[28] Indeed, migrants from Phoenicia settled Tunisia during the 12th to the 2nd century BC, founded ancient Carthage and progressively mixed with the local population.

In the urban centers such as Dougga, Bulla Regia, Thuburnica or Chemtou, Berber lost its Maghrebi phonology but kept the essential of its vocabulary.

[33][34] After the arrival of Romans, following the fall of Carthage in 146 BC,[35][36] the coastal population spoke mainly Punic, but that influence decreased away from the coast.

[31] From Roman period until the Arab conquest, Latin, Greek and Numidian further influenced the language, called Neo-Punic to differentiate it from its older version.

[44][45] Classical Arabic began to be installed as a governmental and administrative language in Tunisia that was called then Ifriqiya from its older name Africa during the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in 673.

[47][48] By the 11th century, through contact of local languages such as African Romance or Berber with Classical Arabic, some urban dialects appeared in the main coastal cities of Tunisia.

[41][49][50] The dialects were slightly and characteristically influenced by several common Berber structures and vocabulary like negation because Tamazight was the language of contact for citizens of that period.

[112] In 2013, Kélemti initiative was founded by Hager Ben Ammar, Scolibris, Arabesques Publishing House, and Valérie Vacchiani to promote and encourage the creation and publication of written resources about and in Tunisian Arabic.

Northwestern,[130] southeastern[133] and southwestern[131] varieties maintain the gender distinction found in Classical Arabic (إنتَا مشيت inta mšīt, إنتِي مشيتي inti mšītī).

Furthermore, Tunis,[72][65] Sfax[63] and Sahel[128] varieties conjugate CCā verbs like mšā and klā in feminine third person and in past tense as CCāt.

However, Northwestern,[130] southeastern[133] and southwestern[131] varieties conjugate them in feminine third person and in past tense as CCat For example, هية مشت hiya mšat.

[63][65] It is also known for some specific verbs like أرى aṛā (to see) and the use of the demonstrative articles هاكومة hākūma for those and هاكة hāka (m.) and هٰاكي hākī (f.) for that respectively instead of هاذوكم hāðūkum and هاذاكة hāðāka (m.) and هاذيكة hāðākī (f.) determinants.

[63] Finally, the conjugation of mūš as a modal verb uses ماهواش māhūwāš instead of ماهوش māhūš, ماهياش māhīyāš instead of ماهيش māhīš, ماحناش māḥnāš instead of ماناش mānāš and ماهوماش māhūmāš instead of ماهمش māhumš.

[130] Similarly, the conjugation of مش miš as a modal verb uses مشني mišnī instead of مانيش mānīš, مشك mišk instead of ماكش mākš, مشّو miššū instead of موش mūš and ماهوش māhūš, مشها mišhā instead of ماهيش māhīš, مشنا mišnā instead of ماناش mānāš, مشكم miškum instead of ماكمش mākumš and مشهم mišhum instead of ماهمش māhumš.

[146] This trend accelerated during the 2011 street protests that brought down the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in which text messaging and social networking played a major role.

In the latter book, the author Mohamed Bacha adapted into written form (through transliteration) and translated into English some of the most representative oral folklore of Tunisia, while keeping its authenticity and unique cultural flavor.

[166] Some authors, particularly Tahar Fazaa (mainly in Tšanšīnāt Tūnsīya (تشنشينات تونسية))[167] and Taoufik Ben Brik (mainly when writing Kalb Bin Kalb (كلب بن كلب)[168][169] and Kawāzākī (كوازاكي)[170][171]) followed him and used Tunisian Arabic in order to write novels, plays and books in Tunisian Arabic.

[172][173] The main authors of these plays were Jalila Baccar, Fadhel Jaïbi [fr] and members of the National Theatre troupes of the Medina of Tunis, El Kef and Gafsa.

[188][189] Some of them achieved relative success outside Tunisia, such as La Goulette (ḥalq il-wād (حلق الواد), 1996), Halfaouine: Child of the Terraces (ʿaṣfūr il-sṭaḥ (عصفور السطح), 1990), and The Ambassadors (il-sufaṛā (السفراء), 1975).

[60] By 1935, the DMG transcription included many unique letters and diacritics for Tunisian not used for Arabic,[208] such as, à, è, ù and ì, for short and accentuated vowels.

[199] This is the reason why the XIXth international congress of orientalists held in Rome, from 23 to 29 September 1935, adopted a modified simplified version of the DMG transcription specifically for Arabic dialects.

[208] From 1935 to 1985, most of the linguists working on Tunisian Arabic such as Gilbert Boris,[5] Hans Rudolf Singer,[65][209] Lucienne Saada[210][211][212] and others,[72][94] adopted the modified DMG.

[72][131][213] Even if the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft transcription was abundantly used in early linguistic researches about Tunisian,[199][213] some trials were performed in order to create alternative Latin scripts and writing methods.

[224][227] The use of digits as numerals and letters at the same time made transcribing Tunisian difficult to users and did not linguistically solve the matters that were faced by the Practical Transcription.

[230] Separately, another Latin script transcription method was created by Patrick L. Inglefield and his team of linguists from Peace Corps Tunisia and Indiana University in 1970.

[234] Buckwalter transcription was created in order to avoid the effect of phoneme simplification of spoken Modern Standard Arabic on the morphological analysis of the language.

[241] The most immediately apparent difference between Tunisian and Standard Arabic is the extensive use of native, substratum words of Latin and Berber etymology or borrowed ones from Italian, Spanish, French and Turkish.

[65] Furthermore, there are words and structures that came from Turkish, such as ڨاوري gāwrī (foreigner) (Gavur) as well as the suffix of occupation as in بوصطاجي būṣṭājī (post officer) and كوّارجي kawwāṛjī (football player).

Nunation does not exist in Tunisian Arabic, and short vowels are frequently omitted, especially if they would occur as the final element of an open syllable, which was probably encouraged by the Berber substratum.

[72][128] These structures ultimately derive from those of Standard Arabic, even if they are radically different in modern Tunisian because of heavy influence from Berber, Latin and other European languages.