The Effect of Age on Dialect Change: The Case of Diphthongs in a Saudi Dialect

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the changes that occur in one of the Saudi dialects, that is Ghamdi variety. The researcher examined the speech of Ghamdi migrants in the city of Mecca within the framework of dialect contact. Those migrants migrated from Al-Baḥa, a rural area in the south-western region of Saudi Arabia, to the city of Mecca in the Hijazi region. The data was collected through sociolinguistic interviews with 49 Ghamdi speakers, and one social variable was used namely, age. The speakers were divided into four age groups 14- 29, 30- 45, 46- 61 and 62+. This investigation was motivated by the obvious linguistic differences between rural Ghamdi and urban Meccan dialects. Two linguistic variables were examined: the diphthongs (ai) and (aw). The results showed that Meccan features, the monophthongs [ɛ:] and [ɔ:], occur in all age groups of Ghamdi migrants. This indicates that there is a change in progress toward Meccan features. Furthermore, the results of this research manifested intermediate features in the speech of Ghamdis, that can be described as narrower diphthongs [ɛi] and [ɔu].