ABSTRACT
As an Arab American and a linguist, I have been interested in the spoken language used by Arab Americans in Detroit for some time. Detroit is a unique laboratory for the study of Arabic as an ethnic minority language because the Detroit metropolitan area has the largest concentration of Arabs outside the Arab world. Their number has been estimated at between 260,000 to 350,000 in the southeastern part of Michigan, which consists of Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland counties.
