Yemeni Arabic - Yafi'i Arabic Dialect

Yafi'i Arabic Dialect

While there is much about the Lower Yafa'i dialect that has not been thoroughly studied, it does have a very interesting phonological shift. Along with the southern bedouin dialects, in Abyan and Lahej, with which it shares much in common, Yafi'i pronounces the classical jīm (ج) as gīm, but unlike all other dialects, Yafi'i systematically pronounces the classical sound ġayn (/ʁ/ as qain and qāf as ġāf, effectively switching the pronunciation of the one letter for the other. An illustration of this phonemic interchange can be seen in the Yafi'i words baġar “cow” and qanam “goat”, which correspond to the classical words baqar “cow” and ġanam “goat”.

Although a similar phonological shift occurs in certain words in the Sudan as well, the similarities are rather misleading. Whereas the shift is systematic in Yafi', occurring at every instance of the relevant phonemes, in the Sudan it is usually a form of hypercorrection which takes place only in certain classical words. In the Sudan, the phoneme is systematically pronounced in all common words, with the pronunciation ġ occurring as a hypercorrection in words such as istiqlāl "freedom", pronounced istighlāl (meaning "exploitation" in Standard Arabic).