Phonetical and morphological remarks on the adaptation of Italian loanwords in Libyan Arabic

The contact between Italian and Libyan Arabic, whose earliest traces date back to the first half of the XIX century, intensified in the decades immediately preceding the Italian occupation of Libya (1911). The number of Italian loanwords in Libyan Arabic can be estimated at about 700 lexical items, although for some of them the source might be another Romance language. The present study integrates the loanwords provided by Abdu (1988) with more lexical items collected from Yoda (2005), Pereira (2010) and the author’s personal fieldwork. The data obtained are subsequently analysed from a phonetical and morphological perspective, contributing to the knowledge of the processes of adaptation of Italian loanwords in Libyan Arabic.