Upper Faifi as an Endangered Arabic Variety: A Philological, Descriptive, and Acoustic Study

Abstract

The Faifi variety, classified as an Arabic dialect (albeit with controversy), is chiefly spoken in southwestern Saudi Arabia by a diminishing number of autochthonous Faifi people. This dialect has been the subject of both synchronic and diachronic description and analysis in a few published studies and a small number of unpublished works. While some studies have focused on very narrow aspects of Faifi, such as the phoneme /st/, others have taken a broad scope and attempted either to address an entire linguistic level, such as syntax or phonology, or to touch upon different linguistic levels in one study. To date, however, no study has acoustically documented the dialect. Thus, the current paper intends to complement previous studies and further elaborate on the distinction between two Faifi subvarieties that existing scholarship seems to have overlooked: Upper and Lower Faifi. We detail an acoustic description of Upper Faifi consonants and vowels and their interaction and provide auditory materials to support our acoustic analysis to contribute a milestone description of this variety and to help future researchers obtain access to this minority of speakers.