Yemenite Hebrew

Yemenite Hebrew (Hebrew: עִבְרִית תֵּימָנִית‎, romanized: ʿIvrIṯ Tēmoniṯ), also referred to as Temani Hebrew, is the pronunciation system for Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Hebrew has been studied by language scholars, many of whom believe it retains older phonetic and grammatical features lost elsewhere. Yemenite speakers of Hebrew have garnered considerable praise from language purists because of their use of grammatical features from classical Hebrew.

Some scholars believe that its phonology was heavily influenced by spoken Yemeni Arabic. Other scholars, including Yosef Qafih and Abraham Isaac Kook, hold the view that Yemenite Arabic did not influence Yemenite Hebrew, as this type of Arabic was also spoken by Yemenite Jews and is distinct from the liturgical and conversational Hebrew of the communities. Among other things, Qafih noted that the Yemenite Jews spoke Arabic with a distinct Jewish flavor, inclusive of pronouncing many Arabic words with vowels foreign to the Arabic language, e.g., the qamatz (Hebrew: קָמַץ) and tzere (Hebrew: צֵירִי‎). He argues that the pronunciation of Yemenite Hebrew was not only uninfluenced by Arabic, but it influenced the pronunciation of Arabic by those Jews, despite the Jewish presence in Yemen for over a millennium.