Arabic phonology

This article is about the Modern Standard Arabic phonology. See also Varieties of Arabic.
See also WP:IPA for Arabic
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in pronunciation, the Arabic language is more properly described as a continuum of varieties.[1] 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 and formal declarations of all types.[2]

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 /aː/. 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.[3] Compare Classical Arabic Phonology

Contents

Vowels

There are three short vowels, three long vowels and two diphthongs (formed by a combination of short /a/ with the semivowels /j/ and /w/). Allophony is partially conditioned by neighboring consonants within the same word. As a general rule, for example, /a/ and /aː/ are:

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.[6] Often, even highly proficient speakers of MSA will import the vowel-retraction rules from their native dialects.[7] 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.[8] Certain speakers (most notably Levantine speakers) exhibit a degree of asymmetry in leftward vs. rightward spread of vowel-retraction.[8][9]

Example words[10]
short long
i عـِد‎ /ʕidd/ promise عيد‎ /ʕiːd/ feast
u عـُد‎ /ʕudd/ come back! عود‎ /ʕuːd/ lute
a عـَد‎ /ʕadd/ counted عاد‎ /ʕaːd/ came back
aj عين‎ /ʕajn/ eye
aw عود‎ /ʕawd/ return

The final heavy syllable of a root morpheme is stressed.[10]

Important note: The pronunciation of loanwords is dependent on the speaker's native variety.

The vowels /o/, /oː/, /e/ and /eː/ appear in varieties of Arabic and some stable loanwords or foreign names.[11] E.g. كوكاكولا /ko(ː)kaˈkoːla/ ('Coca-Cola'), شوكولاتة /ʃo(ː)ko(ː)ˈlaːta/ ('chocolate'), دكتور /dukˈtoːr/ or /dokˈtoːr/ ('doctor'), جون /(d)ʒoːn/ ('John'), توم /tom/ ('Tom'), بلجيكا /belˈ(d)ʒiːka/ ('Belgium'), سكرتير /sekreˈteːr/ or /sekerˈteːr/ ('secretary'), etc. Foreign words often have a liberal sprinkling of long vowels, as their word shapes do not conform to standardized prescriptive pronunciations with short vowels.[12] For short vowels /e/ and /o/, there may be no vowel letter written, as is normally done in Arabic (unless they are at the beginning of a word), or long vowel letters ي (for /e/) or و (for /o/) are used. The letters ي or و are always used to render the long vowels /eː/ and /oː/.

Consonants

See also: Arabic letters

Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background.[13] 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 (/sˤ/, /dˤ/, /tˤ/, and /ðˤ/) cause assimilation of emphasis to adjacent non-emphatic coronal consonants.

Modern Standard Arabic consonant phonemes
  Labial Emphatic 2 Plain Palato-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal/
Epiglottal		 Glottal
Dental Alveolar Alveolar Dental
Nasal m     n              
Stop voiceless (p) 8 tˤ 4   t     k q   ʔ
voiced b dˤ 4   d d͡ʒ~ʒ~ɟ~ɡ 1        
Fricative voiced (v) 8 ðˤ~zˤ z ð ɣ~ʁ 5 ʕ~ʢ̰ 3  
voiceless f   sˤ s θ ʃ   x~χ 5 ħ~ʜ 3 h
Approximant w   lˤ~l 6     j        
Trill     rˤ~r 7              
  • ^1 The phoneme represented by the Arabic letter ǧīm (ج) has many standard pronunciations: [ɡ] in Egypt and some regions in Yemen and Oman. This is also a characteristic of colloquial Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects.[14] In Morocco and Algeria, it is pronounced as [ɡ] in some words, especially colloquially. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, the standard is pronounced with [ʒ], and in certain regions of the Persian Gulf with [j], while [d͡ʒ]~[ʒ] in Literary Arabic. Some regions in Sudan and Yemen, as well as in some Sudanese and Yemeni dialects, it may be either [ɡʲ] or [ɟ], it used to be the same for Classical Arabic. Foreign words containing /ɡ/ may be transcribed with ج‎, غ‎, ك‎, ق‎, گ‎, ݣ‎ or ڨ‎, mainly depending on the regional spoken variety of Arabic. Also, /d͡ʒ~ʒ/ can be used in loanwords where it isn't the standard pronunciation for the letter ǧīm (ج).
  • ^2 Emphatic consonants are pronounced with the back of the tongue approaching the pharynx (see pharyngealization). /q/, /ħ/, and /ʕ/ can be considered the emphatic counterparts to /k/, /h/, and /ʔ/ respectively.[15]
  • ^3 The so-called "voiced pharyngeal fricative" /ʕ/ (ع) is in fact neither pharyngeal nor fricative, but is more correctly described as a creaky-voiced epiglottal approximant.[16] Its unvoiced counterpart /ħ/ (ح) is likewise epiglottal, although it is a true fricative. Thelwall asserts that the sound of ع is actually a pharyngealized glottal stop [ʔˤ].[17] Similarly, McCarthy (1994) points to dialectal and idiolectal variation between stop and continuant variations of /ʕ/ in Iraq and Kuwait, noting that the distinction is superficial for Arabic speakers and carries "no phonological consequences."[18]
  • ^4 Both ض /dˤ/ and ط /tˤ/ are pronounced as [d̪ˤ] and [t̪ˤ], respectively, in Iraq and Arabian Peninsula excluding Jordan and Syria.
  • ^5 In most regional standard pronunciations of Modern Standard Arabic and local spoken dialects, uvular fricatives of the classical period have become velar or post-velar.[19]
  • ^6 In most pronunciations of Modern Standard Arabic, /lˤ/ as a phoneme occurs in a handful of loanwords. It also occurs in الله /ʔalˤˈlˤaːh/, the name of God, q.e. Allah;[14] except when it follows long or short /i/ when it is not emphatic: بسم الله bismi l-lāh /bismillaːh/ ("in the name of God").[20] However, /lˤ/ is absent in many geographic regions such as Egypt and is more common than this in certain dialects, such as Iraqi, where the uvulars have velarized surrounding instances of /l/ in certain environments. /lˤ/ also assumes phonemic status more commonly in pronunciations of Modern Standard Arabic influenced by such dialects. Furthermore, /lˤ/ also occurs as an allophone of /l/ in the environment of emphatic consonants when the two are not separated by /i/.[21]
  • ^7 Emphatic /r/ exists all over North African pronunciations.
  • ^8 /p, v/ are not necessarily pronounced by all Arabic language speakers, but are often pronounced in names and loanwords. Foreign sounds /p/, /v/ are usually transcribed as ب /b/ and ف /f/, respectively. In some words, they are pronounced as in the original language (/p/ and /v/), e.g. باكستان or پاکستان /pa(ː)kistaːn, ba(ː)kistaːn/ "Pakistan", فيروس or ڤيروس /vi(ː)ru(ː)s, vajru(ː)s/ "virus", etc. Sometimes the Persian letter (with 3 dots) ﭖ /p/ and a modified ﭪ /v/ letter are used for this purpose. As these letters are not present on standard keyboards, they are simply written with ب /b/ and ف /f/, e.g. both نوفمبر and نوڤمبر /nu(ː)fambar/, /novambar, -ber/ or /nofember/ "November", both كاپريس and كابريس /ka(ː)pri(ː)s, ka(ː)bri(ː)s/ "caprice" can be used.[12][22] The use of both sounds may be considered marginal and Arabs may pronounce the words interchangeably; besides, many loanwords have become Arabized.

Long consonants are pronounced exactly like short consonants, but last longer. In Arabic, they are called "mushaddadah" (strengthened), but they are not pronounced any stronger, just held longer. Between a geminate consonant and a pause, an epenthetic [ə] occurs,[10] but this is only common across regions in West Asia.

See also Sun and moon letters

Local variations

Spoken varieties differ from Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic not only in grammar but also in pronunciation. Outside of the Arabian peninsula, a major linguistic division is between sedentary varieties, largely urban varieties that grew out of the language of the army camps set up when areas were first conquered, and Bedouin varieties originally spoken by Bedouin nomads who filtered in decades or centuries later. Inside the Arabian peninsula and in Iraq, the two types are less distinct; but the language of the urbanized Hijaz, at least, strongly looks like a conservative sedentary variety.

Some examples of variation:

Consonants
Vowels

Cairene

Main article: Egyptian Arabic

The Arabic of Cairo (often termed "Egyptian Arabic" or more correctly "Cairene Arabic") is a typical sedentary variety and a de-facto standard variety among certain segments of the Arabic-speaking population, due to the dominance of Egyptian movies. Cairene Arabic has emphatic labials [mˤ] and [bˤ][23] and emphatic [rˤ][14] with marginal phonemic status. Cairene has also merged the interdental consonants with the dental plosives (e.g. /θalaːθa/ → [tæˈlæːtæ], 'three') except in loanwords from Classical Arabic where they are nativized as sibilant fricatives (e.g. /θaːnawijja/ → [sænæˈwejːa], 'secondary school'). Cairene speakers pronounce /d͡ʒ/ as [ɡ] (it is also the standard for Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic pronunciation) and debuccalized /q/ to [ʔ] (again, loanwords from Classical Arabic have reintroduced the earlier sound[26] or approximated to [k] with the front vowel around it [æ] changed to the back vowel [ɑ]). Classical Arabic diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ became realized as [eː] and [oː] respectively. Still, Egyptian Arabic sometimes has minimal pairs like [ˈʃæjlæ] ('carrying' f.s.) vs [ˈʃeːlæ] ('burden'). [ɡeːb] 'pocket' + [næ] 'our' → collapsing with [ˈɡebnæ] which means ('cheese' or 'our pocket'),[27] because Cairene phonology can't have long vowels before two consonants. Cairene also has [ʒ] as a marginal phoneme from loanwords,[28] but from words, other than Modern Standard Arabic/Classical Arabic.

Sana'a

See also Sanaani Arabic

Varieties such as that of Ṣan‘ā’, Yemen, are more conservative and retain most phonemic contrasts of Classical Arabic. Ṣan‘ā’ni possesses /ɡ/ but as a reflex of Classical /q/ (which still functions as an emphatic consonant).[27] In unstressed syllables, Ṣan‘ā’ni short vowels may be reduced to [ə].[29] and /tˤ/ is voiced to [dˤ] in initial and intervocalic positions.[23]

Morocco

See also Moroccan Arabic

Of all the mainstream varieties of Arabic, Moroccan Arabic is likely the one that has diverged the most from Classical Arabic, similarly to the position of French in the Romance languages and English among the Germanic languages. As described above, Moroccan has heavily innovated in its vowel phonology, under heavy Berber influence. Short vowels /a/ and /i/ merged into /ə/. More recently, most instances of short /u/ have also merged into /ə/; the few that remain are mostly in the vicinity of velars and uvulars, which suggests an alternative analysis with phonemically rounded consonants (e.g. labiovelars) and only one short vowel /ə/. This schwa, in turn, is phonemically deleted in all contexts except directly followed by a single word-final consonant or in some three-consonant words of the shape CəCC. This inevitably results in some very long, complex consonant clusters, which (unlike most other Arabic varieties) Moroccan Arabic is remarkably tolerant of, only tending to insert epenthetic schwas to break up the clusters at a slow rate of speech. Unlike in other varieties, doubled consonants are never reduced, but are pronounced clearly whether occurring at the beginning of a word, end of a word, between vowels or before or after a consonant. With the collapse of short vowels, speakers no longer perceive a long vs. short distinction in vowels, which has been replaced with a "full" vs. "reduced/unstable" distinction. "Full" vowels (actually pronounced half-long) substitute for both the long and short vowels of Classical Arabic in borrowings; as a result, these borrowings can be immediately identified by their phonology.

A number of other unique or unusual developments have taken place. Stress is, for the most part, not detectable at all; to the extent stressed syllables can be identified, there is often no consistent pattern governing which syllable is stressed. Original /q/ has split into two phonemes /q/ and /ɡ/, reflecting the origin of Moroccan Arabic as a mixture of a sedentary and Bedouin dialect. Original diphthongs /aj/, /aw/ have merged into full vowels /i/, /u/ rather than generating new vowel qualities; but "long diphthongs" /aj/, /aw/ also exist, best analyzed as a combination of full vowel /a/ and semivowel. Unlike most other varieties, emphasis not only triggers front/back allophones in /a/, but also high/low allophones in /i/ and /u/, and /ǝ/ varies between non-emphatic [ɪ̆], emphatic [ə̆], and pharyngeal-environment [ʌ̆]. On the other hand, emphasis spreads only as far as the first full vowel in either direction, unlike in most sedentary varieties where emphasis can spread much more widely, sometimes throughout the entire word. For the purposes of emphasis, /r/ splits completely into non-emphatic /r/ and emphatic /rˤ/, distinguishable mostly by their effects on adjacent vowels; with very few exceptions, the choice of one or another is consistent across all words derived from a given root. Most emphatic/nonemphatic pairs behave similarly, but /t/ is affricated [tˢ] while /tˤ/ is non-affricated [t], so it is always possible to distinguish the two without recourse to their effects on surrounding vowels.

Distribution

The most frequent consonant phoneme of Modern Standard Arabic is /r/, the rarest is /ðˤ/. The frequency distribution of the 28 consonant phonemes, based on the 2,967 triliteral roots listed by Wehr (1952) is (with the percentage of roots in which each phoneme occurs):

Phoneme Frequency Phoneme Frequency
/r/ 24% /w/ 18%
/l/ 17% /m/ 17%
/n/ 17% /b/ 16%
/f/ 14% /ʕ/ 13%
/q/ 13% /d/ 13%
/s/ 13% /ħ/ 12%
/j/ 12% /ʃ/ 11%
/dʒ/ 10% /k/ 9%
/h/ 8% /z/ 8%
/tˤ/ 8% /x/ 8%
/sˤ/ 7% /ʔ/ 7%
/t/ 6% /dˤ/ 5%
/ɣ/ 5% /θ/ 3%
/ð/ 3% /ðˤ/ 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, /t/ 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: */ʃ/, which merged with /s/.[30] Various other consonants have changed their sound too, but have remained distinct. An original */p/ lenited to /f/, and */ɡ/ became palatalized to /ɡʲ/ or /ɟ/ by the time of the Qur'an and /d͡ʒ/, /ɡ/ or /ʒ/ in MSA (see above for more detail).[31] An original voiceless alveolar lateral fricative */ɬ/ became /ʃ/.[32] Its emphatic counterpart was considered by Arabs to be the most unusual sound in Arabic (Hence the Classical Arabic's appellation luġatu 'ḍ-ḍād or "language of the ḍād"); for most modern dialects, it has become an emphatic stop /dˤ/ with loss of the laterality.[32]

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.[32]

References

  1. ^ Kirchhoff & Vergyri (2005:38)
  2. ^ Kirchhoff & Vergyri (2005:38–39)
  3. ^ Holes (2004:57)
  4. ^ a b Thelwall (1990:39)
  5. ^ Holes (2004:60)
  6. ^ Abd-El-Jawad (1987:359)
  7. ^ Abd-El-Jawad (1987:361)
  8. ^ a b Watson (1999:290)
  9. ^ Davis (1995:466)
  10. ^ a b c Thelwall (1990:38)
  11. ^ a b Elementary Modern Standard Arabic: Volume 1, by Peter F. Abboud (Editor), Ernest N. McCarus (Editor)
  12. ^ a b c Teach Yourself Arabic, by Jack Smart (Author), Frances Altorfer (Author)
  13. ^ Holes (2004:58)
  14. ^ a b c Watson (2002:16)
  15. ^ Watson (2002:44)
  16. ^ Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:167–168)
  17. ^ Thelwall (1990), citing Gairdner (1925), Al Ani (1970), and Käster (1981).
  18. ^ McCarthy (1994:194–195)
  19. ^ Watson (2002:18)
  20. ^ Holes (2004:95)
  21. ^ Ferguson (1956:449)
  22. ^ Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic by Hans Wehr
  23. ^ a b c Watson (2002:14)
  24. ^ Watson (2002:60–62), citing Ṣan‘ā’ni and Cairene as examples with and without this phoneme, respectively.
  25. ^ a b c Gulf Arabic Sounds
  26. ^ a b Watson (2002:22)
  27. ^ a b Watson (2002:23)
  28. ^ Watson (2002:21)
  29. ^ Watson (2002:40)
  30. ^ Lipinski (1997:124)
  31. ^ Watson (2002:5, 15–16)
  32. ^ a b c Watson (2002:2)

Bibliography

Overviews
Alphabet
Letters
ʾAlif · Bāʾ · Tāʾ · Ṯāʾ · Ǧīm · Ḥāʾ · Ḫāʾ · Dāl · Ḏāl · Rāʾ · Zayn · Sīn · Šīn · Ṣād · Ḍād · Ṭāʾ · Ẓāʾ · ʿAyn · Ġayn · Fāʾ · Qāf · Kāf · Lām · Mīm · Nūn · Hāʾ · Wāw · Yāʾ
Eras
Notable varieties
Standardized: Modern Standard Arabic, Regional: Egyptian · Iraqi · Levantine · Maghrebi · Sudanese · Arabian · Judeo-Arabic
Academic
Linguistics
Pre-Islamic
Modern Literary Variety
Maghreb
Levant
Mesopotamia
Arabia
Nile Valley
Peripheral
Judeo-Arabic
Creoles
† Extinct