This post was originally posted at (now defunct link) https://blog.fanofyan.com/yemeni/ a long, long time ago. It was written when I was living in San Francisco around 2015/2016. I have moved it here with just some small fixes.
Update 9/23/2019: I have added a resource to Alefbaa below, an on-line Arabic school that I look forward to checking out.
I didn’t realize that this little blog post would be read, but it seems that it has found some readers, and I am very grateful. Every few months, someone reaches out to me about this blog post and how it was one of the few resources they found on the Yemeni dialect.
I am saddened that 4 years after writing this, Yemen has seemingly disappeared from our minds and the news. There is very little information about its culture and many dialects on the internet (in English…though having Googled around a little in fus7a, it’s fairly sparse in Arabic as well) and it does not show up as newsworthy in the West. A forgotten country.
I hope we can all take some time out of our busy days to reflect on the thousands of years of lost culture, traditions, arts, and stories whenever there is war and famine. Not to mention, the lives and futures cut prematurely.
Update 9/25/2019: Thank you to Ameen via Twitter for finding some typos here and there!
I know my blog focuses on technical topics but when I was looking up the Yemeni dialects, there were so few resources on the internet that I wanted to have my notes available just in case there are others in my position in the future.
About this Post
This post is a mish-mash of commonly heard bits of the different Yemeni dialects ( لهجة ). I will try to denote, when I can, the region that a word or grammar rule is used.
These are my notes and they assume the reader has a working understanding of fus7a (MSA: Modern Standard Arabic). Also, I want to state that I am not a linguist nor am I trying to be one.
A lot of these notes are from phone call with a non-Arab (but Arabic-speaking) friend who had lived in Yemen for over a year. I have added to it with other sources I have found on the internet.
I will repeat this — these are notes taken from a one-hour crash course given to me by a non-Yemeni friend as well as a lot of Googling on my part. It is very possible that I got some things wrong and this post is by no way comprehensive.
About Yemeni Arabic
Wikipedia gives a good overview on the regional dialects.
The good thing is that Yemeni Arabic is very similar to fus7a — it is one of the more conservative dialect clusters. That said, there are still some very distinct words and characteristics not found elsewhere.
Because it is very similar to fus7a, Yemeni’s conjugations for past and present follow roughly the same pattern. Pronoun suffixes also follow fus7a patterns.
Pronunciation Notes
For the post —
ai: the ‘ie’ sound in ‘lie’
ay: the ‘ay’ sound in ‘clay’
Yemeni Arabic pronunciation —
The ق is pronounced with a hard ‘G’ (چ), similar to the Egyptian pronunciation of ج.
This seems to be mostly a northern habit (Sana’a).
Interrogative/Question Words
Posession
حق + pronoun
Regular fus7a possession will be understood, but in Yemeni, the pronouns will often be tagged onto an extra word — حق.
Yemeni example: هذا قلم حقي/حقك؟
Fus7a equivalent: هذا قلمي/قلمك؟
مع + pronoun
Shows possession.
English translation: You have a pen.
Yemeni example: معك قلم
Fus7a example: عندك قلم
Common Verbs
Future Tense Conjugation for Verbs
There are a few different ways to denote future tense.
The regular fus7a method is used: سوف + المضارع
- ش + المضارع (more common in Ta’izzi-Adeni)
- ب + المضارع
Often times there’ll be a ش or ب tacked onto a verb in the present tense form to denote future. Same way that we would start future tense verbs with س in MSA. Unsure about the prevalence of using ب but it seems the use of ش is common.
Negation
لا\ما + المضارع + ش
There seems to be regular usage of negation that we see in MSA (لا) but then there’s this extra ش that gets tacked onto the end, same sound as what is used in the future tense.
Examples: لا عرفِش — I don’t know. لا أفهمِش — I don’t understand.
مِش… — not
Example: انا مش يمنية — I am not Yemeni
This is seen in a lot of other Arabic dialects.
Other Words and Phrases
Some More About This Post
I wanted to learn a little bit of Yemeni Arabic because I recently got matched with a Yemeni refugee through Refugee Transitions, an awesome little NGO that connects volunteers in SF with newly arrived refugees. Volunteers mostly serve as English tutors and also help refugees with everything from reading mail to finding jobs.
I was told that the refugee I was placed with speaks very little fus7a, is illiterate in Arabic, and only knows the English alphabet so far.
…sounds like a challenge!
From what I know (I haven’t met her yet), I think the best way to increase communication is to pick up the Yemeni dialect. So, I asked a friend of mine for a crash course and that’s how you have this post!
Other Resources/Links
- Dialect Word list — Yemeni
- Yemen Times — article on Yemeni language
- An actual book on this!
- Alefbaa’s phrase chart
- Yemeni Arabic Vocabulary on Memrise (*NEW! 2021)
- YouTube video — Yemeni Arabic Dialect: numbers, greetings, etc. (*NEW! 2021)
Spot an error?
Did you spot an error? Did I miss something big? Do let me know, please.