# Khaliji dialects



## Abu Fahm

Hi, I have been watching different khaliiji soap operas and I tried to figure out how they differ from each other.

What I picked up is the following:

Kuwaities are the only ones who use aku/maku 

I have heard Bahrainies, Qataris and Imaraties use ma mish as opposed to Kuwaity maku

I gather that the only ones who use word ramas to talk are Imaratis.

I think that Kuwaity, Qatari and Bahrainy are somehow closer to eachother than to Imarati.

Please give me some of your views


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## SofiaB

Abu Fahm said:


> Kuwaities are the only ones who use aku/maku
> also Iraqis



Hee is a good study of Qatari:
http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/839-0606/839-MUSTAFAWI-0-0.PDF
see لكسكسة والكشكشة Kaskasa/kashkasha:http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1285940&highlight=
الكسكسة ، الكشكشة kaskasa, kashkasha


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## Mahaodeh

Abu Fahm said:


> I think that Kuwaity, Qatari and Bahrainy are somehow closer to eachother than to Imarati.
> 
> Please give me some of your views



I don't see it like that; I think that Imaarati, Bahraini and Qatari are more or like the same (with some minor differences of course) while Kuwaiti stands out as considerably different and is much closer to Iraqi than Khaliji.

Actually, I would classify Kuwaiti as Mesopotamian Arabic and the reset as Khaliji Arabic.

I don't know where the dialect of Al Ihsaa' in Saudi Arabia falls though.


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## WadiH

Abu Fahm said:


> Hi, I have been watching different khaliiji soap operas and I tried to figure out how they differ from each other.
> 
> What I picked up is the following:
> 
> Kuwaities are the only ones who use aku/maku


 
Actually, Qataris use this too.



> I gather that the only ones who use word ramas to talk are Imaratis.


 
Basically, yes.



> I think that Kuwaity, Qatari and Bahrainy are somehow closer to eachother than to Imarati.
> 
> Please give me some of your views


 
There are two types of Khaliji dialect: the "7adhari" (حضري) and the Ba7raani (بحراني). The Ba7rani type is spoken by the old Shi'a communities of Bahrain, Al-Qatif and (possibly) Al-Hasa. Everyone else speaks some form of 7adhari Khaliji dialect (then of course, there are the bedouins, but let's focus on the non-bedouins here).

While you can find certain words that appear in some parts of the Khaliij but not others (like "maaku" and "rams"), the difference between all these dialects is mainly a matter of prosody and some slight phonetic differences (the sort of differences that are hard to describe in words). Grammatically, these dialects are largely the same.

I think Qatari and "Sunni" Bahraini are very close. 
Hasaawi dialects sound similar to those as well. Kuwaiti is close but with stronger Najdi and Iraqi influences. Emaratis are a special case: the town-dwellers who come from disparate origins sound a lot like Qataris, whereas the native tribes have a stronger bedouin influence.

Those are my impressions at least. I'm from Riyadh, yet even I can't tell Qataris, Emaratis and Bahrainis apart most of the time. The only two dialects that I can distinguish somewhat easily are Ba7raani, followed by Kuwaiti.

And no, I don't think Kuwait is a "Mesopotamian" dialect. Perhaps some dialects of southern Iraq can be termed Khaliji, but Kuwaitis traditionally spoke an Arabian type of dialect. Even their vernacular poetry is nabati, not Iraqi. About half of Kuwait's population are recently-settled bedouins from central and eastern Arabia and that has pulled Kuwaiti speech even further away from Iraqi.


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## Mahaodeh

Wadi Hanifa said:


> And no, I don't think Kuwait is a "Mesopotamian" dialect. Perhaps some dialects of southern Iraq can be termed Khaliji, but Kuwaitis traditionally spoke an Arabian type of dialect. Even their vernacular poetry is nabati, not Iraqi. About half of Kuwait's population are recently-settled bedouins from central and eastern Arabia and that has pulled Kuwaiti speech even further away from Iraqi.



But aren't the Iraqi dialects also an Arabian type of dialect?

-------

Regarding the Bedouin dialects, I'm only familiar with the dialects spoken in Eastern Iraq, Syria and Jordan, which are somewhere between Najdi and Levantine - can't say which dialect they are closer to but I feel they're closer to Najdi; are they (the bedouin dialects you are specifying here) the same or are they  closer to the Emaraati dialect?


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## Noon9

Mahaodeh said:


> I don't see it like that; I think that Imaarati, Bahraini and Qatari are more or like the same (with some minor differences of course)


 
Not really!


Abu fahm is right Kuwaiti,Bahraini and Qatari are much more closer to each other. Emirati is different.


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## WadiH

Mahaodeh said:


> But aren't the Iraqi dialects also an Arabian type of dialect?
> 
> -------


 

Ok, sure, I guess it depends on how you define your terms. Certainly I think most Iraqi dialects belong to the same large family as Khaliji, Najdi and bedouin dialects generally, but I think Iraqi has evolved on its own (and incorporated older Iraqi features) enough to be considered a seperate branch within that family. Now, the question is whether Kuwaiti is closer to say, Baghdad or Najd or Qatar? I would consider it closer to Najd and Qatar, but I suppose one can argue that it's even closer to some southern Iraqi dialects. Unfortunately, my exposure to Iraqi dialects other than Baghdadi is very limited.​ 
Things that set Kuwaiti apart from, say, Baghdadi, in my view are:​ 
(1) They don't use the "da-" particle
(2) They use more consonontal clusters (e.g. thay say gaLb instead of gaLub)
(3) They address males with "-ik" instead of "-ak"
(4) They use "b-" or "ab-" for the future (at least traditionally. I know that, as in Saudi Arabia, the "ra7" particle is now frequently heard there)
(5) They don't employ "taltalah" (they say "yamshi" not "yimshi" for example. I may be mistaken, but don't Iraqis say "yimshi?")
(6) General diction was traditionally very Najdi (or Khaliji), especially for basic words like أبي instead of أريد and كذي instead of هيكي, whereas the Iraqi borrowings were for objects and things.​ 


> Regarding the Bedouin dialects, I'm only familiar with the dialects spoken in Eastern Iraq, Syria and Jordan, which are somewhere between Najdi and Levantine - can't say which dialect they are closer to but I feel they're closer to Najdi; are they (the bedouin dialects you are specifying here) the same or are they closer to the Emaraati dialect?​


 

Eastern Iraq? Are you sure you don't mean "Western?" There are two types of bedouin dialects in the area between Iraq and Syria (including Jordan and southern Palestine): there is the older layer (which you can distinguish by the affrication of k>ch and g>dj) and the more recent "Najdi" layer (brought by 'Anizza, Shammar, Al-Dhafeer, etc. and distinguished by k > ts and g >dz). The latter type is not close to Najdi; it *is* Najdi, but I don't know how much it has been preserved in modern times.​ 

If you're asking about the bedouins of Kuwait, the dialects they brought with them were pure bedouin Najdi (though I imagine they have lost or diluted such dialects since then, or incorporated elements of the older Kuwaiti 7adhari dialect).​


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## WadiH

By the way, one way I can distinguish Kuwaiti from Bahraini (especially) and Qatari (to a lesser extent) is that the _aleph_ does not sound as "rounded" in Kuwaiti.

Bahrainis also have a unique way of pronouncing _dal_, which is an easy shibboleth to recognize. Unfortunately, I don't know the technical term for it.


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## Ihsiin

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I may be mistaken, but don't Iraqis say "yimishi?"



Yimshi.


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## WadiH

Ihsiin said:


> Yimshi.


 
Thanks.  I don't know why I kept inserting an "i" after the "m."  Certainly not what I was going for!


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## Mahaodeh

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Now, the question is whether Kuwaiti is closer to say, Baghdad or Najd or Qatar?​



This question is hard to answer for me, it would have been easier if you asked whether it's closer to Baghdadi or Emaraati; but then I personally feel that it's somewhere in the middle, definitly closer to Basrawi but not Baghdadi.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> (3) They address males with "-ik" instead of "-ak"​



I suppose you are right about the rest, but I could have sworn I heard Kuwaitis say -ak, but that was a long time ago, so maybe I've forgotten.




Wadi Hanifa said:


> Eastern Iraq? Are you sure you don't mean "Western?"​



Sorry, my mistake, yes, I meant western.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> There are two types of bedouin dialects in the area between Iraq and Syria (including Jordan and southern Palestine): there is the older layer (which you can distinguish by the affrication of k>ch and g>dj) and the more recent "Najdi" layer (brought by 'Anizza, Shammar, Al-Dhafeer, etc. and distinguished by k > ts and g >dz). The latter type is not close to Najdi; it *is* Najdi, but I don't know how much it has been preserved in modern times.[/LEFT]
> 
> OK I don't recall hearing the second type. I checked with my parents and they don't recall hearing it either (I didn't get what the dz sounds like though, do you mean the jiim as it's pronounced in Syria?
> 
> Anyway, from what you say I assume the difference from the Nadji Bedouin is significant, hence you actually have a totally different dialect for Bedouins in the Khaliij area.
> 
> Somehow I imagined that bedouin dialects are closer to each other than the 7aDarai ones because they have less foreign influence - I suppose I underestimated the effect of time and space and overestimated their seclusion.
> 
> -------------
> 
> Indeed, in Iraq it's yimshi not yamshi, except for the bediouns.


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## WadiH

Mahaodeh said:


> I suppose you are right about the rest, but I could have sworn I heard Kuwaitis say -ak, but that was a long time ago, so maybe I've forgotten.


 
I'm quite positive it's "-ik."




> OK I don't recall hearing the second type. I checked with my parents and they don't recall hearing it either (I didn't get what the dz sounds like though, do you mean the jiim as it's pronounced in Syria?


 
No, it's not the Syrian jiim. It's a realization of "qaf" as "dz" via [g]. When I say "dz," I mean an English "d" stuck to an English "z." For example: صدق becomes صدْز. I know it sounds odd to you because it's a very local Najdi feature (it's in fact one of few features that I can call purely Najdi).



> Anyway, from what you say I assume the difference from the Nadji Bedouin is significant, hence you actually have a totally different dialect for Bedouins in the Khaliij area.
> 
> Somehow I imagined that bedouin dialects are closer to each other than the 7aDarai ones because they have less foreign influence - I suppose I underestimated the effect of time and space and overestimated their seclusion.


 
I think I haven't communicated my ideas very well. I did not intend to impart any of the above. In fact, my view is almost the opposite. Bedouin dialects inside Arabia are indeed very similar (which is why they share the same poetic idiom from Oman to Mecca and from Maarib to Homs). But they can be classified into different groups. In eastern Arabia, you can draw a horizontal line near the Saudi-Qatari border. North of that line, the bedouins all speak in a Najdi bedouin dialect. South of that line, you get a slightly different type, where you have j=y and other phonetic features, and most of those tribes traditionally lived around the Empty Quarter in what is now Oman, UAE, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.


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## Abu Fahm

Thanks for such a good discussion. So my ears didnt betray me and endeed Emarati does sound different. It is the Emarati that I struggle with. The others seem to be reasonably clear to understand. I have been watching al Hub al Kabiir (Kuwaity), LaHDha D3af (Bahrainy), HaDh ya naSiib (Emarati) and some QaTari show I dont remember. Apart from the use of aku/maku in Kuwaity, I couldnt destinguish any of those shows other than HaDh ya naSiib setting of which is beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps because of the historical setting, the type of language used in that show is more archaic and much more difficult than modern type of speach.


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## Noon9

I also want to add that we have different dialects here in the UAE. For example in the western region of Abu Dhabi the (ko) suffix replaces the standard (kom) for example: بيتوتكو instead of بيوتكم and so on.


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## behbahan

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Ok, sure, I guess it depends on how you define your terms. Certainly I think most Iraqi dialects belong to the same large family as Khaliji, Najdi and bedouin dialects generally, but I think Iraqi has evolved on its own (and incorporated older Iraqi features) enough to be considered a seperate branch within that family. Now, the question is whether Kuwaiti is closer to say, Baghdad or Najd or Qatar? I would consider it closer to Najd and Qatar, but I suppose one can argue that it's even closer to some southern Iraqi dialects. Unfortunately, my exposure to Iraqi dialects other than Baghdadi is very limited.​
> Things that set Kuwaiti apart from, say, Baghdadi, in my view are:​
> (1) They don't use the "da-" particle
> (2) They use more consonontal clusters (e.g. thay say gaLb instead of gaLub)
> (3) They address males with "-ik" instead of "-ak"
> (4) They use "b-" or "ab-" for the future (at least traditionally. I know that, as in Saudi Arabia, the "ra7" particle is now frequently heard there)
> (5) They don't employ "taltalah" (they say "yamshi" not "yimshi" for example. I may be mistaken, but don't Iraqis say "yimshi?")
> (6) General diction was traditionally very Najdi (or Khaliji), especially for basic words like أبي instead of أريد and كذي instead of هيكي, whereas the Iraqi borrowings were for objects and things.​
> 
> 
> 
> Eastern Iraq? Are you sure you don't mean "Western?" There are two types of bedouin dialects in the area between Iraq and Syria (including Jordan and southern Palestine): there is the older layer (which you can distinguish by the affrication of k>ch and g>dj) and the more recent "Najdi" layer (brought by 'Anizza, Shammar, Al-Dhafeer, etc. and distinguished by k > ts and g >dz). The latter type is not close to Najdi; it *is* Najdi, but I don't know how much it has been preserved in modern times.​
> 
> If you're asking about the bedouins of Kuwait, the dialects they brought with them were pure bedouin Najdi (though I imagine they have lost or diluted such dialects since then, or incorporated elements of the older Kuwaiti 7adhari dialect).​


I've heard some Basrawis saying ''shlon-ik'' rather than ''shlon-ak''.

The Bedouins of Kuwait are around 40%-50% of the citizen population. Most of them use the Hathari dialect, although some still speak in a Bedouin way (mostly the *older* generation of Bedouin). The ones who've lived in Kuwait since the 1950's and 60's are hard to distinguish from the Hathar nowadays.


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## Schem

I'm surprised no one mentioned Emarati's use of _shu _instead of _sheno _and _wusho _which otherwise predominate in Najd and the Gulf. This is what strikes me as being Emarati's trademark feature. I believe it's also the only dialect to use that pronoun outside of the Levant, although the two are not pronounced exactly the same since Emarati shu seems to have developed more recently out of Najdi and Bedouin wusho. Like others mentioned here, this along with other phonetic/intonational features make Emarati to me among the easier Khaleeji dialects to distinguish.

I can also somewhat easily distinguish between Kuwaiti and Sunni Bahraini/Qatari and, of course, between Bahrani and all the rest.

==

Sidenote to Abu Fahm on Khaleeji soap operas: keep in mind that most Khaleeji soap operas include a variety of actors coming mostly from Kuwait and Bahrain with a minority of actors coming from other GCC states and a smaller minority coming from non-GCC states which, for dialects that aren't meant to sound Kuwaiti/Bahraini, often results in broken accents. Most soap operas are also based in Kuwait so that also factors into the delivery and pronunciation of the actors.


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