Gulf Arabic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gulf Arabic | ||
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Spoken in: | Kuwait, eastern part of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, parts of Oman | |
Total speakers: | — | |
Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic South-Central Semitic Arabic Gulf Arabic |
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Writing system: | Arabic alphabet | |
Language codes | ||
ISO 639-1: | none | |
ISO 639-2: | — | |
ISO 639-3: | afb | |
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. |
Gulf Arabic is a variety of the Arabic language spoken around both shores of the Persian Gulf, mainly in Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and parts of Oman. Some notable characteristics that set it apart from other Bedouin dialects is the small number of Persian loanwords, and a pronunciation of k as ch ("kalb" dog, read as "chalb"); and the pronunciation q as g ("qamar" moon, read as "gumar"). Also, in Kuwait, "j" is pronounced as a "y". For example, "jeet" to "yeet".