Hejazi Arabic or Hijazi Arabic (, Hejazi Arabic: , ), also known as West Arabian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken in the Hejaz region, Information Structure and Intonation in Hijazi Arabic. one by the urban population, originally spoken mainly in the cities of Jeddah, Mecca, Medina and partially in Ta'if and another dialect by the urbanized rural and bedouin populations. However, the term most often applies to the urban variety which is discussed in this article.
In antiquity, the Hejaz was home to the Old Hejazi dialect of Arabic recorded in the consonantal text of the Qur'an. Old Hejazi is distinct from modern Hejazi Arabic, and represents an older linguistic layer wiped out by centuries of migration, but which happens to share the imperative prefix vowel /a-/ with the modern dialect.
Classification 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, these include gender-number disagreement, and the feminine marker -n (see Varieties of Arabic). But in contrast to bedouin dialects, the constant use of full vowels and the absence of vowel reduction plus the distinction between the emphatic letters and is generally retained.
Innovative features
The present progressive tense is marked by the prefix or or as in or or ("he is studying"). The future tense is marked by the prefix as in ("he will study"). the internal passive form, which in Hejazi, is replaced by the pattern ( , ) or ( , ). Loss of the final sound in the 3rd person masculine singular pronoun . For example, ("his house"), ("I know him"), ("they said it"), ("on him") and ("we saw him") vs. ("we saw") . loss of gender-specificity in numbers except for the number "one" which is m. and f. . The pronunciation of the interdental letters ,, and . (See Hejazi Arabic Phonology) loss of gender-specificity in plural verb forms, e.g. instead of masculine and feminine . loss of gender-specificity in plural adjectives, e.g. "bored" can be used to describe both feminine and masculine plural nouns. The verb forms V, VI and IIQ have an additional initial , e.g. "it shattered" (V), "she worked" (VI) and "they babbled" (IIQ).
Conservative features Hejazi Arabic does not employ double negation, nor does it append the negation particles -sh to negate verbs: Hejazi ("I don't know"), as opposed to Egyptian and Palestinian . The habitual present tense is not marked by any prefixes as in ("he studies") and ("I love you"), as opposed to Egyptian and . The prohibitive mood of Classical Arabic is preserved in the imperative: ("don't go"). The possessive suffixes are generally preserved in their Classical forms. For example, "your (pl) house". The plural first person pronoun is or , as opposed to or . When indicating a location, the preposition (also written as a prefix ) is preferred to as in or ("in Medina"). The standard pronunciation of the is as in Modern Standard Arabic e.g. ("Riyadh") is pronounced not . The hamzated verbs like and keep their classical form as opposed to and . The use of in form I-verbs is retained as in , and as opposed to , and in Najdi and Gulf dialects. The glottal stop can be added to final syllables ending in a vowel as a way of emphasising. the definite article is always pronounced as opposed to Egyptian or Kuwaiti and the final is always pronounced . Compared to neighboring dialects, urban Hejazi retains most of the short vowels of Classical Arabic with no vowel reduction or ghawa syndrome, for example: ("fish"), as opposed to , ("she hit him"), as opposed to . ("his son"), as opposed to . عَلَيَّ ("on me"), as opposed to . ("our pocket") and ("my family"), as opposed to Najdi and and Egyptian and . ("in your possession" pl.), as opposed to Najdi , Egyptian , and Levantine .
History The Arabic of today is derived principally from the old dialects of Central and North Arabia which were divided by the classical Arab grammarians into three groups: Hejaz, Najd, and the language of the tribes in adjoining areas. Though the modern Hejazi dialects has developed markedly since the development of Classical Arabic, and Modern Standard Arabic is quite distinct from the modern dialect of Hejaz. Standard Arabic now differs considerably from modern Hejazi Arabic in terms of its phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, such diglossia in Arabic began to emerge at the latest in the sixth century CE when oral poets recited their poetry in a proto-Classical Arabic based on archaic dialects which differed greatly from their own.
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 given its development in the historical cities of Jeddah, Medina and Mecca in proximity to the bedouin tribes that lived on the outskirts of these cities, in addition to a minimal influence in vocabulary from other urban Arabic dialects and Modern Standard Arabic, and more recently the influence of the other dialects of Saudi Arabia, all of which made Urban Hejazi a dialect that is distinctly unique but close to peninsular dialects on one hand and urban Arabic dialects on the other.
Historically, it is not well known in which stage of Arabic the shift from the Proto-Semitic pair qāf and gīm came to be Hejazi gāf and jīm , although it has been attested as early as the eighth century CE, and it can be explained by a chain shift * → → that occurred in one of two ways:
Drag Chain: Proto-Semitic gīm palatalized to Hejazi jīm first, opening up a space at the position of , which qāf * then moved to fill the empty space resulting in Hejazi gāf , restoring structural symmetrical relationships present in the pre-Arabic system. Push Chain: Proto-Semitic qāf * changed to Hejazi gāf first, which resulted in pushing the original gīm forward in articulation to become Hejazi jīm , but since most modern qāf dialects as well as standard Arabic also have jīm, then the push-chain of qāf to gāf first can be discredited, although there are good grounds for believing that old Arabic qāf had both voiced and voiceless as allophones; and later on the gīm was fronted to jīm , possibly as a result of pressure from the allophones.Blanc 1969: 11, Travelling Through Time, Essays in honour of Kaj Öhrnberg The development of to have also been observed in languages like Azerbaijani in which the Old Turkic is pronounced as a velar ; e.g. قال / qal 'to stay, remain' is pronounced , rather than as in Turkish or in Bashkir, Uyghur, Kazakh, etc.
Phonology In general, Hejazi native phonemic inventory consists of 26 (with no interdental ) to 28 consonant phonemes depending on the speaker's preference, in addition to the marginal phoneme . Furthermore, it has an eight-vowel system, consisting of three short and five long vowels . Consonant length and Vowel length are both distinctive and being an Arabic dialect the four emphatic consonants are treated as separate phonemes from their plain counterparts.
The main phonological feature that differentiates urban Hejazi from other peninsular dialects in regards to consonants is the pronunciation of the letters ,, and (see Hejazi Phonology) and the standard pronunciation of as in Standard Arabic. Another differential feature is the lack of palatalization for the letters , and , unlike in other peninsular dialects where they can be palatalized in certain positions e.g. Hejazi 'new' vs. Gulf Arabic and Hejazi 'with you' vs. traditional Najdi .
The marginal /ɫ/ is only used in the word 'God' /aɫːaːh/ (except when it follows an as in بسمِ الله ) and in words derived from it. It contrasts with /l/ in والله 'I swear' /waɫːa/ vs. ولَّا 'or' /walːa/. Unlike other neighboring dialects; is not velarized in certain positions, as in 'brain' pronounced with a light lām in Hejazi and velarized one in other peninsular Arabic dialects. Two additional foreign sounds ⟨پ⟩ and ⟨ڤ⟩ are used by a number of speakers while many substitute them with ⟨ب⟩ and ⟨ف⟩ respectively, in general is more integrated and used by more speakers than .
A conservative feature that Hejazi holds is the constant use of full vowels and the absence of vowel reduction, for example 'we told them', is pronounced in Hejazi with full vowels but pronounced with the reduced vowel as in Najdi and Gulf Arabic, in addition to that, the absence of initial consonant cluster (known as the ghawa syndrome) as in 'cow', 'coffee', 'we know' and 'she heard' which are pronounced , , and respectively in Hejazi but , , and in other peninsular dialects.
Consonants +Consonant phonemes of HejaziLabialDentalDenti-alveolarPalatalVelarPharyngealGlottalplainemphaticNasalOcclusivevoicelessvoicedFricativevoicelessvoiced ~ TrillApproximant() Phonetic notes: the affricate is realised as a fricative and the trill is realised a tap by a number of speakers or in a number of words. the phonemes and can be realised as uvular fricatives and respectively in a few instances. the phoneme is used as an alternative phoneme, while many speakers merge it with or depending on the word. the phoneme is used as an alternative phoneme, while many speakers merge it with or depending on the word. can be analyzed as an alternative phoneme for , while many speakers pronounce it distinctly as or merge it with depending on the word. and merge into for a number of speakers due to the influence of neighboring dialects. has the velar allophone , which occurs before stop velars as in ('it spilled') and ('brazier') and is an allophone before as in ('clove') which is pronounced . due to the influence of Modern Standard Arabic, has been introduced as an allophone of in some words and phrases especially in the scientific and religious fields as in ('economy') which is phonemically but can be pronounced as or depending on the speaker, although older speakers prefer in all positions. Word-Initial clusters like , or occur only in loanwords and they are not considered to be a single phoneme but a cluster of two sounds, e.g. ⟨ت⟩ and ⟨ش⟩ as in ('Chile'), this cluster has merged with in earlier loanwords that are more integrated e.g. شَيَّك ('he checked’) from English check. Clusters can occur phonetically in native words affected by syncope when connected, e.g. ('don't lift') pronounced or .
Vowels
+Vowel phonemes of Hejazi Short LongFrontBackFrontBackCloseMidOpen Phonetic notes: and are pronounced either as an open front vowel or an open central vowel depending on the speaker, even when adjacent to emphatic consonants, except in some words such as ('Germany'), ('Japan') and ('dad') where they are pronounced with the back vowel . and are pronounced as true mid vowels and respectively. short (also analyzed as ) is pronounced allophonically as or less likely in word initial or medial syllables e.g. ('sister') and ('comb') and strictly as at the end of words e.g. ('they saw') or before as in ('he') or when isolate. short (also analyzed as ) is pronounced allophonically as or less likely in word initial or medial syllables e.g. ('Islam') and ('section') and strictly as at the end of words e.g. ('I have') or before as in ('he') or when isolate.