Saʽidi Arabic

Sa‘īdi Arabic
Native to	Egypt
Native speakers	22.4 million (2016)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Central Sa‘īdi Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	aec
Glottolog	said1239
Linguasphere	12-AAC-eb

Ṣa‘īdi Arabic (Sa'idi Arabic: صعيدي, locally [sˤɑˈʕiːdi], Egyptian Arabic: [sˤeˈʕiːdi]), also known as Upper Egyptian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Ṣa‘īdi people south of Cairo, Egypt, to the border of Sudan. It shares linguistic features with both Egyptian Arabic and the Quran's Classical Arabic. Dialects include Middle and Upper Egyptian Arabic.

Speakers of Egyptian Arabic do not always understand more conservative varieties of Ṣa‘īdi Arabic.

Ṣa‘īdi Arabic carries little prestige nationally, but it continues to be widely spoken, including in the north by rural migrants who have partially adapted to Egyptian Arabic. For example, the Ṣa‘īdi genitive exponent is usually replaced with Egyptian bitāʿ, but the realisation of /q/ as [ɡ] is retained (normally realised in Egyptian Arabic as [ʔ]).

Second- and third-generation Ṣa‘īdi migrants are monolingual in Egyptian Arabic but maintain cultural and family ties to the south.

The Egyptian poet Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi wrote in his native Sa'idi.

Phonology

Consonants

Ṣa‘īdi Arabic has the following consonants:

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless		t		k			ʔ
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ		χ	ħ	h
	voiced		z			ʁ	ʕ
Affricate	voiceless			t͡ʃ
	voiced			d͡ʒ*
Trill			r
Approximant		w	l	j

• ^* /d͡ʒ/ may also be realised as [ʒ] or as [d], when it merges with /d/.

See also

• Varieties of Arabic
• Sa'idi people
• Egyptian Arabic

Sources

• Khalafallah, Abdelghany A. 1969. A Descriptive Grammar of Sa'i:di Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Janua Linguarum, Series Practica 32. The Hague: Mouton.
• Versteegh, Kees (2001). The Arabic Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1436-2.