The dialect in many towns and villages in the Wādī and the coastal region is characterised by its ج -yodization, changing the Classical Arabic reflex to the approximant ي. That resembles some Eastern Arabian and Gulf dialects, including the dialects of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain other Arab Emirates. In educated speech, ج is realised as a voiced palatal plosive or affricate in some lexical items which are marked or . The ق reflex is pronounced as a voiced velar in all lexical items throughout the dialect. In some other Arabic dialects, is realised as a voiceless uvular plosive in certain marked lexemes , : “Qur’an”. With the spread of literacy and contact with speakers of other Arabic dialects, future sociolinguistic research may reveal whether using the uvular in certain lexemes and retaining the velar for others will occur. Distinctions ث, ت , and ذ, د, are made in Wādī, but ض and ظ are both pronounced ظ. The Coast merges all the pairs into the stops د, ت and ض, respectively. In non-emphatic environments, is realised as an open front unrounded. Thus, "second," which is normally realised with an -like quality in the Gulf dialects, is realised with an. The dialect is characterised by not allowing final consonant clusters to occur in final position. Thus, Classical Arabic "girl" is realised as. In initial positions, there is a difference between the Wādī and the coastal varieties. The coast has initial clusters in "he wants," "onions" and "mail," but Wādī realises the second and third words as and, respectively.
Morphology
When the first person singular comes as an independent subject pronoun, it is marked for gender: for masculine and for feminine. As an object pronoun, it comes as a bound morpheme: for masculine and for feminine. The first person subject plural is naḥnā. The first person direct object plural is rather than the of many dialects. Thus, the cognate of the Classical Arabic "he hit us" is. Stem VI, tC1āC2aC3, can be umlauted to tC1ēC2aC3, thus changing the pattern vowel ā to ē. That leads to a semantic change, as in "they ran away suddenly" and "they shirk, try to escape." Intensive and frequentative verbs are common in the dialect. Thus "to break" is intensified to, as in "he played rough." It can be metathesized to become frequentative, as in "he made a series of giggles or laughs."
Syntax
The syntax has many similarities to other Peninsular Arabic dialects. However, the dialect contains a number of unique particles used for co-ordination, negation, and other sentence types. Examples in coordination include "but, nevertheless, though," "as for…," and "or." Like many other dialects, apophonic or ablaut passive is not very common, and Is mainly confined to clichés and proverbs from other dialects, including Classical Arabic. The particle developed semantically in the dialect to or "yet, already, almost, nearly" and or "maybe, perhaps."
Vocabulary
There are a few lexical items that are shared with Modern South Arabian languages, which perhaps distinguish this dialect from other neighbouring Peninsular dialects. The effect of Hadhrami emigration to Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and East Africa is clear in the vocabulary especially in certain registers like types of food and dress: "sarong." Many loanwords are listed in al-Saqqaf.
