turku.

History

Turku emerged as a regional variant of Bimbashi Arabic when Bimbashi-speaking enslaved soldiers were forced to relocate from Sudan to Chad after the abolition of slavery in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1879. The primary lexifier of Turku is Sudanese Arabic, and it is also heavily influenced by Sango and Sara-Bagirmi languages, from which most of its loanwords originate. Although not much is known about Turku, a dictionary and a phrasebook were published in 1926.

Turku had at least 2 tense/aspect markers: gahed and bi-. Similar particles are also found in Juba Arabic and Nubi.