Najdi Arabic Explained

Najdi Arabic
Nativename:	اللهجة النجدية
Speakers:	million
Date:	2018–2023
Ref:	e27
Familycolor:	Afro-Asiatic
Fam2:	Semitic
Fam3:	West Semitic
Fam4:	Central Semitic
Fam5:	Arabic
Fam6:	Peninsular
Script:	Arabic alphabet
Iso3:	ars
Glotto:	najd1235
Glottorefname:	Najdi Arabic
Map:	Árabe najdí.png
Mapcaption:	Areas where Najdi Arabic is spoken.

Najdi Arabic (Arabic: اللهجة النجدية) is the group of Arabic varieties originating from the Najd region of Saudi Arabia. Outside of Saudi Arabia, it is also the main Arabic variety spoken in the Syrian Desert of Iraq, Jordan, and Syria (with the exception of Palmyra oasis and settlements dotting the Euphrates, where Mesopotamian Arabic is spoken) as well as the westernmost part of Kuwait.

Najdi Arabic can be divided into four region-based groups:

1. Northern Najdi, spoken by the tribe of Shammar and surrounding tribes in Ha'il Region in Najd and the Syrian Desert.
2. Mixed northern-central Najdi of Al-Qassim, Northern Riyadh region of Sudair, and the tribe of Dhafeer around Kuwait.
3. Central Najdi, spoken in the city of Riyadh and surrounding towns and farming communities, and by the tribe of Anazah in the Syrian Desert. This dialect group includes the modern urban dialect of Riyadh, which has become the prestige dialect of Saudi Arabia.
4. Southern Najdi, spoken by the tribes of Qahtan and Banu Yam, including in the Rub' al-Khali and Najran, as well as the branches of Banu Yam, Ajman and Al Murrah in Eastern Arabia.

Phonology

Consonants

Below is the table of the consonant phonemes of Najdi Arabic.

! rowspan="2"

Labial	Dental	Denti-alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
plain		emphatic
Nasal		pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Occlusive	voiceless			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/
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/

Phonetic notes:

• pronounced as //ɡ// is the modern reflex of Classical pronounced as //q// (Arabic: ق), though pronounced as /[q]/ can appear in a few loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic and proper names, as in Arabic: القرآن pronounced as /[alqurˈʔaːn]/ ('Quran') and Arabic: قانون pronounced as /[qaːnuːn]/ ('law').
• The distinction between the Classical Arabic pronounced as /[dˤ]/ (Arabic: ﺽ) and pronounced as /[ðˤ]/ (Arabic: ظ) was completely lost in Najdi Arabic, and both are realised as pronounced as /[ðˤ]/. pronounced as //tˤ// is sometimes voiced.
• The phonemes pronounced as //ɣ// (Arabic: غ) and pronounced as //x// (Arabic: خ) are in free variation with uvular fricatives pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ respectively.
• Northern and central dialects feature affricates pronounced as /[t͡s]/ and pronounced as /[d͡z]/ as allophonic variants of the velar stops pronounced as //k// and pronounced as //ɡ//, respectively, particularly in the context of front vowels e.g. Arabic: كَلْب pronounced as /[t͡salb]/ ('dog'). Dialect leveling as a result of influence from the Riyadh-based prestige varieties has led to the affricate allophones becoming increasingly less common among younger speakers.
• Historically, pronounced as //ʔ// was deleted. It now appears only in borrowings from Classical Arabic; word-medially, this deletion comes along with the lengthening of short vowels.
• The phones pronounced as /[p]/ ⟨Arabic: پ⟩ and pronounced as /[v]/ ⟨Arabic: 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 pronounced as //b// and pronounced as //f// respectively depending on the speaker.

Vowels

! colspan="2"

Front	Central		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/

Unless adjacent to pronounced as //ɣ x h ħ ʕ//, pronounced as //a// is raised in open syllables to pronounced as /[i]/, pronounced as /[ɨ]/, or pronounced as /[u]/, depending on neighboring sounds.^[1] Remaining pronounced as //a// may become fronted to pronounced as /[æ~ɛ]/ in the context of front sounds, as well as adjacent to the pharyngeals pronounced as //ħ ʕ//.

Najdi Arabic exhibits the so-called gahawa syndrome, insertion of epenthetic /a/ after (pronounced as //h x, ɣ ħ, ʕ//). For example, [gahwah] > [gahawah].

When short pronounced as //a// appears in an open syllable that is followed by a nonfinal light syllable, it is deleted. For example, pronounced as //saħab-at// is realized as pronounced as /[sˈħa.bat]/. This, combined with the gahawa syndrome can make underlying sequence of pronounced as //a// and a following guttural consonant (pronounced as //h x, ɣ ħ, ʕ//) to appear metathesized, e.g. pronounced as //ʔistaʕʒal// ('got in a hurry') pronounced as /[ʔistˈʕaʒal]/.

Short high vowels are deleted in non-final open syllables, such as pronounced as //tirsil-uːn// ('you [m. sg.] send') pronounced as /[tirsˈluːn]/.

There is both limited distributional overlap and free variation between pronounced as /[i]/ and pronounced as /[u]/, with the latter being more likely in the environment of bilabials, pharyngealized consonants, and pronounced as //r//.

The mid vowels pronounced as //eː oː// are typically monophthongs, though they can be pronounced as diphthongs when preceding a plosive, e.g. pronounced as //beːt// ('house') pronounced as /[beit]/. pronounced as /[ei]/

Grammar

Morphology

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

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

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.

Negation

See main article: Negation in Arabic. Two particles are used in negation, which are: ma and la. These particles come before the verb in verbal sentences. ma is used with all verbal sentences but la is used with imperative verb forms indicating present and future tense.

Tense/Aspect System

Najdi Arabic exhibits a number of discourse particles whose main function is to mark different tenses and aspects, including the perfective, imperfective, and progressive aspects. These speech particles "form a link between the time of occurrence of the verb and a point of reference not concurrent with it". cites six "relative time markers":

• pronounced as /[d͡zid]/ ('already')
• pronounced as /[ʕaːd]/ ('still, anymore')
• pronounced as /[maː ʕaːd]/ ('no longer, no more')
• pronounced as /[baʕad]/ ('still')
• pronounced as /[maː baʕad]/ ('not yet')
• pronounced as /[taww-]/ ('just')

Most of these discourse particles are preverbal, yet a few of them can show up in non-verbal sentences. These discourse particles have a number of features when they show up in speech:

1. The particle pronounced as /[taww]/ occurs with the perfective and active particle and is almost always followed by a personal pronoun suffix.
2. A few of these particles are not pre-verbal, i.e, they can show up with non-verbal sentences.
3. Their function is similar, "setting the time of occurrence of the situation referred to by the sentence in relation to a point of reference".
4. The particles pronounced as /[ʕaːd]/ and pronounced as /[baʕad]/ can sometimes have a suffix in the affirmative.
5. The particle pronounced as /[maː ʕaːd]/ occurs with the perfective and imperfective.
6. The particles pronounced as /[ʕaːd]/ and pronounced as /[baʕad]/ occur with the imperfective and the active participle.
7. The particle pronounced as /[maː baʕad]/ occurs with the perfective.

The following examples illustrate the use of these discourse particles in Najdi Arabic:

• pronounced as /[ʕaːd]/

• pronounced as /[maʕaːd]/

• pronounced as /[baʕad]/

• pronounced as /[maː baʕad]/

• pronounced as /[taww]/

In addition to these, pronounced as /[d͡zid]/ ('already') may occur before the main verb to convey that something has been done but is no longer the case (equivalent to the experiential perfect in English). There are a number of meanings of pronounced as /[d͡zid]/ depending on context:

• 'had done' when occurring with a past reference point
• 'has done' when occurring with a present reference point
• 'already' when the action has actually occurred previously to the time of utterance
• 'never' with a negative sentence that has a present reference point
• 'ever' with an interrogative sentence with a present reference point.

The following examples illustrate the use of the particle pronounced as /[d͡zid]/:

In addition, the progressive aspect is marked by the particle pronounced as /[qaʕid]/ ('to sit').^[2] The particle pronounced as /[qaʕid]/ surfaces with a verb in the imperfective aspect but cannot surface with a verb in the perfective aspect, as shown in the following two sentences:

The progressive aspect in Najdi Arabic (as well as other dialects is expressed by the imperfective form of the verb, often preceded by the active particle pronounced as /[qaʕid]/. The following examples to illustrate the use of pronounced as /[qaʕid]/ to express the progressive aspect:

See also

• Varieties of Arabic
• Peninsular Arabic

Further reading

• P.F. Abboud. 1964. "The Syntax of Najdi Arabic", University of Texas PhD dissertation.
• Al-Mozainy. Hamza Q. 1981. Vowel Alternations in a Bedouin Hijazi Arabic Dialect: Abstractness and Stress. Austin, Texas. University of Texas, Austin.
• Al-Sudais, M. S. A critical and comparative study of modern Najdi Arabic Proverbs. PhD diss., University of Leeds, 1976.

Notes and References

1. , citing
2. This is particle is also a feature of nearby Arabic dialects, including other dialects of Saudi Arabia, as well as Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Oman