Abdullah Alajlani

I am a second-year PhD student in the Middle Eastern and North African Studies Program (MENAS) tracking in the linguistics of Middle Eastern languages (the Sahili dialect of Al-Qunfudah). I obtained my bachelor's degree in English from King Khalid University - Abha (2008). After that, I was granted a full scholarship to study for a master's at Oakland University - Michigan, where I obtained my master's degree in linguistics (2013). They say 'dreams never die,' and after more than a decade, I began my PhD journey in August 2025. My interests basically focus on sociophonetics—sociolinguistics and sound production. What made me interested in this field is the wonderful varieties of Arabic that various surrounding tribes produce while using their dialects, so I started looking at different aspects of these dialects.