Perceptual dialectology of Egypt. A view from the Berber-speaking periphery

Drawing on an attitudinal and perceptual dialectological survey, the paper presents the dialectology of Egypt, according to the perception of high school students from Siwa Oasis, a peripheral and non-native Arabic-speaking region of Egypt. Our aim is to answer two main questions: first, we want to individuate whether or to what extent linguistic boundaries drawn by professional dialectologists correspond to those drawn by non-specialists; secondly, we are interested in the way speakers define the languages, varieties, or ways of speaking, whose existence they are aware of.