Kuwaiti Arabic shares many phonetic features unique to Gulf dialects spoken in the Arabian Peninsula.
[3] Due to Kuwait's soap opera industry, knowledge of Kuwaiti Arabic has spread throughout the Arabic-speaking world and become recognizable even to people in countries such as Tunisia and Jordan.[4]: p.
113 [5] Kuwaiti Arabic speakers exhibit features not found in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), due in part to natural linguistic change over time, influence from nearby dialects in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, as well as influence from English, Italian, Persian, Turkish, as well as Hindi-Urdu and Swahili.
[6][3] Three groups make up the Kuwaiti population: the descendants of people from the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Iran.
[10] Consonants in parentheses are marginal, found exclusively in formal, educated speech or from loanwords.
Similarly, the glottal stop [ʔ] is rare, occurring in borrowings from Modern Standard Arabic.
The last variety is Educated Standard Arabic (ESA), in which the speaker mixes between MSA and KA.
[22][23] Kuwaiti is the "normal" way of speaking in everyday's life and is acquired naturally at home and not taught at schools (as it is considered a mere dialect of the Arabic language by the public).
[17] Due to immigration during its early history as well as trade, Kuwaiti was influenced by many languages such as Persian, English, Italian, Urdu, Turkish, and others.
[25] A characteristic in Kuwait is the use of words and phrases by women exclusively, for example "يَا حَافِظ", roughly translated to "Oh Saver [God]", is rarely or never used by men.