# بوصلة



## I see you

I read that the Arabic word بوصلة is a loanword from Italian (bussola). In that case, shouldn't it have been spelled بوسلة? I don't think the Italian "s" is pronounced "ص".


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## bearded

I see you said:


> I don't think the Italian "s" is pronounced "ص".


No, it is not!  But I think that emphatic S was adopted in order to render our double s (as an alternative to siin with shadda).


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## analeeh

No, it's just that in the past emphatics were very common when rendering loanwords. I'm not sure whether it reflects an older difference in the pronunciation or what, but if you look at older loanwords in particular (and there are some today too) the emphatic is the usual choice. One theory is that it reflects the different pronunciation of vowels next to emphatics being similar to those in the European word.


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## bearded

analeeh said:


> it reflects the different pronunciation of vowels next to emphatics being similar to those in the European word.


But in the case of 'bussola' (with a non-mistakable u in Italian), I feel that with emphatic S the pronunciation would rather be close to a closed ó...- sorry for the pun.


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## analeeh

Yes, but we have no way of knowing definitively how Italian o or Arabic o and s sounded when it was borrowed - they might have been closer. Or there might have been some other phonological similarity between the pronunciation of the emphatics at the time and the pronunciation of Italian consonants (perhaps aspiration or sth I don't know). Or perhaps this was just the continuation of the pattern of people borrowing loanwords with emphatics and had nothing to do with its pronunciation.


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## Interprete

bearded said:


> But in the case of 'bussola' (with a non-mistakable u in Italian), I feel that with emphatic S the pronunciation would rather be close to a closed ó...- sorry for the pun.


But without the emphasis the following vowel would be very openn, something like 'busèla' which would be even further from the original. Maybe the emphatic S is intended here to close the vowel that immediately follows it 'busola'.


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## bearded

Interprete said:


> the following vowel would be very openn, something like 'busèla'


I don't understand why it would be, and how one can speculate about pronunciation of a short vowel that is not written...  Moreover, please mind that in the original word the stress is on the first syllable (_bùssola_).


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## Interprete

Because that's what emphasis does to vowels around the emphasized consonant...  compare with موصل vs موسل


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## bearded

You wrote, interprete, that *without *the emphasis the pronunciation would be similar to 'busèla', with a stressed open è.  That's what I do not understand, sorry. I'd rather think it would be someting like 'buusla'.
Supposing the existance of a vowel after siin, since it is not written it cannot be stressed, I think. 
Anyhow, analeeh's final surmise in #5 seems quite plausible to me.


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## Interprete

bearded said:


> You wrote, interprete, that *without *the emphasis the pronunciation would be similar to 'busèla', with a stressed open è.


Sorry for the confusion, I didn't mean to indicate a stressed 'e'. My first language is French and I was referring to the French sound è.


> I'd rather think it would be someting like 'buusla'.


Really? I have never come across any فوعل-type of word with a sukuun on the second consonant. Does it exist?
Anyway Al-Maany clearly indicates   بُوصَلَة with a fat7a. And fat7a on the letter Sad is pronounced almost like an 'o' (so it would read something like bûsola), whereas on a sin, it would be pronounced between 'a' and 'e' (or English 'i'), so it would read something like bûsala/bûsela. Hence the use of Sad, which allows for a reading closer to the original word. That's what I was trying to say previously.


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## bearded

Thank you, interprete.  It's clear now. Concerning sukuun, how is the name of the city of Basra written/spelt in Arabic?


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## Interprete

You're welcome. Regarding Basra, I think it is spelt the way it is pronounced in English, however it doesn't have a long waw in second position.


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## bearded

A question (from the depth of my ignorance):
As far as I know, emphatic consonants usually influence the pronunciation not only of the subsequent, but also of the preceding vowels. Thus, with the emphatic S, would the first vowel  in that word really sound as uu, or would there be a tendency towards óó (something like bóóSola)?


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## Mahaodeh

Interprete said:


> Anyway Al-Maany clearly indicates بُوصَلَة with a fat7a. And fat7a on the letter Sad is pronounced almost like an 'o' (so it would read something like bûsola)



Ok, I kept repeating the word, and I asked others to repeat it, and I every single time I hear booSala, not booSola - I also tried it with بصلة - صديق - مصاري - أصالة, not in any one of them did the fat7a on the Saad sound anywhere near an o sound. Where did that rule come from?



bearded said:


> Concerning sukuun, how is the name of the city of Basra written/spelt in Arabic?



It's written البَصْرَة. The name is always written with a definite article in Arabic.


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## Interprete

Mahaodeh said:


> Ok, I kept repeating the word, and I asked others to repeat it, and I every single time I hear booSala, not booSola - I also tried it with بصلة - صديق - مصاري - أصالة, not in any one of them did the fat7a on the Saad sound anywhere near an o sound. Where did that rule come from?





			
				Wikipedia said:
			
		

> Allophony in different dialects of Arabic can occur, and is partially conditioned by neighboring consonants within the same word. As a general rule, for example, /a/ and /aː/ are:
> 
> 
> /a, aː/
> retracted to [ɑ] in the environment of a neighboring /r/, /q/ or an emphatic consonant (one that is uvularized, though customarily transcribed as if pharyngealized): /sˤ/, /dˤ/, /tˤ/, /ðˤ/, /ɫ/ and in a few regional standard pronunciations also /x/and /ɣ/;[4]


We may have a subjective perception of what an 'o' sounds like, given that we don't have the same mother tongue. I was referring to that sound [ɑ] which to a French (and I assume, an Italian) speaker, sounds like an open o. The point is that it is very different from the way you would pronounce it in أسالة مساري سديق بسلة. Don't you agree that the former is much closer to the original pronunciation of 'bussola' than the latter.


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## bearded

And what about the first syllable 'buu' before the emphatic S (my #13)?


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## Ihsiin

Interprete said:


> We may have a subjective perception of what an 'o' sounds like, given that we don't have the same mother tongue. I was referring to that sound [ɑ] which to a French (and I assume, an Italian) speaker, sounds like an open o. The point is that it is very different from the way you would pronounce it in أسالة مساري سديق بسلة. Don't you agree that the former is much closer to the original pronunciation of 'bussola' than the latter.



This is not how I pronounce it. What we find is that the qualities of the vowels vary between dialects, and as I am not aware of any Arab whose pronounciation of Classical Arabic is not influenced by his or her dialect, there is no standard. We only have variation. If compare بوصلة with بوسلة I find that the فتحة in question doesn't change much, and in both cases I pronounce it closer to /e/ than /a/.


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## Interprete

Of course, but I think it would make more sense to refer to the pronunciation of 'standard' CA, given that the word we're talking about is probably not new at all...
Here is an example from the Qur'an read by al-Ghamidi, with the word بَصَل (onion) where he clearly shifts to between the first fat7a and the second to another level of 'openness'.
The Quranic Arabic Corpus - Word by Word Grammar, Syntax and Morphology of the Holy Quran
Again, you might say this sounds to your ear like 'almost an /e/' but I really don't think this is how a phonologist would transcribe it. To me it sounds like the exact opposite... betweeen /a/ and /o/.
I'm actually surprised by your reaction and that of Mahaodeh, because this topic has already been discussed several times on this forum. Isn't it called تفخيم ?
*حروف التفخيم*
حروفه : "خُصّ ضَغْطٍ قِظْ" وتسمى أيضاً حروف الاستعلاء. وتفخم هذه الحروف في جميع الأحوال والمواضع.

أقوى حروف التفخيم أو الإستعلاء هو الطاء ثم الضاد ثم الصاد ثم الظاء ثم القاف ثم الغين ثم الخاء.
تفخيم وترقيق - ويكيبيديا، الموسوعة الحرة

I understand that this rule may not be applied by today's speakers of MSA unanimously, but you still find it in any Arabic grammar book, even those directed to foreigners learning MSA actually.


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