Najdi Arabic

Najdi Arabic
Native to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria
Native speakers
 4.05 million (2011-2015)[1]
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3 ars
Glottolog najd1235[2]

Najdi Arabic (Arabic: اللهجة النجدية‎) is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Najd region of Saudi Arabia.

There are three major dialects of Najdi Arabic.

  1. Northern Najdi, spoken in Ha'il Region and Al-Qassim Region in the Najd.
  2. Central Najdi (Urban Najdi), spoken in the city of Riyadh and surrounding towns and farming communities.
  3. Southern Najdi, spoken in the city of Al-Kharj and surrounding towns, and in the Rub' al-Khali.

Phonology

Consonants

Here is a table of the consonant sounds of Najdi Arabic. 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 can be pronounced as /b/ and /f/ respectively depending on the speaker.[3]

Consonants
Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Pharyngeal Glottal
 plain  emphatic  plain emphatic
Nasal m n
Occlusive voiceless ttˤ~tʼ kʔ
voiced b d d͡ʒ ɡ
Fricative voiceless fθ ssˤ~sʼ ʃ xħh
voiced ð ðˁ~ðʼz ɣʕ
Trill r
Approximant l (ɫ) j w

Phonetic notes:

  • The classicized [q] is an allophone for /ɡ/ ⟨ق⟩ in few words and proper names as in القرآن [alqurˈʔaːn] ('Quran') and قانون [qaːnuːn] ('Law').[4]
  • The distinction between the classical /dˤ/ ⟨ض⟩ and /ðˤ/ ⟨ظ⟩ was completely lost in Najdi Arabic, and both are realised as /ðˤ/.
  • the marginal phoneme /ɫ/ only occurs in the word الله /aɫːaːh/ ('god') and words derived from it,[5] it contrasts with /l/ in والله /waɫːa/ ('i swear') vs. ولَّا /walːa/ ('or'), but it occurs as an allophone of /l/ in many other contexts, especially when neighboring the phonemes /ɡ, x, sˤ, tˤ/ e.g. قَلَم "pencile" /ɡalam/→[ɡaɫam].
  • The phonemes /ɣ/ ⟨غ⟩ and /x/ ⟨خ⟩ can be realised as uvular fricatives [ʁ] and [χ] respectively.
  • In the consonantal system of Najdi Arabic, there is an occurrence of the alveolar affricates [t͡s] and [d͡z] as allophonic variants of the velar stops /k/ and /ɡ/, respectively.[6]

Morphology

Najdi Arabic sentence structure can have the word order VSO and SVO, however, VSO usually occurs more often.[7] NA morphology is distinguished by three categories which are: nouns ism, verb fial, and particle harf. Ismmeans name in Arabic and it corresponds to nouns and adjectives in English. Fialmeans action in Arabic and it corresponds to verbs. Harfmeans letter and corresponds to pronouns, demonstratives, prepositions, conjunctions and articles.

Verbs are inflected for number, gender, person, tense, aspect and transitives. Nouns shows number(singular and plural) and gender(masculine and feminine). [8]

Complementizers in NA have three different classes which are: relative particle, declarative particle, and interrogative particles. The three different complementizers that are used in Najdi Arabic are: illi, in, itha.[9]

Negation

Two particles are used in negation, which are: ma and la. These particles come before the verb in verbal sentences.[7] ma is used with all verbal sentences but la is used with imperative verb forms indicating present and future tense.[8]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "Arabic, Najdi Spoken". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-08-08.
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Najdi Arabic". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Al Motairi (2015:5)
  4. ↑ Al Motairi (2015:6)
  5. ↑ Watson (2002:16)
  6. ↑ Al Motairi (2015)
  7. 1 2 Bruce., Ingham, (1994). Najdi Arabic : central Arabian. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co. pp. 37–44. ISBN 9789027283122. OCLC 607094254.
  8. 1 2 Alothman, Ebtesam (2012). "Digital Vernaculars: An Investigation of Najdi Arabic in Multilingual Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication" (PDF). University of Manchester: 96–121.
  9. ↑ Lewis Jr., Robert (2013). "Complementizer Agreement in Najdi Arabic" (PDF). University of Kansas: 22.

Bibliography

  • P.F. Abboud. 1964. "The Syntax of Najdi Arabic", University of Texas PhD dissertation.
  • Al Motairi, Sarah Soror (2015). "An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis of Syllable Structure in Qassimi Arabic".
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