Tihamiyya Arabic

Tihāmiyyah (Arabic: تهامية Tihāmiyyah; also known as Tihamiyya, Tihami) is the variety of Arabic originally spoken by the tribes, that belongs to the historic region of Tihamah, the Red Sea coastal plain of Arabia from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Bab el Mandeb Strait.

Pronunciation

The Tihami Arabic or Tihamiyya dialect has many aspects which differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically Tihami is similar to the majority of Yemeni dialects, pronouncing the qāf (ق) as [q] and the ǧīm (ج) as a velar plosive [ɡ] (the ǧīm pronunciation is also shared with Egyptian Arabic). Grammatically all Tihami dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article (al-) with the prefix (am-). The future tense, much like the dialects surrounding Sanaa, is indicated with the prefix (š-), for all persons, e.g. ša-būk am-sūq "I will go to the Souq". Some Tihami dialects, such as that spoken in Al-Hodeida, are otherwise fairly similar to other Yemeni dialects in grammar and syntax, differing mainly in vocabulary, while others can be so far from any other Arabic dialect that they are practically incomprehensible even to other Yemenis.

See also

• Varieties of Arabic
• Maghreb Arabic
• Nemadi language
• Imraguen language

External links

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