All Dialects: وحى (to listen)

[Schem]

In your dialect, do you use or have you heard of the verb وَحَى in the meaning of listening to another person talk. If yes, is it fully activated like in my dialect with imperative اوح, present توحي, etc?

To Najdi speakers, is the verb used in your dialects? How often is it heard? And please share if you have information regarding the word's background and historic prevalence.

Thanks

 

[djara]

Doesn't exist in Tunisian.

 

[Hemza]

Never heard in Morocco either.

 

[Wadi Hanifa]

It's well-known but considered a bit old fashioned and 'bedouin'. I can see how it could have developed from the older sense of 'to tell', 'to inform' (hence وحي as 'revelation'), but it is a bit tenuous so who knows.

 

[Schem]

I agree about the etymology but how it's considered seems very unetymological and irrelevant to Gassim. The verb is part of the core vocabulary in all the Gassimi sedentary centers.

Just because it's found in Bedouin lexicons shouldn't have to mean anything besides what we already know of Najdi. Perhaps within Yamama the verb was preserved only in Bedouin communities although I doubt it isn't used in places like Majmaah or Kharj.

 

[Wadi Hanifa]

Words go in and out of fashion for many reasons. It may very well have been commonly used a generation or two ago (I would need to ask around). I was just commenting on how it is perceived today. It certainly doesn't mean the perception is based on historical fact (or that there is anything wrong with bedouin speech -- I think it's great!).

There are a number of Najdi words that people nowadays perceive as "Khaliji" or "Kuwaiti" for example, because they are out of fashion and young people only know them from Kuwaiti TV shows (e.g. جوّد, جوزي, etc.). But these are definitely Najdi words that older people still use.

 

[Schem]

I think this scenario is to be expected considering the nature of mainstream Gulf Arabic (as opposed to Bahrani, Hasawi, etc). It's the same thing that happened to European languages in the Americas.

Eastern Arabia was settled heavily by Najdis and Najdi descendants there retained a large vocabulary the homeland has since given up. The topic of this thread, وحى, doesn't seem to be used in the Gulf littoral though.