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Faifi Language
Faifi is a possible Old South Arabian language spoken by about 50,000 people in the vicinity of Mount Faifa (Jebel Fayfa) in the southwestern corner of Saudi Arabia, and across the border in Jebel Minabbih, Yemen. Along with Razihi, it is possibly the only other possible surviving descendant of the Old South Arabian branch of Central Semitic. Speakers Faifi is spoken in an area of roughly 600 km² (232 m²) along the Saudi border known as Jabal Fayfa by some estimated 50,000 people primarily living in the upper part of the mountains. Until 35 years ago no major roads entered Jabal Fayfa and thus it is speculated that speakers of the language older than 60 may be monolingual while younger speakers of the language have tended to take up speaking varieties of Hejazi, Nejdi, and Standard Arabic alongside their own language due to prolonged contact with Arabic language media, education, etc. Education in Jabal Fayfa tends to be bilingual due to the difficulties students experienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Arab world, and the largest in Western Asia and the Middle East. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. Bahrain is an island country off the east coast. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. Its capital and largest city is Riyadh. The country is home to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam. Pre-Islamic Arabia, the territory that constitutes modern-day Saudi Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fifa Mountains
The Fifa Mountains or Faifa Mountains ( ar, جِبَالُ فَيْفَاءَ, Jibāl Fayfāʾ) are located in the vicinity of the town of Faifa' in Jazan Province, southwest Saudi Arabia. Description They are as high as and they cover an area of almost . This group of mountains constitutes a part of the Sarawat range, which is generally considered to be divided into two subranges within western Saudi Arabia: the Hijaz Mountains in the north (towards the Levant) and the 'Asir Mountains in the south (towards Yemen). Unlike many other mountains in Saudi Arabia, the temperature of Fifa mountains is generally moderate. The jagged rock formations are covered with green flora and have many agricultural terraces. The various fields scattered around the mountains are known for their very high peaks and green terraces. Moreover, the most famous crops planted in the fields are coffee and maize. The mountains twist around each other. Thus, from a distance, the mountains appear as one py ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ich-Laut
The phonology of Standard German is the standard pronunciation or accent of the German language. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with History of German, historical developments thereof as well as the geographical variants and the influence of German dialects. While the spelling of German is officially standardised by an international organisation (the Council for German Orthography) the pronunciation has no official standard and relies on a ''de facto'' standard documented in reference works such as (German Pronunciation Dictionary) by Eva-Maria Krech et al., (Duden volume 6, The Pronunciation Dictionary) by Max Mangold and the training materials of radio and television stations such as ''Westdeutscher Rundfunk'', ''Deutschlandfunk'', or ''Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen''. This standardised pronunciation was invented, rather than coming from any particular German-speaking city. But the pronunciation that Germans usually consider to be closest to the stand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Himyaritic Language
Himyaritic is an unattested or sparsely attested Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Yemen, by the Himyarite tribal confederacy. It was a Semitic language but either did not belong to the Old South Arabian (''Sayhadic'') languages according to Christian Robin or was, as more widely accepted, not a distinct language from Sabaic. The precise position inside Semitic is unknown because of the limited knowledge of the language if it is indeed a distinct language from Sabaic. Although the Himyar kingdom was an important power in South Arabia since the 1st century B.C., the knowledge of the supposed Himyaritic language is very limited if at all a distinct language, because all known Himyarite inscriptions were written in Sabaic, an Old South Arabian language. The three Himyaritic texts appeared to be rhymed (''sigla ZI 11, Ja 2353 and the Hymn of Qāniya''). Himyaritic is only known from statements of Arab scholars from the first centuries after the rise of Islam. According to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khat
Khat or qat ( ''ch’at''; Oromo: ''Jimaa'', so, qaad, khaad, khat or chat, ar, القات ''al-qāt'') is a flowering plant native to eastern and southern Africa. Khat contains the alkaloid cathinone, a stimulant, which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite, and euphoria. Among communities from the areas where the plant is native, khat chewing has a history as a social custom dating back thousands of years analogous to the use of coca leaves in South America and betel nut in Asia. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified it in 1980 as a drug of abuse that can produce psychological dependence, although the WHO does not consider khat addiction to be a serious problem. The legality of khat varies by region. In many countries, khat might not be a specifically controlled substance but may nevertheless be illegal under more general laws. It is a specifically controlled substance in some countries including Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Code-switching
In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together. Multilingualism, Multilinguals (speakers of more than one language) sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the use of more than one linguistic variety in a manner consistent with the syntax and phonology of each variety. Code-switching may happen between Sentence (linguistics), sentences, sentence fragments, words, or Morpheme, individual morphemes (in synthetic languages). However, some linguists consider the Loanword, borrowing of words or morphemes from another language to be different from other types of code-switchin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modern Standard Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of Standard language, standardized, Literary language, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; occasionally, it also refers to spoken Arabic that approximates this written standard. MSA is the language used in literature, academia, print media, print and mass media, law and legislation, though it is generally not spoken as a first language, similar to Contemporary Latin. It is a Pluricentric language, pluricentric standard language taught throughout the Arab world in formal education, differing significantly from many vernacular varieties of Arabic that are commonly spoken as mother tongues in the area; these are only partially mutually intelligible with both MSA and with each other depending on their proximity in the Dialect continuum#Arabic, Arabic dialect continuum. Many linguists consider MSA to be distinct from Clas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Najdi Arabic
Najdi Arabic ( ar, اللهجة النجدية) is the group of Arabic varieties originating from the Najd region of Saudi Arabia. The group includes the majority of bedouin tribes historically residing in deserts surrounding Najd, and as a result several regions surrounding Najd, including the Eastern Province, Al Jawf, Najran, and Northern Borders Regions are now mostly Najdi-speaking. Outside of Saudi Arabia, it is also the main Arabic variety spoken in the Syrian Desert of Iraq, Jordan, and Syria (with the exception of Palmyra oasis and settlements dotting the Euphrates, where Mesopotamian Arabic is spoken) as well as the westernmost part of Kuwait. Najdi dialects are classified as Bedouin dialects. Najdi Arabic can be divided into four region-based groups: #Northern Najdi, spoken by the tribe of Shammar and surrounding tribes in Ha'il Region in Najd and the Syrian Desert. #Mixed northern-central Najdi of Al-Qassim, Northern Riyadh region of Sudair, and the tribe of Dha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hejazi Arabic
Hejazi Arabic or Hijazi Arabic (HA) ( ar, حجازي, ḥijāzī), also known as West Arabian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken in the Hejaz region, one by the urban population, originally spoken mainly in the cities of Jeddah, Mecca, Medina and partially in Ta'if and another dialect by the urbanized rural and bedouin populations. However, the term most often applies to the urban variety which is discussed in this article. In antiquity, the Hejaz was home to the Old Hejazi dialect of Arabic recorded in the consonantal text of the Qur'an. Old Hejazi is distinct from modern Hejazi Arabic, and represents an older linguistic layer wiped out by centuries of migration, but which happens to share the imperative prefix vowel /a-/ with the modern dialect. Classification Also referred to as the sedentary Hejazi dialect, this is the form most commonly associated with the term "Hejazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Razihi Language
Razihi (), originally known to linguists as "''Naẓīri''", is a Central Semitic language spoken by at least 62,900 people in the vicinity of Mount Razih (Jabal Razih) in the far northwestern corner of Yemen.Watson, Glover-Stalls, Al-razihi, & Weir (2006), "The language of Jabal Rāziḥ: Arabic or something else?", ''Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies'' 36:35–41 Along with Faifi, it is possibly the only surviving descendant of the Old South Arabian languages. Speakers Razihi is spoken on Jabal Razih, a mountain lying west of the town Sa'dah, whose highest summit, Jabal Hurum, is high. The population of Jabal Razih was approximately 25,000 in the 1970s and is estimated to be much more now. The number of Razihi speakers is reported by ''Ethnologue'' to have been 62,900 in 2004. A comprehensive study of the speakers, including their written tradition, was the topic of the book "''A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen''" (2007) by Shelagh Weir. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yemen
Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and Oman to the Oman–Yemen border, northeast and shares maritime borders with Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. Yemen is the second-largest Arabs, Arab sovereign state in the peninsula, occupying , with a coastline stretching about . Its constitutionally stated Capital city, capital, and largest city, is Sanaa. As of 2021, Yemen has an estimated population of some 30.4 million. In ancient times, Yemen was the home of the Sabaeans, a trading state that included parts of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. Later in 275 AD, the Himyarite Kingdom was influenced by Judaism. Christianity arrived in the fourth century. Islam spread quickly in the seventh century and Yemenite troops were crucial in the early Islamic conquests. Several Dynasty, dynasties ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Faifa
The Fifa Mountains or Faifa Mountains ( ar, جِبَالُ فَيْفَاءَ, Jibāl Fayfāʾ) are located in the vicinity of the town of Faifa' in Jazan Province, southwest Saudi Arabia. Description They are as high as and they cover an area of almost . This group of mountains constitutes a part of the Sarawat range, which is generally considered to be divided into two subranges within western Saudi Arabia: the Hijaz Mountains in the north (towards the Levant) and the 'Asir Mountains in the south (towards Yemen). Unlike many other mountains in Saudi Arabia, the temperature of Fifa mountains is generally moderate. The jagged rock formations are covered with green flora and have many agricultural terraces. The various fields scattered around the mountains are known for their very high peaks and green terraces. Moreover, the most famous crops planted in the fields are coffee and maize. The mountains twist around each other. Thus, from a distance, the mountains appear as one py ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
