Razihi language

Jabal Razih
Razihi
Native to Yemen
Language codes
ISO 639-3 rzh
Glottolog jaba1234[1]

Razihi (Rāziḥī), the language of Jabal Razih in the far northwestern corner of Yemen,[2] is the only surviving descendent of the Old South Arabian languages.[1]

Classical Arabic corresponds to Razihi /ɬ/, and its emphatic correlate, *ḍ, to general Yemeni /ð/ in recent words, but to /tɬ/ in older words. There is nasal assimilation, as in ssān 'man', ssānah 'woman', cognate with Arabic ʾinsān 'person'; this was a feature of both Ancient North Arabian and Old South Arabian, but is not found in any Arabic dialect. Razihi also has a large number of non-Arabic basic vocabulary items, prepositions and other grammatical forms.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Jabal Razih". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  2. 1 2 Watson, Glover-Stalls, Al-razihi, & Weir (2006), "The language of Jabal Rāziḥ: Arabic or something else?", Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 36:35–41
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