Gulf Arabic


Gulf Arabic is a variety of the Arabic language spoken in Eastern Arabia around the coasts of the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, as well as parts of eastern Saudi Arabia, southern Iraq, and by Iranian Arabs and northern Oman.
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. Similarly to other Arabic varieties, Gulf Arabic varieties are not completely mutually intelligible with other Arabic 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 accent, that may hinder mutual intelligibility.
Gulf varieties' closest related relatives are other dialects native to the Arabian Peninsula, i.e. Najdi 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 el-lahja el-Khalijiyya 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:
The differences in the phonology of the Arabic dialect group of the Persian Gulf, compared to Modern Standard Arabic, are following:
LetterMSA pronunciationKhaliji varietiesExamplesNotes
ج or mōy or mōj ;
masyid or masjid 		Changes are optional, although jim never changes to in loanwords.
ق,, very rarely and optionally when followed by front vowels or following a consonant preceded by a front voweljiddām, qeddām or geddām ;
sharji, sharqi or shargi 		Many Literary Arabic loanwords preserve the sound, but optionally use /g/ sound. By Persian influence, extremely rarely the qaf changes to ghayn .
غ/ʁ~ɣ/,, qannā Ghayn rarely 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 cannot be distinguished by pronunciation as the Gulf dialects lack the pharyngealised. However, they retain their orthographic distinction.

Vowels

Following vowel chart applies to the Gulf Arabic dialect continuum:
stipulates at least two qualities of : He further explains that these qualities also apply to, so that ⁓⁓ can therefore be assumed.
Elsewhere in the article, the open central vowels are written without the diacritic for the sake of simplicity.

Morphology

Pronouns

Personal 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:
Some pronouns, however, have other forms: