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This part of the analysis looks at the prepositions 'a'la' (على) and its relation to the definite marker, 'al' (ال).

In Modern Standard Arabic, it's necessary to pronounce all of the sounds in each word. However, in dialect, because it
 makes it easier and quicker to speak, it's common to drop letters in a word. In linguistics, this is called elision and it's 
 similar to what we do in English when we are speaking quickly. For example, we can say "fish and chips" but often when we 
 are speaking informally, it comes out as, "fish n chips".

Similarity in Arabic, this happens often. With the preposition we looked at in this study, we looked at when it undergoes 
elision before a noun and when it does or does not, if the is a a definite marker on the noun. By definite marker, I just 
 mean the rough translation of 'the'. If a word has this definite marker, it effectively translates to 'the ___' and without 
 the definite marker, it translates to 'a/an ___'.

Because of the similar sounds between 'a'la' and 'al', we can see how elision would make sense here. Note the example below, 
 transliterated into English with the Arabic along side it.

Arabic	English	Transliteration	Classification
عالبيت	to the house	"a'al-bayt"	connected with definite marker
عبيت	to a house	"a'bayt	connected without definite marker
على البيت	to the house	"a'la al-bayt"	unconnected with definite marker
على بيت	to a house	"a'la bayt"	unconnected without definite marker

As we can see from the data below, it was much more common for the speakers to pronounce the preposition and the noun as distinctive words despite wether the word had the definite article or not. This is outside of the hypothesis I made at the beginning of the study. I guessed that on average, the speakers would connect the two words more often than not.

I originally guessed this because I was thinking it's ultimately the easier thing to do. I, myself, usually connect the two words when speaking in dialect, usually without regard to a definite marker or lack thereof. This is common because, as we said earlier, the elision makes it much easier and faster to pronounce with the presence of a definite marker. This idea probably extended to
 words without a definite marker just as a form of habit and it quickly became a dialectal go-to.

However, it's clear that in this case my hypothesis was wrong. I conclude the reasoning behind this as one of two reasons. 1. I merely underestimated the general Jordanian's tendency to go along with elision for the convenience of speaking quicker and more easily. Or 2. 
Perhaps because these speaking samples, while largely spoken in dialect, where an interview between two people. It's impossible to 
 know the exact circumstances of each person but we might be able to assume that the person speaking was aware that their words were being
 recorded and their picture soon to be taken. With this, we could possibly assume that some of the speakers might have code-switched 
 or partially code-switched into a slightly more formal version of their dialect to adapt to a situation they deemed to be semi-formal, 
 possibly accounting for the data to show a majority pronunciation closer in line with Modern Standard Arabic than dialect.

Jordanian Arabic by Amber Montgomery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.