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Arabic phonology
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While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in pronunciation, the Arabic language is more properly described as a collection of different varieties or Macrolanguage. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic, which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions. Modern Standard Arabic is used in writing in all print media and orally in newscasts, speeches, formal declarations of all types, and recitations of the Qur'an.
Modern Standard Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes, making phonemic contrasts between "emphatic" (pharyngealized or velarized) consonants and non-emphatic ones; Arabic also has three vowel phonemes.
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Encyclopedia
While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in pronunciation, the Arabic language is more properly described as a collection of different varieties or Macrolanguage. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic, which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions. Modern Standard Arabic is used in writing in all print media and orally in newscasts, speeches, formal declarations of all types, and recitations of the Qur'an.
Modern Standard Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes, making phonemic contrasts between "emphatic" (pharyngealized or velarized) consonants and non-emphatic ones; Arabic also has three vowel phonemes. However, by the 8th century the letter alif no longer represented a glottal stop, but a long . As a result, a diacritic symbol, hamza, was introduced to represent this sound. In addition, some of these phonemes have coalesced in the various modern dialects, while new phonemes have been introduced through borrowing or phonemic splits. A "phonemic quality of length" applies to consonants as well as vowels.
Vowels
There are three short vowels, three long vowels and two diphthongs (formed by a combination of short with the semivowels and ). Allophony is partially conditioned by neighboring consonants within the same word. As a general rule, for example, and are:
- retracted to in the environment of a neighboring , or an emphatic consonant;
- before a word boundary;
- advanced to in the environment of plain labial and coronal consonants as well as ;
However, the actual rules governing vowel-retraction are a good deal more complex, and have relatively little in the way of an agreed-upon standard for MSA, as there are often competing notions of what constitutes a "prestige" form. Often, even highly proficient speakers of MSA will import the vowel-retraction rules from their native dialects. Thus, for example, in the Arabic of someone from Cairo emphatic consonants will affect every vowel between word boundaries, whereas certain Saudi speakers exhibit emphasis only on the vowels adjacent to an emphatic consonant. Certain speakers (most notably Levantine speakers) exhibit a degree of asymmetry in leftward vs. rightward spread of vowel-retraction.
Example words | short | long | i | | promise | | feast | u | | come back! | | lute | a | | counted | | came back | aj | | | | eye | aw | | | | return |
The final heavy syllable of a root morpheme is stressed.
The vowels , , and appear in some stable loanwords or foreign names. . E.g. ???????? ('Coca-Cola'), ????? or ('lemon'), ???????? ('chocolate'), ????? or ('doctor'), ??? or ('John'), ??? ('Tom'), ?????? or ('Belgium'), ?????? ('secretary'), etc. Foreign words often have a liberal sprinkling of long vowels, as their word shapes do not conform to the usual guidelines, which may be used to render short vowels. For short vowels and in foreign words, there may be no written letter written, as is normally done in Arabic (unless they are at the beginning of a word), or long vowel letters ? (for ) or ? (for ) are used. Letters ? or ? are always used to render the long vowels and .
Consonants
Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background. Nevertheless, the number and phonetic character of most of the 28 consonants has a broad degree of regularity among Arabic-speaking regions. Note that Arabic is particularly rich in uvular, pharyngeal, and pharyngealized ("emphatic") sounds. The emphatic coronals ( , and ) cause assimilation of emphasis to adjacent non-emphatic coronal consonants.
- Emphatic consonants are pronounced with the back of the tongue approaching the pharynx (see pharyngealization). , , and can be considered the emphatic counterparts to , , and respectively.
- argues that Arabic descriptions of a voiced pharyngeal fricative are incorrect and that Arabic varieties instead possesses a pharyngealized glottal stop (. Epiglottal realizations for and have also been reported.
- is pronounced as by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced as , and in certain regions of the Arabian Gulf it is pronounced as . In classical Arabic, this was either or . Foreign words containing may be transcribed with (Egypian spelling), , or Persian letter , for example, both ???? and ???? (even ???? or ????) /golf/ golf are all possible spellings.
- In most pronunciations of Standard Arabic, occurs in a handful of loanwords and ???? , the name of God, q.e. Allah, except when following long or short when it is not emphatic: ??? ???? bismi l-lah ('in the name of God'). However, is a somewhat more common phoneme than this in certain dialects, such as Iraqi, where the uvulars have velarized surrounding instances of /l/ in certain environments. also assumes phonemic status more commonly in pronunciations of Standard Arabic influenced by such dialects (occasionally alongside , and as is the case in Cairo) though it is still a marginal phoneme.
In most dialects, uvular fricatives of the classical period have become velar or post-velar.
Foreign sounds /p/, /v/ are usually transcribed as ? /b/ and ? /f/, respectively. In some words, they pronounced as in the original language (/p/ and /v/), e.g. ??????? or ??????? /pakista?n/ Pakistan, ????? or ????? /vi?rus, vajrus/ virus, etc. Sometimes Persian letters (with 3 dots) ? /p/ and ? /v/ letters are used for this purpose. As these letters lack on standard keyboards, they are simply written with ? /b/ and ? /f/, e.g. both ?????? and ?????? /nu?fambar/, /novambar/ or /novembir/ November, both ?????? and ?????? /ka?'pri?s/ caprice can be used. The use of both sounds may be considered marginal and Arabs may pronounce the words interchangeably; besides, many loanwords have become arabised.
Long consonants are pronounced exactly like short consonants, but last longer. In Arabic, they are called them "mushaddadah" (strengthened), but they are not pronounced any stronger, just held longer. Between a geminate consonant and a pause, an epenthetic occurs.
See also Sun and moon letters
Local variations
Colloquial varieties differ from Standard Arabic not only in specific words but also in pronunciation. Trends common to most or many dialects include:
- Realization of the voiced emphatic dental fricative as , merging it with , or both.
- Debuccalizing to or fronting it to .
- Monophthongizing diphthongs such as and to and , respectively. Mid vowels may also be present in loanwords such as ?????? (Melbórn Melbourne), ?????? ( '(male) secretary') and ????? ('doctor').
- Loss of the glottal stop in places where it is historically attested, as in .
- Raising word final to .
- In dialects like North Mesopotamian, many Bedouin dialects of the Maghrib, and Mauritanian, and have collapsed to schwa and exhibit very little distinction so that such dialects have only (long and short) and . Similarly, certain Sudanese and Cairene dialects exhibit contrasts between and in limited contexts.
- A number of dialects have the marginal phonemes (for educated speakers) and , largely from loanwords as in ????? (Volvo 'Volvo') and ??? ?? (sevn-ap 'Seven-Up'). is another possible loanword phoneme, as in the word ?????? (sandawitsh 'sandwich'), though a number of varieties instead break up the and sounds with an epenthetic vowel.
Despite differences amongst colloquial varieties, there is a great deal of regional consistency in speakers' recitation of the Qur'an as many fluently speak and understand the standard pronunciation.
Cairene
The Arabic of Cairo has emphatic labials and and emphatic with marginal phonemic status. Cairene has also merged the interdental consonants with the dental plosives (e.g. ? , 'three') except in loanwords from Standard Arabic where they are nativized as sibilant fricatives (e.g. ? , 'secondary school'). Cairene has also retracted to (while adopting loanwords from Standard Arabic with ) and debuccalized to (again, loanwords from Standard Arabic have reintroduced the earlier sound). Classical Arabic diphthongs and became realized as and respectively; loanwords from Standard Arabic reintroduced the diphthongs, sometimes with minimal pairs like ('carrying' f.s.) vs ('burden') as well as ('cheese') vs ('our pocket'). Cairene also has as a marginal phoneme from loanwords.
San`a'
Varieties such as that of , Yemen, are more conservative and retain most phonemic contrasts of Classical Arabic. possesses but as a reflex of Classical (which still functions as an emphatic consonant). In unstressed syllables, short vowels may be reduced to . and is voiced to in initial and intervocalic positions.
Distribution
The most frequent consonant phoneme of Arabic is , the rarest is . The frequency distribution of the 28 consonant phonemes, based on the 2,967 triliteral roots listed by is (with the percentage of roots in which each phoneme occurs):
| Phoneme | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|---|
| Frequency | 24% | 18% | 17% | 17% | 17% | 16% | 14% | 13% | 13% | 13% | 13% | 12% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 9% | 8% | 8% | 8% | 8% | 7% | 7% | 6% | 5% | 5% | 3% | 3% | 1% |
|---|
This distribution does not necessarily reflect the actual frequency of occurrence of the phonemes in speech, since pronouns, prepositions and suffixes are not taken into account, and the roots themselves will occur with varying frequency. In particular, occurs in several extremely common affixes (occurring in the marker for second-person or feminine third-person as a prefix, the marker for first-person or feminine third-person as a suffix, and as the second element of Forms VIII and X as an infix) despite being fifth from last on Wehr's list. The list does give, however, an idea of which phonemes are more marginal than others. Note that the five least frequent letters are among the six letters added to those inherited from the Phoenician alphabet.
History
Of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost: , which merged with . Various other consonants have changed their sound too, but have remained distinct. An original lenited to , and became palatalized to or by the time of the Qur'an and in MSA (see above for more detail). An original voiceless alveolar lateral fricative became . Its emphatic counterpart was considered by Arabs to be the most unusual sound in Arabic (Hence the Classical Arabic's appellation or "language of the "); for most modern dialects, it has become an emphatic stop with loss of the laterality.
Other changes may also have happened. Classical Arabic pronunciation is not thoroughly recorded, and different reconstructions of the sound system of Proto-Semitic propose different phonetic values. One example is the emphatic consonants, which are pharyngealized in modern pronunciations may have been velarized in the eighth century and glottalized in Proto-Semitic.
Bibliography
- Hans Wehr, (1952) Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart****
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