`titreb ‘Real Sanaani’. Note on the perception of linguistic changes in Sanaa, Yemen.`/titreb While the traditional dialect of the ancient part of Sanaa (Yemen) has already been thoroughly described, much less information is available on the linguistic dynamics at work in greater Sanaa, whose population is predominantly migrant origin. Old Sanaani remains in any case a symbolic reference for most of the inhabitants of the city. This paper seeks to establish the value of such a reference point, and to represent speakers’ attitudes towards the speech of the old city. Such attitudes are manifold, but there is one constant : opposition between a refined urban identity linked to an Old Town seen as historically charged, and a tribesman identity (gabîlî) built symbolically on a certain ruggedness associated wth physical courage. This opposition occurs in linguistic behavior, or at least in the discourse which Sanaanis produce on this subject. It gives rise to distinct attitudes according to speaker sex. Finally, it seems to have led to the appearance of a modern speech which while urban remains connoted as gabîlî.