Yemeni Arabic
Encyclopedia
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
varieties
spoken in Yemen
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
, and northern Somalia
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
and phonology
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
):
and Levantine Arabic
.
An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ] (⟨⟩, ⟨⟩) and ذ / د [d], [ð] (⟨⟩, ⟨⟩) distinction but ض [dˤ] ⟨⟩ and ظ [ðˤ] ⟨⟩ are both pronounced ظ [ðˤ] where as Coastal HA merges all these pairs into the stops د , ت and ض ( and ) respectively.
In non-emphatic environments, (ā) is realised as an open front (slightly raised) unrounded vowel. Thus
(θānī) “second; psn. name”, which is normally realised with an [ɑː]-like quality in the Gulf dialects, is realised with an [æː] quality in HA.
This dialect is characterised by not allowing final consonant clusters to occur in final position. Thus Classical Arabic bint “girl” is realised as binit. In initial positions, there is a difference between the Wādī and the coastal varieties of HA. Coastal HA has initial clusters in (bġā) “he wants”, “onions” and (brīd) “mail (n.)” while Wādī HA realises the second and third words as and (barīd) respectively.
The first person direct object plural is rather than (–nā) which is the case in many dialects. Thus, the cognate of the Classical Arabic “he hit us” is in HA.
Stem VI, (tC1āC2aC3), can undergo a vowel stem shift to (tC1ēC2aC3), thus changing the pattern vowel (ā) to (ē). This leads to a semantic change as in (tšāradaw) “they ran away suddenly” and (tšēradaw) “they shirk, try to escape”
Intensive and frequentative verbs are common in the dialect. Thus /kasar/ “to break” is intensified to /kawsar/ as in “he played rough”. It can be metathesized to become frequentative as “he made a series (lit. breaks) of giggles or laughs”.
Like many other dialects, apophonic or ablaut passive (as in /kutib/ "it was written") is not very common in HA and perhaps is confined to clichés and proverbs from other dialects including Classical Arabic.
The particle /qad/ developed semantically in HA into /kuð/ or /guð / “yet, already, almost, nearly” and /gad/ or /gid/ “maybe, perhaps”.
languages, which perhaps distinguish this dialect from other neighbouring Arabian Peninsula dialects. The effect of Hadrami migration to Southeast Asia
(see Arab Singaporean
), the Indian subcontinent and East Africa on HA is clear in the vocabulary especially in certain registers like types of food and dress, e.g. "sarong". Many loan words were listed in al-Saqqaf (2006):
'i dialect that has not been thoroughly studied, it does have a very interesting phonological shift. Along with the southern bedouin dialects, in Abyan and Lahej, with which it shares much in common, Yafi'i pronounces the classical jīm (ج) as gīm, but unlike all other dialects, Yafi'i systematically pronounces the classical sound ġayn (/ʁ/ as qain and qāf as ġāf, effectively switching the pronunciation of the one letter for the other. An illustration of this phonemic interchange can be seen in the Yafi'i words baġar “cow” and qanam “goat”, which correspond to the classical words baqar “cow” and ġanam “goat”.
Although a similar phonological shift occurs in certain words in the Sudan as well, the similarities are rather misleading. Whereas the shift is systematic in Yafi', occurring at every instance of the relevant phonemes, in the Sudan it is usually a form of hypercorrection which takes place only in certain classical words. In the Sudan, the phoneme [q] is systematically pronounced [ɡ] in all common words, with the pronunciation ġ [ʁ] occurring as a hypercorrection in words such as istiqlāl "freedom", pronounced istighlāl (meaning "exploitation" in Standard Arabic).
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ]
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
varieties
Varieties of Arabic
The Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
spoken in Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
, southwestern Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
, and northern Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(as well as the territory of the de facto state of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
). It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, as it has many classical features not found across most of the Arabic speaking world.
Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi, Adani (Adenese), Tihami and Hadhrami
Hadhrami Arabic
Hadhrami Arabic is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadhrami people living in the . It is also spoken by many Hadhrami emigrants who migrated from to East Africa , South-east Asia and, recently, to the other Gulf countries...
(Hadrami). The independent languages of Mahri (Mehri
Mehri language
Mehri or Mahri is a Modern South Arabian language, a branch of the greater Semitic language family, and is spoken by minority populations in isolated areas of the eastern part of Yemen and western Oman. It is a remnant of the ancient indigenous language group spoken in the southern Arabian...
) and Suqutri (Socotri, Soqotri
Soqotri language
Soqotri, or Socotri, is the language of the native population of the island of Socotra, and Abd al Kuri and Samhah islands of the Socotra archipelago off the southern coast of the Republic of Yemen...
), as well as a couple of smaller languages, are not Arabic dialects at all, but form a group of its own, confusingly called Modern South Arabian languages, although they are not descended from Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian
Old South Arabian is the term used to describe four extinct, closely related languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. There were a number of other Sayhadic languages , of which very little evidence survived, however...
(also called Sayhadic). Below is a table showing the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
system of some consonants together with their IPA values (Note that some phonetic symbols may not appear in some versions of web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
):
| Arabic | Transliteration | IPA transcription |
|---|---|---|
| ث | θ | |
| ذ | ð | |
| ظ | or | ðˤ |
| ص | sˤ | |
| ط | tˤ | |
| ض | dˤ | |
| ء | ʔ | |
| ع | ʕ | |
| غ | ʁ | |
| خ | χ | |
| ج | ɟ | |
| ج | ɡ | |
| ج | dʒ | |
| ج | j | |
| ش | ʃ | |
| ي | j |
Phonology
The San'ani dialect is distinguished among Yemeni dialects by its use of the hard [ɡ] sound in the place of the classical Arabic qāf (ق), as well as its preservation of the classical Arabic palatal pronunciation of j (also transliterated , IPA transcription [dʒ]) for the Arabic letter ج jīm. In these respects, San'ani Arabic is very similar to most Bedouin dialects across the Arabian peninsula.Morphology
Along with these phonological similarities to other dialects, San'ani Arabic also has several unique features. It uses the classical mā in the meaning of "what", as well as in negations. Unlike the classical usage, this mā is used without distinction in verbal and nominal sentences alike. It represents the future aspect with a complex array of prefixes, depending on the person of the verb. For first-person verbs the prefix (ša-) or (‘ad) is used. The derivation of (ša-) is apparently related to the classical (sa-), and (‘ad) is likely an abbreviation of (ba‘d), meaning "after". For all other persons in San'a proper the simple prefix (‘a-) is used, although many of the villages around San'a extend the use of (ša-) for all persons.Syntax
San'ani syntax differs from other Arabic dialects in a number of ways. It is one of few remaining Arabic dialects to retain the mā af‘al exclamatory sentence type with the meaning "how (adjective)". For instance, mā ajmal, is used to mean "how beautiful", from the adjective jamīl, meaning "beautiful"; a construction it shares with Libyan ArabicLibyan Arabic
Libyan Arabic is a collective term for the closely related varieties of Arabic spoken in Libya. It can be divided into two major dialect areas; the eastern centred in Benghazi and Bayda, and the western centred in Tripoli and Misrata...
and Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic is a broad variety of Arabic spoken in the 100 to 200 km-wide Eastern Mediterranean coastal strip...
.
Vocabulary
The San'ani vocabulary is also very distinct and conservative. The classical verb sāra, yasīr is retained with the meaning of "to go". Shalla, yashill is used to mean "to take/get".An example, would be the parliament speaker of Yemen, Abdullah Alahmar, when he spoke on AL-Jazeera TV few years ago, they actually had to translate his Yemeni dialect to Standard Arabic, for viewers and the TV host to understand what he said.
Adeni Arabic dialect
The Adeni dialect is also very distinct from the rest of the Yemeni dialects. Like the majority of Yemeni dialects, Adeni uses the hard uvular [q] for the classical qāf (ق). Like the Taiz dialect, however, Adeni Arabic substitutes dental fricatives for dental plosives, /θ/ becomes /t/, /ð/ becomes /d/, and the two (classical) emphatics, /ðˤ/ and /dˤ/ are both merged into one sound, namely /dˤ/.Tihami Arabic dialect
The Tihami dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qaf (ق) as [q] and the jīm (ج) as a hard [ɡ] ([ɡ] exists in Egyptian ArabicEgyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
also). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sana'a, is indicated with the prefix (sh-), for all persons, e.g. sha-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.
Zabidi dialect
Of all the dialects of the Tihami tihama region, the dialect of Zabid displays the most innovations. It shares the transformed definite article of (am-) with the rest of the Tihami dialects, but it is unique in retaining certain of the declensional suffixes in the nominative case. Indefinite masculine nouns in nominal sentences as well as the subjects of verbal sentences are suffixed with the sound (-ū), which stems from the classical suffix (-un/-u). Likewise the phonology of the Zabidi sub-dialect is perhaps unique among all Arabic dialects in that it replaces the sound (‘ain) [ʕ] (ع) with the glottal stop ( ’ ) [ʔ] (ء). In terms of vocabulary, the Zabidi dialect shares very little with other Arabic dialects, in many respects it seems to be a different language. Zabidis use the verb bāka, yabūk to mean "to go." The word goh#d and goh#da mean man, and woman, respectively. And the word fīaym to mean "where", hence the phrase: fīaym bāyku? meaning "Where are you going?", which is grammatically parallel to the more familiar: fayn rāyih# of more mainstream dialects.Phonology
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its pronunciation of the voiced palatal plosive (or affricate) (ج) as the semi-vowel (ي) (y) (j). In this it resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the dialects of the other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, (ج) is realised as a voiced palatal plosive ([ɟ]) or affricate ([dʒ]) in some lexical items.The ق [q] reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar [ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether HA is going to witness innovation like using the uvular /q/ in certain lexemes while retaining the velar /ɡ/ for others.
Wādī HA makes ث / ت [t], [θ] (⟨⟩, ⟨⟩) and ذ / د [d], [ð] (⟨⟩, ⟨⟩) distinction but ض [dˤ] ⟨⟩ and ظ [ðˤ] ⟨⟩ are both pronounced ظ [ðˤ] where as Coastal HA merges all these pairs into the stops د , ت and ض ( and ) respectively.
In non-emphatic environments, (ā) is realised as an open front (slightly raised) unrounded vowel. Thus
(θānī) “second; psn. name”, which is normally realised with an [ɑː]-like quality in the Gulf dialects, is realised with an [æː] quality in HA.
This dialect is characterised by not allowing final consonant clusters to occur in final position. Thus Classical Arabic bint “girl” is realised as binit. In initial positions, there is a difference between the Wādī and the coastal varieties of HA. Coastal HA has initial clusters in (bġā) “he wants”, “onions” and (brīd) “mail (n.)” while Wādī HA realises the second and third words as and (barīd) respectively.
Morphology
When the first person singular comes as an independent subject pronoun, it is marked for gender, thus (anā) for masculine and (anī) for feminine. As an object pronoun, it comes as a bound morpheme, thus (–nā) for masculine and (–nī) for feminine. The first person subject plural is .The first person direct object plural is rather than (–nā) which is the case in many dialects. Thus, the cognate of the Classical Arabic “he hit us” is in HA.
Stem VI, (tC1āC2aC3), can undergo a vowel stem shift to (tC1ēC2aC3), thus changing the pattern vowel (ā) to (ē). This leads to a semantic change as in (tšāradaw) “they ran away suddenly” and (tšēradaw) “they shirk, try to escape”
Intensive and frequentative verbs are common in the dialect. Thus /kasar/ “to break” is intensified to /kawsar/ as in “he played rough”. It can be metathesized to become frequentative as “he made a series (lit. breaks) of giggles or laughs”.
Syntax
The syntax of HA has many similarities to other Peninsular Arabic dialects. However, the dialect contains a number of unique particles used for coordination, negation and other sentence types. Examples in coordination include (kann, lākan) “but; nevertheless, though”, (mā) (Classical Arabic ammā) “as for…” and (walla) “or”.Like many other dialects, apophonic or ablaut passive (as in /kutib/ "it was written") is not very common in HA and perhaps is confined to clichés and proverbs from other dialects including Classical Arabic.
The particle /qad/ developed semantically in HA into /kuð/ or /guð / “yet, already, almost, nearly” and /gad/ or /gid/ “maybe, perhaps”.
Vocabulary
There are a few lexical items that are shared with Modern South ArabianArabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a land mass situated north-east of Africa. Also known as Arabia or the Arabian subcontinent, it is the world's largest peninsula and covers 3,237,500 km2...
languages, which perhaps distinguish this dialect from other neighbouring Arabian Peninsula dialects. The effect of Hadrami migration to Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
(see Arab Singaporean
Arab Singaporean
The majority of the Arabs in Singapore are Hadhramis tracing their ancestry from the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula called Hadhramaut, which is now part of the Republic of Yemen. The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen PDRY was formed on 30 November 1967 when it achieved independence...
), the Indian subcontinent and East Africa on HA is clear in the vocabulary especially in certain registers like types of food and dress, e.g. "sarong". Many loan words were listed in al-Saqqaf (2006):
Yafi'i Arabic dialect
While there is much about the Lower YafaLower Yafa
Lower Yafa, Lower Yafa'i , or the Sultanate of Lower Yafa , was a state in the British Aden Protectorate. Within its area were the sheikhdoms of Al Saadi, Yaher, Kalad, Thi Nakheb, and Yazidi. It was a founding member of the Federation of Arab Emirates of the South in 1959 and its successor, the...
'i dialect that has not been thoroughly studied, it does have a very interesting phonological shift. Along with the southern bedouin dialects, in Abyan and Lahej, with which it shares much in common, Yafi'i pronounces the classical jīm (ج) as gīm, but unlike all other dialects, Yafi'i systematically pronounces the classical sound ġayn (/ʁ/ as qain and qāf as ġāf, effectively switching the pronunciation of the one letter for the other. An illustration of this phonemic interchange can be seen in the Yafi'i words baġar “cow” and qanam “goat”, which correspond to the classical words baqar “cow” and ġanam “goat”.
Although a similar phonological shift occurs in certain words in the Sudan as well, the similarities are rather misleading. Whereas the shift is systematic in Yafi', occurring at every instance of the relevant phonemes, in the Sudan it is usually a form of hypercorrection which takes place only in certain classical words. In the Sudan, the phoneme [q] is systematically pronounced [ɡ] in all common words, with the pronunciation ġ [ʁ] occurring as a hypercorrection in words such as istiqlāl "freedom", pronounced istighlāl (meaning "exploitation" in Standard Arabic).