Razihi language


Razihi is a South Semitic language spoken by at least 62,900 people in the vicinity of Mount Razih in the far northwestern corner of Yemen. Along with Faifi, it is the only surviving descendant of the Old South Arabian languages.

Speakers

Razihi is spoken on Jabal Razih, a mountain lying west of the town Sa'dah, whose highest summit, Jabal Hurum, is 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.

Phonology

Razihi exhibits wide-scale assimilation of coronal consonants in words. Unlike in Arabic, this is not restricted to obstruents but includes sonorants, most significantly, 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 both Ancient North Arabian and Old South Arabian but is not found in any Arabic dialect. Razihi also has a large number of non-Arabic basic vocabulary items, prepositions and other grammatical forms.
In contrast to Yemeni Arabic dialects, Razihi does not ever allow word-final consonant clusters.
Syncope, or the removal, of the high vowels and is a common phenomenon in Razihi:
In Classical Arabic: