Dhofari Arabic

Dhofari Arabic, also known as Dhofari or Zofari, is a variety of Arabic spoken around Salalah in Oman's Dhofar Governorate. It has the ISO 639-3 language code "adf".

Dhofari Arabic
Zofari Arabic
Native to	Oman
Speakers	130,000 (2020)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Peninsular Dhofari Arabic
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	adf
Glottolog	dhof1235
Location of Dhofari Arabic

Nomadic and sedentary communities living in the area speak Dhofari Arabic as a first language, second language, or lingua franca, with varying degrees of fluency.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Interdental		Dental/Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
			plain	emph.	plain	emph.
Nasal		m			n
Stop	voiceless				t	tˤ		k	q		ʔ
	voiced	b			d			ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ		s	sˤ	ʃ	x		ħ	h
	voiced		ð	ðˤ	z		(ʒ)	ɣ		ʕ
Tap					ɾ
Approximant					l	(lˤ)	j	w

• [ʒ] only rarely occurs among speakers
• [lˤ] mostly occurs in formal speech.

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i iː	u uː
Mid	eː	oː
Open	a aː

• A schwa sound [ə] may also occur as a lax realization of short vowels.

Phoneme	Sound/Allophones
/i/	[i], [ɪ]
/a/	[æ], [ɑ]
/u/	[u], [ʊ]
/aː/	[æː], [ɑː]

See also

• Peninsular Arabic

Bibliography

• Davey, Richard J. (2013). Coastal Dhofārī Arabic: a sketch grammar (PhD thesis). University of Manchester.
• Davey, Richard J. (2016). Coastal Dhofari Arabic: A Sketch Grammar. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics. Vol. 87. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-31670-6. OCLC 1264422220.
• Rhodokanakis, Nikolaus (1908). Der Vulgärarabische Dialekt im Đofâr (Ẓfâr). OCLC 503848016.