Khuzestani Arabic | |
---|---|
Native to | Iran |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
Arabic alphabet | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | None |
Khuzestani Arabic is a dialect of Gelet (Southern) Mesopotamian Arabic spoken by the Iranian Arabs in Khuzestan Province of Iran. Whilst being a southern Mesopotamian Arabic dialect, it has many similarities with Gulf Arabic in neighbouring Kuwait. It has subsequently had a long history of contact with the Persian language, leading to several changes. [1] The main changes are in word order, noun–noun and noun–adjective attribution constructions, definiteness marking, complement clauses, and discourse markers and connectors. [1] [2]
Khuzestani Arabic is only used in informal situations. It is not taught in school, not even as an optional course, although Modern Standard Arabic is taught at a basic level for religious purposes. [1] Almost all Khuzestani Arabic speakers are bilingual in Arabic and Persian (the official language of Iran). [3] Khuzestani Arabic speakers are shifting to Persian; if the existing shift continues into the next generations, according to Bahrani & Gavami in Journal of the International Phonetic Association, the dialect will be nearly extinct in the near future. [3]
Khuzestani Arabic is spoken in Ahvaz, Hoveyzeh, Bostan, Susangerd, Shush, Abadan, Khorramshahr, Shadegan, Hamidiyeh, Karun, Martinica and Bawi. [3]
The Khuzestani Arabic dialect is in contact with Bakhtiari Lurish, Persian and Mesopotamian Arabic. [3] Although the lexis of the dialect is primarily composed of Arabic words, it also has Persian, English, French and Turkish loanwords. [3] In the northern and eastern cities of Khuzestan, Luri is spoken in addition to Persian, and the Arabic of the Kamari Arabs of this region is "remarkably influenced" by Luri. [3] In cities in Khuzestan such as Abadan, some of the new generations, especially females, often mainly speak Persian. [3] A number of Khuzestani Arabic speakers furthermore only converse in Persian at home with their children. [3]
Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background. [4] Nevertheless, the number and phonetic character of most of the 28 consonants has a broad degree of regularity among Arabic-speaking regions. Note that Arabic is particularly rich in uvular, pharyngeal, and pharyngealized (" emphatic") sounds. The emphatic coronals (/sˤ/, /dˤ/, /tˤ/, and /ðˤ/) cause assimilation of emphasis to adjacent non-emphatic coronal consonants.[ citation needed] The phonemes /p/ ⟨ پ⟩ and /v/ ⟨ ڤ⟩ (not used by all speakers) are only occasionally considered to be part of the phonemic inventory, as they exist only in foreign words and they can be pronounced as /b/ ⟨ ب⟩ and /f/ ⟨ ف⟩ respectively depending on the speaker. [5] [6]
Labial | Dental | Denti-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | emphatic 1 | |||||||||
Nasal | m | n | ||||||||
Stop | voiceless | ( p) | t | tˤ | k | ʔ | ||||
voiced | b | d | dˤ | g | ||||||
Fricative | voiceless | f | θ | s | sˤ | ʃ | x ~ χ | ħ | h | |
voiced | ( v) | ð | z | ðˤ | ɣ ~ ʁ | ʕ | ||||
Affricate | voiceless | tʃ | ||||||||
voiced | d͡ʒ | |||||||||
Tap | ɾ | |||||||||
Approximant | l | ( ɫ) | j | w |
Phonetic notes: