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Razihi language
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Razihi language
Razihi (Rāziḥī), originally known to linguists as "Naẓīri", is a South Semitic language spoken by at least 62,900 people in the vicinity of Mount Razih (Jabal Razih) in the far northwestern corner of Yemen. Along with Faifi and Rijal Alma, it is possibly the only surviving descendant of the Old South Arabian languages.
Razihi is spoken on Jabal Razih, a mountain lying west of the town Sa'dah, whose highest summit, Jabal Hurum, is 2,790 m (9,150 ft) 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. This work includes a number of interesting realities of life in Jabal Razih including the mention that the tribes of the area typically have the term 'Ilt (IPA: /ʔilt/) in their tribe name (e.g. Ilt al-Qayyāl, Ilt ʿIzzan) and that aside from external governing bodies the political sphere of Jabal Razih was typically dominated by the Sayyid elite being that the majority of Razihi tribes have historically been adherents of the Zaydi form of Shi'a Islam. Attestation of the Razih region directly is known as early as al-Hamdani's work al-Iklīl but the tribal federation that the speakers of Razihi belong to, Khawlan bin ʾAmir, were possibly known to the Sabaeans as Ḫwln Gdd(t)n.
Weir makes mention in the beginning of the book that the "local dialect, or language, is extremely unusual, and was always a difficulty, but some male informants could switch to a register of Arabic that I could understand more easily" and this is part of why the plethora of Razihi documents she was able to photocopy required rather specialized knowledge for her to understand. The earliest of these documents date to the early 10th century AH (17th century AD).
Razihi speakers see their speech variety as distinct from those around them who they describe as speaking "Yamanīt" (Yemeni).
An affricate sound [s͡t] is also present, as a realization of the Arabic [sˤ] from loan words.
Razihi exhibits wide-scale assimilation of coronal consonants in words. Unlike in Arabic, this is not restricted to obstruents but includes sonorants, most significantly /n/, as can be seen in words such as ssān, "man" and ssānah, "woman", which are cognate words of Arabic insān, "person". Nasal consonant assimilation was a feature of some Ancient North Arabian languages (primarily Safaitic) and Old South Arabian but is not found in any Arabic dialect aside from perhaps the speech variety of Harūb, Saudi Arabia.
In contrast to Yemeni Arabic dialects, Razihi does not ever allow word-final consonant clusters (-CC).
Syncope, or the removal, of the high vowels /i/ and /u/ is a common phenomenon in Razihi:
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Razihi language
Razihi (Rāziḥī), originally known to linguists as "Naẓīri", is a South Semitic language spoken by at least 62,900 people in the vicinity of Mount Razih (Jabal Razih) in the far northwestern corner of Yemen. Along with Faifi and Rijal Alma, it is possibly the only surviving descendant of the Old South Arabian languages.
Razihi is spoken on Jabal Razih, a mountain lying west of the town Sa'dah, whose highest summit, Jabal Hurum, is 2,790 m (9,150 ft) 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. This work includes a number of interesting realities of life in Jabal Razih including the mention that the tribes of the area typically have the term 'Ilt (IPA: /ʔilt/) in their tribe name (e.g. Ilt al-Qayyāl, Ilt ʿIzzan) and that aside from external governing bodies the political sphere of Jabal Razih was typically dominated by the Sayyid elite being that the majority of Razihi tribes have historically been adherents of the Zaydi form of Shi'a Islam. Attestation of the Razih region directly is known as early as al-Hamdani's work al-Iklīl but the tribal federation that the speakers of Razihi belong to, Khawlan bin ʾAmir, were possibly known to the Sabaeans as Ḫwln Gdd(t)n.
Weir makes mention in the beginning of the book that the "local dialect, or language, is extremely unusual, and was always a difficulty, but some male informants could switch to a register of Arabic that I could understand more easily" and this is part of why the plethora of Razihi documents she was able to photocopy required rather specialized knowledge for her to understand. The earliest of these documents date to the early 10th century AH (17th century AD).
Razihi speakers see their speech variety as distinct from those around them who they describe as speaking "Yamanīt" (Yemeni).
An affricate sound [s͡t] is also present, as a realization of the Arabic [sˤ] from loan words.
Razihi exhibits wide-scale assimilation of coronal consonants in words. Unlike in Arabic, this is not restricted to obstruents but includes sonorants, most significantly /n/, as can be seen in words such as ssān, "man" and ssānah, "woman", which are cognate words of Arabic insān, "person". Nasal consonant assimilation was a feature of some Ancient North Arabian languages (primarily Safaitic) and Old South Arabian but is not found in any Arabic dialect aside from perhaps the speech variety of Harūb, Saudi Arabia.
In contrast to Yemeni Arabic dialects, Razihi does not ever allow word-final consonant clusters (-CC).
Syncope, or the removal, of the high vowels /i/ and /u/ is a common phenomenon in Razihi: