Variety of the Arabic language
Hadhrami Arabic
, or
?a?rami Arabic (?A)
, is a
variety of Arabic
spoken by the
Hadhrami people
(
?a??rem
) living in the region of
Hadhramaut
in southeastern
Yemen
, with a small number of speakers found in
Kenya
.
[1]
Phonology
[
edit
]
The dialect in many towns and villages in the
W?d?
(valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its
?
/
d?
/
-yodization, changing the
Classical Arabic
reflex
/
d?
/
to the approximant
?
[
j
]
. That resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects, including the dialects of Basra in
Iraq
,
Kuwait
,
Qatar
,
Bahrain
other
Arab Emirates
. In educated speech,
?
is realised as a voiced palatal plosive
[
?
]
or affricate
[
d?
]
in some lexical items which are marked [+ religious] or [+ educated] (see
?
/
q
/
below).
The
?
/
q
/
reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar
[
?
]
in all lexical items throughout the dialect. In some other Arabic dialects,
/
q
/
is realised as a voiceless uvular plosive
[
q
]
in certain marked lexemes [+ religious], [+ educational]:
/qur?aːn/
“Qur’an”. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other
Arabic dialects
, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether using the uvular
/
q
/
in certain lexemes and retaining the velar
/
?
/
for others will occur.
Consonants
[
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]
- Sounds
/t,
t?/
are phonetically noted as lamino-alveolar stops
[t?,
t??]
.
- /d/
is phonetically noted as an apical-alveolar stop
[d?]
.
- /?/
can be heard as a voiced palatal plosive or an affricate sound
/d?/
.
- In the dialects of Al-Qarn, both
/t,
t?/
and
/d/
can be heard as affricated
[t?,
t??]
,
[d?]
.
- /m/
can be heard as labiodental
[?]
when preceding
/f/
.
- /n/
can be heard as a palatal nasal
[?]
when following
/?
~
d?/
. When preceding
/k,
q/
, it is then heard as
[ŋ,
?]
.
[2]
Vowels
[
edit
]
- There are five diphthongs noted as
/aj,
aw,
uj,
uːj,
eːw/
.
In non-emphatic environments,
/aː/
is realised as an open front (slightly raised) unrounded
[
æ
]
. Thus,
/θaːniː/
"second," which is normally realised with an
[
?ː
]
-like quality in the Gulf dialects, is realised with an
[
æː
]
.
Phoneme
|
Allophone
|
Notes
|
/i/
|
[?]
|
in shortened, non-emphatic environments
|
[?]
|
in emphatic or emphatic-like environments
|
[e?]
|
within the positions of pharyngeal fricatives
|
/a/
|
[æ]
|
in non-emphatic environments
|
[?]
|
in emphatic-like environments
|
[?]
|
within the positions of emphatic consonants
|
/u/
|
[?]
|
in shortened, non-emphatic environments
|
[?]
|
[?]
|
within the positions of labial or high articulated consonants
|
[o]
|
within the positions of uvular or pharyngeal consonants
|
/iː/
|
[iː]
|
elsewhere in non-emphatic environments
|
[iː?]
|
diphthongization occurs when in emphatic environments
|
/eː/
|
[??ː]
|
elsewhere in non-emphatic environments
|
[?ː]
,
[?ː?]
|
within the positions of emphatic environments
|
/aː/
|
[æː]
|
elsewhere in non-emphatic environments
|
[?ː]
|
within the positions of emphatic environments
|
/oː/
|
[oː]
|
elsewhere in non-emphatic environments
|
[?ː]
|
[?ː?]
|
within the positions of emphatic environments
|
/uː/
|
[uː]
|
elsewhere in non-emphatic environments
|
[uː?]
|
within the positions of emphatic environments
|
Diphthongs
Phoneme
|
Allophone
|
/aj/
|
[æ??]
|
[???]
|
/aw/
|
[??]
|
[???]
|
/uj/
|
[???]
|
/uːj/
|
[uː?]
|
/eːw/
|
[eː?]
|
Distinctions
?
,
?
/
t
/
,
/
θ
/
and
?
,
?
/
d
/
,
/
ð
/
are made in
W?d?
, but
?
/
d?
/
and
?
/
ð?
/
are both pronounced
?
[
ð?
]
. The Coast merges all the pairs into the stops
?
,
?
and
?
(
[
t
]
,
[
d
]
and
[
d?
]
), respectively.
The dialect is characterised by not allowing final consonant clusters to occur in final position. Thus, Classical Arabic
/bint/
"girl" is realised as
/binit/
. In initial positions, there is a difference between the
W?d?
and the coastal varieties. The coast has initial clusters in
/b?aː/
"he wants,"
/bs?al/
"onions" and
/briːd/
"mail (n.)," but
W?d?
realises the second and third words as
/bas?al/
and
/bariːd/
, respectively.
Morphology
[
edit
]
When the first person singular comes as an independent subject pronoun, it is marked for gender:
/anaː/
for masculine and
/aniː/
for feminine. As an object pronoun, it comes as a
bound morpheme
:
/-naː/
for masculine and
/-niː/
for feminine. The first person subject plural is
na?n?
.
The first person direct object plural is
/naħnaː/
rather than the
/-naː/
of many dialects. Thus, the cognate of the Classical Arabic
/d?arabanaː/
"he hit us" is
/ð?arab
naħnaː/
.
Stem VI,
tC1?C2aC3
, can be
umlauted
to
tC1?C2aC3
, thus changing the pattern vowel
?
to
?
. That leads to a semantic change, as in
/t?aːradaw/
"they ran away suddenly" and
/t?eːradaw/
"they shirk, try to escape."
Intensive and frequentative verbs are common in the dialect. Thus
/kasar/
"to break" is intensified to
/kawsar/
, as in
/koːsar
fi
l-l?ib/
"he played rough." It can be metathesized to become frequentative, as in
/kaswar
min
ið?-ð?aħkaːt/
"he made a series (lit. breaks) of giggles or laughs."
Syntax
[
edit
]
The syntax has many similarities to other
Peninsular Arabic
dialects. However, the dialect contains a number of unique particles used for co-ordination,
negation
, and other sentence types. Examples in coordination include
/kann,
laːkan/
"but, nevertheless, though,"
/maː/
(Classical Arabic
/ammaː/
) "as for…," and
/walla/
"or."
Like many other dialects, apophonic or
ablaut
passive (as in
/kutib/
"it was written") is not very common, and is mainly confined to cliches and proverbs from other dialects, including Classical Arabic.
The particle
/qad/
developed semantically in the dialect to
/kuð/
or
/?uð/
"yet, already, almost, nearly" and
/?ad/
or
/?id/
"maybe, perhaps."
Vocabulary
[
edit
]
There are a few lexical items that are shared with
Modern South Arabian languages
, which perhaps distinguish this dialect from other neighbouring Peninsular dialects. The effect of Hadhrami emigration to
Southeast Asia
(see
Arab Indonesians
and
Arab Singaporeans
), the
Indian subcontinent
and
East Africa
is clear in the vocabulary especially in certain registers like types of food and dress:
/s?aːruːn/
"
sarong
." Many loanwords are listed in al-Saqqaf (2006).
[3]
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Hadrami Arabic
at
Ethnologue
(25th ed., 2022)
- ^
Al-Saqqaf, Abdullah Hassan Shaikh (1999).
A descriptive linguistic study of the spoken Arabic of W?d? ?a?ramawt, Yemen
. University of Exeter.
- ^
Al-Saqqaf, Abdullah Hassan (15 January 2006). "The Linguistics of Loanwords in Hadrami Arabic".
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
.
9
(1): 75?93.
doi
:
10.1080/13670050608668631
.
S2CID
145299220
.
External links
[
edit
]
https://www.grin.com/document/882658?lang=en
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