Khuzestani Arabic

Khuzestani Arabic is a dialect of Gelet (Southern) Mesopotamian Arabic spoken by the Iranian Arabs in Khuzestan Province of Iran. Whilst being a southern Mesopotamian Arabic dialect, it has many similarities with Gulf Arabic in neighbouring Kuwait. It has subsequently had a long history of contact with the 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 at a basic level for religious purposes.[1] Almost all Khuzestani Arabic speakers are bilingual in Arabic and Persian (the official language of Iran).[3] Khuzestani Arabic speakers are shifting to Persian; if the existing shift continues into the next generations, according to Bahrani & Gavami in Journal of the International Phonetic Association, the dialect will be nearly extinct in the near future.[3]

Distribution

Khuzestani Arabic is spoken in Ahvaz, Hoveyzeh, Bostan, Susangerd, Shush, Abadan, Khorramshahr, Shadegan, Hamidiyeh, Karun, and Bawi.[3]

Contact and lexis

The Khuzestani Arabic dialect is in contact with Bakhtiari Lurish, Persian and Mesopotamian Arabic.[3] Although the lexis of the dialect is primarily composed of Arabic words, it also has Persian, English, French and Turkish loanwords.[3] In the northern and eastern cities of Khuzestan, Luri is spoken in addition to Persian, and the Arabic of the Kamari Arabs of this region is "remarkably influenced" by Luri.[3] In cities in Khuzestan such as Abadan, some of the new generations, especially females, often mainly speak Persian.[3] A number of Khuzestani Arabic speakers furthermore only converse in Persian at home with their children.[3]

Phonology

Consonants

Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background.[4] 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.[5][6]

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].

See also

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. Bahrani, Nawal; Ghavami, Golnaz Modarresi (2021). "Khuzestani Arabic". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 51 (2): 1. doi:10.1017/S0025100319000203. S2CID 235915108.
  4. Holes (2004:58)
  5. Teach Yourself Arabic, by Jack Smart (Author), Frances Altorfer (Author)
  6. Hans Wehr, Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (transl. of Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart, 1952)

Sources
  • Holes, Clive (2004). Modern Arabic : structures, functions, and varieties. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. ISBN 978-1-58901-022-2.
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