Gulf Arabic

For other Arabic dialects, see varieties of Arabic.

Gulf Arabic
Native to	Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Iran, UAE, Oman
Native speakers	6.8 million (2016)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Peninsular Gulf Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	afb
Glottolog	gulf1241

Gulf Arabic (خليجي Khalījī local pronunciation: Template:IPA-ar or اللهجة الخليجية el-lahja el-Khalijiyya, local pronunciation: Template:IPA-ar) is a variety of the Arabic language spoken in Eastern Arabia around the coasts of the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, as well as parts of eastern Saudi Arabia (Eastern Province), southern Iraq (Basra Governorate and Muthanna Governorate), and south Iran (Bushehr Province and Hormozgan Province) 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 is 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, Hejazi 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 (اللهجة الخليجية local pronunciation: Template:IPA-ar) can be translated as 'the dialect of the gulf'. However, it is most commonly referred to as Khaliji (خليجي Khalījī Template:IPA-ar), in which the noun خليج (Template:IPA-ar; Khalīj) has been suffixed with the Nisba, literally meaning 'of the bay' or 'of the gulf'.

Phonology

Consonants

Gulf Arabic consonants

		Labial		Dental	Denti-alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
					plain	emphatic
		plain	emphatic
Nasal		m	(mˤ)		n
Occlusive	voiceless	(p)			t	tˤ	ʧ	k	q		ʔ
	voiced	b	(bˤ)		d		ʤ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f		θ	s	sˤ	ʃ	x~χ		ħ	h
	voiced			ð	z	ðˤ		ɣ~ʁ		ʕ
Trill					r	(rˤ)
Approximant					l	(ɫ)	j	w

Phonetic notes:

• The non-native Arabic letter /p/ ⟨پ⟩, or its native counterpart /b/ ⟨ب⟩, is used to denote that sound which occurs only in loanwords, e.g.: piyāḷah (پيالة or بيالة Template:IPA-ar, 'small glass'), from Hindi.
• /dˤ/ ⟨ض⟩ has merged to /ðˤ/ ⟨ظ⟩.
• The difference between /l/ and /ɫ/ is not orthographically shown.
• The classicized [q] is an allophone for /g/ ⟨ق⟩ , used in Literary Arabic loanwords, and also an allophone for /ɣ/ ⟨غ⟩.
• The stops /b/, /d/, and /g/ are described as fully voiced despite their position within the word.

The differences in the phonology of the Arabic dialect group of the Persian Gulf, compared to Modern Standard Arabic, are following:

Letter	MSA pronunciation	Khaliji varieties	Examples	Notes
ج	/d͡ʒ/	[j] or [d͡ʒ⁓ʒ]	mōy or mōj (موج Template:IPA-ar or Template:IPA-ar, 'wave'); masyīd or masjīd (مسجد Template:IPA-ar or Template:IPA-ar, "mosque")	Changes are optional, although jim (ج) never changes to [j] in loanwords.
ق	/q/	/q/ (in Classical Arabic words), [ɡ], very rarely and optionally [d͡ʒ⁓ʒ] when followed by front vowels ([ɐ], [e], [ɪ] or [i]) or following a consonant preceded by a front vowel	jiddām, qeddām or geddām (قدام Template:IPA-ar, Template:IPA-ar or Template:IPA-ar, "in front of"); sharji, sharqi or shargi (شرقي Template:IPA-ar, Template:IPA-ar or Template:IPA-ar, "eastern")	Many Literary Arabic loanwords preserve the /q/ sound. By Persian influence, extremely rarely the qaf (ق) changes to ghayn (غ) [ʁ].
غ	/ʁ/	[q]	qannā (غنى Template:IPA-ar, "to sing")
ك	/k/	/k/, [t͡ʃ] if preceded or followed by a front vowel or if 2nd person feminine singular suffixed/object pronoun	ubūch (أبوك Template:IPA-ar; 'your (f.sg.) father')	This change is optional, but encountered with more often when the kaf (ك) is used to denote the 2nd person feminine singular suffixed/object pronoun.
ض	/dˤ/	[ðˤ]	ẓāʼ (ضاع Template:IPA-ar, 'to lose')	Ẓāʼ (ظ) and Ḍad (ض) cannot be distinguished by pronunciation as the Gulf dialects lack the pharyngealised [d].

Vowels

Following vowel chart applies to the Gulf Arabic dialect continuum:

	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i	iː			u	uː
Mid	e	eː			o	oː
Open	æ	æː	ä	äː	ɑ	ɑː

Qafisheh stipulates at least two qualities of /a/:

a has a low back quality in the environment of pharyngealized consonants and frequently before or after /q/. This sound is similar to the a sound in father but shorter and farther back. (...) Before or after the pharyngeals 9 [= ʿAyin] and H [= ḥ], or any other plain consonant, a is farther front than the a in father; its quality ranges between the e in pen and the a in pan.

— Hamdi A. Qafisheh, A Short Reference Grammar of Gulf Arabic, p. 16

He further explains that these qualities also apply to /aː/, so that [ɑ(ː)]⁓[ä(ː)]⁓[æ(ː)] can therefore be assumed.

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:

Person		Singular	Plural
1st		ānā (آنَا)	niḥin (نِحِنْ)
2nd	masculine	inta (إِنْتَ)	intum (إِنْتُمْ)
	feminine	inti (إِنْتِ)	intin1 (إِنْتِنْ)
3rd	masculine	huwa (هُوَ)	hum (هُمْ)
	feminine	hiya (هِيَ)	hin2 (هِنْ)

• ^1 Many speakers do not distinguish between masculine and feminine forms in the second person plural, replacing intum and intin with intu (إنْتُ).
• ^2 Speakers that do not distinguish between masculine and feminine forms in the third person plural will also use hum (هُمْ) for both genders in the third person plural, respectively.

Some pronouns, however, have other (less frequent, resp. local) forms:

• ānā (آنَا):

  anā (أَنَا)

  āni (آنِي) (especially Baḥrānī)

• inta (إِنْتَ):

  init (إِنِتْ)

• huwa (هُوَ):

  hū (هُوْ)

  huwwa (هُوَّ) (especially Qaṭarī)

  uhu (أُهُو)

• hiya (هِيَ):

  hī (هِيْ)

  hiyya (هِيَّ) (especially Qaṭarī)

  ihi (إِهِي)

• niḥin (نِحِنْ):

  niḥna (نِحْنَ)

  iḥna (إِحْنَا) (especially Baḥrānī and Qatarī)

  ḥina (إِحْنَا) (Qatarī)

• intum (إِنْتُمْ):

  intu (إنْتُ)

• hum (هُمْ):

  humma (هُمَّ) (especially Qatarī)

  uhum (أُهُمْ)

See also

• Varieties of Arabic
• Arabic language

Further reading

• AlBader, Yousuf B. (2015) "Semantic Innovation and Change in Kuwaiti Arabic: A Study of the Polysemy of Verbs"