| Bahraini Gulf Arabic | |
|---|---|
| Bahraini Sunni Arabic | |
| Native to | Bahrain |
Native speakers | 70,000 (2019)[1] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Not official in any country |
| Regulated by | Not recognised as a language |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | none |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | bahr1247 |
Bahraini Gulf Arabic (Arabic:لهجة بحرينية,romanized: Lahjat Baḥraynīyah) is aGulf Arabicdialect spoken inBahrain. It is spoken byBahraini Sunnis (Arabs andAjams) and is a dialect which is most similar to the dialect spoken inQatar,Kuwait and theUAE.
An sociolinguistic feature of Bahrain is the existence of three distinct dialects:Bahrani Arabic (a dialect primarily spoken byBaharna in Shia villages and some parts of Manama), Sunni andAjami Arabic.[2]
InBahrain, the Sunni Muslims form a minority of the population, but the ruling family is Sunni. Therefore, the Arabic dialect represented on television is almost invariably that of the Sunni population, and power, prestige and financial control are associated with the Sunni Arabs. This is having a major effect on the direction of language change in Bahrain.[3]
As with all Bahraini dialects, it is heavily influenced byIndo-European languages, includingIranian languages such asAchomi;[4] an example of this isdolagh (دولاغ) instead ofjorab (جوراب) for socks,[5][6] which is used more commonly in modernPersian andArabic; the former has been influenced by the latter, in addition to Persian,[7][8][9][10][11][12] andIndo-Aryan languages, such asHindi andUrdu; an example of this is thatBahrainis do not use the formal Arabicheza'a (حذاء) to describe a 'shoe' but they rather sayjooti (Urdu:جوتا, singular) orjawati (plural).[12]: 134 English (itself an Indo-European language), has also had an influence on Bahraini Arabic, for example Bahrainis sayambaloos (عمبلوص) for 'ambulance', andesweech (سویچ) for 'electronic keys',[13] It is also influenced byTurkish.
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