Arabic language

Arabic (العربية al-'arabiyyah, or less formally 'arabi) is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab world and is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world. Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century and is the liturgical language of Islam.

Phonology

The consonant phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Standard Arabic, which has only three vowels, in short and long variants, namely {{IPA|/i, a, u/}} and {{IPA|/i?, a?, u?/}}. Naturally, considerable allophony occurs.

Related Topics:
Vowel - Allophony

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Consonants

Arabic consonant phonemes

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See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.

Related Topics:
Arabic alphabet - IPA

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• {{IPA|}} is pronounced as {{IPA|}} 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 {{IPA|}}.
• {{IPA|/l/}} is pronounced {{IPA|}} only in {{IPA|/?al? :a?h/}}, the name of God, i.e. Allah.

Emphatic Consonants

The consonants known as emphatic are velarised and pharyngealised, and are denoted in the IPA with {{IPA|}}. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter e.g. {{IPA|/d?/}} is written ?D?; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it e.g. ???.

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Long Consonants

Vowels and consonants can be (phonologically) short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which marks lengthened consonants. Such consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: e.g. qabala "he received" and qabbala "he kissed".

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Syllable Shape

Arabic has two kinds of syllable: open syllables (CV) and (CVV) - and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC) and (CVCC). Every syllable begins with a consonant - or else a consonant is borrowed from a previous word through elision ? especially in the case of the definite article THE, {{unicode|?}}al (used when starting an utterance) or _l (when following a word), e.g. baytu ?l mudiir ?house (of) the director?, which becomes bay-tul-mu-diir when divided syllabically. By itself, definite mudiir would be pronounced {{IPA|/?al mudi?r/}}.

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Word Stress

Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length and syllable shape, and correct word stress aids intelligibility. In general, "heavy" syllables attract stress (i.e. syllables of longer duration - a closed syllable or a syllable with a long vowel). In a word with a syllable with one long vowel, the long vowel attracts the stress (e.g. ki-'taab and ?kaa-tib). In a word with two long vowels, the second long vowel attracts stress (e.g.ma-kaa-'tiib). In a word with a "heavy" syllable where two consonants occur together or the same consonant is doubled, the (last) heavy syllable attracts stress (e.g. ya-ma-?niyy, ka-'tabt, ka-?tab-na, ma-?jal-lah, ?mad-ra-sah, yur-?sil-na). This last rule trumps the first two: ja-zaa-{{unicode|?}}i-?riyy. Otherwise, word stress typically falls on the first syllable: ?ya-man, ?ka-ta-bat, etc. The Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, however, has some idiosyncrasies in that a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, so that mad-?ra-sah carries the stress on the second-to-last syllable, as does qaa-?hi-rah.

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Dialectical Phonologies

In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic {{IPA|}} is used in the Maghreb dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic {{IPA|}} became {{IPA|}} extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian) distinguish between {{IPA|}} and {{IPA|}}. Interdental fricatives ({{IPA|}} and {{IPA|}}) are rendered as stops {{IPA|}} and {{IPA|}} in some dialects (principally Levantine and Egyptian) and as {{IPA|}} and {{IPA|}} in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes {{IPA|}} and {{IPA|}} coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use {{IPA|}} exclusively, while those with such fricatives use {{IPA|}}. Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, {{IPA|}} is rendered as {{IPA|}} in dialects without interdental fricatives. Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render Standard {{IPA|}} (a voiceless uvular stop): it retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen and Morocco (and among the Druze), while it is rendered {{IPA|}} in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan) and as a glottal stop {{IPA|}} in many prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Thus, Arabs instantly give away their geographical (and class) origin by their pronunciation of a word such as qamar "moon": {{IPA|}}, {{IPA|}} or {{IPA|}}.

Related Topics:
Persian - Druze

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