Khuzestani Arabic

Khuzestani Arabic is a dialect of Gelet (Southern) Mesopotamian Arabic spoken by the Iranian Arabs in Khuzestan Province of Iran. It is also considered by most contemporary scholars to be a mix of Southern Mesopotamian Arabic and Gulf Arabic spoken in places such as Kuwait and Eastern Arabia. It has had a long history of contact with 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
Native toIran
Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
GlottologNone

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.[1]

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background.[3] 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. 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.[4][5]

Khuzestani Arabic consonant phonemes
Labial Dental Denti-alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
plain emphatic1
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:

  • /p/ and /v/ occur mostly in borrowings from Persian, and may be assimilated to /b/ or /f/ in some speakers.
  • /ɡ/ is pronunciation of /q/ in Khuzestani Arabic and the rest of southern Mesopotamian dialects.
  • The gemination of the flap /ɾ/ results in a trill /r/.
gollark: I think what it really needs is a supreme overlord to manage, say, roads.
gollark: Yes, that.
gollark: I will not, unless there's demand for a convenient ready made constitution.
gollark: Yep!
gollark: No, actually.

References
  1. Khuzestani Arabic: a case of convergence
  2. Shabibi, Maryam (2006). Contact-induced grammatical changes in Khuzestani arabic (PhD thesis). University of Manchester. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.529368.
  3. Holes (2004:58)
  4. Teach Yourself Arabic, by Jack Smart (Author), Frances Altorfer (Author)
  5. Hans Wehr, Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (transl. of Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart, 1952)



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