English abstract
This study deals with the plosives of the contemporary dialects and colloquial languages of Oman, a country known for its rich linguistic, social, and cultural heritage. Classification standards were made to show differences between such varieties. Focus on this study is made on the different realizations of the plosive consonants. I tried to answer the following questions:
- What are the plosives of the contemporary dialects and colloquial languages of Oman? What are their characteristics?
- Are there differences between such plosives at the different levels of such dialect and colloquial languages?
- Do such plosives differ from their counterparts in Classical Arabic?
The study made use of a fieldwork that led to compiling a linguistic database of the contemporary dialects and colloquial languages of the different governorates of Oman. It also made use of the experimental and physical techniques in order to determine the accurate places of articulation and their phonetic features.
The study also has revealed the following findings:
- Some of the plosives such as /q/ has become an ejective /k?/ and /??/ in the Bedouin dialect of Dhofar. It has become /k??/ in the urban variety of Ad Dhahirah Governorate, the mountainous varieties of Al Buraymi Governorate and the Ad Dakhliyah. The consonant /?/ changed into a fricative consonant /?/ in a mountainous village in Ash Sharqiyah North Governorate and an approximant /y/ in Bedouin dialects. The consonant /?/ has become a velarized bilabial approximant consonant /w?/ in a mountainous dialect in Musandam and lateral consonant /l??/ in the colloquial Bedouin dialect of Dhofar. The consonant /k/ has become a palatal /c/ in mountainous dialects in Al Batinah and Al Buraymi and an affricate /?/ in some mountainous dialects in Al Dakhiliyah and Ad Dhahirah.
- Most of the plosive consonant that Omani dialects and colloquial Omani languages share are the /d/, /b/, /?/ and /t/.
- The most common plosive consonants in which there are differences among Omani dialects and colloquial languages are the /?/, /?/, /q/. /k/ and /?/
