Arabic Phonology

While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in phonology, the contemporary spoken Arabic language is more properly described as a continuum of varieties. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions. MSA is used in writing in formal print media and orally in newscasts, speeches and formal declarations of numerous types.

Modern Standard Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes or 8 or 10 vowels in most modern dialects. All phonemes contrast between " emphatic" (pharyngealized) consonants and non-emphatic ones. 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

Modern Standard Arabic has six vowel phonemes forming three pairs of corresponding short and long vowels (). Many spoken varieties also include and . Modern Standard Arabic has two diphthongs (formed by a combination of short with the semivowels and ). Allophony in different dialects of Arabic can occur and is partially conditioned by neighboring consonants within the same word. The following are some general rules:

*
** retracted to in the environment of a neighboring , or an emphatic consonant (one that is uvularized, though customarily transcribed as if pharyngealized): , , , , and in a few regional standard pronunciations also and ;
** only in Iraq and the Persian Gulf: before a word boundary;
** advanced to in the environment of most consonants:
*** labial consonants (, and ),
*** plain (non-emphatic) coronal consonants with the exception of : namely , , , , , , , , and
*** pharyngeal consonants ( and )
*** glottal consonants ( and )
*** , and ;
** Across North Africa and West Asia, the allophones and may be realized differently, either as , or both as ;
** In northwestern Africa, the open front vowel is raised to or .
*
** Across North Africa and West Asia, may be realized as before or adjacent to emphatic consonants and , , , . can also have different realizations, i.e. . Sometimes with one value for each vowel in both short and long lengths or two different values for each short and long lengths. They can be distinct phonemes in loanwords for a number of speakers.
** In Egypt, close vowels have different values; short initial or medial: ,  ← instead of . and completely become and respectively in some other particular dialects. Unstressed final long are most often shortened or reduced:  → ,  → ,  → .

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, as there are often competing notions of what constitutes a "prestige" form. Often, even highly proficient speakers 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.

The final heavy syllable of a root is stressed.

The short vowels are all possible allophones of across different dialects; e.g., ('I said') is pronounced or or , since the difference between the short mid vowels and is never phonemic, and they are mostly found in complementary distribution, except for a number of speakers where they can be phonemic but only in foreign words.

The short vowels are all possible allophones of across different dialects; e.g., ('from') is pronounced or or since the difference between the short mid vowels and is never phonemic, and they are mostly found in complementary distribution, except for a number of speakers where they can be phonemic but only in foreign words.

The long mid vowels and appear to be phonemic in most varieties of Arabic except in general Maghrebi Arabic, where they merge with and . For example, لون ('color') is generally pronounced in Mashriqi dialects but in most Maghrebi Arabic. The long mid vowels can be used in Modern Standard Arabic in dialectal words or in some stable loanwords or foreign names,Elementary Modern Standard Arabic: Volume 1, by Peter F. Abboud (Editor), Ernest N. McCarus (Editor) as in ('Rome') and ('cheque').

Foreign words often have a liberal sprinkling of long vowels, as their word shapes do not conform to standardized prescriptive pronunciations written by letters for short vowels.Teach Yourself Arabic, by Jack Smart (Author), Frances Altorfer (Author) The long mid vowels and are always rendered with the letters and , respectively. In general, the pronunciation of loanwords is highly dependent on the speaker's native variety.

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. The phonemes ⟨ پ⟩ and ⟨ ڤ⟩ (not used by all speakers) are not considered to be part of the phonemic inventory, as they exist only in foreign words and they can be pronounced as ⟨ ب⟩ and ⟨ ف⟩ respectively depending on the speaker.Hans Wehr, ''Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic'' (transl. of ''Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart'', 1952) The standard pronunciation of ⟨ ج⟩ varies regionally, most prominently in the Arabian Peninsula, parts of the Levant, Iraq, and northern Algeria, it is also considered as the predominant pronunciation of Literary Arabic outside the Arab world, in most of Northwest Africa and the Levant, in Egypt, coastal Yemen, and south coastal Oman, as well as in Sudan.

Note: the table and notes below discusses the phonology of Modern Standard Arabic among Arabic speakers and not regional dialects.

Long (geminate or double) consonants are pronounced exactly like short consonants, but last longer. In Arabic, they are called ''mushaddadah'' ("strengthened", marked with a shaddah), but they are not actually pronounced any "stronger". Between a long consonant and a pause, an epenthetic occurs, but this is only common across regions in West Asia.

Phonotactics

Standard Arabic syllables come in only five forms:
* C V (light)
* C V V (heavy)
* C V C (heavy)
* C V V C (super-heavy)
* C V C C (super-heavy)

Arabic syllable structure does not allow syllables to start with a vowel or with a consonant cluster. In cases where a word starts with a consonant cluster it is preceded by an epenthetic utterance initially or when preceded by a word that ends with a consonant; there are however exceptions like and that connect with a following word-initial consonant cluster with and respectively, if the preceding word ends with a long vowel that vowel is then shortened.

Super-heavy syllables are usually not allowed except word finally, with the exception of CVV- before geminates creating non-final CVVC- syllables, these can be found in the active participles of geminate Form I verbs, like in ('substance, matter'), ('entirely'), ('poisonous'), ('dry'), ('public, general'), ('private, special'), and ('hot, spicy').

In the pausal form, the final geminates behave as a single consonant, only when preceding another word or with vocalization, the geminates start appearing, belonging to two separate syllables.

Loanwords can break some phonotactic rules like allowing initial consonant clusters (with an initial epenthetic being optional) like in /bluː.toː/ "Pluto" or allowing CVVC syllables non-finally without geminates like in /ruːs.jaː/ "Russia" which can be modified to /ruː.si.jaː/ to fit the phonotactics better.

Word stress

The placement of word stress in Arabic varies considerably from one dialect to another, and has been the focus of extensive research and debate.

In determining stress, Arabic distinguishes three types of syllables:

* Light:
** An open syllable containing a short vowel (i.e. CV), such as ''wa'' 'and'
* Heavy:
** An open syllable containing a long vowel (i.e. CVV), such as ''sā.fara'' 'he travelled'
** A closed syllable containing a short vowel followed by one consonant (i.e. CVC), such as ''min'' 'from' or ''ka.tab.tu'' 'I wrote'
* Super-heavy:
** A closed syllable containing a long vowel followed by one consonant (i.e. CVVC), such as ''bāb#'' 'door' or ''mād.dun'' 'stretching (NOM)'
** A closed syllable containing a short vowel followed by two consonants (i.e. CVCC), such as ''bint#'' 'girl', or a long vowel followed by a geminate consonant (i.e. CVVC_iC_i), such as ''mādd#'' 'stretching'

The word stress of Classical Arabic has been the subject of debate. However, there is consensus as to the general rule, even though there are some exceptions. A simple rule of thumb is that word-stress falls on the penultimate syllable of a word if that syllable is closed, and otherwise on the antepenultimate.

A more precise description is J. C. E. Watson's. Here the stressed syllable follows the marker ' and variant rules are in brackets:

Modern Arabic dialects all maintain rules (1) and (2). But if there is neither a final superheavy syllable nor a heavy penultimate syllable, their behaviour varies. Thus in Palestinian, rule (3) is instead 'otherwise stress the first syllable (up to the antepenult): ‘he wrote’, ‘man’', whereas the basic rules of Cairene (to which there are exceptions) are:

Local variations of Modern Standard Arabic

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'', largely urban, varieties and rural varieties. Inside the Arabian peninsula and in Iraq, the two types are less distinct; but the language of the urbanized Hejaz, at least, strongly looks like a conservative sedentary variety.

Some examples of variation:

; Consonants

In Modern Standard Arabic (not in Egypt's use), is used as a marginal phoneme to pronounce some dialectal and loan words.
On the other hand, it is considered a native phoneme or allophone in most modern Arabic dialects, mostly as a variant of (as in Arabian Peninsula and Northwest African dialects) or as a variant of (as in Egyptian and a number of Yemeni and Omani dialects). It is also considered a separate foreign phoneme that appears only in loanwords, as in most urban Levantine dialects where is and is .

The phoneme represented by the Arabic letter ' () has many standard pronunciations: in most of the Arabian Peninsula and as the predominant pronunciation of Literary Arabic outside the Arab world, in most of Egypt and some regions in southern Yemen and southwestern Oman. This is also a characteristic of colloquial Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In Morocco and western Algeria, it is pronounced as in some words, especially colloquially. In most north Africa and most of the Levant, the standard is pronounced , and in certain regions of the Persian Gulf colloquially with . In some Sudanese and Yemeni dialects, it may be either or as it used to be in Classical Arabic.

The foreign phonemes and are not necessarily pronounced by all Arabic speakers, but are often pronounced in names and loanwords. and are usually transcribed with their own letters and but as these letters are not present on standard keyboards, they are simply written with and , e.g. both and , or "November", both and "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 Arabized, e.g. or "Pakistan", or "virus".

is another possible loanword phoneme, as in the word or (''sandawitš'' or ''sāndwitš'' 'sandwich'), though a number of varieties instead break up the and sounds with an epenthetic vowel. Egyptian Arabic treats as two consonants () and inserts , as or when it occurs before or after another consonant. is found as normal in Iraqi Arabic and Gulf Arabic.Gulf Arabic Sounds
/ref> Normally the combination (''tā’-shīn'') is used to transliterate the , while in rural Levantine dialects /k/ is usually substituted with while speaking and would be written as ك. Otherwise Arabic usually substitutes other letters in the transliteration of names and loanwords like the Persian character which is used for writing .

Other Variations include:
* Split of original into two phonemes, distinguished primarily by how they affect neighboring vowels. This has progressed the farthest in North Africa. See Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic
* Loss of the glottal stop in places where it is historically attested, as in → .

; Vowels

* Development of highly distinctive allophones of and , with highly fronted , or in non-emphatic contexts, and retracted in emphatic contexts. The more extreme distinctions are characteristic of sedentary varieties, while Bedouin and conservative Arabian-peninsula varieties have much closer allophones. In some of the sedentary varieties, the allophones are gradually splitting into new phonemes under the influence of loanwords, where the allophone closest in sound to the source-language vowel often appears regardless of the presence or absence of nearby emphatic consonants.
* Spread of "emphasis", visible in the backing of phonemic . In conservative varieties of the Arabic peninsula, only adjacent to emphatic consonants is affected, while in Cairo, an emphatic consonant anywhere in a word tends to trigger emphatic allophones throughout the entire word. Dialects of the Levant are somewhere in between. Moroccan Arabic is unusual in that and have clear emphatic allophones as well (typically lowered, e.g. to and ).
* Monophthongization of diphthongs such as and to and , respectively ( and in parts of the Maghrib, such as in Moroccan Arabic). Mid vowels may also be present in loanwords such as ( Melbourne), ( '(male) secretary') and ( 'doctor').
* Raising of word final to . In some parts of Levant, also word-medial to . See Lebanese Arabic.
* Loss of final short vowels (with sometimes remaining), and shortening of final long vowels. This triggered the loss of most Classical Arabic case and mood distinctions.
* Collapse and deletion of short vowels. In many varieties, such as North Mesopotamian, many Levantine dialects, many Bedouin dialects of the Maghrib, and Mauritanian, short and have collapsed to schwa and exhibit very little distinction so that such dialects have two short vowels, and . Many Levantine dialects show partial collapse of and , which appear as such only in the next-to-last phoneme of a word (i.e. followed by a single word-final consonant), and merge to elsewhere. A number of dialects that still allow three short vowels in all positions, such as Egyptian Arabic, nevertheless show little functional contrast between and as a result of past sound changes converting one sound into the other. Arabic varieties everywhere have a tendency to delete short vowels (especially other than ) in many phonological contexts. When combined with the operation of inflectional morphology, disallowed consonant clusters often result, which are broken up by epenthetic short vowels, automatically inserted by phonological rules. In these respects (as in many others), Moroccan Arabic has the most extreme changes, with all three short vowels , , collapsing to a schwa , which is then deleted in nearly all contexts. This variety, in fact, has essentially lost the quantitative distinction between short and long vowels in favor of a new qualitative distinction between unstable "reduced" vowels (especially ) and stable, half-long "full" vowels , , (the reflexes of original long vowels). Classical Arabic words borrowed into Moroccan Arabic are pronounced entirely with "full" vowels regardless of the length of the original vowel.

Phonologies of different Arabic dialects

The main dialectal variations in Arabic consonants revolve around the six consonants; , , , , and :

* Grayed ones are also standard pronunciations.

Cairene

The Arabic of Cairo (often called "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 media. Watson adds emphatic labials and and emphatic to Cairene Arabic with marginal phonemic status. Cairene has also merged the interdental consonants with the dental plosives (e.g. ثلاثة → , 'three') except in loanwords from Classical Arabic where they are nativized as sibilant fricatives (e.g. ثانوية → , 'secondary school'). Cairene speakers pronounce as and debuccalized to (again, loanwords from Classical Arabic have reintroduced the earlier sound or approximated to with the front vowel around it changed to the back vowel ). Classical Arabic diphthongs and became realized as and respectively. Still, Egyptian Arabic sometimes has minimal pairs like شايلة ('carrying' f.s.) vs شيلة ('burden'). جيب 'pocket' + نا 'our' → collapsing with which means (جبنة 'cheese' or جيبنا 'our pocket'), because Cairene phonology cannot have long vowels before two consonants. Cairene also has as a marginal phoneme from loanwords from languages other than Classical Arabic.

Sanaa

Varieties such as that of Sanaa, Yemen, are more conservative and retain most phonemic contrasts of Classical Arabic. Sanaani possesses as a reflex of Classical (which still functions as an emphatic consonant). In unstressed syllables, Sanaani short vowels may be reduced to . is voiced to in initial and intervocalic positions.

Distribution

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

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, namely, , , , , and .

Sample

The Literary Arabic sample text is a reading of The North Wind and the Sun by a speaker who was born in Safed, lived and was educated in Beirut from age 8 to 15, subsequently studied and taught in Damascus, studied phonetics in Scotland and since then has resided in Scotland and Kuwait.

Normal orthographic version

Diacriticized orthographic version

Phonemic transcription (with '' i‘rāb'')

Phonemic transcription ( without ''i‘rāb'')

Phonetic transcription (

Egypt)

ALA-LC transliteration

English Wiktionary transliteration (based on Hans Wehr)

English Translation

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

References

Bibliography

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* Hans Wehr, (1952) ''Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart''
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{{Arabic language

Arabic language