# Standardization of Arabic Phonology



## inquisitiveness1

Hi,

So Modern Standard Arabic is generally considered to have a standard set of consonant values that may differ from the dialects. Some of the sound values for the letters though are different from the reconstructed values of early Classical Arabic, even though the older sounds may or may not still exist in some of the Arabic dialects.

The most blatant incidences of CA->MSA sound changes that I know of are:

Classical Arabic ج /g/~>/ɡʲ/~>/ɟ/ becomes Modern Standard Arabic /d͡ʒ/ (I think there are a few people on the forums who debate this though and say it's /ʒ/). /g/ still exists as the pronunciation for ج in Egypt and parts of Yemen, and /ɡʲ/ or /ɟ/ for ج still exists in some parts of Sudan and Yemen (maybe all of Sudan?).
Classical Arabic ض /ɮˤ/ becomes Modern Standard Arabic /dˤ/ (via merging with the sound of ظ and then separating from it). AFAIK, no dialect has /ɮˤ/ for ض.
There are also some more iffy cases like:

Classical Arabic خ /χ/ becomes Modern Standard Arabic /x/, but /χ/ is also considered an acceptable standard pronunciation IIRC (allophonic I guess) and dialects have free variation between the two sounds IIRC.
Classical Arabic غ /ʁ/ becomes Modern Standard Arabic /ɣ/, but /ʁ/ is also considered an acceptable standard pronunciation IIRC (allophonic I guess) and dialects have free variation between the two sounds IIRC.

Classical Arabic س might have been /ʃ/ which then became Modern Standard Arabic /s/. AFAIK, no dialect has /ʃ/ for س.
Classical Arabic ش might have been /ɕ/ which then became Modern Standard Arabic /ʃ/. AFAIK, no dialect has /ɕ/ for ش.
And there are also cases where a lot of dialects don't keep the old sound, but Modern Standard Arabic still does:

Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic ث /θ/ is often /t/ or /s/ in dialects.
Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic ذ /ð/ is often /d/ or /z/ in dialects.

Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic ظ /ðˤ/ is often /dˤ/ or /zˤ/ in dialects.

Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic ق /q/ is often /g/ or /ʔ/ in dialects.

Anyways, the point of this thread is me asking about the standardization of the sound values for these letters.

*1)* When were all of these sound values established as the "standard"?
For example, at some point, people stopped considering [g] for ج as "standard" and instead considered it "dialectal". To give examples as an elaboration: no one teaches "standard Arabic" using [g] as the sound for ج, no language borrows Arabic words with ج as [g] (ignoring direct borrowings from Egyptian Arabic) rather than as [d͡ʒ], and even in Qur'anic recitation, [g] is never used, even in Egypt, because I guess it "sounds wrong/dialectal". So, when did the standardization of these sound values happen?​
*2)* HOW did the standardization happen? There wasn't some multinational standardization committee, right? What was the process that made the determination that so-and-so was standard and so-and-so is dialectal? Where did the perception of there being a standard come from?

*3)* Generally speaking, what was the criteria use to promote a certain standard sound values over another sound value? (or "passively made into the standard" if "promoted" implies more agency than what actually happened).
For example, why did [d͡ʒ] become the standard sound for ج over [g]? Was it just that [d͡ʒ] was more popular at the time? Are there other reasons?​


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## Hemza

Hello,

To add to your long list of sounds, the "ج" pronounced as a "g" does exist in Morocco (may be Mauritania too?) but not for all words though, we both has "j" (majority of words) and "g" (minority of words). Also where the "ج" is a "g" in Morocco, in Tunisia it is pronounced as a "ز". (while Algerians always keep the standard pronounciation I think)

To reply to your first point, according to what I noticed among my Egyptian classmates, even when they read standard Arabic, they ALWAYS pronounce the "ج" as a "g" which was at first, very surprising for non Egyptians (including me). When I asked one about this, he told me that this is how he has been taught at school.


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## Ramisadeh

I think the standard pronunciation of consonants is that of the language that Quran was taught with. In Islamic tradition Quran has been revealed to Mohammed and Mohammed was from Quraish, and the khalifas after him were also from Quraish and when Uthman standardized the Mushaf (the collected written Quran) he ordered those who will teach Quran to new muslims to teach it using the Qurashi accent, it's been reported that at the time of Abu Baker the first Khalifa, Omar sent to Abdullah bin Mas3ud, one of the companions of The Prophet, to stop teaching Quran using his accent instead he shoud use the Qurashi one as to avoid confusion between new muslims of how to pronounce the consonants, Abdullah bin Mas3ud in this story was reported pronouncing the ح in حتى as ع so it would sound عتى. What I'm saying is that different pronunciations of consonants existed among preislamic Arabs, and there is no reason to think that they had lost their accents after Islam had arrived, add to that the different indigenous languages in the lands conquered by Arabs and you got yourself a lot of influences that would make different the way certain letters are pronounced in different areas. I do believe that common people in the Arab world even in the peninsula before Islam and after it had arrived never spoke a unified standard Arabic as a colliqual language.


inquisitiveness1 said:


> Classical Arabic ج /g/~>/ɡʲ/~>/ɟ/ becomes Modern Standard Arabic /d͡ʒ/ (I think there are a few people on the forums who debate this though and say it's /ʒ/). /g/ still exists as the pronunciation for ج in Egypt and parts of Yemen, and /ɡʲ/ or /ɟ/ for ج still exists in some parts of Sudan and Yemen (maybe all of Sudan?).



Who said that in Classical Arabic the sound for ج was g???  The sound was always close to the English J.

As I said the dialect of Quraish was the standard and the classical Arabic which developed into what is called now MSA has never undergone change in how consonants are pronounced to this day.


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## analeeh

I don't think so. At the very least, it is well-established that the dialect of Quraysh did not have postvocalic hamza - but some other prestigious dialect did.

I think that at least some of these shifts had happened in Arabic by the time the Qur'an was written down - at least in some dialects - and the 'modern' pronunciation stems from an approximation of the descriptions given by linguists in Tajweed. 

I would say that the modern 'standard' pronunciation of MSA (the sort of al-Jazeera 'accentless' variant) is a combination of tajweed pronunciation and eastern dialects - the shortening of final vowels and so on. I think inasmuch as there was a process of language reform and standardisation of MSA, it was centred in the east - in Greater Syria and Egypt.


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## Ramisadeh

Well maybe not Qurashi accent entirely, but you might know that there was in fact a prestigous language used by Arabs for poetry well before Islam, it doesn't mean that Arab clans couldn't use their own terminology but they sure followed rules for not using their own accents' peculiarities for the sake of presenting their poetry to other clans, and Mecca being the religious and cultural destination it was in those times, it had the most elegant of Arabic accents maybe because of its status. The same thing we would see in Capital cities nowadays where the most refined form of the local language is spoken. What are you insinuating about Msa reforms being performed in Syria and Egypt? Do you think that these countries' dialects affected Standarized Arabic? I assure you that that couldn't be farther from the truth. Every Arab knows that as far as consonant prononciation is concerned, there is no difference between CA and MSA what so ever.


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## analeeh

Yes, I think that these countries' dialects (slightly) affected Modern Standard Arabic. As I said, the pronunciation of consonants is largely based on approximation of the descriptions given in tajweed manuals - though not entirely. But the shortening of final vowels is certainly a development from the CA period, at least if we assume poetry/Qur'anic pronunciation reflects the way that Arabic was spoken then. Likewise, the generally accepted standard pronunciation of MSA has a stress pattern suspiciously similar to that of Shami. Quite possibly this is because that is the actual stress pattern that Classical Arabic had, but I don't think so - again, the evidence generally suggests that CA didn't really have very much in the way of a stress system (that is, that stress was much less marked than it is in modern dialects or modern MSA pronunciation). 

Capital cities do not have 'the most refined form of the local language' - this is a common myth about language often reflected by the fact that standard languages are often based on that of the capital. Do you think Amman has the most eloquent form of Arabic? I assure you that London English is far from the most 'standard' form of British English. Mecca seems to have had a dialect that (like modern dialects) had lost hamza. The hamza was then probably reinserted - including into the Qur'an - under the influence of the poetic standard that you mention (which hadn't lost glottal stops).


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## momai

Ramisadeh said:


> What are you insinuating about Msa reforms being performed in Syria and Egypt? Do you think that these countries' dialects affected Standarized Arabic? I assure you that that couldn't be farther from the truth. Every Arab knows that as far as consonant prononciation is concerned, there is no difference between CA and MSA what so ever.


They clearly did ,otherwise we would have ended up pronouncing ض and ظ the same way in MSA which is the case in the Arabian peninsula while the real ض( closer to شين than to دال)  has been lost in most dialects except for some dialects in Yemen.


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## Ramisadeh

What you all are stating as truth are mere theories.


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## Jamal31

Ramisadeh said:


> What you all are stating as truth are mere theories.


Your posts are also mere theory as well.

To OP, here is some info with sources regarding the subject:

Arabic Grammar – 10
Arabic Grammar – 8


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## inquisitiveness1

Ramisadeh said:


> Who said that in Classical Arabic the sound for ج was g???  The sound was always close to the English J.
> 
> As I said the dialect of Quraish was the standard and the classical Arabic which developed into what is called now MSA has never undergone change in how consonants are pronounced to this day.



Here are the reasons I disagree that nothing changed. First, for the ج:

*Introductory point:* Linguistically, Arabic is a Semitic language, and the phoneme ج corresponds to phonemes in every single other Semitic that have the sound [g] (Modern Arabic is literally the only Semitic languages that has [d͡ʒ] rather than [g]). So, undoubtably the original sound in Arabic words written with a ج is [g], but it a question of if [g] changed to [d͡ʒ] before the Classical/Qur'anic period or if it changed after - and for the following reasons, it seems to me that it is the latter (i.e. the Classical/Qur'anic era pronunciation was a [g] or [g]-type pronunciation, and this [g] in speech latter changed to the modern [d͡ʒ] sound). Furthermore, there are Arabic dialects that have [g] for ج, and I would argue that those dialects are actually conservative in that regard rather than innovative.

*Places where ج being [d͡ʒ] uniquely breaks a noticeable pattern, but would not if it were [g] or a palatalized type of g
1)* ج is classified as a "shiddah" letter in classical descriptions. If you look at all of the other shiddah letters, they are all "plosive" sounds (being a plosive sound is the uniquely unifying trait that all letters in the shiddah group share. Literally only the modern pronunciation of ج is the odd man out). If ج really was originally [d͡ʒ] in Classical times, it should not have been classified as a shiddah letter. It should have been it's own category, or at the very least, in the rakhaawa category, since the airflow is not ceased. If ج was still [g] or a similar plosive in Classical times though, it would fit, as [g] is a plosive sound.

*2)* ج is classified as a "qalqalah" letter" in classical tajwiid descriptions. If you look at all of the other qalqalah letters, they are all "plosive" sounds, specifically all the voiced and/or emphatic ones (being a voiced and/or emphatic*** plosive sound is the uniquely unifying trait that all letters in the qalqalah group share. Literally only the modern pronunciation of ج is the odd man out). The modern pronunciation [d͡ʒ], again, is not plosive, so it doesn't match the others. If ج was still [g] or a similar plosive in Classical times though, it would fit, as [g] is a plosive sound that is voiced.
***Some people may state that maybe it is only voiced plosives that are qalqalah, and that the two unvoiced ones in the list (ق & ط) maybe have been voiced in the Classical period. I am not sure about whether that is true or not, but regardless, the only indisputable commonality is that they are all plosive sounds.​
*3)* ج is classified as a "qamariyyah" letter, meaning that it does not assimilate with the lam in the definite article "al-". If you look at all of the other qamariyyah letters, they are "coronal" sounds.  If ج really was originally [d͡ʒ] in Classical times, it should not have been classified as a qamariyyah letter, it would have been classified as a shamsiyyah letter, since [d͡ʒ] is a coronal sound (since being a coronal sound is the uniquely unifying trait that all letters in the qamariyyah group share. Literally only the modern pronunciation of ج is the odd man out). If ج was still [g] in Classical times though, it would fit, as [g] is not a coronal sound.
This is somewhat further supported by dialects that don't strictly adhire to the Classical rules, where these dialects do assimilate the [d͡ʒ] sound, and the presumably reason for this is that [d͡ʒ] is coronal, thus by the underlying rule, it should assimilate with the "al-". The most logical reason why it didn't assimilate in classical times is that it wasn't coronal at the time.​
*Evidence in history for ج being [g] or a [g]-type sound rather than [d͡ʒ]
1)* Foreign words that had a [g] sound that were borrowed into Arabic in Classical and pre-Classical times almost always were written in Arabic with ج. The issue this creates is that [d͡ʒ] doesn't sound anything like [g], and even if it did, the letters غ, ق, and/or ك are all obviously better options than [d͡ʒ], so we are left with the question of why ج was used for foreign [g] all the time. The most obvious conclusion you could surmises is that, at the time, ج had a sound more [g]-like than غ, ق, and ك , which clearly isn't the case with the modern pronunciation [d͡ʒ].

*2)* The earliest borrowings of Arabic words with ج into other languages used [g] letters to represent Arabic ج, not the letters they normally use to represent [d͡ʒ]. As a example, the name Ja'far was wrriten in Greek as Γιαφαρ Giaphar, even though the normal way to write foreign [d͡ʒ] in Greek was to use the letter Zeta.  (if you are wondering why there is an "i" there, it is because the shift of [g]->[d͡ʒ] had an intermediate phase of [ɡʲ] or[ɟ] (a "palatalized g" or a "voiced palatal plosive" respective), i.e. the hard "g" sound became "gy" before becoming like the English J, so Γιαφαρ was trying to write Gya'far. The Arabic scholars Sibawayh, and Ibn Jinni also allude to this since they paired the ج with ي as having the same place of articulation, which isn't the case with modern ج)

Now, regarding the ض :

*Introductory point:* Linguistically, Arabic is a Semitic language, and the phoneme ض corresponds the Proto-Semitic phoneme [ɬʼ] . So, undoubtedly the original sound in Arabic words written with a ض is a lateral sound (considered to be voiced /ɮˤ/ rather than the original voiceless [ɬʼ] since all sources indicate the Arabic sound was voiced, so the posited change from voiceless [ɬʼ] to voiced /ɮˤ/ would be pre-Arabic), but it a question of if /ɮˤ/ (or a similar lateral sound) changed to /dˤ/ before the Classical/Qur'anic period or if it changed after - and for the following reasons, it seems to me that it is the latter (i.e. the Classical/Qur'anic era pronunciation was a /ɮˤ/ or /ɮˤ/-type pronunciation, and this /ɮˤ/ in speech latter changed to the modern /dˤ/ sound).

*Evidence in history for ض being /ɮˤ/ or a /ɮˤ/-type sound rather than /dˤ/*

*1)* ض is classified as a "rakhaawa" letter in classical descriptions. If you look at all of the other rakhaawa letters, they are all "fricative" or "approximant" sounds (being a fricative or approximant sound is the uniquely unifying trait that all letters in the rakhaawa group share. Literally only the modern pronunciation of ض is the odd man out). If ض really was originally /dˤ/ in Classical times, it should not have been classified as a rakhaawa letter. It should have been a shiddah letter, since the airflow is ceased. If ض was still /ɮˤ/ or a similar fricative or affricate sound in Classical times though, it would fit, as /ɮˤ/ is a fricative sound.
Also, since /dˤ/ is a voiced and emphatic plosive, I would expect it to be included as a qalqalah sound, but it is not classified as such, which implies it wasn't a voiced and/or emphatic plosive at the time the rules were made.​
*2)* Early Arabic scholars like Sibawayh and Ibn Jinni give mechanical descriptions of the sound that doesn't match the modern /dˤ/ (as an example, Sibawayh says it is pronounced "between the first of the side of the tongue and the adjoining part of the molars") and that in fact seem to be describing a lateral sound (such as /ɮˤ/).

*3)* Noticeably, unlike letters such as ظ and ط, the letter ض was never said to be the "emphatic" ("itbaaq") counterpart to any letter as ظ was said to be for ذ. It should strike you as unusual that in the oldest descriptions, ض was never said to be the emphatic counterpart of د. Furthermore, Sibawayh even explicitely states that ض did not share it's place of articulation with any other letter, which means it couldn't be /dˤ/ as obviously it would have shared place of articulation with د /d/ in that case, but Sibawayh just said it didn't share place of articulation with any letter, so it can't share the same place of articulation with د /d/.

*4)* Arabic had been called the "language of the ض" because the sound of ض was considered to be a very unusual sound, that at the time was thought to be unique to Arabic. The problem is that /dˤ/ isn't unusual whatsoever. EVEN IF you want to argue that the emphatic part of it is what makes it special and rare, you know what is even a rarer and more unusual sound than /dˤ/?  ظ /ðˤ/, because not only does it have emphasis (so that cancels out with what makes /dˤ/ anything rare), /ð/ is way more rare and unusual sound than /d/, so /ðˤ/ is rarer and more unusual than /dˤ/. In that case, it doesn't make sense why the moniker would have been "language of the ض /dˤ/" rather than the "language of the ظ /ðˤ/". But it would make sense if ض were /ɮˤ/ or a similar lateral sound, since not only are lateral fricatives sounds rare (even rarer than /ð/), an emphatic one is even more so.

*5)* This point isn't really that strong, but some Malaysian words that were borrowed from Arabic use "dl" in place of ض, which is a common way among modern languages with /ɮ/ to write the sound, so presumably they were doing so

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I think I got all the points. If you are going to respond, I would prefer that you not simply say without evidence that the tajwiid pronunciation did not change. And if anyone sees something that I wrote that is mistaken, please let me know.

In fact, I am interested to see if there is any evidence at all that can even support the notion that MSA values [d͡ʒ] & /dˤ/ are being the original Classical/Qur'anic sounds for ج and ض. (I am doubting there is much compelling evidence)


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## inquisitiveness1

Hemza said:


> To add to your long list of sounds, the "ج" pronounced as a "g" does exist in Morocco (may be Mauritania too?) but not for all words though, we both has "j" (majority of words) and "g" (minority of words). Also where the "ج" is a "g" in Morocco, in Tunisia it is pronounced as a "ز". (while Algerians always keep the standard pronounciation I think)


I was not aware that Moroccans pronounced "ج" as a "g" in some words. I wonder why that is the case for some words and not for others.


Hemza said:


> To reply to your first point, according to what I noticed among my Egyptian classmates, even when they read standard Arabic, they ALWAYS pronounce the "ج" as a "g" which was at first, very surprising for non Egyptians (including me). When I asked one about this, he told me that this is how he has been taught at school.


Oh yeah, for Modern Standard Arabic as spoken in Egypt, I was aware that they still say [g]. But if I am not mistaken, specifically for Qur'anic recitation, they do not use [g], and I presume the reason for this is that [g] is perceived to be a dialectal innovation/deviation from the percieved Classical sound [d͡ʒ], and while dialectalism as acceptable for MSA speech, it is not acceptable for religious pronunciation (even though it seems very likely to me that it was actually [g] (or the similar sounds /ɡʲ/~/ɟ/ if [g] already shifted by that time) that was the original Classical/Qur'anic era sound of ج , and that it is [d͡ʒ] that is the innovative pronunciation, not [g]).


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## Hemza

inquisitiveness1 said:


> I was not aware that Moroccans pronounced "ج" as a "g" in some words. I wonder why that is the case for some words and not for others.



It's the case for جلس, انجاص, جزار, جاموس, جنازة, جوز, جيش and some other which are absent from my mind currently . For the rest, we pronounce the regular ج. I don't know if it's like this in the whole country though.
I have no idea unfortunately... I have an hypothesis but I think it's wrong. May be, the Arab tribes who settled in Morocco had this "g" sound? I'm thinking of بني حسان who came from Yemen in the 14th century, as they settled in Southern /North Eastern Morocco and Mauritania. Because this feature is unkown in Algeria and in Tunisia (well in Tunisia, it's replaced by ز). But at the same time, Algerian and Tunisian dialects (as well as Moroccan) too, share some features with some Yemeni dialects (Northern I think) which aren't found (as far as I know) anywhere else but they lack this "g" feature which is present in Yemen/Oman, Egypt and Morocco. I thought about this hypothesis because even in Yemen and Oman, in the areas where the ج is pronounced as a "g", I don't think it's the case for all words, isn't it?


inquisitiveness1 said:


> Oh yeah, for Modern Standard Arabic as spoken in Egypt, I was aware that they still say [g]. But if I am not mistaken, specifically for Qur'anic recitation, they do not use [g], and I presume the reason for this is that [g] is perceived to be a dialectal innovation/deviation from the percieved Classical sound [d͡ʒ], and while dialectalism as acceptable for MSA speech, it is not acceptable for religious pronunciation (even though it seems very likely to me that it was actually [g] (or the similar sounds /ɡʲ/~/ɟ/ if [g] already shifted by that time) that was the original Classical/Qur'anic era sound of ج , and that it is [d͡ʒ] that is the innovative pronunciation, not [g]).



My bad, I misunderstood you then. I thought you were talking about Standard Arabic spoken by Egyptians. I have no idea about the way they recitate  القرآن. As for the original pronunciation of the ج, I know that in Aramaic and Hebrew, it's pronounced as a "g" but my knowledge isn't large enough to judge about Arabic.


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## Jamal31

Pardon the semi-off topic question, but does anyone know of a site which goes through the sounds denoted like d͡ʒ, dˤ, ðˤ, ɮ, etc?


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## inquisitiveness1

Jamal31 said:


> Pardon the semi-off topic question, but does anyone know of a site which goes through the sounds denoted like d͡ʒ, dˤ, ðˤ, ɮ, etc?


If you mean to ask a site that lets you know that the sounds mean (since perhaps you don't know IPA), go on Wikipedia and go to the article for "Consonants". There, you will find a chart that lists them all (you can control-f the IPA symbols I wrote, but don't include the ˤ part). Also to help you, go look at the "Arabic Phonology" article (specifically the subsection for consonants). you can click on the sounds on either page to be linked to a page for each sound that describes how the sound is, a sound file for the sound, and a list of languages with example words that have the sound (sometimes with an audio file of some of the words).

Btw, just to make it easier, I'll go over all the sounds that aren't obvious from the symbol (so not talking about /g/ which is just g as in "game" or /d/ which is just d as in "dog"):

Adding ˤ to anything makes it the "pharyngealized" version of it (so ظ ðˤ is the pharyngealized version of ذ ð). For the sake of Arabic, normally we just called these the emphatic consonants (although emphatic consonants in other Semitic languages may not be pharyngealized, rather they have a different feature of emphasis, so for these languages, using ˤ would not be correct as it is for Arabic).
IPA /j/ is the sound of English Y (as in "You" or "Yoyo"; NOT the English J as in "Joke", since that is written as /d͡ʒ/)
Adding ʲ to anything makes it the "palatalized" version of it. In layman's terms, that means adding a "y" sound to the sound (although technically speaking this isn't exactly correct as there is a difference between /gʲ/ and /gj/). So for example, /ɡʲ/ is most similar to the English sound "gy" (you can hear the "gy" sound in "argue", although again, technically speaking that is /gj/, not /gʲ/). If you are curious, you can look up the "Palatalization (phonetics)" article on Wikipedia, but pretty much all you need to know is that it roughly speaking makes sounds have a y quality added to them.

/d͡ʒ/ is the sound of English J (not the French J as in "bonjour", nor the hard English G as in "game")

/ð/ is the sound of English th (SPECIFICALLY in the words "The", "This", "Bathe", NOT "Bath", "Theodore", "Theory") and Standard Arabic ذ
/ɟ/ and /ɮ/ are hard to describe (although the former sound-wise sounds like, but is not identical to, /gʲ/), so for those, you can look up the phrases "voiced palatal plosive" and "voiced alveolar lateral fricative" in wikipedia


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## Jamal31

Thanks that's very helpful.


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## inquisitiveness1

momai said:


> [...]while the real ض( closer to شين than to دال)  has been lost in most dialects except for some dialects in Yemen.


I am curious. If you happen to know, what sound is this, and what regions/towns does it exist in?


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## Ghabi

There is a long and detailed thread for the historical pronunciation of Daad:
- The historical pronunciation of Arabic ضاد/ض

There are also other threads discussing the pronunciations of individual letters. You can look for them by searching the forum.


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## bejl1

So basically, sometime after the 10th century, every single tajweed scholar in the Arabic world adopted new pronunciations for two letters, and they imposed this on every reading of the Quran, so that today not a single one differs from the other in this regard. If this is the case then the change would've been well documented. By whom though?


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## Vandalgon

bejl1 said:


> So basically, sometime after the 10th century, every single tajweed scholar in the Arabic world adopted new pronunciations for two letters, and they imposed this on every reading of the Quran, so that today not a single one differs from the other in this regard. If this is the case then the change would've been well documented. By whom though?


Sound changes are not normally noticed by speakers of a language, so it is not at all surprising that a sound could change in Tajweed. The sound changed in some areas, it didn't change in others, the new majority with the new sound claim to have been the original - not knowing any better - and stigmatize the old sound as dialectal.

There were some Arabic linguistists (like Sibawayh who has been mentioned above, especially in the thread linked by Ghabi), who recorded what the contemporary pronunciation of sounds were as well as they could, and what they described, the sounds they used clearly aren't the same as the modern sounds. There is sort of a cognitive dissonance going on, where even though a sound is explicitly described a certain way in the oldest sound descriptions, modern recitators insist they are following that even though they way they are producing the sound of a letter in their mouth explicitly does not follow it. As an example, ض is given as NOT having the same place of articulation as د, yet the modern pronunciation does have the same place of articulation, explicitly contradicting the tajweed rules. ج was said to have the same place of articulation as ي, but the modern majority pronunciation clearly doesn't (you can even check this yourself. Pronounce y and j. J is pronounced ahead of Y, not at the same place.). I'd also say the other stuff included in that giant post earlier in the thread is also convincing, but the explicit contradictions between what the old Arabic tajweed scholars themselves wrote, and how modern practitioners pronounce today, to me is the most damning evidence that the sounds changed. If you asked a linguistically-knowledgeable scholar to make his own mechanical description of how he pronounced the modern sounds, it would irreconcilably conflict with the old accounts (like, in addition to place of articulation, how is the modern ض rakhaawa at all? You can't hold/continue the sound at all, which contradicts the definition of rakhaawa).

You tell me. How can you reconcile this with the assertion that nothing changed? You can't say the old scholars weren't specific enough to distinguish the place of articulation between ج and ي, and you certainly can't seriously expect to say that they were confused somehow and thought ض and د had a different point of articulation, when, if it were true the sounds never changed, that it would be obvious that ض and د would have the exact same everything (place of articulation, manner of articulation, etc) with the exception of emphasis.


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## bejl1

Vandalgon said:


> Sound changes are not normally noticed by speakers of a language, so it is not at all surprising that a sound could change in Tajweed.



I'm not talking about the average speaker, I'm talking about the scholars who devoted their entire lives to the recitation of the Quran. Such a major change would definitely have been noticed by these.



> The sound changed in some areas, it didn't change in others, the new majority with the new sound claim to have been the original - not knowing any better - and stigmatize the old sound as dialectal.



This does not make sense. Why would a tajweed scholar decide that some people in one place is more correct in pronunciation than their own teacher, and then adopt this new pronunciation, without even commenting on this. Not only was this done by one scholar, but every scholar throughout the Islamic World, which by the 10th century was vast. If you're claiming that it was pronounced g and then it was changed sometime after the 10th century, then that means the scholars made a conscious choice to do this, and also to not comment on this at all. Now does this make sense? I find it a far-fetched conclusion.



> There were some Arabic linguistists (like Sibawayh who has been mentioned above, especially in the thread linked by Ghabi), who recorded what the contemporary pronunciation of sounds were as well as they could, and what they described, the sounds they used clearly aren't the same as the modern sounds.



Yes, but I'm asking which scholars noted this change in tajweed? It can't have eluded everyone until the 21st century.



> You tell me. How can you reconcile this with the assertion that nothing changed? You can't say the old scholars weren't specific enough to distinguish the place of articulation between ج and ي, and you certainly can't seriously expect to say that they were confused somehow and thought ض and د had a different point of articulation,



I think it's on you to tell me how every single tajweed scholar somehow made the exact same mistake. The different readings for example are extremely well-recorded, with narrations specifying a single harakah on a single word used in one place, yet somehow two letters completely changed in sound and no-one thought this was worth mentioning.


----------



## Vandalgon

bejl1 said:


> I'm not talking about the average speaker, I'm talking about the scholars who devoted their entire lives to the recitation of the Quran. Such a major change would definitely have been noticed by these.


How would they notice? It's sound change. It's not like someone all of a sudden said j rather than g, there was a gradual progression. Not only do I not see a reason to assume tajweed is immune to sound change, we have written proof that it did, since the old tajweed descriptions do not match the modern sounds.



bejl1 said:


> This does not make sense. Why would a tajweed scholar decide that some people in one place is more correct in pronunciation than their own teacher, and then adopt this new pronunciation, without even commenting on this. Not only was this done by one scholar, but every scholar throughout the Islamic World, which by the 10th century was vast. If you're claiming that it was pronounced g and then it was changed sometime after the 10th century, then that means the scholars made a conscious choice to do this, and also to not comment on this at all. Now does this make sense? I find it a far-fetched conclusion.


"Why would a tajweed scholar decide that some people in one place is more correct in pronunciation than their own teacher, and then adopt this new pronunciation" is not how it would have happen. A teacher would teach a sound, a student would attempt to repeat it, but they would be a slight difference. Generation upon generation, slight difference upon slight difference, and the sound changes without anyone noticing, just like how it happens in other contexts. There is no need for a conciencus decision to change anything. The old sound changes without being noticed and after the new sound becomes the majority with the person still thinking nothing changed, while the old sound that still survived intact in other regions becomes stigmatize as a dialectal deviation.

Edit: In the case of ض, the gradual changes happen everywhere, so there would be no other sound in another region to compare it to other than dialects that gave it the sound of ظ, but since that is a sound merger, and it was know that there should be 28 consonants, they would know that it can't have the same sound as ظ, so using the sound of ظ for ض would be deemed (correctly) as a dialectalism. For the case of ج during the transitional period, one of two things happened. Either the koine that comprised tajwiid (as if it were like a special dialect for the educated class) experience the sound change separate even from dialects that didn't have the sound change OR the majority of tajwiid speakers followed the sound change of their dialect (except in cases where a sound merger occurred, since again, they did know there was supposed to be 28 different consonant sounds), and this "dragged" the pronunciation of the tajweed-register for speakers in regions that had no sound change. Actually, I am not even sure if Cairo tajweed speakers even did the thing they do in the modern era where they use J instead of g. I want to look into it, but _maybe _that could be a very recent change due to increased mass media and transportation in the last few centuries



bejl1 said:


> Yes, but I'm asking which scholars noted this change in tajweed? It can't have eluded everyone until the 21st century.


If you mean what scholars noticed that the sounds they are making don't match the classical descriptions, I personally don't know any 10th-19th century Arabic scholars that noted it. Maybe there were some that did, but they were quelled by the majority that insisted that sound change is impossible and thus there was considered no need to reevaluate the sound. I am just guessing, I don't know. I too am interested in this question you are asking.

As for noticing changes, the older Arabic phoneticists did mention erroneous pronunciations, but I don't know whether or not if they made a special distinction between tawjeed and normal educated/standard (not "dialect", since the sounds scholars like Sibawayh was describing were the sounds of the standard...which I presume is identical to the tajweed sounds of the time)



bejl1 said:


> I think it's on you to tell me how every single tajweed scholar somehow made the exact same mistake. The different readings for example are extremely well-recorded, with narrations specifying a single harakah on a single word used in one place, yet somehow two letters completely changed in sound and no-one thought this was worth mentioning.


As I said before, because a) sound changes are gradual and thus usually go unnoticed and b) some scholars would be making the mistake, and others would not, but since most dialects did change to j (again, unnoticed and gradually), that sound would be considered by most tajwiid scholars to be unchanged from the original, and thus the minority that did not use that sound were deemed by the majority to be using a dialectalism (notice they are not claiming the minority to have not participated in the same sound change as the majority. The majority is insisting that the majority sound IS the unchanged original sound, so the actually original sound that is now the minority is perceived to be an erroneous change FROM the majority sound to the minority sound.)


----------



## bejl1

Vandalgon said:


> How would they notice? It's sound change. It's not like someone all of a sudden said j rather than g, there was a gradual progression. Not only do I not see a reason to assume tajweed is immune to sound change, we have written proof that it did, since the old tajweed descriptions do not match the modern sounds.



Now hold on a minute. You're claiming that the change within the scholarly community itself was gradual, but at the same time you're claiming that there exists classical manuals that accurately describe the proper pronunciation of these letters. If this was the case, then all these scholars would have to do would be to look up these books, and voila, problem solved. But rather, you're claiming that the scholars ignored these manuals, and instead decided to see how the majority pronounced it, and go after that. Highly illogical.



> Generation upon generation, slight difference upon slight difference, and the sound changes without anyone noticing, just like how it happens in other contexts.





> How would they notice?



By the very same classical manuals you noticed it through of course! If these classical manuals existed then of course people would notice it. You're contradicting yourself and I hope you can see that. You should in fact be able to present book after book in which tajweed scholars debate this topic.


----------



## Vandalgon

bejl1 said:


> Now hold on a minute. You're claiming that the change within the scholarly community itself was gradual, but at the same time you're claiming that there exists classical manuals that accurately describe the proper pronunciation of these letters. If this was the case, then all these scholars would have to do would be to look up these books, and voila, problem solved. But rather, you're claiming that the scholars ignored these manuals, and instead decided to see how the majority pronounced it, and go after that. Highly illogical.



They do look at the books. Go look up tajweed descriptions that is used today and you will see that are based on what the old scholars such as Sibawayh said. And I already mentioned the cognitive dissonance. Like I said before, the tajweed descriptions used even today say that ض does not have the same place of articulation as د, and that ج has the same place of articulation as ي (note that these modern description are ripped straight out of the old Classical descriptions, such as from Sibawayh, Ibn Jinni, and others), but even though modern tajweed still _in writing_ say those things, the speakers themselves are not following it _in speech_. Again, you check this yourself. If you agree that modern tajweed speakers pronounced ج as J, then say that and then compare it with ي. They are not pronounced in the same place in the mouth. Yet, go look for yourself what the tajweed descriptions say - that those two sounds have the same place of articulation. The reality is that you read that they have the same place of articulation, yet you still pronounced as not having the same place of articulation and somehow may still insist you are pronouncing it just like the written tajweed rules described - even though you objectively aren't. Same with ض. It straight-up is described as not being the same point of articulation as د in written tajweed rules, but the modern speakers of tajweed don't actually follow that. Again, check you yourself. Do you pronounce ض as an emphatic د just like how you pronounce ط as an emphatic ت, and you agree that is the modern tawjeed pronunciation? Then you and them are blatantly disobeying the written tajwid rules by having ض with the same point of articulation as د.



bejl1 said:


> By the very same classical manuals you noticed it through of course! If these classical manuals existed then of course people would notice it. You're contradicting yourself and I hope you can see that. You should in fact be able to present book after book in which tajweed scholars debate this topic.


I am making no contradiction. Some might have noticed, but for the majority, there is cognitive dissonance, and that won out. The sound change would have mostly gone unnoticed, and as a result of new majority pronunciations (Sound B), speakers who live in regions that used the old sound (Sound A) are interpreted as using a sound that is a deviant FROM the majority sound (i.e. the majority erroneously thinks that Sound B was the original sound and it became Sound A in those minority dialects, when actually, it was the other way around). Even though the written accounts didn't change and thus the sound described therein is still sound A, the tajweed community is so convinced that they would never let a sound change and that the majority of speakers would be affected by the sound change, that they give primacy to both their spoken sound (Sound B) and the written account and have them paradoxically co-exist, alleding they are the same, RATHER than making their spoken sound subservient to thee written account, which would have made them correctly (or at least, more correctly if not exactly) pronounce the sound as Sound A.

Let's entertain for a second the idea that there is no sound change. In that case, you must be claiming that it is the written accounts that are wrong. Is that what you beleive? Becuase as I have challenged to you before, literally go compare the written descriptions to the way the sounds are today. They do not match. They just don't. I don't see how you can for instance tell me that in the modern spoken tajweed of today that ض is rakhaawa and in a different place of articulation from د (you can't, because in modern tajweed, as you can self-confirm, it is in the same place as د. It is only different from د in itbaaq, not in place of articualtion as the written tajweed rules say it should be). Certainly I trust you can imagine if a sound changes and is not notice (just like in every other context and language), but can you accept that apparently all the classical scholars either a) were blatantly wrong and messed up all the sound descriptions OR b) that there is some conspiracy that rewrote originally correct sound descriptions (ones that actually would match the modern pronounciation) into incorrect ones that are now adopted by tajweed as good written references? I imagine not, but that is what you are alluding to, since either the written or the spoken must be wrong since they are not the same.

This discussion might get somewhere if you actually reconcile it for me. How does the modern spoken ض and ج match the classical description? Compare the spoken and written and tell me how.


----------



## bejl1

Vandalgon said:


> They do look at the books.



Good so you retract your earlier statement in which you said that the change would not have been noticed, so all you have to do now is bring me the books of tajweed scholars commenting on this change in pronunciation.



> I am making no contradiction.



Clearly you are since you're saying that t*here exists classical manuals accurately describing the pronunciation* while at the same time claiming that *tajweed scholars had no references to compare with and hence had to resort to guessing and vague estimations on what was the prevailing pronunciation. *Obvious contradiction.



> In that case, you must be claiming that it is the written accounts that are wrong. Is that what you beleive?



I'm still waiting for you to provide written accounts relating to the change in pronunciation by tajweed scholars who had access to these accurate descriptions for 1000 years.



> Is that what you beleive?



No, I don't believe that tajweed scholars actively ignored these classical manuals for 1000 years since they had no motivation to do so and you've presented no arguments.



> OR b) that there is some conspiracy that rewrote originally correct sound descriptions



I'm afraid you're the one who has ventured into the realm of conspiracy theories by claiming that every single tajweed scholar changed two letters some time after the 10th century for no apparent reason.



> How does the modern spoken ض and ج match the classical description?



There's no *the* classical description.


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## Vandalgon

bejl1 said:


> Good so you retract your earlier statement in which you said that the change would not have been noticed, so all you have to do now is bring me the books of tajweed scholars commenting on this change in pronunciation.


You literally are not even reading what I wrote.



bejl1 said:


> Clearly you are since you're saying that t*here exists classical manuals accurately describing the pronunciation* while at the same time claiming that *tajweed scholars had no references to compare with and hence had to resort to guessing and vague estimations on what was the prevailing pronunciation. *Obvious contradiction.


The contradiction is modern tajweed scholars using a pronunciation that explicitly doesn't match the written account. My argument of this being the case 「because of cognitive dissonance where they keep the written account, yet also refuse to acknowledge that their spoken sound differs from the written account」 itself is not contradictory.



bejl1 said:


> I'm still waiting for you to provide written accounts relating to the change in pronunciation by tajweed scholars who had access to these accurate descriptions for 1000 years.


You mean you want me to give the names of modern tajweed scholars who also participate in the cognitive dissonance I am describing yet acknowledge the sound change?



bejl1 said:


> No, I don't believe that tajweed scholars actively ignored these classical manuals for 1000 years since they had no motivation to do so and you've presented no arguments.


You mean beside the argument that the publically availble written account doesn't match the modern spoken sound? The argument that you can literally confirm by spending a few minutes to look up the tajweed description and see if it matches?



bejl1 said:


> I'm afraid you're the one who has ventured into the realm of conspiracy theories by claiming that every single tajweed scholar changed two letters some time after the 10th century for no apparent reason.


So you are literally ignoring everything I said (such as about unnoticed gradual change) , ignoring the entire conversation, and resorting to the strawman of some instantaneous change via conspiracy, which is something not only I never claimed, I explicitly denied was what happened? I see you are not actually interested in discussion if you are blatantly going to misrepresent another person's (repeated) argument in that manner. *Thus, I am disengaging from speaking with you here on this topic.*



bejl1 said:


> There's no *the* classical description.


Wut? First of all, yes there is. Second of all, even the written descriptions used in modern tajweed texts still is based on the classical descriptions, so regardless, you can check the written tajweed descriptions even used today to do that thing I have repeated asked you to do (saying it again for yet another time: you can see the dissonance by reading the written tajweed description and comparing it to the spoken sound, where you will see for yourself that they don't match). I see now that you won't though since you have no interest in the conversation and have refused to even spend a few minutes trying what I said to confirm or deny the claim I am making.


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## bejl1

Vandalgon said:


> *Thus, I am disengaging from speaking with you here on this topic.*



As expected. I'd probably do the same had I been in your position and thereby being faced with trying to reconcile the two statements "the scholars had no reference for how ج was pronounced" and "the scholars had access to classical manuals describing how ج was pronounced". Talk about shooting yourself in the foot here...



> My argument of this being the case 「because of cognitive dissonance where they keep the written account, yet also refuse to acknowledge that their spoken sound differs from the written account」 itself is not contradictory.



That's not your argument, that's your thesis, ie what you were supposed (but failed) to present arguments for.


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## Vandalgon

bejl1 said:


> "the scholars had no reference for how ج was pronounced"


Now you are just lying (edit: or really were not at all reading the text I wrote and somehow attributed a fabrication to me). I never, ever, said anything in this thread that said they lack a reference. The most I ever said is that they don't acknowledge that the reference they had conflicts with how their pronounce the word. I said they don't notice sound change in their speech (gradual sound change is unnoticed), but they did have written records that, if not for the assertion their their speech can't be affect by sound change, would allow them to have a more original pronunciation if they adhered to their own written records more than to the assertion that the spoken sound from teacher-to-student over generations is unchanged.


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## bejl1

Vandalgon said:


> Now you are just lying. I never, ever, said anything in this thread that said they lack a reference. The most I ever said is that they don't acknowledge that the reference they had conflicts with how their pronounce the word.



Of course you did, in a lot of places.



> A teacher would teach a sound, a student would attempt to repeat it, but they would be a slight difference. Generation upon generation, slight difference upon slight difference, and the sound changes without anyone noticing, just like how it happens in other contexts
> ...
> Sound changes are not normally noticed by speakers of a language, so it is not at all surprising that a sound could change in Tajweed. The sound changed in some areas, it didn't change in others, the new majority with the new sound claim to have been the original - not knowing any better - and stigmatize the old sound as dialectal.
> ...
> How would they notice? It's sound change.
> ...
> The old sound changes without being noticed and after the new sound becomes the majority with the person still thinking nothing changed, while the old sound that still survived intact in other regions becomes stigmatize as a dialectal deviation.



So either they had references or they made assumptions according to what the majority pronounced it like. You refuse to make up your mind. In one paragraph classical manual exists, in a another they don't, then the re-appear again, and so forth.


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## Vandalgon

bejl1 said:


> Of course you did, in a lot of places.
> 
> So either they had references or they made assumptions according to what the majority pronounced it like. You refuse to make up your mind.


Nothing I wrote there said there was no reference. The lack of notice regarded to their own spoken sound change. The whole argument I have been saying that although they have written accounts, they also assert the spoken sounds are unchanged.

Perhaps you need me to say it like this. Even if they never had written accounts, they still would assert that the sound is unchanged, because they believe that the teachers perfectly get the student to perfectly copy the teacher's spoken pronunciation sound, and that that student will become a teacher who will then pass that sound perfect in turn to his student and so on and so on. That way, there is a chain of spoken phonetics from generation to generation that even without written is considered "100%" reliable. That is the spoken mode. However, what I have claimed is that they also have a written mode (the written tajweed rules). In a perfect world, they would acknowledge that the spoken mode is not invulnerable to change and thus, they would make it subservient to the written mode, thus they would not rely on chain of spoken sound to deem what is correct, they would look at the unchanged written description (because unlike sound, there is no analogue to sound change in written descriptions. I don't expect the words in a text to change as I can expect sounds to change over time). The issue however, is that they don't make the spoken mode subservient to the written mode. They are given equal value (although in reality, I'd say the spoken mode is given higher value since in reality, it is the spoken mode pronunciation that became the modern standard, not the written mode pronunciation. They think they value the two modes the same, but they don't actually, because if they did, they would have actually look at both modes as seperate entities rather than joined). They refuse to accept that either the written or the spoken modes have change and thus they consider both avenues to have been unchanged. Objectively speaking however (again, you can test it yourself), the spoken mode did experience a change, and this is visable bright as day to people who do not evidencelessly accept that the spoken mode is unchanged, because the written mode is demonstratively in conflict with the modern spoken mode.

But, most if not all tajweed scholars in the modern day do not accept to take a step back and reexamine. Even if there was a scholar that pointed it out the discrepancy between the written and spoken, you know what the response would be? "The pronunciation from teacher to student throughout the generations is perfect. There is no chance the sound changed under our stringent teaching procedures" (i.e. they will rely on the unchanged-spoken mode idea, in combination with the accepted fact that the classical written tajwiid accounts are unchanged, to assert that they are actually compatible i.e. they use the pre-made conclusion that the two modes are the same as an "argument" over the synthetic conclusion of dissimilarity that would be made if they independently compared the sound values of the written with the spoken). They assert that both the spoken and written pronunciation is unchanged. Thus, when they read the written account, in their minds, they do not accept the possibility that it is not describing the sound they were taught by their teacher via the spoken mode and see it as the same, because to them, they take it as given that the spoken and written modes are describing the same thing, rather than take a step back and examine the written account as a completely separate mode from the spoken one, and then comparing them to see if they fit, where they would find they don't. I made no contradiction in my argument and I never said anything along the lines of "the scholars had no reference for how ج was pronounced" - I said is that they had a reference. When I also said they did not notice the sound change and "how would they notice", that was also still true, because to the tajweed scholars living in the time of the change, they take it as given that the sound they were taught by their teacher is the original under the assumption that copied it perfectly (even though actually in the generations of the time, the sound was slightly shifting, so the sound of the student isn't the same as the teacher by some measure, and this is compounded over generations). So just like normal sound change, they "wouldn't notice" because the reference that they do have (the static written accounts) are by default from the get-go assumed to match the spoken mode sound (which actually was changing). If they looked at the written and spoken modes separately rather than viewed as equivalent things, then they would be able to actually use the reference material that they have in order to realize that their spoken mode is changing. But because they give co-supremacy to the spoken mode, that are unable to use the reference that they do have. It is this mentality that they have that makes them both have a reference (the written accounts) yet be unable to use it for resist spoken-mode change.



bejl1 said:


> In one paragraph classical manual exists, in a another they don't, then the re-appear again, and so forth.



I have never, in any line, even the lines you cited, claimed classical manuals did not exist. That is an untenable interpretation of what I have written.


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## elroy

Vandalgon, my compliments on your eloquent and cogent argumentation.   Your debate with bejl1 is a nice example of the difference between arguing based on linguistic facts and using those facts to reach a conclusion, and arguing based on an already assumed (and usually ideologically driven) conclusion and trying to make the facts fit that conclusion.

I really like your cognitive dissonance thesis.  See this thread for what I think could be an example of this.  To this day I still cannot come to terms with the idea that [ʒ] is a dialectally influenced MSA pronunciation of ج.  I'm sure if I objectively examined the evidence I would probably have to concede that this is the case, but because the notion doesn't feel right I'm not inclined to engage in that type of objective exercise. 

As bejl1's arguments show, people often have vested interests in certain aspects of language being a certain way.  In my case, my vested interest is only based on not wanting to dismiss as invalid a form I've always been used to, but in other cases - when things like religion or politics are involved - there is much more at stake.


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## tounsi51

Hemza said:


> Also where the "ج" is a "g" in Morocco, in Tunisia it is pronounced as a "ز". (while Algerians always keep the standard pronounciation I think)



In Tunisia we only replace ج by ز only when we have ج  and ز  in the same word.


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## Ramisadeh

tounsi51 said:


> In Tunisia we only replace ج by ز only when we have ج  and ز  in the same word.


Yes like in the word جوز it becomes زوز, right? Or the word جواز becomes زواز, I love tunisian dialect.


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## tounsi51

Yes correct  however we don't use the word جواز to mean "to get married"

Are you from Jordan? I went there many times and I love the Jordanian accent


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## Ramisadeh

No I meant as in passport, but I forgot that you say باسبور however I met Tunisians who called passports زواز
Yes I am from Jordan and thank you.


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## tounsi51

Yes we use French word passeport


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## Hemza

tounsi51 said:


> In Tunisia we only replace ج by ز only when we have ج  and ز  in the same word.



Sorry, I thought that where we pronounce "g", you pronounce "ز". It's not the case in Morocco (it doesn't depend on the letter which are presents) and I'm curious if there is a rule. I quoted these words because these are the words I know, there might be others I don't know.


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## tulaibzafir

bejl1 said:


> So basically, sometime after the 10th century, every single tajweed scholar in the Arabic world adopted new pronunciations for two letters, and they imposed this on every reading of the Quran, so that today not a single one differs from the other in this regard. If this is the case then the change would've been well documented. By whom though?



I'm about a year late, but I made an account just to reply to this thread. I've been training in the Qur'anic Recitation and Tajweed sciences for several years now, and the contemporary Tajweed scholars are DEFINITELY not in agreement over the pronunciation of the letter ض. 
I've been researching this particular letter purely from the perspective of scholars of Tajweed for many years now, and I can tell you that this change from a fricative into a plosive IS documented by scholars of Tajweed and Islam in general. And I can also safely say that the historical texts DO indicate that the majority of the world was reciting the ض as a fricative just a little over a century ago, but unfortunately the majority shifted within the last 100 years. 
I can also tell you that there were politics associated with this in the realm of the scholars of Tajweed in Egypt, and they literally imprisoned people who advocated for this pronunciation just because they did not want to lose credibility for their chain of narration. This is all historically documented. 
Furthermore, the scholars of Tajweed whose pronounce the ض as a plosive today instead of the original fricative, rather than correcting their pronunciations to match the descriptions of the texts, instead thought it better to obfuscate the original definitions of the textual descriptions to match their own pronunciations. This is also historically documented by Tajweed scholars. One example of this is that many Tajweed scholars today claim that the rakhawah of ض refers to its pre-voicing, which anyone who's even taken an intro to linguistics class and read just a few books of the early Tajweed scholars will know how ridiculous a claim that is. 
Language is prone to change. If the early Tajweed scholars believed that oral transmission was the only factor necessary for the preservation of Arabic pronunciation, they would not have written such detailed books describing each letter. The fact of the matter is, many tajweed scholars today IGNORE textual descriptions for the sake of "sanad," i.e. the credibility of their oral transmission. 
Though I don't completely agree with OP regarding ج or س or ش, I can definitely agree with ض because of two reasons:
1. There still exist to this day oral transmissions with the original pronunciation. 
2. The entirety of Tajweed texts quite clearly contradict the pronunciation of ض we have today. 

This is not a full representation of my research on the matter, just a little flavor. I have dozens and dozens of classical books that I've managed to get my hands on, and I've been sifting through each of them to gather as much evidence as possible on this issue.


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## eskandar

tulaibzafir said:


> this change from a fricative into a plosive IS documented by scholars of Tajweed and Islam in general. And I can also safely say that the historical texts DO indicate that the majority of the world was reciting the ض as a fricative just a little over a century ago, but unfortunately the majority shifted within the last 100 years.
> I can also tell you that there were politics associated with this in the realm of the scholars of Tajweed in Egypt, and they literally imprisoned people who advocated for this pronunciation just because they did not want to lose credibility for their chain of narration. This is all historically documented.
> Furthermore, the scholars of Tajweed whose pronounce the ض as a plosive today instead of the original fricative, rather than correcting their pronunciations to match the descriptions of the texts, instead thought it better to obfuscate the original definitions of the textual descriptions to match their own pronunciations. This is also historically documented by Tajweed scholars. ...
> I have dozens and dozens of classical books that I've managed to get my hands on, and I've been sifting through each of them to gather as much evidence as possible on this issue.


This is all fascinating. You mention historical references several times - could you please give some of the citations/references you're referring to here? I don't doubt what you're saying but I would love to see these sources myself.


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## inquisitiveness1

tulaibzafir said:


> I'm about a year late, but I made an account just to reply to this thread. I've been training in the Qur'anic Recitation and Tajweed sciences for several years now, and the contemporary Tajweed scholars are DEFINITELY not in agreement over the pronunciation of the letter ض.
> I've been researching this particular letter purely from the perspective of scholars of Tajweed for many years now, and I can tell you that this change from a fricative into a plosive IS documented by scholars of Tajweed and Islam in general. And I can also safely say that the historical texts DO indicate that the majority of the world was reciting the ض as a fricative just a little over a century ago, but unfortunately the majority shifted within the last 100 years.
> I can also tell you that there were politics associated with this in the realm of the scholars of Tajweed in Egypt, and they literally imprisoned people who advocated for this pronunciation just because they did not want to lose credibility for their chain of narration. This is all historically documented.
> Furthermore, the scholars of Tajweed whose pronounce the ض as a plosive today instead of the original fricative, rather than correcting their pronunciations to match the descriptions of the texts, instead thought it better to obfuscate the original definitions of the textual descriptions to match their own pronunciations. This is also historically documented by Tajweed scholars. One example of this is that many Tajweed scholars today claim that the rakhawah of ض refers to its pre-voicing, which anyone who's even taken an intro to linguistics class and read just a few books of the early Tajweed scholars will know how ridiculous a claim that is.
> Language is prone to change. If the early Tajweed scholars believed that oral transmission was the only factor necessary for the preservation of Arabic pronunciation, they would not have written such detailed books describing each letter. The fact of the matter is, many tajweed scholars today IGNORE textual descriptions for the sake of "sanad," i.e. the credibility of their oral transmission.
> Though I don't completely agree with OP regarding ج or س or ش, I can definitely agree with ض because of two reasons:
> 1. There still exist to this day oral transmissions with the original pronunciation.
> 2. The entirety of Tajweed texts quite clearly contradict the pronunciation of ض we have today.
> 
> This is not a full representation of my research on the matter, just a little flavor. I have dozens and dozens of classical books that I've managed to get my hands on, and I've been sifting through each of them to gather as much evidence as possible on this issue.


Although I did (and do) believe that ض was a fricative in the Classical era, I am surprised to hear you say that it was the majority pronunciation up to as recently as 100 years or so ago. I would have thought it lost majority status much earlier.

Also, regarding ج specifically (س and ش, I understand the skepticism better), do you agree that it was a plosive sound in Classical Arabic (in contrast to its modern sound) since it is described as a shiddah letter, or do you maintain that /d͡ʒ/ (English J sound) was indeed the original Classical sound?


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