Juba Arabic as a written language

International audience This paper deals with the issue of Juba-Arabic (JA) as a written language and investigates various written materials produced from early 20th c. up to early 21th c. The investigated writings are presented in their socio-historical context in order to determine in which ways genres and contexts impact the writing practices, particularly regarding orthographic and grammatical choices. These choices are analyzed following the notions of sameness and distance used for evaluating literacy processes in non-standard languages. The paper highlights the key moments and key agents of the codification of JA as a written language and the new developments led by the use of the internet.