The Shehri Alphabet

Shehri (Śḥerī) and Jibbali are two names for the same Modern South Arabian language ^[2]. "Shehri" is the community's own name (endonym) — meaning the language of the Shehri mountain people of Dhofar. "Jibbali" is an Arabic-derived outsider name (from jibāl, mountains). Both names refer to the same language spoken in the Dhofar Governorate of Oman.

In academic linguistics, both names appear in the literature. LINCOM Europa and SOAS publications often use both "Jibbali" and "Shehri" interchangeably. The ISO 639-3 code shv applies to both.

Increasingly, scholars are adopting "Shehri" (Śḥerī) as the preferred name, respecting the community's own designation.

Shehri (Jibbali) is a living descendant of the ancient South Arabian linguistic tradition — the same tradition represented by the Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic, and Hadramitic inscriptional languages documented in ISAC's epigraphic collections ^[1].

The Modern South Arabian languages (Shehri, Mehri, Hobyót, Bathari, Soqotri) are not descendants of Arabic; they represent a separate South Semitic branch that diverged before Arabic and other Central Semitic languages.

The lateral fricative /ɬ/ in Shehri may be a retention of a Proto-South-Semitic sound that was merged with other consonants in Arabic. This suggests that the Modern South Arabian languages like Shehri preserve features of ancient South Semitic phonology that Arabic has lost.

Shehri is spoken in the Dhofar Governorate of southern Oman, with its main speaker community in the Dhofar mountains (Jebel Qara, Jebel Samhan) and around the city of Salalah ^[2]. Dhofar borders Yemen to the west, and Yemen's Al-Mahra region has related Mehri speakers, reflecting the geographic continuity of the Modern South Arabian language area.

An estimated 25,000–60,000 people speak Shehri (Jibbali).

The ISO 639-3 code for Shehri (Jibbali) is shv ^[1]. Both the Shehri and Jibbali names are documented under this single code. LINCOM Europa, SOAS University of London, and ISAC (the former Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago) are among the institutions that have contributed to the academic documentation of this endangered language.

The lateral fricative /ɬ/ is the most phonologically distinctive sound in Shehri and all Modern South Arabian languages ^[2]. It is produced by pushing air over the sides of the tongue while the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge — a similar sound to Welsh "ll" (as in "Llanfair"). In scholarly Latin transliteration it is written ɬ.

The lateral fricative is absent from Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and all other Semitic branches — making it the defining phonological marker of Modern South Arabian.

Its retention in Shehri (and its cognate ś in Old South Arabian inscriptions) suggests these languages preserve a Proto-South-Semitic sound lost elsewhere in the Semitic family — one key reason linguists classify Modern South Arabian as a distinct South Semitic branch.

Although Shehri speakers are typically fluent in Arabic (through education and daily life in Oman), Shehri is a distinct language — not a dialect of Arabic ^[2]. Key differences include:

• Lateral fricative /ɬ/: Shehri has this sound; Arabic does not — it is the defining phoneme separating Modern South Arabian from Arabic

• Vocabulary: Core Shehri vocabulary descends from Proto-South-Arabian, not Proto-Arabic — the languages share a Semitic ancestor but diverged over millennia

• Grammar: Shehri has its own verb morphology, noun patterns, and pronoun system, distinct from Classical or Modern Standard Arabic

• History: Arabic and Modern South Arabian languages separated from Proto-South-Semitic roughly 3,000–4,000 years ago; Shehri is not descended from Arabic

Arabic loanwords do appear in Shehri due to prolonged contact, but these are borrowings into an essentially non-Arabic Semitic language.

Shehri (Jibbali) belongs to the Afro-Asiatic → Semitic → South Semitic → Modern South Arabian sub-group ^[1]. Its closest living relatives are Mehri, Hobyót, Bathari, and Soqotri — together constituting the entire Modern South Arabian branch.

Modern South Arabian languages are not dialects of Arabic — they are a separate Semitic branch with over three millennia of distinct history, related to but separate from the ancient South Arabian inscriptional languages (Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic, Hadramitic).

Shehri has no officially standardised writing system and has historically been an exclusively oral language ^[2]. LINCOM Europa academic publications use Latin transliteration. Some speakers informally use Arabic script, but no community-standardised orthography or formal written tradition exists.

This is shared by all Modern South Arabian languages — unlike Arabic (written tradition since 6th century CE), they maintained transmission exclusively through oral poetry, storytelling, and everyday speech until Western linguistic documentation began in the 19th century.