South Arabic

South Arabic is the game's name for the Modern South Arabian languages, a branch of South Semitic spoken along the southern edge of Arabia, in Yemen and the Omani coast of Dhofar, rather than a dialect of Arabic itself. Its chief members include Mehri of the Mahra region and Soqotri, confined to the island of Socotra.

Together with the ancient Sabaean tongue and the languages of Ethiopia they form the South Semitic group. These languages were spoken in the peninsula before the spread of Arabic with Islam in the 600s, and long bilingualism with Arabic followed.

They remain mainly spoken languages with oral poetry and little written literature; when written, an adapted Arabic alphabet is used. The tenth-century geographer al-Hamdani described Mehri as a speech far removed from classical Arabic.