Resumen de “Unser house was of stone”. A text in the arabic dialect of ṣummēl in the Gaza district
During the war between Arabs and Israel in 1948 all the Arab villages between Jaffa and Gaza disappeared and the majority of their inhabitants fled to Gaza or to the Westbank. Only a few families remained in Israel and settled down in the cities of Ramle, Lidd (Lod) and Jaffa. The former village dialects of that region can be divided into a northern group with the sound shifts *q > k and *k > č and in a southern group in which *k is preserved and *q shifted to g. The dialect of Ṣummēl belongs to the southern group. Speaker of the text published in this article is Sāra Dirbāši, a nearly 80-year-old lady born in Ṣummēl. Her report gives a vivid impression of the life in the village in the time of the British mandate.
