Hejazi Arabic

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Hejazi Arabic
حجازي
Pronunciation	Hejazi Arabic pronunciation: [ħɪˈ(d)ʒaːzi]
Native to	Saudi Arabia
Region	Hejaz
Speakers	11 million (2018)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic Central Semitic Arabic Peninsular Hejazi Arabic
Early form	Old Hejazi
Dialects	Rural Hejazi
Writing system	Arabic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	acw
Glottolog	hija1235
Extent of Hejazi Arabic
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Hejazi Arabic or Hijazi Arabic (HA) (Arabic: حجازي, romanized: ḥijāzī, Hejazi Arabic pronunciation: [ħɪˈdʒaːzi]), also known as West Arabian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken in the Hejaz region,^[2] one by the urban population, originally spoken mainly in the cities of Jeddah, Mecca, Medina and partially in Ta'if and another dialect by the urbanized rural and bedouin populations.^[3] However, the term most often applies to the urban variety which is discussed in this article.

In antiquity, the Hejaz was home to the Old Hejazi dialect of Arabic recorded in the consonantal text of the Qur'an. Old Hejazi is distinct from modern Hejazi Arabic, and represents an older linguistic layer wiped out by centuries of migration, but which happens to share the imperative prefix vowel /a-/ with the modern dialect.