| Hadhrami Arabic | |
| States: | Yemen |
| Ethnicity: | Hadharem |
| Speakers: | million |
| Date: | 2020 |
| Ref: | e25 |
| Speakers Label: | Speakers |
| Familycolor: | Afro-Asiatic |
| Fam2: | Semitic |
| Fam3: | West Semitic |
| Fam4: | Central Semitic |
| Fam5: | Arabic |
| Fam6: | Peninsular |
| Fam7: | Yemeni |
| Script: | Arabic alphabet |
| Iso3: | ayh |
| Glotto: | hadr1236 |
| Glottorefname: | Hadrami Arabic |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Map: | Hadhrami Arabic.svg |
| Mapcaption: | Distribution of Hadhrami Arabic according to Ethnologue |
Hadhrami Arabic, or Ḥaḍrami Arabic (ḤA), is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Hadharem (Ḥaḍārem) living in the region of Hadhramaut in southeastern Yemen, with a small number of speakers found in Kenya.
Hadhrami Arabic is also the main element language that forms a local variety of Arabic in Indonesia, a variety that was eventually referred to as Indonesian Arabic. Where most of the vocabulary and grammar are absorbed from here.[1]
The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by its ج pronounced as /link/-yodization, changing the Classical Arabic reflex pronounced as /link/ to the approximant ي pronounced as /link/. That resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects, including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, ج is realised as a voiced palatal plosive pronounced as /link/ or affricate pronounced as /link/ in some lexical items which are marked [+ religious] or [+ educated] (see ق pronounced as /link/ below).
The ق pronounced as /link/ reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar pronounced as /link/ in all lexical items throughout the dialect. In some other Arabic dialects, pronounced as /link/ is realised as a voiceless uvular plosive pronounced as /link/ in certain marked lexemes [+ religious], [+ educational]: pronounced as //qurʔaːn// “Qur’an”. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether using the uvular pronounced as /link/ in certain lexemes and retaining the velar pronounced as /link/ for others will occur.
| Labial | Interdental | Dental/Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | emph. | plain | emph. | |||||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||||
| Stop | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Trill | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Open | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | ||
In non-emphatic environments, pronounced as //aː// is realised as an open front (slightly raised) unrounded pronounced as /link/. Thus, pronounced as //θaːniː// "second," which is normally realised with an pronounced as /link/-like quality in the Gulf dialects, is realised with an pronounced as /link/.
| Phoneme | Allophone | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| pronounced as //i// | pronounced as /[ɪ]/ | in shortened, non-emphatic environments |
| pronounced as /[ɨ]/ | in emphatic or emphatic-like environments | |
| pronounced as /[e̝]/ | within the positions of pharyngeal fricatives | |
| pronounced as //a// | pronounced as /[æ]/ | in non-emphatic environments |
| pronounced as /[ʌ]/ | in emphatic-like environments | |
| pronounced as /[ɑ]/ | within the positions of emphatic consonants | |
| pronounced as //u// | pronounced as /[ə]/ | in shortened, non-emphatic environments |
| pronounced as /[ʊ]/ | ||
| pronounced as /[ʉ]/ | within the positions of labial or high articulated consonants | |
| pronounced as /[o]/ | within the positions of uvular or pharyngeal consonants | |
| pronounced as //iː// | pronounced as /[iː]/ | elsewhere in non-emphatic environments |
| pronounced as /[iːᵊ]/ | diphthongization occurs when in emphatic environments | |
| pronounced as //eː// | pronounced as /[ɛ̝ː]/ | elsewhere in non-emphatic environments |
| pronounced as /[ɛː]/, pronounced as /[ɛːᵊ]/ | within the positions of emphatic environments | |
| pronounced as //aː// | pronounced as /[æː]/ | elsewhere in non-emphatic environments |
| pronounced as /[ɑː]/ | within the positions of emphatic environments | |
| pronounced as //oː// | pronounced as /[oː]/ | elsewhere in non-emphatic environments |
| pronounced as /[ɔː]/ | ||
| pronounced as /[ɔːᵊ]/ | within the positions of emphatic environments | |
| pronounced as //uː// | pronounced as /[uː]/ | elsewhere in non-emphatic environments |
| pronounced as /[uːʷ]/ | within the positions of emphatic environments |
| pronounced as //aj// | pronounced as /[æ̆ɪ]/ | |
| pronounced as /[ʌ̆ɪ]/ | ||
| pronounced as //aw// | pronounced as /[ăʊ]/ | |
| pronounced as /[ʌ̆ʊ]/ | ||
| pronounced as //uj// | pronounced as /[ɵ̆ɪ]/ | |
| pronounced as //uːj// | pronounced as /[uːɪ]/ | |
| pronounced as //eːw// | pronounced as /[eːʊ]/ |
Distinctions ث, ت pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ and ذ, د pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ are made in Wādī, but ض pronounced as /link/ and ظ pronounced as /link/ are both pronounced ظ pronounced as /link/. The Coast merges all the pairs into the stops د, ت and ض (pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/), respectively.
The dialect is characterised by not allowing final consonant clusters to occur in final position. Thus, Classical Arabic pronounced as //bint// "girl" is realised as pronounced as //binit//. In initial positions, there is a difference between the Wādī and the coastal varieties. The coast has initial clusters in pronounced as //bɣaː// "he wants," pronounced as //bsˤal// "onions" and pronounced as //briːd// "mail (n.)," but Wādī realises the second and third words as pronounced as //basˤal// and pronounced as //bariːd//, respectively.
When the first person singular comes as an independent subject pronoun, it is marked for gender: pronounced as //anaː// for masculine and pronounced as //aniː// for feminine. As an object pronoun, it comes as a bound morpheme: pronounced as //-naː// for masculine and pronounced as //-niː// for feminine. The first person subject plural is naḥnā.
The first person direct object plural is pronounced as //naħnaː// rather than the pronounced as //-naː// of many dialects. Thus, the cognate of the Classical Arabic pronounced as //dˤarabanaː// "he hit us" is pronounced as //ðˤarab naħnaː//.
Stem VI, tC1āC2aC3, can be umlauted to tC1ēC2aC3, thus changing the pattern vowel ā to ē. That leads to a semantic change, as in pronounced as //tʃaːradaw// "they ran away suddenly" and pronounced as //tʃeːradaw// "they shirk, try to escape."
Intensive and frequentative verbs are common in the dialect. Thus pronounced as //kasar// "to break" is intensified to pronounced as //kawsar//, as in pronounced as //koːsar fi l-lʕib// "he played rough." It can be metathesized to become frequentative, as in pronounced as //kaswar min iðˤ-ðˤaħkaːt// "he made a series (lit. breaks) of giggles or laughs."
The syntax has many similarities to other Peninsular Arabic dialects. However, the dialect contains a number of unique particles used for co-ordination, negation, and other sentence types. Examples in coordination include pronounced as //kann, laːkan// "but, nevertheless, though," pronounced as //maː// (Classical Arabic pronounced as //ammaː//) "as for…," and pronounced as //walla// "or."
Like many other dialects, apophonic or ablaut passive (as in pronounced as //kutib// "it was written") is not very common, and is mainly confined to clichés and proverbs from other dialects, including Classical Arabic.
The particle pronounced as //qad// developed semantically in the dialect to pronounced as //kuð// or pronounced as //ɡuð// "yet, already, almost, nearly" and pronounced as //ɡad// or pronounced as //ɡid// "maybe, perhaps."
There are a few lexical items that are shared with Modern South Arabian languages, which perhaps distinguish this dialect from other neighbouring Peninsular dialects. The effect of Hadhrami emigration to Southeast Asia (see Arab Indonesians and Arab Singaporeans), the Indian subcontinent and East Africa is clear in the vocabulary especially in certain registers like types of food and dress: pronounced as //sˤaːruːn// "sarong." Many loanwords are listed in al-Saqqaf (2006).[3]