Hejazi Arabic | ||||
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Spoken in | Hejaz region, Saudi Arabia | |||
Native speakers | 6,000,000 (date missing) | |||
Language family |
Afro-Asiatic
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Writing system | Arabic alphabet | |||
Language codes | ||||
ISO 639-3 | acw | |||
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Hejazi Arabic (Arabic: حجازي) (also known as Hijazi Arabic [ISO 639-3], West Arabian Arabic) is a variety of the Arabic language spoken in the western region of Saudi Arabia. Although, strictly speaking, there are two distinct dialects spoken in the Hejaz region, one by the bedouin and rural tribes, and another by the urban population, the term most often applies to the urban variety, spoken in cities such as Jeddah, Mecca, Yanbu, and Medina. Outside of Arabia, Urban Hejazi appears to be most closely related to the Arabic dialects of Northern Sudan and Upper Egypt (Ingham 1971).
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Also referred to as the sedentary Hejazi dialect, this is the form most commonly associated with the term "Hejazi Arabic", and is spoken in the urban centers of the region, such as Jeddah, Mecca, and Medina. With respect to the axis of bedouin versus sedentary dialects of the Arabic language, this dialect group exhibits features of both.
The most prominent of these are the following:
Like other sedentary dialects, the urban Hejazi dialect is less conservative than the bedouin varieties and has therefore shed many Classical forms and features that are still present in many bedouin dialects. These include the internal passive form (which in Hejazi, is replaced by the pattern anfa'al"/"yinfa'il), the marker for indefiniteness (tanwin), gender-number disagreement, and the feminine marker -n (see Varieties of Arabic). Features that mark Hejazi Arabic as a sedentary dialect include:
Other features of Hejazi Arabic are:
The urban Hejazi vocabulary differs in some respect from that of other dialects in the Arabian Peninsula. For example, there are fewer specialized terms related to desert life, and more terms related to seafaring and fishing. Due to the diverse origins of the inhabitants of Hijazi cities, many borrowings from the dialects of Egypt, Syria, and Yemen exist. Five centuries of Turkish rule have also had their influence. Due to this, the Hijazi dialect is considered to be of "mixed affinities" (Ingham 1971).
Certain distinctive particles and vocabulary in Hijazi are /ɡiːd/ "already", /daħħin/ "now", and /lessa/ "not yet".
The varieties of Arabic spoken by the bedouin tribes of the Hejaz region are relatively under-studied. However, the speech of some tribes shows much closer affinity to other bedouin dialects, particularly those of neighboring Nejd, than to those of the Hejazi cities. The dialects of northern Hejazi tribes merge into those of Jordan and Sinai, while the dialects in the south merge with those of 'Asir and Nejd. It is also worth noting that many large tribal confederations in Nejd and eastern Arabia are recent migrants from the Hejaz, including the tribes of Utaybah, Mutayr, Harb, and Bani Khalid. In earlier times, many other Arab tribes also came from the Hejaz, including Kinana, Juhayna, Banu Sulaym, and Ghatafan. Also, not all speakers of these bedouin dialects are literally nomadic bedouins; some are simply sedentary tribal sections that live in rural areas, and thus speak dialects similar to those of their bedouin neighbors.
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