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 experience while attempting to learn in Standard Arabic and this has kept Faifi from being excluded from classrooms. Many Faifi-speakers leave Jabal Fayfa for educational and work related prospects and thus it is speculated they normally do not transmit their language to their children born outside of the native speech area. Because of such it is suggested that Faifi is an endangered language. Many speakers willClassification
The classification of Faifi is a topic of great interest since it was first considered to not be a dialect of Arabic. While most discussions of the language only cover the speech variety found in Jebel Fayfa, it has been suggested that the speech variety across the border in Jabal Minabbih is the same language and this would mean that Faifi is spoken on both sides of the Saudi-Yemeni border and encompasses more than just the speech varieties which are the most well documented. In the ISO change request regarding the language it was noted by linguist Michael Ahland himself said that he was "''completely convinced that Faifi is an independent language''" but did not know what language it could possibly be a dialect of given that it is exceedingly unlike the neighboring Arabic speech varieties. The discussion of Faifi as a Sayhadic language is not well studied, and although plausible it is fair to stay on the side of caution given that no definitive comparative study has been conducted between Faifi and any known Sayhadic language, including neighboring Razihit. An air of caution can be found in Lowry (2020) when Faifi is discussed, noting that while some authors jump to claim Faifi as a descendant of a Sayhadic language (''more broadly " Himyaritic"'') Watson (2018) does make the argument that Faifi and Razihit both may be amongst numerous speech varieties in this area that could be holdouts of this long assumed to be extinct branch of Central Semitic.Phonology
The consonant inventory of Faifi is as follows according to both Alfaifi & Behnstedt (2010), Alfaife (2018) and Alaslani (2017); allophones are in parentheses and phonemes attested only in Alaslani (2017) are in brackets: The following features should be noted regarding consonant inventory of Faifi: # The phoneme /ðˤ/ is attested in both the Upper and Lower dialects as a variant of �ˤand is suspected to be a byproduct of contact with Arabic. In the Upper variety of Faifi the phoneme is typically pronounced as /f/ or /θ/ while both the pharyngealization and place of articulation is preserved in the Lower dialect and in Minnabih. # The phoneme /t͡s/ appears to be a variation of the phoneme ͡ʃin the Upper dialect although it can vary between speakers; it is ͡ʃin both Minabbih and the Lower dialect. The phoneme ͡ʃis a reflex of both historical *k and *ɮˤ in both areas, similar to Razihi. # Alfaifi & Behnstedt (2010) describes the phoneme /ʃ/ as apical-alveolar in the Lower dialect and apical-palatal in the Upper dialect, while in Minabbih it is pronounced as �by some speakers. Behnstedt originally described it as a sound similar to a retroflexed ''References
Old South Arabian languages Languages of Saudi Arabia {{Semitic-lang-stub