# linguistic composition of Saudi Arabia and Yemen



## Ali.h

Are there any minority ethnic groups in either Saudi Arabia or Yemen that speak a different language besides Arabic?


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## L.2

In Saudi Arabia some tribes speak old Himyarite or Arabic mixed with Himyarite, one of old semitic languages. these people are mostly living in top of mountains or in a far desert place so their language was not influenced by Arabic.


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## WadiH

In the region straddling Yemen and Oman, the Mahra tribes speak a Semitic language called Mahri that is not Arabic.  There are also, in Oman, languages (or perhaps dialects) related to Mahri such as SHheri شحري, Jibbali جبالي, and Harsusi حرسوسي (in an area called جدّة الحراسيس).   These dialects/languages are collectively called Modern South Arabian, and they are, as far as I am aware, unwritten.  In the island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea (politically part of Yemen), Modern South Arabian is also spoken.  Contrary to popular belief, Modern South Arabian is not the same as the Himyarite language, nor is it descendant from it.  Of course, if you ask many Mahris, they will insist that their language is simply a dialect of Arabic.



L.2 said:


> In Saudi Arabia some tribes speak old Himyarite or Arabic mixed with Himyarite, one of old semitic languages. these people are mostly living in top of mountains or in a far desert place so their language was not influenced by Arabic.



I've never heard of such communities in Saudi Arabia, except perhaps some nomadic Mahra who live on the southern edges of the Rub' Al-Khali and may at times cross into Saudi territory.


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## L.2

I can not believe a Saudi has never heard at least of فيفا?
Fayfa is a tribe that is living in جبال فيفا in South of KSA, there's also خولان and بنى مالك and all are living on tops of mountains. It is a well-known fact that they speak Himyarite I have never met someone claims something else, I have watched a documentary film on Saudi TV that says it was the old Himyarite besides all of them actually حميرية قحطانية tribes and are descendants of Humair bin Sabba' but that does not mean they are not Arabs (according to some historians) they are Arabs although their language is different. Himyarite is one of south western Arabic dialects while Arabic today 'Fusha' is one of northern Arabic dialects but the north and south Arabic greatly differ than each other and are considered separated languages and because of spread of Islam the northern Arabic 'Fusha' has become the most widely known while others died or almost died out. Jazan poeple and those people in the border differ than fayfa and other people on the tops of mountians, while the latter speak a totally different language that an Arab can not understand, Jazan people speak Arabic but kept some of Himyarite dialect, one of the most famous aspects of Jazan dialect is الطمطمائية that is replacing ال التعريف with ام so instead of saying البيت they say امبيت . Prophet Muhammad imitated their language, in a hadith in مسند الامام أحمد

حدثنا عبد الله حدثني ابي حدثنا عبد الرزاق انبانا معمر عن الزهري عن صفوان بن عبد الله عن ام الدرداء عن كعب بن ابي عاصم الاشعري وكان من اصحاب السقيفة قال‏:‏ 
سمعت رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم يقول‏:‏ ليس من امبر امصيام في امسفر​‏
As for Mahri, historians and linguists' views differ and it's really better for us to acquaint the average learner with all linguists views rather than showing partiality towards one side so Mahri origin is still not known or not clear however whatever was its origin, an Arabic speaker can not understand Mahras nor guess what they are saying it's a different language has its own grammar, vocabulary and writing system.​


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## WadiH

L.2 said:


> I can not believe a Saudi has never heard at least of فيفا?
> Fayfa is a tribe that is living in جبال فيفا in South of KSA, there's also خولان and بنى مالك and all are living on tops of mountains.



Yes, I have heard of all of these.



> It is a well-known fact that they speak Himyarite I have never met someone claims something else,



And I've never heard that they spoke Himyarite.  Are you sure it's not just a very difficult dialect of Arabic?  If you have a source or a recording regarding these dialects I would be very interested.



> I have watched a documentary film on Saudi TV that says it was the old Himyarite



Saudi TV is not a good source for linguistic information, I'm sorry to say.



> besides all of them actually حميرية قحطانية tribes and are descendants of Humair bin Sabba'



You need to realize that these genealogies are mostly made up.  The real Himyar was not descendant from the real Qahtan.  Qahtan was an Arabic-speaking tribe, and Himyar were a non-Arabic-speaking people.



> Himyarite is one of south western Arabic dialects while Arabic today 'Fusha' is one of northern Arabic dialects but the north and south Arabic greatly differ than each other and are considered separated languages and because of spread of Islam the northern Arabic 'Fusha' has become the most widely known while others died or almost died out.



This is a common misconception.  The South Arabian languages spoken by the Himyarites, Sabeans, etc. were not simply dialects of Arabic -- they were completely separate languages, just like Hebrew or Aramaic.  The Arabic dialects that you hear in Yemen and southwestern Saudi Arabia today are not descendant from these languages -- they are descendant from the same Arabic that your dialect and mine came from (though there may be some influences from those languages, especially in vocabulary).



> Jazan poeple and those people in the border differ than fayfa and other people on the tops of mountians, while the latter speak a totally different language that an Arab can not understand, Jazan people speak Arabic but kept some of Himyarite dialect, one of the most famous aspects of Jazan dialect is الطمطمائية that is replacing ال التعريف with ام so instead of saying البيت they say امبيت . Prophet Muhammad imitated their language, in a hadith in مسند الامام أحمد
> 
> حدثنا عبد الله حدثني ابي حدثنا عبد الرزاق انبانا معمر عن الزهري عن صفوان بن عبد الله عن ام الدرداء عن كعب بن ابي عاصم الاشعري وكان من اصحاب السقيفة قال‏:‏
> سمعت رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم يقول‏:‏ ليس من امبر امصيام في امسفر​‏​




Can someone familiar with Old South Arabian shed some light on this?  I've never found a reference to this feature existing in Old South Arabian.  I've always assumed this was an old Arabic dialectal feature, but I could be wrong.



> As for Mahri, historians and linguists' views differ and it's really better for us to acquaint the average learner with all linguists views rather than showing partiality towards one side so Mahri origin is still not known or not clear however whatever was its origin, an Arabic speaker can not understand Mahras nor guess what they are saying it's a different language has its own grammar, vocabulary and writing system.



Do linguists differ though?  I think Mahri is fairly well-understood.  All linguists agree that Mahri is a separate language.  It is closely-related to the other South Arabian languages like Himyarite but is not descendant from them.  What else is there to say?


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## dkarjala

Concerning Sabaean vs. MeHrian:

Old South Arabian languages (Sabaean, Minaean, Qatabanian and HaDramitic) have no isoglosses with the Modern South Arabian languages, i.e., they share no common features except those that all Semitic languages share. In fact, in 1994, Norbert Nebes published a paper showing that Old South Arabian has the indicative and subjunctive endings on the imperfects (the مضارع مرفوع/منصوب) which separates them cleanly from the Ethiopian and MeHrian dialects of Semitic. In other words, the MSA languages are "Southern" in their features and the OSA languages are "Central" in their features.

Concerning the definite article _'am-_:

The _Hadiith _concerning the definite article in _'am_- is referring to Yemeni dialects of Arabic. In the 20th century (not sure about nowadays) it was still used in parts of Northern Yemen and even here and there in the Tihaama. But it was always part of a North Arabian/Pre-FusHA dialect.

If anyone wants further reading on this, let me know and I can give you a bibliography!


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## WadiH

dkarjala said:


> Concerning the definite article _'am-_:
> 
> The _Hadiith _concerning the definite article in _'am_- is referring to Yemeni dialects of Arabic. In the 20th century (not sure about nowadays) it was still used in parts of Northern Yemen and even here and there in the Tihaama. But it was always part of a North Arabian/Pre-FusHA dialect.



The am- article is still widely used in Yemen.  It is also frequently used in the Saudi parts of the Tihama, and will occasionally appear in people's speech in the Sarawat (i.e the mountains) as well.  I'm surprised you say it only appears "here and there in the Tihaama."  In Saudi Arabia, it's commonly-considered to be a specifically Tihaami feature, and it's the Tihaamis who use it more than anyone else.  I have a CD by a Yemeni singer in my car and all the articles in the songs are "am-."  One of the verses says تقول يا ابن أم تهايم حان غرس أم شجر (with تهايم of course being plural of تهامة).

It appears sporadically in the speech of some southern bedouin tribes like the Al Murra (who now live in Eastern Arabia but retain their old dialect), though perhaps this is no longer the case.

So this feature is far from extinct, although it's probably avoided when speaking to people from other regions.


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## dkarjala

Wadi Hanifa said:


> The am- article is still widely used in Yemen.  It is also used in the Saudi parts of the Tihama, and will occasionally appear in people's speech in the Sarawat (i.e the mountains) as well.  It even appears sporadically among some southern bedouin tribes like the Al Murra (who now live in Eastern Arabia but retain their old dialect), though perhaps this is no longer the case.  So this feature is far from extinct, although it's probably avoided when speaking to people from other regions.



Cool!


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## Mahaodeh

dkarjala said:


> In fact, in 1994, Norbert Nebes published a paper showing that Old South Arabian has the indicative and subjunctive endings on the imperfects (the مضارع مرفوع/منصوب) which separates them cleanly from the Ethiopian and MeHrian dialects of Semitic. In other words, the MSA languages are "Southern" in their features and the OSA languages are "Central" in their features.



I don't speak any south Arabian language, nor or old so I'm in no way trying to object, I'm merely trying to understand - hopefully learn something. However, my question is about the indicative and subjunctive endings - are these the ONLY features that separate the south and central languages? I would have imagined it was much more than that!

Another question that seems to pose itself; if these languages that are currently spoken in Yemen and parts of KSA did not descend from OSA nor from Arabic, where did they come from then?


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## WadiH

Mahaodeh said:


> Another question that seems to pose itself; if these languages that are currently spoken in Yemen and parts of KSA did not descend from OSA nor from Arabic, where did they come from then?



Yemen and Oman.  There are no MSA languages in Saudi Arabia.


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## dkarjala

Mahaodeh said:


> I don't speak any south Arabian language, nor or old so I'm in no way trying to object, I'm merely trying to understand - hopefully learn something. However, my question is about the indicative and subjunctive endings - are these the ONLY features that separate the south and central languages? I would have imagined it was much more than that!



Well these distinctions are not always perfect but one thing that distinguishes "Southern" languages from "Western/Central" languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc.) is the way of forming the present tense -- it is a very important and drastic difference. In Akkadian (East Semitic) and Ethiopian (South Semitic) the present/imperfect is expressed by doubling the middle root letter _yafa''al _instead of putting a _Damma_, for example, at the end of the jussive _yaf'alu. _Here look at the three groups this way:

East Semitic (Akkadian, Eblaite):
Past: _yaf'al_
Present: _yafa''al
_Subjunctive: _N/A_

West Southern Semitic (Ethiopian, Modern South Arabian):
Past: _fa'ala
_Present: _yafa''al
_Subjunctive: _yaf'al_

West Central Semitic:
Past: _fa'ala_
Present: _yaf'al(u)
_Subjunctive: _yaf'ala_

So you see the big difference is the present tense in Southern languages looks a bit like form II _yufa''il_ in Arabic. This is a drastic difference in grammar! As you can tell from Akkadian, it is also probably the old way of doing things (note that the Arabic _majzuum_ is used for the _maaDii _in Akkadian!). So the present tense in Southern languages has 3 syllables in the base rather than two...hard to ignore. 

An the MSA languages have just this system. The OSA languages, on the other hand, seem to have the system that Arabic and Proto-Hebrew had. Verbal forms like this are not easily 'borrowed' from one language to another and are a good sign of a direct relationship.

Other characteristics add to this, of course. For example, Jibbali has a sound plural in _-t_ for all genders and mostly broken plurals otherwise. This is quite a difference in the noun system as well. A quick glance a pronouns would also show some similarities to Ethiopian Semitic vs. Central Semitic.



> Another question that seems to pose itself; if these languages that are currently spoken in Yemen and parts of KSA did not descend from OSA nor from Arabic, where did they come from then?


Well, where did any Semitic languages come from? Most likely, the OSA people had migrated from Syria/North and the MSA people migrated from Ethiopia/West at some time in the past. It is interesting to note that Akkadian and Ethiopic, which are geographically at the 'edges' of Semitic, both have the same present/imperfect.


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## hiba

There's also a dialect of Arabic used by Arab Jews in Yemen, Judeo-Arabic.


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## L.2

Wadi Hanifa said:


> You need to realize that these genealogies are mostly made up. The real Himyar was not descendant from the real Qahtan. Qahtan was an Arabic-speaking tribe, and Himyar were a non-Arabic-speaking people.


 
Well, Why do you think it's made up? I am not into tribal genealogy but what everyone knows is that Arabs are pure Arabs who actually descending from Qahtan and Arabized Arabs who are descending from Ishmael. The first ones don't necessarily speak Arabic as we know there were ancient Arab nations who did not speak Arabic that we speak today. Arabs were speaking different languages in the north or south of Arab peninsula. There is the north group of Arabic or Adanite and the South group of Arabic Sabaean or Himyarite so what's wrong of Himyris being descendant of Qahtan?
I'll quote from "The American Cyclopaedia", by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana.
[The Himyaritcs are mentioned in classical literature under the name of Homerites. They traced their origin to Himyar, grandson of Saba and descendant of Joktan or Kahtan, one of the mythical ancestors of the Arabs].
So I think having speaking another language does not, and should not mean they are not Arabs.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> This is a common misconception. The South Arabian languages spoken by the Himyarites, Sabeans, etc. were not simply dialects of Arabic -- they were completely separate languages, just like Hebrew or Aramaic. The Arabic dialects that you hear in Yemen and southwestern Saudi Arabia today are not descendant from these languages -- they are descendant from the same Arabic that your dialect and mine came from (though there may be some influences from those languages, especially in vocabulary).


 
I don't say it's a dialect, I said some call it a dialect even though it's a different language than Arabic because they all languages of Arabs. Jawad Ali says in his book المفصل في تاريخ العرب قبل الإسلام chapter 1

لقد كان للعرب قبل الإسلام لغات، مثل المعينية والسبئية و الحمرية والصفوية والثمودية واللحيانية وأمثالها، اختلفت عن عربية القرآن الكريم اختلاقاً كبيرا، حتى إن أحدنا إذا قرأ نصاً مدوناً بلغة من تلك اللغات عجز عن فهمه، وظن إذا لم يكن له علم بلغات العرب الجاهليين أنه لغة من لغات البرابرة أو الأعاجم، فإذا سيكون موقفنا من أصحاب هذه اللغات، أنعدهم عرباً والجواب إن هؤلاء، وإن اختلفت لغتهم عن لغتنا وباينت ألسنتهم ألسنتا فإنهم عرب لحماً ودماً، ولدوا ونشأوا في بلاد العرب، لم يرسوا إليها من الخارج، ولم يكونوا طارئين عليها من أمة غريبة. فهم إذن عرب مثل غيرهم، و لغات العرب هيّ لغات عربية، وإن اختلفت وتباينت، وما اللغة التي نزل القرآن الكريم إلا لغة واحدة من تلك اللغات، ميزت من غيرها، واكتسبت شرف التقدم والتصدر بفضل الإسلام، وبفضل نزول الكتاب بها، فصارت "اللغة العربية الفصحى" ولغة العرب أجمعين.​and how come their language is only an Arabic dialect as mine and yours how a dialect evolves into a totally different language? I don't mean some differences that are normal between dialects but I refer to the whole vocabularies that have actually no connection with Arabic at all, where did these huge vocabs come from? I've learned it but I really forgot it now, and I asure you when I learnt it I started with very basic words like mother, son, go and come....etc if it was Arabic then it should be at least recognized even if it was very hard, like Moroccan for instance there should be at least a little comprehension and a way to communicate while in fayfa and khulani it's not therefore it's not merely a matter of few words or some different pronunciations,or a dialect that turned to somthing else it is totally different language let alone that it has many features that are not in Arabic, as already mentioned, the ال is replaced with ام. They also don't pronounce some Arabic sounds and there is a sound that's not in Arabic.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> Saudi TV is not a good source for linguistic information, I'm sorry to say


 
That is its land, those are its people, TV channel 1 showed maps and made interviews with those people in their homes on mountains it wrote Arabic subtitles of what they were saying and they said their language is Himyarite.
Anyway, generaly regarding all your post I really respect your opinion, I'll take it as an opinion unless you prove your claims because all you have provided is 'I think' and 'I have not heard' and it is not a good reason for me why I should take your words as a fact, I am sorry to say too.


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## qaqa85

Saudi TV is not a good source for linguistic information, I'm sorry to say.

Then which source is good for linguistic information?


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## dkarjala

qaqa85 said:


> Saudi TV is not a good source for linguistic information, I'm sorry to say.
> 
> Then which source is good for linguistic information?


 
Books, man! Books written by linguists and scholars. Academic journals. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.


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## WadiH

I know this is an old thread, but I want to tie some loose ends and answer some important points.



L.2 said:


> Well, Why do you think it's made up? I am not into tribal genealogy but what everyone knows is that Arabs are pure Arabs who actually descending from Qahtan and Arabized Arabs who are descending from Ishmael.



The idea of shoehorning all Arabs into one of two groups dates from the Islamic era.  It is simply a theory, or more accurately, a myth.  We know that it is a myth because there are pre-Islamic inscriptions that contradict this.  Even pre-Islamic poetry does not contain much evidence of it.



> The first ones don't necessarily speak Arabic as we know there were ancient Arab nations who did not speak Arabic that we speak today. Arabs were speaking different languages in the north or south of Arab peninsula. There is the north group of Arabic or Adanite and the South group of Arabic Sabaean or Himyarite so what's wrong of Himyris being descendant of Qahtan?
> I'll quote from "The American Cyclopaedia", by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana.



This is a grievous error that the early Orientalists fell into: they found two separate language groups in Arabia (Northern and Southern), and they found the myth of Adnan and Qahtan in the Islamic literature, so they jumped to the conclusion that the Adnanite tribes must have spoken North Arabian and the Qahtanite tribes must have spoken South Arabian.  There was never any good reason or evidence for this -- it was just a "connect the dots" sort of thing.  The Arab scholars of the 20th century adopted this idea and the errors compounded from there (e.g. Taha Hussein concluding that Imru' Al-Qays could not speak Arabic because Kindah was counted as a Qahtanite tribe!).  Of course, we now know that this was just a hasty leap of logic, and it has been proven by pre-Islamic inscriptions that most of the so-called Qahtanite tribes spoke Arabic (our Arabic, not South Arabian), especially the ones from the Kahlan sept.  Kinda and Qahtan are mentioned by name in the inscriptions, and Qahtan is mentioned simply as one tribe out of many, not the ancestors of ALL of southern Arabia.  But although modern academic scholarship has abandoned the old theory, as always, scholars in the Arab World often take a few decades to catch up with the rest of the world, so some of them still think that tribes such as Azd or Kinda did not speak Arabic, or they think that South Arabian was simply a dialect of Arabic like the dialect of Tamiim or Quraysh so no big deal.



> [The Himyaritcs are mentioned in classical literature under the name of Homerites. They traced their origin to Himyar, grandson of Saba



Of course, archeology tells us that Himyar was unrelated to Saba.  They did not even speak the same language.  The idea that there was a man named Himyar whose father was a man named Saba is simply an invention from the Islamic era.



> So I think having speaking another language does not, and should not mean they are not Arabs.



I did not say that.  It is not my intention to imply that peoples who did not speak Arabic were not Arabs.  I'm not really interested in that question, to be honest.  I'm more interested in language.




> and how come their language is only an Arabic dialect as mine and yours how a dialect evolves into a totally different language? I don't mean some differences that are normal between dialects but I refer to the whole vocabularies that have actually no connection with Arabic at all, where did these huge vocabs come from? I've learned it but I really forgot it now, and I asure you when I learnt it I started with very basic words like mother, son, go and come....etc



No one denies that these dialects are likely to have been influenced by older languages in that area such as Himyaritic (after all, the old Arab scholars themselves described many of these Himyaritic areas as being less "faSeeH" than other parts of Yemen).  But to be influenced by a substrate language does not mean you are speaking that substrate language.  I have seen the Faifa dialect transcribed and it looked pretty Arabic to me.  It may have some old Yemenite influences, but it is Arabic nonetheless.




> that it has many features that are not in Arabic, as already mentioned, the ال is replaced with ام.



As discussed above, this is not a feature of the South Arabian languages.  It is a feature of the Arabic (i.e. our Arabic, not South Arabian) dialects of Yemen.  In other words, it is Arabic.



> They also don't pronounce some Arabic sounds and there is a sound that's not in Arabic.



This is true of most Arabic dialects.


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