An sociolinguistic feature of Bahrain is the existence of three distinct dialects: Bahrani Arabic (a dialect primarily spoken by Baharna in Shia villages and some parts of Manama), Sunni and Ajami Arabic.[2]
In Bahrain, the Sunni muslims form a minority of the population, but the ruling family is Sunni. Therefore, the Arabic dialect represented on TV is almost invariably that of the Sunni population. Therefore, power, prestige and financial control are associated with the Sunni Arabs. This is having a major effect on the direction of language change in Bahrain.[3]
As with all Bahraini dialects, it is heavily influenced by Indo-European languages, including Iranian Languages such as the Achomi Language,[4] an example of this is "Dolagh" (دولاغ) instead of "Jorab" (جوراب) for socks,[5][6] which is used more commonly in modern Farsi and Arabic; the former having been influenced by the latter, in addition to Farsi,[7][8][9][10][11][12] and Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi and Urdu an example of this is that Bahrainis do not use the formal Arabic Heza'a (حذاء) to describe a "shoe" but they rather say "Jooti" (single) or "Jawati" (plural).[12]: 134 English (itself an Indo-European language), has also had an influenced on Bahraini Arabic, for example Bahrainis say "Ambaloos" (عمبلوص) for Ambulance, and "esweech" (سویچ) for electronic keys,[13] It is also influenced by Turkish.
