Hejazi Arabic
Hejazi Arabic or Hijazi Arabic ( '), also known as West Arabian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia. Strictly speaking, there are two main groups of dialects spoken in the Hejaz region, one by the urban population, originally spoken in the major cities of Jeddah, Mecca and Medina, and another by the Bedouin or rural populations. However, the term most often applies to the urban variety which is discussed in this article.
Hejazi Arabic
A conservative phonological feature that Hejazi holds is the lack of palatalization for the letters , and , unlike in other peninsular dialects where they can be palatalized and merged with other phonemes in certain positions (to [t͡ʃ], [t͡s], [ʃ], or [s] in case of ك, [d͡ʒ] or [d͡z] in case of ق and in case of ج), it is also worth mentioning that this trait of non-palatalization is becoming common across Saudi Arabia especially in urban centers, another feature is that the ل is only velarized to /ɫ/ in the word الله /aɫːaːh/ 'god' (except when it follows an /i/: بسمِ الله or لله ) and words derived from it, unlike other peninsular dialects where it might be velarized allophonically, as in pronounced in Hejazi but in other peninsular Arabic dialects.