This paper examines the impact of Arabic on the East Caucasian (Nakh- Daghestanian) language Chechen in Jordan. Chechens settled down on the territory of today’s Kingdom of Jordan around 120 years ago. All Jordanian Chechens are bilingual and use Chechen as an oral community language and Arabic for all other purposes on a daily basis. The paper provides an overview about influences of Jordanian Arabic on the lexicon and the morphosyntax of Chechen. The influence of Arabic on the Chechen lexicon is growing, especially among young speakers, and loan words are morphosyntactically integrated into the recipient language. With respect to syntax only little impact can be detected concerning constituent order in main clauses and complex sentences. The paper also briefly compares Jordanian Chechen with Caucasian Chechen and concludes that despite some sociolinguistic difference the linguistic impact of the genealogically and typologically diverse majority languages Arabic and Russian on one and the same minority language Chechen exhibits more commonalities than differences. Therefore, heritage language studies should be extended to oral languages such as Chechen and collaborate with studies on endangered minority languages.

This paper examines the impact of Arabic on the East Caucasian (Nakh- Daghestanian) language Chechen in Jordan. Chechens settled down on the territory of today’s Kingdom of Jordan around 120 years ago. All Jordanian Chechens are bilingual and use Chechen as an oral community language and Arabic for all other purposes on a daily basis. The paper provides an overview about influences of Jordanian Arabic on the lexicon and the morphosyntax of Chechen. The influence of Arabic on the Chechen lexicon is growing, especially among young speakers, and loan words are morphosyntactically integrated into the recipient language. With respect to syntax only little impact can be detected concerning constituent order in main clauses and complex sentences. The paper also briefly compares Jordanian Chechen with Caucasian Chechen and concludes that despite some sociolinguistic difference the linguistic impact of the genealogically and typologically diverse majority languages Arabic and Russian on one and the same minority language Chechen exhibits more commonalities than differences. Therefore, heritage language studies should be extended to oral languages such as Chechen and collaborate with studies on endangered minority languages.