Abstract
Popular Hijazi proverbs have a great significance in the lives of Hijazi people. They are considered a document for their ways of thinking, a summary for their experiences, a core for their judgments, and a mirror for their habits and tradition. Additionally, they are the best way of reserving their heritage, transferring it from one generation to another. Popular Hijazi proverbs, moreover, include religious, ethical, intellectual and social implications. They can be exploited in reserving Arabic lexical items and in studying the Hijazi dialect. Thus, a linguistic study of the popular Hijazi proverbs is also a study of the Hijazi dialect which will help us to identify most of its common linguistic features: phonetic, morphologic, syntactic and semantic. On the other hand, such study of popular Hijazi proverbs can be contrasted and compared to classical Arabic proverbs and other proverbs of similar dialects. Popular proverbs have well known characteristics, such as using the slang or colloquial languages and using a mixture of both classical Arabic and the slang. Although there are many books and researches dealing with the Hijazi proverbs, they are concerned only with their collection, explanation and implication. This study, however, is an attempt to study the linguistic features of the popular proverbs in Hijaz (Makkah, Madina and Jeddah) in the following levels:
1- Phonetic features (vowels, consonant, stress)
2-Morphological features (verb weights, pluralization, masculization/feminization,
3- syntactic-structural features (sentence, analysis)
4- semantic features (lexical items and their meanings)
It is hoped that this study will shed light on the general characteristics of the features of the Hijazi dialect, the difference between the Hijzi dialect and classical Arabic for non-Arab learners, and the various effects and benefits.