Gulf Arabic


Gulf Arabic or Khaleeji is a variety of Arabic spoken in Eastern Arabia around the coasts of the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, southern Iraq, eastern Saudi Arabia, northern Oman, and by some Iranian Arabs.
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 can be translated as 'the dialect of the gulf'. However, it is most commonly referred to as Khaliji, in which the noun خليج has been suffixed with the Nisba, literally meaning 'of the bay' or 'of the gulf'.

Phonology

Consonants

Phonetic notes:
  • only occurs in loanwords; the non-native letter, or its native counterpart , are used to denote this sound e.g.: piyāḷah, 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 * and * is often in some dialects but is a fricative in Gulf dialects. It shares this feature with most Peninsular and Mesopotamian dialects.
  • has merged to .
  • 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 . 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 .

    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 ; is a contemporary reflex of historical and so there are also sets of words where and appear in free variation.
Voiced stops tend to devoice in utterance-final position, especially as the final element in clusters, e.g. كلب .
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 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:
LetterMSA pronunciationKhaliji varietiesExamplesNotes
ج or mōy or mōj ;
masyid or masjid 		Changes are optional, although jim never changes to in recent loanwords from MSA.
ق ; and, when followed by a front vowel jiddām ;
sharji 		Many Literary Arabic loanwords preserve the sound, but optionally use. By Persian influence, extremely rarely the qaf changes to ghayn .
غ, qannā Ghayn occasionally changes to or by Persian influence.
ك, if preceded or followed by a front vowel or if 2nd person feminine singular suffixed/object pronounubūch This change is optional, but encountered with more often when the kaf is used to denote the 2nd person feminine singular suffixed/object pronoun.
ضẓāʼ Ẓāʼ and Ḍad are not distinguished by pronunciation, as the Gulf dialects lack the emphatic. However, they retain their orthographic distinction.

Vowels

Gulf Arabic has five long vowels and three or four short monophthongs. Two recent studies point to a lack of phonemic contrast between and , and Shockley argues that backness is not phonemically contrastive in short vowels. The most recent grammar of Gulf Arabic similarly points to a reduced central vowel 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 →.
  • صيف → .
  • →.
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.
  • →.
  • كتاب →.
  • →.
When between two emphatic, uvular, or bilabial consonants, is fully backed to.
  • طِبّ →.
  • قَلِّب →.
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, the realization is a back and rounded :
  • بَدْو →.
  • بعد →.
  • قهوة →.
  • صف →.
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.
  • →.
  • →.
  • عافية →.
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. vs. .

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.
The short vowel phoneme occurs rarely as a variant of the diphthong in a handful of words.

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:
  • Many speakers do not distinguish between masculine and feminine forms in the second person plural, replacing intum and intin with intu.
  • Speakers that do not distinguish between masculine and feminine forms in the third person plural will also use hum for both genders in the third person plural, respectively.
Some pronouns, however, have other forms:
  • ānā :
  • : anā
  • : āni
  • inta :
  • : init
  • huwa :
  • : hū
  • : huwwa
  • : uhu
  • hiya :
  • : hī
  • : hiyya
  • : ihi
  • niḥin :
  • : niḥna
  • : iḥna
  • : ḥina
  • intum :
  • : intu
  • hum :
  • : humma
  • : ''uhum''

    Syntax

The normal word order in main clauses is the following:
Subject – – – –
The following sentence indicates the normal word order of declarative statements:
When forming interrogative statements, any of these elements can be replaced by interrogative words. identifies five such words in Gulf Arabic:
  • من
  • كيف
  • ليش
  • متى
Unless it is desired to stress one of these elements, this order of elements is preserved in the formation of interrogative questions.
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, it is moved to final position:
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.