Levantine Arabic: Syrian Dialect

Syrian Arabic

Syrian Arabic refers to any varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken mainly in the west of Syria, with Damascus Arabic being the prestigious dialect. In the east of Syria, varieties of Iraqi Arabic and North Mesopotamian Arabic are spoken.

Dialects of the cities of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Tartous are more similar to each other than to that of the northern region of Aleppo. Allied dialects are spoken in the coastal mountains.

Along with Lebanese Arabic, Syrian Arabic is classified as North Levantine Arabic. Lebanese Arabic is similar especially to the southern Syrian dialects, though it has more influence from Palestinian Arabic.

Due to Syria's long history of multiculturalism and foreign imperialism, Syrian Arabic exhibits a vocabulary stratum that includes word borrowings from Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Syriac, English, French and Persian. There is no standardized spelling, but it is usually written in the Arabic alphabet from right to left.

Other forms of Arabic natively spoken in Syria include:

the dialect spoken in the Jabal al-Druze (Jabal Al-Arab) mountains;
the eastern dialect group (Al-Hasakah, Al-Raqqah, and Deir ez-Zor), part of Mesopotamian Arabic (rarely called North Syrian Arabic);
Badawi Arabic, spoken by the Bedouin (nomads).
Non-indigenous dialects of Arabic, most notably those of Iraq and Palestine, are frequently used within their respective refugee diasporas, especially in Damascus.

A Note on Damascus Dialect
The Damascus Dialect is a dialect of Syrian Arabic that is indigenous to and spoken primarily in Damascus. As the dialect of the capital city of Syria, and due to its use in the Syrian broadcast media, it is the prestigious dialect of Syria and widely recognized by speakers of other Syrian dialects, as well as in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan. Because of this, the terms Syrian Arabic or Syrian Dialect is quite often used to refer to the Damascus Dialect in particular.

Source: Wikipedia