Varieties of Arabic
There are many varieties of Arabic (also called dialects of Arabic or vernacular languages) in existence. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. It is classified as a macrolanguage comprising 30 modern varieties, including its standard form. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. Some varieties of Arabic in North Africa, for example, are not easily comprehensible to an Arabic speaker from the Levant or the Persian Gulf. Within these broad regions further and considerable geographic distinctions exist, within countries, across country borders, even between cities and villages.
Hejazi Arabic phonology
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, Medina, Mecca and Ta'if who constitute the majority, 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 consonant inventory mostly depends on the speaker, urban speakers use 26 with no interdental phonemes or 28 phonemes with the phonemes and being used partially due to the influence of Modern Standard Arabic and neighboring dialects, in addition to the marginal phoneme and two foreign phonemes ⟨پ⟩ and ⟨ڤ⟩ used by a number of speakers. In general, Hejazi speakers pronounce as or merge it with depending on the word, with the classicized pronunciation being an optional allophone, as it is always used when pronouncing the letter's name (), and when reading or speaking Standard or Classical Arabic. On the other hand rural or bedouin speakers use 27 consonant phonemes completely merging the phoneme /dˤ/ with /ðˤ/ .