Bareqi Arabic () is one of the

Varieties of Arabic Varieties of Arabic (or dialects or vernaculars) are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic languages, Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian P ...

spoken in many towns and villages around

Bareq Bareq (; also transliterated as '), is a governorate located in the Asir Province of Saudi Arabia in the north-west of the province, north of Abha. It occupies a distinct location midway between Tihamah and Asir, above sea level. With an e ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

Characteristics

Bareqi Arabic has many aspects that differentiate it from all other dialects in the Arab world. Phonologically, Bareqi Arabic is similar to the majority of Saudi Arabia dialects and

Himyaritic language Himyaritic is an unattested or sparsely attested Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Yemen, by the Himyarites. It was a Semitic language but either did not belong to the Old South Arabian (''Sayhadic'') languages according to Christian Ro ...

. All Bareqi dialects also share the unusual feature of replacing the definite article ''al-'' with the prefix ''am-''. The dialects of many towns and villages in the wadi and the coastal region are characterized by having changed ج () to a

palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ; the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic notation i ...

ي (called yodization).

References

*''The information in this article is based on that in its Arabic equivalent''. {{authority control Mashriqi Arabic Peninsular Arabic Languages of Saudi Arabia