Because of the tribal nature of Upper Egypt, and because some of the Upper Egyptian tribes have had links to the formal Arabic language with its proper pronunciations, or the classical Arabic language could be vividly noticed in many sub-dialects.

Furthermore, in addition to similar pronunciation of letters with Hejazi cities such as Jeddah and Mecca, words such as "لسع" meaning "still" and "قمرية" meaning "wild pigeon" are in wide use in Upper Egypt.

Other examples are classical words such as "فروج" meaning "chicken", as opposed to "فرخة" that is used in Northern Egypt.

Second- and third-generation Ṣaʽīdi migrants are monolingual in Egyptian Arabic but maintain cultural and family ties to the south.

Behnstedt and Woidich classify the dialects of Upper Egypt into four broad groupings:[8] Ṣaʽīdi Arabic has the following consonants:[9]