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Gulf Arabic or Khaleeji (خليجي local pronunciation: or اللهجة الخليجية , local pronunciation: ) is a variety of Arabic spoken in Eastern Arabia around the of the Persian Gulf in Kuwaiti Arabic, Bahrani Arabic, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, southern Iraq, Arabic, Gulf Spoken – A Language of Iraq Ethnologue eastern Saudi Arabia, northern Oman, and by some Iranian Arabs. Languages of Iran Ethnologue
Gulf Arabic can be defined as a set of closely related and more-or-less mutually intelligible varieties that form a dialect continuum, with the level of mutual intelligibility between any two varieties largely depending on the distance between them. Similar to other varieties, Gulf Arabic is not completely mutually intelligible with varieties spoken outside the Gulf. The specific dialects differ in vocabulary, grammar and accent. There are considerable differences between, for instance, Kuwaiti Arabic and the dialects of Qatar and the UAE, especially in pronunciation, that may hinder mutual intelligibility. The Gulf has two major dialect types that differ phonologically and morphologically, typically referred to as badawī 'Bedouin' and ḥadarī 'sedentarism', which in simpler terms mean "desert dweller" and "city dweller". The differences mark important cultural differences between those who historically practiced pastoralism and those who were sedentary.
Gulf varieties' closest related relatives are other dialects native to the Arabian Peninsula, i.e. Najdi Arabic, Mesopotamian Arabic and Bahrani Arabic. Although spoken over much of Saudi Arabia's area, Gulf Arabic is not the native tongue of most Saudis, as the majority of them do not live in Eastern Arabia. There are some 200,000 Gulf Arabic speakers in the country, out of a population of over 30 million, mostly in the aforementioned Eastern Province. Languages of Saudi Arabia Ethnologue
| + Gulf Arabic consonant phonemes ! colspan="2" rowspan="2" | ! rowspan="2" Labial consonant ! rowspan="2" | Dental ! colspan="2" | Denti-alveolar ! rowspan="2" | Palatal ! colspan="2" | Dorsal consonant ! rowspan="2" | Pharyn- geal ! rowspan="2" | Glottal |
and are often palatalized when occurring before front vowels unless the following consonant is emphatic. The actual realization is in free variation, and can be or, more commonly, . Speakers who exhibit variation between and do so in words derived from historical (e.g. مقابل 'opposite'); is a contemporary reflex of historical and so there are also sets of words where and appear in free variation (e.g. (e.g. جار 'neighbor').
Voiced stops tend to devoice in utterance-final position, especially as the final element in clusters, e.g. كلب ('dog') .
A notable aspect of Gulf Arabic is the different realization of a number of phonemes inherited from Classical Arabic. These differences are the result, in part, of natural linguistic changes over time. After these changes occurred, the original sounds (or close approximations to them) were reintroduced as a result of contact with other dialects, as well as through influence of Modern Standard Arabic as a language of media, government, and religion. For many of these sounds, speakers exhibit free variation between the MSA form and the colloquial form. The following table provides a rough outline of these differences:
| Changes are optional, although jim (ج) never changes to in recent loanwords from MSA. |
| Many Literary Arabic loanwords preserve the sound, but optionally use . By Persian influence, extremely rarely the qaf (ق) changes to ghayn (غ) . |
| Ghayn occasionally changes to or by Persian influence. |
| This change is optional, but encountered with more often when the kaf (ك) is used to denote the 2nd person feminine singular suffixed/object pronoun. |
| Ẓāʼ (ظ) and Ḍad (ض) are not distinguished by pronunciation, as the Gulf dialects lack the emphatic . However, they retain their orthographic distinction. |
| +Gulf Arabic Vowel Phonemes ! rowspan="2" | ! colspan="2" | Front vowel ! colspan="2" | Back vowel |
Similarly, the normal realization of short is except in final position, where it is ; when adjacent to emphatic, uvular, or bilabial consonants, is centralized to .
When between two emphatic, uvular, or bilabial consonants, is fully backed to .
The normal realization of short is a front ; when adjacent to dorsal and pharyngeal consonants, the normal realization is a back ; when adjacent to emphatic consonants (and, for some speakers, bilabial consonants), the realization is a back and rounded :
When both a dorsal/pharyngeal consonant and emphatic consonant are adjacent to a vowel, the realization is .
For , the pattern is largely the same except that, when adjacent to dorsal/pharyngeal consonants, the realization is .
Word-finally, long is shortened and subjected to the same phonological rules as short . This shortening can lead to alternations based on morphological conditioning, e.g. ('lunch') vs. ('your lunch').
is normally realized as . Similarly, is realized except when unstressed, in which case it is reduced to if it is not deleted altogether (e.g. → or 'houses').
The short vowel phoneme occurs rarely as a variant of the diphthong in a handful of words (e.g. لو 'if').
Some pronouns, however, have other (less frequent, resp. local) forms:
Subject – (Verb) – (Direct Object) – (Indirect Object) – (Adverbials)
The following sentence indicates the normal word order of declarative statements:
When forming interrogative statements, any of these elements can be replaced by interrogative words. identifies five such words in Gulf Arabic:
Unless it is desired to stress one of these elements, this order of elements is preserved in the formation of interrogative questions.
When placing emphasis on the questioned element, word order can change. Specifically, the element of a clause can be questioned by moving it, generally to initial position. With the subject (which is normally initial), it is moved to final position:
The moved element receives strong stress; in the case of a question word, the intonation is a high fall. When the point is to seek clarification, the element questioned has a high rising intonation.
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