The Language of the Arab Minority in Southern Iran

1 The Arabic dialects that are spoken in scattered areas along the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf have not been linguistically described yet. Due to their Sunnite denomination, the Arab communities living in Southern Iran may be considered a religious minority. Linguistically speaking, they are mostly bilingual speakers of Arabic and Farsi, albeit to different degrees. The project mainly focuses on the documentation and various linguistic aspects of the local dialects. Based on a large digital corpus of authentic texts in transcription and English translation the project will address an array of research questions, among them: How can these dialects be classified from an areal- linguistic perspective within the continuum of the Arabic dialects spoken along the Gulf from Khuzestan in the north to Oman in the south? Do they possess phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features, which particularly connect them with any single dialect spoken in the region? To what extent do these dialects show contact phenomena with the majority language Persian that go beyond lexical borrowing, for instance in the realm of prosody and information structure. Hitherto, the description and analysis of prosody and information structure has been largely neglected in Arabic studies and thus constitutes one of the most innovative aspects of the project. Another new aspect is the documentation of cultural practices of a completely under-researched minority group by combining linguistic and ethnographic aspects. The linguistic data will be gathered during long field campaigns that are carried out with the help of local researchers and speakers. This will guarantee the collection of authentic data and the creation of a corpus which consists of life stories, traditional narratives and songs, procedural texts and spontaneous conversation. For the analysis of certain linguistic features, questionnaires and staged communicative events will supply additional data. The project has been designed as an attempt to combine the approaches of general linguistics with the methodologies of Arabic dialectology. The use of up-to-date text technological methodologies to build a digital corpus also sets new standards in Arabic dialectology. The project is conducted in the spirit of open source and open access. Therefore, the linguistic corpus will be professionally archived and made available to the scientific community through a publicly accessible web interface, which will enable other scholars to do further analyses and to add their own material.

The Language of the Arab Minority in Southern Iran This project presents the first study of South-Iranian Arabic, a group of Gulf Arabic varieties spoken by Arab communities in the Iranian provinces of Bushehr and Hormozgan. These communities represent both a linguistic and religious minority, as they are predominantly Sunni in a largely Persian-speaking and Shiite context. Most speakers are bilingual in Arabic and Farsi to varying degrees: younger generations are educated primarily in Farsi, while many older speakers-especially in rural areas-remain largely monolingual in Arabic. A central achievement of the project is the documentation of these previously under-researched dialects through an integrated linguistic and ethnographic approach. The project created a substantial digital corpus of authentic spoken materials, including life histories, traditional narratives, procedural texts, and spontaneous conversations. These materials-recorded as audio and partly video-have been transcribed and translated into English and Persian and are permanently archived in the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR). The entire set of collected data is based on contributions from more than 40 speakers across 14 locations, supplemented by questionnaires and carefully designed communicative tasks to support linguistic analysis. The research addresses key questions in dialectology, areal linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Findings reveal that South-Iranian Arabic dialects reflect diverse historical origins within the Arab world, ranging from Kuwait in the north to southern regions possibly linked to Yemen. While the dialects are predominantly Bedouin in character, they also preserve older features associated with sedentary southern varieties. The project also provides important insights into language contact and change. Depending on factors such as urbanization, religious affiliation, and degree of integration into Iranian society, varying levels of convergence with Farsi were identified. In cases of advanced contact-induced change, Farsi influences extend beyond vocabulary to core areas of grammar, including the verbal system, definiteness marking, and gender and number agreement. Overall, the project demonstrates the value of combining methods from general linguistics and Arabic dialectology, while also setting new standards through the use of advanced digital and text-based technologies in Arabic dialectology. Conducted in the spirit of open access, the documentation is freely available to community members, researchers, and the wider public through the Endangered Languages Archive: https://www.elararchive.org/dk0810. The documentation thus helps preserving the cultural heritage of this region of the world.