section_path: Demographics/Language
section_name: Language
paragraph_text: Language
  
  The official language is Arabic. There are four main regional dialect groups spoken by Saudis: Najdi (about 14.6 million speakers), Hejazi (about 10.3 million speakers), Gulf (about 0.96 million speakers) including Baharna dialects, and Southern Hejaz and Tihama dialects. Faifi is spoken by about 50 000. The Mehri language is also spoken by around 20 000 Mehri citizens. Saudi Sign Language is the principal language of the deaf community, amounting to around 100 000 speakers. The large expatriate communities also speak their own languages, the most numerous of which, according to 2018 data, are Bengali (~1 500 000), Tagalog (~ 900 000), Punjabi (~ 800 000), Urdu (~ 740 000), Egyptian Arabic (~ 600 000), Rohingya, North Levantine Arabic (both ~ 500 000) and Malayalam.