Mutually unintelligible in the context of "Spoken Arabic"

Varieties of Arabic (or dialects or vernaculars) are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian Peninsula. There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to geographical distance and some that are mutually unintelligible. Many aspects of the variability attested to in these modern variants can be found in the ancient Arabic dialects in the peninsula. Likewise, many of the features that characterize (or distinguish) the various modern variants can be attributed to the original settler dialects as well as local native languages and dialects. Some organizations, such as SIL International, consider these approximately 30 different varieties to be separate languages, while others, such as the Library of Congress, consider them all to be dialects of Arabic.

In terms of sociolinguistics, a major distinction exists between the formal standardized language, found mostly in writing or in prepared speech, and the widely diverging vernaculars, used for everyday speaking situations. The latter vary from country to country, from speaker to speaker (according to personal preferences, education and culture), and depending on the topic and situation. In other words, Arabic in its natural environment usually occurs in a situation of diglossia, which means that its native speakers often learn and use two linguistic forms substantially different from each other, the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as the official language and a local colloquial variety (called العامية, al-ʿāmmiyya in many Arab countries, meaning "slang" or "colloquial"; or called الدارجة, ad-dārija, meaning "common or everyday language" in the Maghreb), in different aspects of their lives.

The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the city of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Shanghainese, like the rest of the Wu language group, is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese, such as Mandarin.

Shanghainese belongs to a separate group of the Taihu Wu subgroup. With nearly 14 million speakers, Shanghainese is also the largest single form of Wu Chinese. Since the late 19th century, it has served as the lingua franca of the entire Yangtze River Delta region, but in recent decades its status has declined relative to Mandarin, which most Shanghainese speakers can also speak.

Sichuanese, also called Sichuanese Mandarin, is a branch of Southwestern Mandarin spoken mainly in Sichuan and Chongqing, which was part of Sichuan Province from 1954 until 1997, and the adjacent regions of their neighboring provinces, such as Hubei, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan and Shaanxi. Although "Sichuanese" is often synonymous with the Chengdu-Chongqing dialect, there is still a great amount of diversity among the Sichuanese dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible with each other. In addition, because Sichuanese is the lingua franca in Sichuan, Chongqing and part of Tibet, it is also used by many Tibetan, Yi, Qiang and other ethnic minority groups as a second language.

Sichuanese is more similar to Standard Chinese than southeastern Chinese varieties but is still quite divergent in phonology, vocabulary, and even grammar. The Minjiang dialect is especially difficult for speakers of other Mandarin dialects to understand. Sichuanese can be further divided into a number of dialects: Chengdu–Chongqing, Minjiang, Renshou–Fushun, and Ya'an–Shimian. The dialect of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province and an important central city, is the most representative dialect of Southwestern Mandarin and is used widely in Sichuan opera and other art forms of the region.

South Sumatra (Indonesian: Sumatera Selatan) is a province of Indonesia, located in the southeast of the island of Sumatra. The capital and largest city of the province is the city of Palembang, and the province covers territory historically administered by the Palembang Sultanate. The province borders the provinces of Jambi to the north, Bengkulu to the west and Lampung to the south, as well a maritime border with the Bangka Belitung Islands to the east. It is the largest province in the island of Sumatra, and it is slightly smaller than Portugal, the department of Boquerón in Paraguay, the Altai Republic in Russia or the U.S. state of Maine. The Bangka Strait in the east separates South Sumatra and the island of Bangka, which is part of the Bangka Belitung Islands province.

The province has an area of 86,771.68 km (33,503 sq mi) and had a population of 8,467,432 at the 2020 census; the official estimate as at mid-2024 was 8,837,301 (comprising 4,499,011 males and 4,338,290 females). The province is rich in natural resources, such as petroleum, natural gas and coal. The province is inhabited by many different Malay sub ethnic groups, with Palembangese being largest ethnic group. Most speak the Palembang language, which is mutually intelligible to both Indonesian and local Palembang Malay. Other ethnic groups include the Javanese, Sundanese, Minangkabau and Chinese. Most are concentrated in urban areas and are largely immigrants from other parts of Indonesia.

Hainanese or Hainamese (Hainan Romanised: Hái-nâm-oe, Hainanese Pinyin: Hhai3 nam2 ue1, simplified Chinese: 海南话; traditional Chinese: 海南話; pinyin: Hǎinánhuà), also known as Kengbun/Kengvun (simplified Chinese: 琼文话; traditional Chinese: 瓊文話), Keng language (琼语; 瓊語) or Hainam Min (海南闽语; 海南閩語) is a language of Min Chinese spoken in the island of Hainan and regional overseas Chinese communities in Thailand especially.

In the classification by Yuan Jiahua, it was added to the Southern Min group by Him despite being mutually unintelligible with Southern Min varieties such as Hokkien and Teochew. In the classification of Li Rong, used by the Language Atlas of China, it was treated as a separate Min subgroup. Hou Jingyi combined it with Leizhou Min, spoken on the Leizhou Peninsula, in a Qiong–Lei group. "Hainanese" is also used for the language of the Li people living in Hainan, but generally refers to Min varieties spoken in Hainan.