Arabic phonology

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 /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.

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. For example, /a/ and /aː/ are:

• retracted to [ɑ] in the environment of a neighboring /r/, /q/, a velar/uvular fricative, or an emphatic consonant;
• [ɐ] before a word boundary;
• advanced to [æ] in the environment of plain labial and coronal consonants as well as /j/;

Other vowels exhibit similar allophony. Although there are long and short vowels, length distinctions are neutralized before a pause where all vowels appear as short.

Example words

	short		long
i	/ʕidd/	promise	/ʕiːd/	feast
u	/ʕudd/	come back!	/ʕuːd/	lute
a	/ʕadd/	counted	/ʕaːdd/	came back
aj			/ʕajn/	eye
aw			/ʕawd/	return

The final heavy syllable of a root morpheme is stressed.

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 (/sˤ/, /dˤ/, /tˤ/, and /ðˤ/) cause assimilation of emphasis to adjacent non-emphatic coronal consonants.

Standard Arabic consonant phonemes

		Labial	Inter- dental	Dental/Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyn- geal	Glottal
				plain	emphatic1
Nasal		m		n
Stop	voiceless			t	tˤ		k	q		ʔ
	voiced	b		d	dˤ	dʒ ~ g
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ	s	sˤ	ʃ	x ~ χ		ħ	h
	voiced		ð	z	ðˤ		ɣ ~ ʁ		ʕ
Trill				r
Approximant				l	(lˤ)	j	w

1. 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.
2. argues that Arabic descriptions of a voiced pharyngeal fricative are incorrect and that Arabic varieties instead possesses a pharyngealized glottal stop ([ʔˤ]. Epiglottal realizations for /ħ/ and /ʕ/ have also been reported.
3. /dʒ/ is pronounced as [ɡ] 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 [ʒ], and in certain regions of Oman it is pronounced as [j]. In classical Arabic, this was either [ɟ] or [gʲ].
4. In most pronunciations of Standard Arabic, /lˤ/ occurs in a handful of loanwords and /ʔalˤˈlˤaːh/, the name of God, i.e. Allah, except when following long or short /i/ when it is not emphatic: bismi l-lāh [bismilˈlaːh] ('in the name of God'). However, /lˤ/ 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. /lˤ/ also assumes phonemic status more commonly in pronunciations of Standard Arabic influenced by such dialects.

In most dialects, uvular fricatives of the classical period have become velar or post-velar.

Long consonants are pronounced exactly like short consonants, but last longer. In Arabic, they are called them "mushaddadah" i.e. "strengthened", but they are not pronounced any stronger, just held longer. Between a geminate consonant and a pause, an epinthetic [ə] occurs.

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 [ðˤ] as [zˤ], merging it with [dˤ], or both.
• Debuccalizing /q/ to [ʔ] or fronting it to [k].
• Monophthongizing diphthongs such as /aj/ and /aw/ to /eː/ and /oː/, respectively. Mid vowels may also be present in loanwords such as ملبورن (Melbórn Melbourne), سكرتير (/sikriteːr/ '(male) secretary') and دكتور (/duktoːr/, 'doctor').
• Loss of the glottal stop in places where it is historically attested, as in /samaːʔ/.
• Raising word final /a/ to [e].
• In dialects like North Mesopotamian, many Bedouin dialects of the Maghrib, and Mauritanian, /i/ and /u/ have collapsed to schwa and exhibit very little distinction so that such dialects have only (long and short) /a/ and /ə/. Similarly, certain Sudanese and Cairene dialects exhibit contrasts between /i/ and /u/ in limited contexts.
• A number of dialects have the marginal phonemes /v/ (for educated speakers) and /p/, largely from loanwords as in ڤولڤو (Volvo 'Volvo') and سڤن أپ (sevn-ap 'Seven-Up'). /tʃ/ is another possible loanword phoneme, as in the word سندوتش (sandawitsh 'sandwich'), though a number of varieties instead break up the /t/ and /ʃ/ 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 [mˤ] and [bˤ] and emphatic [rˤ] with marginal phonemic status. Cairene has also merged the interdental consonants with the dental plosives (e.g. /θalaːθa/ → /talaːta/, 'three') except in loanwords from Standard Arabic where they are nativized as sibilant fricatives (e.g. /θaːnawiːja/ → /saːnawiːja/, 'secondary school'). Cairene has also retracted /dʒ/ to /g/ (while adopting loanwords from Standard Arabic with /dʒ/) and debuccalized /q/ to [ʔ] (again, loanwords from Standard Arabic have reintroduced the earlier sound). Classical Arabic diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ became realized as /eː/ and /oː/ respectively; loanwords from Standard Arabic reintroduced the diphthongs, sometimes with minimal pairs like /ʃajla/ ('carrying' f.s.) vs /ʃeːla/ ('burden') as well as [ˈgibnɐ] ('cheese') vs [ˈgebnɐ] ('our pocket'). Cairene also has /ʒ/ as a marginal phoneme from loanwords.

San'a'

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

Distribution

The most frequent consonant phoneme of Arabic is /r/, the rarest is /ðˤ/. 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	/r/	/w/	/l/	/m/	/n/	/b/	/f/	/ʕ/	/q/	/d/	/s/	/ħ/	/j/	/ʃ/	/dʒ/	/k/	/h/	/z/	/tˤ/	/x/	/sˤ/	/ʔ/	/t/	/dˤ/	/ɣ/	/θ/	/ð/	/ðˤ/
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, /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

The six vowels are inherited without change from Proto-Semitic to Modern Standard Arabic, and of the 29 Proto-Semitic consonants, only one has been lost: */ʃ/, which merged with /s/. 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 /dʒ/ in MSA (see above for more detail). An original voiceless alveolar lateral fricative */ɬ/ became /ʃ/. 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 /dˤ/ 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.

References

Bibliography

• Hans Wehr, (1952) Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart