Gulf Arabic
Arabic language spoken in the Persian Gulf
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Gulf Arabic can be defined as a set of closely related and more-or-less mutually intelligible varieties that form a dialect continuum, with the level of mutual intelligibility between any two varieties largely depending on the distance between them. Similar to other varieties, Gulf Arabic is not completely mutually intelligible with varieties spoken outside the Gulf. The specific dialects differ in vocabulary, grammar and accent. There are considerable differences between, for instance, Kuwaiti Arabic and the dialects of Qatar and the UAE, especially in pronunciation, that may hinder mutual intelligibility. The Gulf has two major dialect types that differ phonologically and morphologically, typically referred to as badawī 'Bedouin' and ḥadarī 'sedentary', which in simpler terms mean "desert dweller" and "city dweller". The differences mark important cultural differences between those who historically practiced pastoralism and those who were sedentary.
Gulf varieties' closest related relatives are other dialects native to the Arabian Peninsula, i.e. Najdi Arabic, Mesopotamian Arabic and Bahrani Arabic. Although spoken over much of Saudi Arabia's area, Gulf Arabic is not the native tongue of most Saudis, as the majority of them do not live in Eastern Arabia. There are some 200,000 Gulf Arabic speakers in the country, out of a population of over 30 million, mostly in the aforementioned Eastern Province.
Name
The dialect's full name el-lahja el-Khalijiyya (اللهجة الخليجية ) can be translated as 'the dialect of the gulf'. However, it is most commonly referred to as Khalīji (خليجي ), in which the noun Khalīj (خليج ) has been suffixed with the Nisba, literally meaning 'of the bay' or 'of the gulf'.
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Phonology
Consonants
Phonetic notes:
- only occurs in loanwords; the non-native letter ⟨پ⟩, or its native counterpart ⟨ب⟩, are used to denote this sound e.g.: piyāḷah (پيالة or بيالة , 'small glass'), from Persian.
- A feature that distinguishes Gulf Arabic dialects from other Arabic varieties is the retention of the dental fricatives and , which in many other dialects merged with other sounds; similarly, the reflex of the merger of classical * ⟨ض⟩ and * ⟨ظ⟩ is often in some dialects but is a fricative (either or ) in Gulf dialects. It shares this feature with most Peninsular and Mesopotamian dialects.
- ⟨ض⟩ has merged to ⟨ظ⟩.
- Historically, became in Gulf Arabic. Due to influence from MSA, the sound was reintroduced in a handful of classicisms. A number of speakers realize this restricted phoneme as a voiced uvular stop; these same speakers have post-velar or uvular realizations of and ( and , respectively). For such speakers, and the are in free variation while other speakers distinguish from . Thus قرآن may be realized as or for such speakers.
- The emphatic consonants are variably described in the literature as having secondary velarization or pharyngealization. Other emphatic consonants can be found, but these are the result of a process that spreads the velarization/pharyngealization of these sounds on surrounding consonants. E.g. بطولة ('championship') ('championship').
Allophony
and are often palatalized when occurring before front vowels unless the following consonant is emphatic. The actual realization is in free variation, and can be or, more commonly, . Speakers who exhibit variation between and do so in words derived from historical (e.g. مقابل 'opposite'); is a contemporary reflex of historical and so there are also sets of words where and appear in free variation (e.g. (e.g. جار 'neighbor').
Voiced stops tend to devoice in utterance-final position, especially as the final element in clusters, e.g. كلب ('dog') .
A notable aspect of Gulf Arabic is the different realization of a number of phonemes inherited from Classical Arabic. These differences are the result, in part, of natural linguistic changes over time. After these changes occurred, the original sounds (or close approximations to them) were reintroduced as a result of contact with other dialects, as well as through influence of Modern Standard Arabic as a language of media, government, and religion. For many of these sounds, speakers exhibit free variation between the MSA form and the colloquial form. The following table provides a rough outline of these differences:
Vowels
Gulf Arabic has five long vowels and three or four short monophthongs. Two recent studies point to a lack of phonemic contrast between [i] and [u], and Shockley (2020) argues that backness is not phonemically contrastive in short vowels. The most recent grammar of Gulf Arabic similarly points to a reduced central vowel [ə] as a frequent reflex of all short vowels.
Allophony
Regional variations in vowel pronunciation is considerable, particularly outside of educated speech. Unless otherwise noted, the following are major allophonic variants shared across the entire Gulf region.
Front vowels
In the context of emphatic consonants, long and exhibit centralized vowel onglides and offglides. For example:
- طين ('mud') → .
- صيف ('summer') → .
- ('she menstruates') → .
Similarly, the normal realization of short is except in final position, where it is ; when adjacent to emphatic, uvular, or bilabial consonants, is centralized to .
- ('my daughter') → .
- كتاب ('book') → .
- ('go! [f]') → .
When between two emphatic, uvular, or bilabial consonants, is fully backed to .
- طِبّ ('medicine') → .
- قَلِّب ('turn over!') → .
The normal realization of short is a front ; when adjacent to dorsal and pharyngeal consonants, the normal realization is a back ; when adjacent to emphatic consonants (and, for some speakers, bilabial consonants), the realization is a back and rounded :
- بَدْو ('Bedouin') → .
- بعد ('after') → .
- قهوة ('coffee') → .
- صف ('row') → .
When both a dorsal/pharyngeal consonant and emphatic consonant are adjacent to a vowel, the realization is .
For , the pattern is largely the same except that, when adjacent to dorsal/pharyngeal consonants, the realization is .
- ('he fasted') → .
- ('he said') → .
- عافية ('health') → .
Word-finally, long is shortened and subjected to the same phonological rules as short . This shortening can lead to alternations based on morphological conditioning, e.g. ('lunch') vs. ('your lunch').
Back vowels
is normally realized as . Similarly, is realized except when unstressed, in which case it is reduced to if it is not deleted altogether (e.g. → or 'houses').
The short vowel phoneme occurs rarely as a variant of the diphthong in a handful of words (e.g. لو 'if').
Morphology
Similarly to other Arabic varieties, Gulf Arabic has lost much of the case inflection of Classical Arabic. Possession is marked with the particles and , which are attached to possessive enclitics.
Pronouns
Gulf Arabic has 10 personal pronouns. The conservative dialect has preserved the gender differentiation of the 2nd and 3rd person in the plural forms, whereas dual forms have not survived. The following table bears the generally most common pronouns:
- ^1 Many speakers do not distinguish between masculine and feminine forms in the second person plural, replacing intum and intin with intu (إنْتُ).
- ^2 Speakers that do not distinguish between masculine and feminine forms in the third person plural will also use hum (هُمْ) for both genders in the third person plural, respectively.
Some pronouns, however, have other (less frequent, resp. local) forms:
- ānā (آنَا):
- anā (أَنَا)
- āni (آنِي) (especially Baḥrānī)
- inta (إِنْتَ):
- init (إِنِتْ)
- huwa (هُوَ):
- hū (هُوْ)
- huwwa (هُوَّ) (especially Qaṭarī)
- uhu (أُهُو)
- hiya (هِيَ):
- hī (هِيْ)
- hiyya (هِيَّ) (especially Qaṭarī)
- ihi (إِهِي)
- niḥin (نِحِنْ):
- intum (إِنْتُمْ):
- intu (إنْتُ)
- hum (هُمْ):
- humma (هُمَّ) (especially Qaṭarī)
- uhum (أُهُمْ)
Syntax
The normal word order in main clauses is the following:
Subject – (Verb) – (Direct Object) – (Indirect Object) – (Adverbials)
The following sentence indicates the normal word order of declarative statements:
/ʔaħmad
Ahmad
xarrab
ruined-3msg
l-beːt/
the-house
'Ahmad ruined the house'
When forming interrogative statements, any of these elements can be replaced by interrogative words. Holes (1990) identifies five such words in Gulf Arabic:
- من ('who')
- (alternatively, وش , or إيش ) ('what')
- كيف ('how')
- ليش (alternatively ) ('why')
- متى ('when')
Unless it is desired to stress one of these elements, this order of elements is preserved in the formation of interrogative questions.
/min
xarrab
il-beːt/
who
ruined-3msg
the-house
'who ruined the house?'
/ʔaħmad
Ahmad
xarrab
ruined-3msg
ʃinhu/
what
'what did Amad ruin?'
/ʔaħmad
Ahmad
xarrab
ruined-3msg
il-beːt
the-house
leːʃ/
why
'why did Ahmad ruin the house?'
When placing emphasis on the questioned element, word order can change. Specifically, the element of a clause can be questioned by moving it, generally to initial position. With the subject (which is normally initial), it is moved to final position:
/xarrab
ruined-3msg
il-beːt
the-house
min/
who
'who ruined the house?'
The moved element receives strong stress; in the case of a question word, the intonation is a high fall. When the point is to seek clarification, the element questioned has a high rising intonation.