Hadhrami Arabic
اللهجة الحضرمية
Native to	Hadhramaut,Yemen
Ethnicity	Hadharem
Speakers	5.1 million (2020)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Peninsular Yemeni Hadhrami Arabic
Dialects	Indonesian Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ayh
Glottolog	hadr1236
Distribution of Hadhrami Arabic according toEthnologue
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Hadhrami Arabic (Arabic:اللهجة الحضرمية,romanized: al-Lahjah al-Ḥaḍramiyah) is avariety of Arabic spoken by theHadharem living in the region ofHadhramaut in southeasternYemen. It is also spoken by many emigrants, who migrated from Hadhramaut to theHorn of Africa (Somalia andEritrea),East Africa (Comoros,Zanzibar,Kenya,Tanzania, andMozambique),Southeast Asia (Indonesia,Malaysia,Brunei andSingapore) and, recently, to the otherArab states of the Persian Gulf.

Hadhrami Arabic is also the main element language that forms a local variety of Arabic in Indonesia. This variety was eventually referred to asIndonesian Arabic, where most of the vocabulary and grammar are absorbed from here.^[2]

The dialect in many towns and villages in theWādī (valley) and the coastal region is characterised by itsج/dʒ/-yodization, changing theClassical Arabic reflex/dʒ/ to the approximantي[j]. That resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects, including the dialects of Basra inIraq,Kuwait,Qatar,Bahrain otherArab Emirates. In educated speech,ج is realised as a voiced palatal plosive[ɟ] or affricate[dʒ] in some lexical items which are marked [+ religious] or [+ educated] (seeق/q/ below).

Theق/q/ reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar[ɡ] in all lexical items throughout the dialect. In some other Arabic dialects,/q/ is realised as a voiceless uvular plosive[q] in certain marked lexemes [+ religious], [+ educational]:/qurʔaːn/ “Qur’an”. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of otherArabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether using the uvular/q/ in certain lexemes and retaining the velar/ɡ/ for others will occur.

• Sounds/t,tˀ/ are phonetically noted as lamino-alveolar stops[t̻,t̻ˤ].
• /d/ is phonetically noted as an apical-alveolar stop[d̺].
• /ɟ/ can be heard as a voiced palatal plosive or an affricate sound/dʒ/.
• In the dialects of Al-Qarn, both/t,tˤ/ and/d/ can be heard as affricated[tʃ,tʃˤ],[dʒ].
• /m/ can be heard as labiodental[ɱ] when preceding/f/.
• /n/ can be heard as a palatal nasal[ɲ] when following/ɟ~dʒ/. When preceding/k,q/, it is then heard as[ŋ,ɴ].^[3]

• There are five diphthongs noted as/aj,aw,uj,uːj,eːw/.

In non-emphatic environments,/aː/ is realised as an open front (slightly raised) unrounded[æ]. Thus,/θaːniː/ "second," which is normally realised with an[ɑː]-like quality in the Gulf dialects, is realised with an[æː].

Distinctionsث,ت/t/,/θ/ andذ,د/d/,/ð/ are made inWādī, butض/dˤ/ andظ/ðˤ/ are both pronouncedظ[ðˤ]. The Coast merges all the pairs into the stopsد,ت andض ([t],[d] and[dˤ]), respectively.

The dialect is characterised by not allowing final consonant clusters to occur in final position. Thus, Classical Arabic/bint/ "girl" is realised as/binit/. In initial positions, there is a difference between theWādī and the coastal varieties. The coast has initial clusters in/bɣaː/ "he wants,"/bsˤal/ "onions" and/briːd/ "mail (n.)," butWādī realises the second and third words as/basˤal/ and/bariːd/, respectively.

When the first person singular comes as an independent subject pronoun, it is marked for gender:/anaː/ for masculine and/aniː/ for feminine. As an object pronoun, it comes as abound morpheme:/-naː/ for masculine and/-niː/ for feminine. The first person subject plural isnaḥnā.

The first person direct object plural is/naħnaː/ rather than the/-naː/ of many dialects. Thus, the cognate of the Classical Arabic/dˤarabanaː/ "he hit us" is/ðˤarabnaħnaː/.

Stem VI,tC1āC2aC3, can beumlauted totC1ēC2aC3, thus changing the pattern vowelā toē. That leads to a semantic change, as in/tʃaːradaw/ "they ran away suddenly" and/tʃeːradaw/ "they shirk, try to escape."

Intensive and frequentative verbs are common in the dialect. Thus/kasar/ "to break" is intensified to/kawsar/, as in/koːsarfil-lʕib/ "he played rough." It can be metathesized to become frequentative, as in/kaswarminiðˤ-ðˤaħkaːt/ "he made a series (lit. breaks) of giggles or laughs."

The syntax has many similarities to otherPeninsular Arabic dialects. However, the dialect contains a number of unique particles used for co-ordination,negation, and other sentence types. Examples in coordination include/kann,laːkan/ "but, nevertheless, though,"/maː/ (Classical Arabic/ammaː/) "as for…," and/walla/ "or."

Like many other dialects, apophonic orablaut passive (as in/kutib/ "it was written") is not very common, and is mainly confined to clichés and proverbs from other dialects, including Classical Arabic.

The particle/qad/ developed semantically in the dialect to/kuð/ or/ɡuð/ "yet, already, almost, nearly" and/ɡad/ or/ɡid/ "maybe, perhaps."

There are a few lexical items that are shared withModern South Arabian languages, which perhaps distinguish this dialect from other neighbouring Peninsular dialects. The effect of Hadhrami emigration toSoutheast Asia (seeArab Indonesians andArab Singaporeans), theIndian subcontinent andEast Africa is clear in the vocabulary especially in certain registers like types of food and dress:/sˤaːruːn/ "sarong." Many loanwords are listed in al-Saqqaf (2006).^[4]

• Varieties of Arabic
• Peninsular Arabic
• Indonesian Arabic

Hadhrami Arabic test ofWikipedia atWikimedia Incubator

• Hadhrami Arabic onwww.grin.com

• Languages of Yemen
• Hadhrami people
• Mashriqi Arabic
• Peninsular Arabic

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 25
• CS1 Indonesian-language sources (id)
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles containing Hadrami Arabic-language text
• Articles containing Arabic-language text
• Pages with plain IPA