Yemeni Arabic

Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of Arabic varieties spoken in Yemen, southwestern Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Djibouti. 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 most important of these groups are San'ani, Ta'izzi-Adeni (also called South Yemeni Arabic or Djibouti Arabic), Tihami and Hadhrami. Yemeni Arabic is used for daily communications and has no official status; Modern Standard Arabic is used in official purposes, education, commerce and media.

Non-Arabic languages indigenous to the region include several Modern South Arabian languages, such as the Mehri and Soqotri languages, which are not Arabic languages, but members of an independent branch of the Semitic family. Another separate Semitic family once spoken in the region is Old South Arabian; these went extinct in the pre-Islamic period. Some of these share areal features with Yemeni Arabic due to influence from or on Yemeni Arabic.