Talk:Hejazi Arabic

Is there a way to change the title of this article? The spelling "Hijazi" is much more common and accepted than "Hejazi" when referring to the dialect.

it spells "Hejazi" , belong to the Hejaz area , which is written "Hejaz" in both new and anchient english maps. Ammar 08:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that Hijazi is more commonly used than 'hejazi'. Look at Academic texts, both on language and culture/history. 'Hijazi' is a better fit for the article.

the word "Hijaz" is not wrong too , but "Hejaz" is much more popular in english references. Maps for example Ammar (^Talk - ^{Don't Talk}) 13:24, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

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I am 'Hejazi' and so far I have yet to meet one Hejazi who doesn't use 'tha'.

I'm removing that part

i didnt write that , but i can semi-confirm this , because im hejazi and i rarely use the "tha" alpha , i think it depends on the origine race of each person. Ammar 00:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Since when is J "jeem" and G "qaf" unique to Hijaz? Most of KSA use them!! User: Najdazy 06:32, 29 June 2007

I agree. This article seems to be nonsense. Mrhawley 07:58, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

you right , J 'jeem ج' isn't unique , but Q 'qaf ق' is. they use the G (as in "Goal") replacing the Q Ammar (^Talk - ^{Don't Talk}) 11:32, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

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I came here to find infomration about this dialect of the Arabian peninnsula, but based on what I know of this group of dialects, this page suffers from original research. I read through the page, and I think it would do a much better job at simply stating the facts published about it. I found many of the claims were based on either questionable evidence or no evidence is given. I'll look into it more carefully in the future, but this needs attention from an expert. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.67.144.164 (talk) 02:36, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I have no objection to the tagging, of course. I just wanted to say that 90% of this article was literally written yesterday, and it's still a work in progress, so, please be patient with sources. I know it's not the ideal way of doing things, but unfortunately, I'm able to be much more productive when writing out the article first and coming back to add the citations afterwards. However, I would like to point out that the majority of the points made in the article echo those made by Versteegh in the link provided at the bottom of the page ([1]). Also, it would be great if you could point out specific statements that you feel are incorrect or that conflict with what the published material has to say or with what you already know about the subject, because that would help better direct my efforts. If you would be so kind, that is. Thanks. -- Slacker 02:51, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

You are off to a good start, but I searched for the comparisons you make with other dialects and I could not find about them in that link you pointed to. There is too much heavy emphasis through this page on comparisons with the dialects of Egypt and (but not as much) the Levant region. I don't understand why this is, but you have to understand that the dialects of the Hedjaz belong to a separate cluster from these two other regions. Maybe there are similarities with the dialects of the southern Levant and Upper Egypt, but they shouldn't be overemphasised. The Versteegh link makes this point: "Meccan Arabic has a genitive exponent (hagg), as well as verbal aspectual particles (bi- and 'ammal for the continuous aspect and rayih- for the future), which are not normally used in the Bedouin dialects. The realisation of /q/ in Mecca is /g/ as in the Bedouin dialects. In some respects, the dialect of Mecca seems to be close to the varieties of Arabic found in Upper Egypt and the Sudan." This doesn't correspond to some of the grammatical claims about the supposed numerous similarities with Egyptian and Levant dialects. The page also doesn't make clear which of these similarities are due to recent borrowings and which aren't. If these similarities exist because of foreign residents in the Hedjaz, that's a case of dialect contact. The page is also supposed to be about the dialects of the Hedjaz region not just Mecca. The other link you give states that the Meccan dialect is "substantially different" from the dialects in the rest of the Hedjaz, which might be because of influences/borrowings, but this page says that dialect variation is "limited to minor phonetic differences". There are many other examples through the page which I tagged. One states: "Possessive pronouns for the 2nd person are -ak (masculine) and -ik (feminine). In Standard Arabic, these are -ka and -ki, respectively" I think you mean Standard -aka and -aki, but maybe you mean something else. Another one states: "2nd and 3rd person non-enclitic pronouns end in vowels in a similar manner to that of Egyptian Arabic". Many different Arabic dialects have pronouns that end in a vowel. I don't understand why this phenomenon is connected with Egyptian Arabic again, as if both dialects are special in some way. This page would do a better job by getting rid of all these questionable and contradictory items and concentrate on describing the features of the dialect or group of dialects of the Hedjaz itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.124.193.125 (talk) 20:47, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it looks like the main issues you raise are the following:

(1) You believe I overemphasize the comparisons with Egyptian and Levantine dialects, and that I place Hejazi in the same "cluster" as those two groups.

I didn't mean to place them in the same cluster, and I'll try to reword any statements that give that impression (or you could go ahead and do that yourself). However, I did mean to show that urban Hejazi dialects (particularly Mecca, Jeddah, and Medina) show a lot in common with those dialects just as they show features of the native bedouin dialects. This is not an original claim; I placed a link to a Bruce Ingham article on the dialect of Mecca that says substantially the same thing.

As for comparisons, the purpose is to compare the dialect with the nearest dialects to it. That's why (if I remember correctly) there are just as many comparisons to Nejdi bedouin dialects as there are to Egyptian and Levantine. From the other Arabic-dialect articles here, I surmised that the purpose isn't to teach people how to speak the dialect (there are other sister wikis for that), but to give an accessible idea of the dialect in general, because most people who read these articles are not specialists. Therefore, it makes it easier to understand what the examples from Hejazi are referring to when they are compared to other dialects. Egyptian Arabic is the most widely studied dialect by foreign learners, so that also compelled me to use a lot of examples from it, but again there are many comparisons to beduoin dialects as well.

By the way, it's not an original claim to say that Hejazi is especially close to Egyptian and Sudanese Arabic. Bruce Ingham emphasizes this as well; much more than I have, to be sure. I haven't worked that into the article yet, though.

(2) It's not clear whether similarities with other dialects are due to contact in the past or contact that is more recent.

I'm not sure what you mean by foreign contact here, but I assume you mean recent foreign contact in the Saudi era. The published material I could find does not distinguish between what may be due to very recent contact with foreign expats, and what may have come about earlier, but of course any similarities with other dialects are due to contact in one way or another, that's why people consider Arabic dialects to be in a continuum. In any case, I'll go through the article at some stage and remove features that are not mentioned in them, but I'm not sure I can say much about which of the similarities are due to "borrowing", and if so, when that borrowing may have occurred.

(3) A certain group of Hejazi pronouns are likened specifically to Egyptian ones, but you believe that the similarity holds for other dialects as well.

True many others end in vowels, but the Egyptian ones are basically identical to the Hejazi ones, e.g. huwwa of Egyptian v. huwwe of Levantine, humma of Egyptian v. henne of the Levantine. So while it's true that many dialects end these pronouns with vowels, only the Egyptian ones sound the same as the Hejazi ones (well maybe the Sudanese do as well, but I'm not sure). I suppose I can clarify that part.

(4) -ka and -ki

There is nothing in that statement that's not widely available in print, so don't worry. I used -ka and -ki instead of -aka and -aki because you could also have -uka and -ika depending on the i'rab of the word that the pronoun is attached to, so the actual pronouns are -ka and -ki not -aka and -aki. This is worth mentioning because it's one of the main differences between bedouin and sedentary dialects across the Arab world.

(5) The relationship of the dialect of Mecca to those of other big cities (Jeddah and Medina especially)

Ingham was talking about the speech of the Hejaz in general (urban, beduoin, and rural); he wasn't comparing Mecca to Jeddah and Medina. I already emphasized in the article that urban Hejazi is distinct from bedouin Hejazi. I compared the Foreign Service Institute's guide to "Urban Hejazi Dialect" (which is based on the speech of Jeddah) to what Ingham has to say about Meccan speech, and I couldn't really find any meaningful differences (bear in mind that Jeddah is 30 minutes away from Mecca by car, so that's expected). I believe that the differences between the three main cities are very minor with respect to the features I outlined in the article. I thought that I'd come across a source that discussed that, but I could be wrong. If I can't find any sources on that issue, I'll just remove that statement.

Thanks again. -- Slacker 21:53, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfotunately, I haven't been able to return and fix or expand this article. So, for the time being, I've added another source and removed or modified some of the more contentious material. I still think most of what's in the article is easily confirmed by the three sources, but feel free to delete whatever you feel is unsupported. I'll try to come back to the article eventually, and in the meantime I'll add whatever additional reference works I can find. -- Slacker (talk) 04:03, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

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Dialect group

This is more of an academic question than an editorial one.

Why is Hejazi Arabic grouped within the Peninsular dialect group, when it is clearly very close to the Nile/Egyptic group and especially Sudanese, and shares much more with them than with Central-Eastern Peninsular, Southern Peninsular, or even bedouin Hejazi? --High surv (talk) 18:06, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Good question. Peninsular Arabic isn’t a very cohesive group, and there aren’t really any features that define Peninsular Arabic to the exclusion of other dialects. Urban Hijazi might be better just considered its own dialect. Coolcat108 (talk) 07:12, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@Coolcat108: I do not agree with that assessment. All Peninsular Arabic dialects are either of bedouin/central characteristics (like Najdi, Khaleeji, and bedouin Hijazi), which have very clear shared features, or of the South-Arabian-influenced group (Yemeni, South Saudi), or a mix of the two groups (Bahrani, Omani). It's a pretty cohesive group (or two groups). Urban Hijazi Arabic is the odd one out.

Peninsular Arabic is very diverse. For example there is not much that binds the Bahrani/Sedentary Omani and the Hijazi Bedouin dialects in terms of shared innovations. They are very different. Within Yemen there are dozens of different dialects, some of which differ drastically. So it’s probably of little value to talk about Peninsular Arabic as a dialect area Coolcat108 (talk) 03:47, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

History of Hejazi Arabic

Is the history section on this dialect of Arabic supposed to be that of the urban Hejazi dialect, only not taking into account the other Hejazi dialects? Jun221 (talk) 22:26, 5 March 2021 (UTC)