Ingham and Holes both note the existence of two peninsular dialect groups: • A southwestern dialect group that includes most of the dialects of
South Arabia, stretching as far north as
Al Bahah. Holes generalizes it to a "sedentary" or "peripheral" group that also includes dialects of historically sedentary populations on the
Persian Gulf coast, such as
Omani Arabic and
Bahrani Arabic. These dialects share certain syntactic features with
Modern South Arabian languages. • A central-eastern dialect group originating in the center, that spread with the migration of Arab tribes. This group includes the dialects of most
bedouin tribes in the peninsula, spanning an area extending from the
Syrian Desert to the
Empty Quarter. Its most notable examples are
Najdi Arabic and
Gulf Arabic. The following varieties are usually noted: •
Yemeni Arabic, displays a past conjugation with the very archaic -k suffix, as in southern
Semitic languages. The dialect of
Aden has > as in Cairo. •
Hejazi Arabic, spoken in
Saudi Arabia along the coast of the
Red Sea, especially in the cities of
Mecca and
Jeddah. Strictly speaking, there are two distinct dialects spoken in the
Hejaz region, one by the
Bedouin rural population and another by the urban population in cities such as
Jeddah,
Mecca,
Medina,
Taif and
Yanbu. The Bedouin varieties are part of the Najdi dialect group. •
Najdi Arabic, spoken in the center of the peninsula in Saudi Arabia and is characterized by a shift of to and affrication of and to and , respectively, in certain contexts. As defined by Ingham with its tribal area (Najdi, urban Hejazi and bedouin Hejazi groups) which shows a correlation and differences between those dialects: ==See also==