On the urban dialects side, the current trend is to have urban dialects getting closer to their rural neighbours, thus introducing some variability among cities in the Levant. For instance, Jerusalem used to say as Damascus ['nɪħna] ("we") and ['hʊnne] ("they") at the beginning of the 20th century, and this has moved to the more rural ['ɪħna] and ['hʊmme] nowadays.U. Seeger, Mediterranean Language Review 10 (1998), pp. 89-145. This trend was probably initiated by the partition of the Levant of several states in the course of the 20th century.
