Yemeni Arabic

Yemeni Arabic (Arabic: لهجة يمنية, romanized: Lahja Yamaniyyah, lit. 'Yemeni dialect') is a cluster of varieties of Arabic native to Yemen and southwestern Saudi Arabia. It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, having many classical features not found across most of the Arabic-speaking world.

Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary and phonology. The four most important groups are San'ani in the North and Centre and Hadhrami in the East, where ⟨ق⟩ is pronounced [g] and ⟨ج⟩ is [d͡ʒ] or [ʄ] (except in coastal Hadhrami where ⟨ج⟩ is [j]), in addition to Ta'izzi-Adeni in the South and Tihami in the West, where ⟨ق⟩ is [q] and ⟨ج⟩ is [g]. Yemeni Arabic is used for daily communications and has no official status; Modern Standard Arabic is used for official purposes, education, commerce and media.

Non-Arabic South Semitic languages indigenous to the region include several Modern South Arabian languages, such as the Mehri and Soqotri languages, which are members of an independent branch of the Semitic family. Another separate Semitic family once spoken in the region is Old South Arabian; these became extinct in the pre-Islamic period with the possible exceptions of Razihi and Faifi. Some of these share areal features with Yemeni Arabic owing to influence from or on Yemeni Arabic.

Yemeni Arabic itself is influenced by Himyaritic, Modern South Arabian and Old South Arabian languages and possesses significant substratum from these languages.