Hejazi Arabic

Classification

Urban Hejazi Arabic belongs to the western Peninsular Arabic branch of the Arabic language, which itself is a Semitic language. It includes features of both urban and bedouin dialects giving its history between the ancient urban cities of Medina and Mecca and the bedouin tribes that lived on the outskirts of these cities. The main phonological characteristic features that differentiate Urban Hejazi from the neighbouring Najdi ِdialect and other bedouin dialects in the Arabian peninsula is the absence of vowel reduction, the classical pronunciation of the letter ⟨ض⟩, the distinction between it and ⟨ظ⟩, and the pronunciation of the letters ⟨ث⟩, ⟨ذ⟩, and ⟨ظ⟩.

Features

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. Like other sedentary dialects, the urban Hejazi dialect is less conservative than the bedouin varieties in some aspects and has therefore shed some Classical forms and features that are still present in bedouin dialects, while retaining others. These include the internal passive form (which in Hejazi, is replaced by the pattern (أنفعل /anfaʕal/, ينفعل /jinfaʕil/), the marker for indefiniteness (tanwin), gender-number disagreement, and the feminine marker -n (see Varieties of Arabic).

Sedentary features

1. The present progressive tense is marked by the prefix بـ /bi/ or قاعد /gaːʕid/ as in بيدرس /bijidrus/ or قاعد يدرس /gaːʕid jidrus/ ("he is studying").
2. In contrast to bedouin dialects, the distinction between the emphatic sounds /dˤ/ ض and /zˤ/ ظ is generally preserved in a number of words.
3. The final -n in present tense plural verb forms is no longer employed (e.g. يركبوا /jirkabu/ instead of يركبون /jarkəbuːn/).
4. The dominant case ending before the 3rd person masculine singular pronoun is -u, rather than the -a that is prevalent in bedouin dialects. For example, بيته /beːtu/ ("his house"), عنده /ʕindu/ ("he has"), أعرفه /aʕrifu/ ("I know him").

Conservative features

1. Hejazi Arabic does not employ double negation, nor does it append the negation particles -sh to negate verbs: Hejazi ما اعرف /maː aʕrif/ ("I don't know"), as opposed to Egyptian معرفش /maʕrafʃ/ and Palestinian بعرفش /baʕrafiʃ/.
2. The prohibitive mood of Classical Arabic is preserved in the imperative: لا تروح /laː tiruːħ/ ("don't go").
3. The possessive suffixes are generally preserved in their Classical forms. For example, بيتكم /beːtakum/ "your (pl) house".
4. The plural first person pronoun is نحنا /niħna/ or إحنا /iħna/, as opposed to the bedouin حنّا /ħənna/ or إنّا /ənna/.
5. When used to indicate location, the preposition في /fi/ is preferred to بـ /b/. In bedouin dialects, the preference differs by region.
6. Less restriction on the distribution of /i/ and /u/.
7. The glottal stop can be added to final syllables ending in a vowel as a way of emphasising.
8. Compared to neighboring dialects, urban Hejazi retains more of the short vowels of Modern Standard Arabic, for example:

Phonology

In general, Hejazi Arabic has approximately 28 consonant phonemes of which two (/θ, ð/) are partially used by a number of speakers, and 8 vowel phonemes /a, u, i, aː, uː, oː, iː, eː/. Consonant length and Vowel length are both distinctive in Hejazi.

Consonants

Hejazi consonant inventory mostly depends on the speaker, where urban speakers use 26 with no interdental phonemes or 28 phonemes with the phonemes /θ/ ⟨ث⟩ and /ð/ ⟨ذ⟩ being used partially and mostly by younger speakers due to the influence of Modern Standard Arabic, while rural or Bedouin speakers use 27 consonant phonemes completely merging the classical phoneme /dˤ/ ⟨ض⟩ with /ðˤ/ ⟨ظ⟩. A notable feature of general Hejazi (both urban and rural alike) is the pronunciation of ⟨ق⟩ as a voiced velar stop (/ɡ/ instead of the Classical /q/) which Ibn Khaldun described as that it might have been the Old Arabic pronunciation of the letter, and he even described that the Islamic prophet Muhammad may have had the /g/ pronunciation, but due to the influence of Modern Standard Arabic the [q] has been reintroduced as an allophone of /ɡ/ ⟨ق⟩ in few words and phrases. The phonemes /p/ ⟨پ⟩ and /v/ ⟨ڤ⟩ (not used by all speakers) are not considered to be part of the phonemic inventory, as they exist only in foreign words and they can be pronounced as /b/ ⟨ب⟩ and /f/ ⟨ف⟩ respectively depending on the speaker.

Phonetic notes:

Vowels

Hejazi has eight vowel phonemes: three short /a/, /u/, /i/ and five long /aː/, /uː/, /oː/, /iː/ and /eː/, with length as a distinctive feature, and two diphthongs /aw/ and /aj/. Unlike other Arabic dialects, Hejazi did not develop allophones for the vowels /a/ and /aː/ in the vicinity of emphatic consonants, and retains most of the long and short vowels of Classical Arabic with no vowel reduction, though in a few number of foreign words the long /aː/ is optionally pronounced [ɑː]. The pronunciation of word initial and medial /u/ and /i/ depends on the nature of the surrounding consonants, whether the syllable is stressed or unstressed, and on the accent of the speaker and the speech rate. As a general rule, word initial and medial /u/ is pronounced [ʊ] or [o̞], but strictly as an [u] at the end of the word and before /w/ (as in هُوَّ [huwːa]), while word initial and medial /i/ is pronounced [ɪ] or [e̞], and strictly as an [i] at the end of the word and before /j/ (as in هِيَّ [hijːa]), though this free variation in allophones is not found among all speakers of Hejazi. Most of the two diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ from the classical period underwent monophthongization and are realised as the long vowels /eː/ and /oː/ respectively, but they still occur as diphthongs in a number of words as in حَيْوان /ħajwaːn/ ('animal') and contrast with the long vowels as in دَوْري /dawri/ ('league') vs. دوري /doːri/ ('my turn') vs. دوري /duːri/ ('turn around!').

Phonetic notes:

Phonological Processes

The linking conjunction و ('and') pronounced [u] is often linked with the consonant (before it) or the vowel (before or after it) or for emphasis only left as it is :-

Vocabulary

Hejazi vocabulary derives primarily from Classical Arabic Semitic roots. 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. Loanwords are mainly of Persian, Turkish, Latin (French and Italian) and English origins, and due to the diverse origins of the inhabitants of Hejazi cities, some loanwords are only used by some families. Many loanwords are fading due to the influence of Modern Standard Arabic and their association with lower social class and education. Most of the loanwords are nouns (with a change of meaning sometimes) as in : جزمة /d͡ʒazma/ "shoe" from Turkish çizme /t͡ʃizme/ originally meaning "boot" or كُبري /kubri/ "overpass" from köprü /køpry/ originally meaning "bridge".

General Hejazi Expressions include بالتوفيق /bitːawfiːg/ "good luck", لو سمحت /law samaħt/ "please/excuse me" to a male, إيوه /ʔiːwa/ "yes", لأ /laʔ/ "no", لسة /lisːa/ "not yet", قد /ɡid/ or قيد /ɡiːd/ "already", دحين /daħiːn/ or /daħeːn/ "now"..

Portmanteau

A common feature in Hejazi vocabulary is Portmanteau words (also called a blend in linguistics); in which parts of multiple words or their phones (sounds) are combined into a new word, it is especially innovative in making Interrogative words, examples include:

Numerals

The Cardinal number system in Hejazi is much more simplified than the Classical Arabic

A system similar to the German numbers system is used for other numbers between 20 and above : 21 is واحد و عشرين /waːħid u ʕiʃriːn/ which literally mean ('one and twenty') and 485 is أربعمية و خمسة و ثمانين /urbuʕmijja u xamsa u tamaːniːn/ which literally mean ('four hundred and five and eighty').

Unlike Classical Arabic,the only number that is gender specified in Hejazi is "one" which has two forms واحد and وحدة as in كتاب واحد /kitaːb waːħid/ ('one book') or سيارة وحدة /sajːaːra waħda/ ('one car').

Subject pronouns

In Hejazi Arabic, personal pronouns have eight forms. In singular, the 2nd and 3rd persons differentiate gender, while the 1st person and plural do not.

Verbs

Hejazi Arabic verbs (فعل fiʻl; pl. أفعال afʻāl), as the verbs in other Semitic languages, and the entire vocabulary in those languages, are based on a set of three, four also five consonants (but mainly three consonants) called a root (triliteral or quadriliteral according to the number of consonants). The root communicates the basic meaning of the verb, e.g. k-t-b 'to write', ʼ-k-l 'to eat'. Changes to the vowels in between the consonants, along with prefixes or suffixes, specify grammatical functions such as :

Hejazi Has simplified the three Classical Arabic present verb moods (indicative رفع, subjunctive نصب, jussive جزم) into a single indicative present mood by adopting the Classical Arabic present subjunctive verb forms (with no /-n/ ending), except if the verbs are followed by an indirect object pronoun then they will resemble the present jussive verb conjugation of Classical Arabic e.g. أقول ('I say') becomes أقل له ('I say to him'), Hejazi Arabic also added a present progressive which is not part of the Classical Arabic grammar. And has simplified three grammatical number categories in verbs into two (Singular and Plural) instead of the Classical (Singular, Dual and Plural).

Regular verbs

the most common verbs in Hejazi have a given vowel pattern for past (a and i) to present (a or u or i). Combinations of each exist:

According to Arab grammarians, verbs are divided into three categories; Past ماضي, Present مضارع and Imperative أمر. An example from the root k-t-b the verb katabt/aktub 'i wrote/i write' (which is a regular sound verb):

While present progressive and future are indicated by adding the prefix (b-) and (ħ-) respectively to the present (indicative) :

Example: katabt/aktub "write": non-finite forms

Active participles act as adjectives, and so they must agree with their subject. An active participle can be used in several ways:

1. to describe a state of being (understanding; knowing).
2. to describe what someone is doing right now (going, leaving) as in some verbs like رحت ("i went") the active participle رايح ("i'm going") is used instead of present continuous form to give the same meaning of an ongoing action.
3. to indicate that someone/something is in a state of having done something (having put something somewhere, having lived somewhere for a period of time).

Object pronouns

Enclitic forms of object pronouns are suffixes that are affixed to various parts of speech, with varying meanings:

Unlike Egyptian Arabic, in Hejazi no more than one pronoun can be suffixed to a word.

Modifications:-

Writing system

Hejazi is written using the Arabic alphabet, like other varieties of Arabic, Hejazi does not have a standard form of writing and mostly follows the Classical Arabic form of writing. in general people alternate between writing the words according to their etymology or the phoneme used while pronouncing them, which mainly affect the three interdental letters ⟨ث⟩ ,⟨ذ⟩ and ⟨ظ⟩ and their alternatives, and writing some words that end in a vowel, whether to add a vowel at the end of the word or write its Classical Arabic form as in the word ('you' singular feminine) /inti/ which can be written as انتِ or انتي. The table below shows the Arabic alphabet letters and their corresponding phonemes in urban Hejazi :-

Notes:

Rural Dialects

The varieties of Arabic spoken in the smaller towns and by the bedouin tribes in 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 Najd, than to those of the urban 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 Najd. Also, not all speakers of these bedouin dialects are figuratively nomadic bedouins; some are simply sedentary sections that live in rural areas, and thus speak dialects similar to those of their bedouin neighbors.

Al-`Ula

The dialect of Al-`Ula governorate in the northern part of the Madinah region. Although understudied, it is considered to be unique among the Hejazi dialects, it is known for its pronunciation of Classical Arabic ⟨ك⟩ /k/ as a ⟨ش⟩ /ʃ/ (e.g. تكذب /takðib/ becomes تشذب /taʃðib/), the dialect also shows a tendency to pronounce long /aː/ as [eː] (e.g. Classical ماء /maːʔ/ becomes ميء [meːʔ]), in some instances the Classical /q/ becomes a /d͡ʒ/ as in قايلة /qaːjla/ becomes جايلة /d͡ʒaːjla/, also the second person singular feminine pronoun /ik/ tends to be pronounced as /iʃ/ (e.g. رجلك /rid͡ʒlik/ ('your foot') becomes رجلش /rid͡ʒliʃ/.

Badr

The dialect of Badr governorate in the western part of the Madinah region is mainly noted for its lengthening of word-final syllables and its alternative pronunciation of some phonemes as in سؤال /suʔaːl/ which is pronounced as سعال /suʕaːl/, it also shares some features with the general urban dialect in which modern standard Arabic ثلاجة /θalːaːd͡ʒa/ is pronounced تلاجة /talːaːd͡ʒa/, another unique feature of the dialect is its similarity to the Arabic dialects of Bahrain.