| Saʽīdi Arabic | |
| Also Known As: | Upper Egyptian Arabic |
| Nativename: | Arabic: صعيدى |
| States: | Egypt |
| Region: | Al Minya Governorate and south to Sudan border; Red Sea area; Cairo area |
| Ethnicity: | Sa'idis |
| Speakers: | million |
| Date: | 2021 |
| Ref: | e26 |
| Speakers Label: | Speakers |
| Familycolor: | Afro-Asiatic |
| Fam2: | Semitic |
| Fam3: | West Semitic |
| Fam4: | Central Semitic |
| Fam5: | Arabic |
| Script: | Arabic alphabet |
| Iso3: | aec |
| Glotto: | said1239 |
| Glottorefname: | Saidi Arabic |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Lingua: | 12-AAC-eb[1] |
| Map: | Árabe saidi.png |
Ṣaʽīdi Arabic (autonym: صعيدى pronounced as /aec/, pronounced as /arz/), or Upper Egyptian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Upper Egyptians in the area that is South/Upper Egypt, a strip of land on both sides of the Nile that extends from Aswan and downriver (northwards) to Lower Egypt. It shares linguistic features with Egyptian Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and the Classical Arabic of the Quran. Dialects include Middle and Upper Egyptian Arabic.[2] [3]
Speakers of Egyptian Arabic do not always understand more conservative varieties of Ṣaʽīdi Arabic.
Ṣaʽīdi Arabic carries little prestige nationally, but it continues to be widely spoken in the South, and in the north by Southern migrants who have also adapted to Egyptian Arabic. For example, the Ṣaʽīdi genitive exponent is usually replaced with Egyptian bitāʿ, but the realisation of pronounced as /link/ as pronounced as /link/ is retained (normally realised in Egyptian Arabic as pronounced as /link/).
Ṣaʽīdi Arabic has various sub-dialects and varies widely from a town to town. Because of the tribal nature of Upper Egypt, and because some of the Upper Egyptian tribes have had links to the formal Arabic language with its proper pronunciations, or the classical Arabic language could be vividly noticed in many sub-dialects. For example, the word "Arabic: قعمز" meaning "sit", is used throughout Egypt, Sudan, and the Maghreb, and continues to be widely used in Upper Egypt. Furthermore, in addition to similar pronunciation of letters with Hejazi cities such as Jeddah and Mecca, words such as "Arabic: لسع" meaning "still" and "Arabic: قمرية" meaning "wild pigeon" are in wide use in Upper Egypt. Other examples are classical words such as "Arabic: فروج" meaning "chicken", as opposed to "Arabic: فرخة" that is used in Northern Egypt.
Second- and third-generation Ṣaʽīdi migrants are monolingual in Egyptian Arabic but maintain cultural and family ties to the south.
The Egyptian poet Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi wrote in his native Sa'idi dialect and was the voice of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and a prominent Egyptian nationalist.
Behnstedt and Woidich classify the dialects of Upper Egypt into four broad groupings:[4]
Ṣaʽīdi Arabic has the following consonants:[5]
| Dental/Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||
| Plosive/ Affricate | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| 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/ | |||||||
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
| High | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Mid | (pronounced as /link/) pronounced as /link/ | [{{IPA link|ə}}] | (pronounced as /link/) pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Low | pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| /i/ | [i], [ɪ] | [ɨˤ], [ɨ̞ˤ], [ɨ], [ɨ̞] | |
| /iː/ | [iː], [ɪː] | [ɨ̞ˤː], [ɨ̞ː] | |
| /eː/ | [eː], [ɛː], [e], [ɛ] | [ɛˤː], [ɛˤ], [ɛ], [ɜ], [ɛː] | |
| /a/ | [ä], [æ] | [ɑˤ], [ɑ] | |
| /aː/ | [äː], [æː] | [ɑːˤ], [ɑː] | |
| /oː/ | [oː], [ɔː], [o], [o̞], [ɔ] | [o̞ˤː], [ɔˤ], [o̞], [ɔ], [o̞ː] | |
| /u/ | [u], [ʊ] | [ʊˤ], [ʊ] | |
| /uː/ | [uː], [ʊː] | [ʊˤː], [ʊː] |