Hejazi Arabic
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| Hejazi Arabic | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | western Saudi Arabia | |
| Total speakers: | — | |
| Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic South-Central Semitic Arabic Hejazi Arabic |
|
| Writing system: | Arabic alphabet | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | — | |
| ISO 639-3: | — | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Hezaji Arabic is a variety of the Arabic language spoken in the regions of western Saudi Arabia . It is also the colloquial variety of Arabic spoken in the cities of Jeddah, Mecca ,Taif, Rabigh , Yanbu and Medina. It is the most widely understood dialect in the Arabian Peninsula.
Pronunciations in Hejazi differ from other Gulf dialects in some respects. The Arabic qaaf 'ق' is pronounced with a 'g' sound, as in "get". The 'j' sound for the letter jim 'ج' is retained, in contrast to many dialects in the region which use "g" or "zh". The dialect also leaves out the "tha" sound, using a hard 't' to replace it (in some words using 'z' to replace it).
The Hejazi dialect also contains fairly recent borrowings from other Arabic dialects, including Levantine and Egyptian.
