Simplified Italian of Libya was an Italian pidgin in the colony of Libya, that survived until the late 20th century, mainly in the area of the capital Tripoli. It was a legacy of Italian colonial period when Libya was part of Italian North Africa. It was created in the early 1920s and lasted until the late 1990s.However some old Libyans were able to speak this Italian Pidgin until the early 2000s (according to professor Epifanio Ajello of the University of Salerno)
History
This Italian Pidgin of Libya (called sometimes "Libyan Italian") is a legacy of the Italian Empire.
Italian was the language of the Italians who settled in Libya. In 1940 nearly half the native Libyans were able to speak in Italian (and in Tripoli & Benghazi all of them) and many loanwords from Italian (nearly 800) were assimilated in the local Arab language. But since the 1920s started to be developed between the native Arab population a "Pidgin italian", with Arab and Italian words mixed (according to historian TripodiTripodi (1999), Chapter: Libya).
Although it was greatly used by most of the Arab Libyans on the coast since colonial rule, the Pidgin Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi who expelled nearly all the Italian colonists population (and Italian-educated Libyans who were against the Gaddafi's rule). The Libyan dictator returned Arabic to be once again the sole official and common used language of the country.
Some academics think that there was fully spoken a kind of pidgin in northern Libya at the end of WW2: the Italian pidgin of Libya, spoken mainly in Tripoli and Benghazi. But with the disappearance of the Italians of Libya under Gheddafi, this pidgin is no longer in existence since the late 1980s/early 1990s.Tripodi (1999), Introduction
Characteristics
The Simplified Italian of Libya is similar in morphology and syntaxis to the Italian Eritrean, a pidgin developed in another colony of the kingdom of Italy: Italian Eritrea.
Like the Simplified Italian of Eritrea, the Libyan Italian "has basic SVO order; unmarked form is used for nonspecific; stare and ce (from Italian) as locatives".Pidgin and Creole languages; pag. 58
Many Italian loanwords existed in this Pidgin mainly, but not exclusively, as a technical jargon. For example, machinery parts, workshop tools, electrical supplies, names of fish species ...etc.
+ Italian LoanwordsItalian Pidgin of LibyaItalian Word IPA (Western) IPA (Eastern) Meaning Word Meaning ṣālīṭa slope salita up slope kinšēllu metallic gate cancello gate anguli corner angolo cornerṭānṭa, uṭānṭa truck ottanta eighty (a model of a truck of Italian make)tēsta a hit with the forehead testa headmaršabēdi sidewalk marciapiede sidewalkkāčču kick calcio kicksbageţi, spageţispaghettilazānyalasagnarizoţurisottofeţuččinifettuccine
Libyan Italian seems to resemble the form and structure of "Creole" based forms of European languages (that loanworded during the Renaissance from medioeval Italian).
See also Italian Eritrean Simplified Italian of Somalia Simplified Italian of Ethiopia Mediterranean Lingua Franca
Notes
Bibliography Bandini, Franco. Gli italiani in Africa, storia delle guerre coloniali 1882-1943. Longanesi. Milano, 1971. Bender, Lionel. Pidgin and Creole languages. University of Hawaii Press. Hawaii, 1987. Hussein Ramadan, Abdu. “Italian loanwords in colloquial Libyan Arabic as spoken in the Tripoli region”. Tripoli, 2013 ( http://hdl.handle.net/10150/184333) Chapin Metz, Helen. Libya: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987