The Attitudes Towards Shammari Dialect in Hail region in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the social evaluation and social meaning of the feminine plural suffix in the Hail region, located in the northwest of Saudi Arabia. This region presents many dialectal variations. One is the Shammari dialect, which comes from the Shammar tribe. A distinct variation of the Shammari dialect is the realisation of the feminine plural suffix -a:t. This variable is undergoing a lenition process that includes changing the feminine plural suffix from the standard form [t] to either [h] or [j].