# All Dialects/MSA/Classical: fat7a فتحة pronunciation



## Flaminius

I have learnt from a discussion here that Moroccans and Algerians tend to pronounce _-a_ with a more open variation, which sounds like an O to me.  I have also seen that the Palestinian variety often realises _-a_ as _-e_, e.g., _samake_ (fish) and _taʿiyye_ (hat).  Do other varieties of Arabic  have variant pronunciations for the word-final _-a_?


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## MarcB

Shami or Levantine usually pronounces eh like you wrote for Palestinian which is shami. Most others pronounce ah with some slight variations.


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## elroy

It should be noted that a word-final _a_ is not always pronounced /e/ in Palestinian Arabic.

First of all, this only happens when the _a_ corresponds to a ة in the written language. We don't say _Amérke_* for example.  

Secondly, it doesn't happen in every word that ends with a ة.

Some random examples:

_blúze_ (بلوزة), _3ilbe_ (علبة), _bétinjáne_ (باذنجانة/بيتنجانة)

but 

_sur3a_ (سرعة), _fir2a_ (فرقة), _sháTra_ (شاطرة)

I wouldn't be able to tell you what the rule is for when it happens and when it doesn't (if there is one). Maybe somebody out there has written a dissertation about it.


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

^In general,we can observe that it's pronounced "a" when close to emphatics and 7a, 3ayn, ghayn, or 9af' (when it's pronounced) and "e" in all other cases. But that's not a 100% rule...


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## clevermizo

elroy said:


> It should be noted that a word-final _a_ is not always pronounced /e/ in Palestinian Arabic.[...]



I wrote you a private message about it. In general:

if ة is preceded by ض ص  ق ء ط ظ ع ح خ and sometimes ر, pronounce [a]. Sometimes ب, م or ل can be pronounced emphatic, and then I guess pronounce [a] as well. For example لمبة [LaMBa] or perhaps [lamBa] or [laMBa] depending on the degree of emphasis spreading.

Otherwise, pronounce [e]. And if you are Lebanese, pronounce _. 

Although it is descriptive, this rule seems to be very stable in the dialects of Sham, and so we can probably be 98% sure about it._


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

^that's quite white I've just said


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## Flaminius

elroy said:


> It should be noted that a word-final _a_ is not always pronounced /e/ in Palestinian Arabic.
> 
> First of all, this only happens when the _a_ corresponds to a ة in the written language. We don't say _Amérke_* for example.


Seeing that my enquiry is about _ta marbūta_, I read in this thread that _-a_ can be pronounced _-ah_ in several varieties.  Or is the "h" something irrelevant here?


> _sur3a_ (سرعة), _fir2a_ (فرقة), _sháTra_ (شاطرة)


As I tried to pronounced them, the "r" in the last one becomes emphatic influenced by the almost-homorganic "T" immediately before.  Is it the case in native pronunciation?


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## elroy

clevermizo said:


> I wrote you a private message about it.


 Oops. I guess I forgot about it because I don't need the rule. 


> if ة is preceded by ض ص ق ء ط ظ ع ح خ and sometimes ر, pronounce [a].


 I just tested this with some words ending in the letters you list (except for ر), and I can confirm that they would sound very odd if pronounced with an [e]. However, when I got to ظ I realized that we usually realize that letter as a ز, yet in such cases we still pronounce [a]. For example, بوظة is pronounced _búza_ and bot _búze_*, but بلوزة is _blúze_ and وزة is _wazze_. As for ر, you seem to be right in that both pronunciations occur (برة - _barra_, مسعرة - _msa33ara_, مدبرة - _mdabbara_ but مديرة - _mudíre_, قصيرة - _2aSíre_, نادرة - _nádre_ [but if it's a name it's _nádira_!]), so I don't know if there's a rule there.


> Sometimes ب, م or ل can be pronounced emphatic, and then I guess pronounce [a] as well. For example لمبة [LaMBa] or perhaps [lamBa] or [laMBa] depending on the degree of emphasis spreading.


 What do you mean by "pronounced emphatic"? I'm not sure what sounds your capitalized letters are supposed to represent. I do say _lámba _(notice that here the first vowel is long), but I'm not sure why.


> And if you are Lebanese, pronounce _. _


 It's also in the Galilee.


Flaminius said:


> Seeing that my enquiry is about ta marbūta, I read in this thread that -a can be pronounced -ah in several varieties. Or is the "h" something irrelevant here?


 No, it's not irrelevant. I think there is a slight  sound in some dialects - but not in Palestinian Arabic.


> As I tried to pronounced them, the "r" in the last one becomes emphatic influenced by the almost-homorganic "T" immediately before. Is it the case in native pronunciation?


 Hmm - emphatic consonants again. I'm not sure what you're talking about.  When I say sháTra, I can't say that the r sounds any different to me than it usually does.


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## clevermizo

elroy said:


> What do you mean by "pronounced emphatic"? I'm not sure what sounds your capitalized letters are supposed to represent. I do say _lámba _(notice that here the first vowel is long), but I'm not sure why.



You can do the same physical process that differentiates the pronunciation of ت and ط to really any sound. This is a pharyngealization/velarization process (raising the dorsum of the tongue towards the roof/back of the mouth). In Arabic descriptive linguistics (in the West) this is usually referred to as "emphasis". I don't know what the native Arabic term for this is - but I am sure one exists because the ancient Arabic grammarians were meticulous. The "emphatic set" of consonants in CA/MSA is restricted to ط، ظ، ص، ض, however in dialects there are often other contrasts that the Arabic alphabet has no separate letters for. Even in the classical language this is true - notably how ل is pronounced in the word الله which differs physically from its otherwise more fronted quality.


Anyway, 'M' vs. 'm' is the same distinction as 'T' versus 't.' The reason why بوظة is [buuZ*a*] and not [buuZ*e*] is exactly because the ظ in question, imho, is not being realized as "ز" as much as an emphatic version of the latter - i.e. the same way ط differs from ت. 'M' exists in the word for water ميّ, [May] which is pronounced with emphatic quality. 'B' vs 'b' also exists, notably in the word for "dad" - بابا [BaaBa] which contrasts plain [baaba] which would sound like بابها, "her door."

[M, B, L] are more restricted than the normal set [T,D,S,Z or Dh] but exist nonetheless.

You should self test with some words perhaps.

'Emphasis' is a common phonemic contrast in Semitic languages (though absent in some - like Modern Hebrew that has merged T and t both into /t/ or made S into /ts/), although sometimes the actually physical process differs. Emphatic consonants usually promote vowel archiphonemes to more backed realization, thus around them vowels sounds further back in the mouth or more "hollow." This is why [a] is preferred for ة in the contexts described above - because it is a back vowel, more natural in the context of a consonant which is emphatic or otherwise guttural.


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## elroy

Wow.  Never in a million years would it would have occurred that such distinctions possibly existed!  I just said some of the words you mentioned to myself, and I can kind of detect the difference, but it's still not as perceptible to me as the differences I've always been familiar with (س/ص, etc.), but I guess that's probably because I'm not used to the concept.

Thanks for the information.   I guess you are qualified to answer Flaminius's question about the [r] in [sháTra].   Is that [r] emphatic, posisbly because of the [T] in its immediate environment?


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## clevermizo

This is what we call an orthographic bias. It's the same reason that Americans don't realize that the 'tt' in 'letter' is actually a flap, like the 'r' in Spanish.  Colloquial Arabics have moved passed the canonical four (ص، ض، ط ،ظ), sometimes because of importation of vocabulary from other languages, or other processes that have been lost to history.

And yes about your second point this is a phenomenon in Arabic linguistics called "Emphasis Spreading." It is hairy stuff because no one has been able to pinpoint what the bounds are - meaning, emphasis spreading seems to spread over whole words, or sometimes past word boundaries. In a word like لمبة it is usually pronounced as if it were [LaMBa] with three emphatic sounds. Who knows if it is due to any one and then spreading, or all three were as such initially. In a word like شاطرة, the presence of ط forces the ر to sound more "emphatic" thus blocking the pronunciation of ة as [e].

ر is a funny beast and many dialects are splitting into which ones have "emphatic" and "non-emphatic" versions of it. It has to do with the vowels surrounding it. This is why the segment را does _not_ succumb to the procedure of إمالة. You don't hear any Lebanese going around and saying "rees" or "riis" instead of "raas" for راس. The reason is that the ا conditions ر to be pronounced in this "darker" way, and as such إمالة is blocked (just as for ط or ص). In fact, most people to my knowledge pronounce this word as راص!!! And the س is affected by the emphatic ر and sounds like ص instead (a classical example of spreading)!

With the example of مدير, مديرة you will note the pronunciations you have given [mudiir] and [mudiire]. This is because the vowel around ر is [ii] and thus ر has a "lighter" or non-emphatic sound quality. In general back/low vowels cause emphasis in ر and high/front vowels (like ii) cause fronting and block emphasis in ر. And not only that with mudiire we have a minimal pair with mudiira, which for some people sounds like مديرها if their dialect does not pronounce the suffix [ha] (like in Lebanese).

Note, this is why I also spelled [maZBuuT] as مظبوط, because I believe that the z-like sound is actually Z. I can actually pronounce two versions to myself right now [mazbuuT] and [maZBuuT] and the latter seems more correct to me. However when you corrected me to spell it مزبوط, I did not argue the point. I also often see this spelling مظبوط on the internet as well, and if we say that in dialect writing ظ refers to the sound Z, then this spelling I think is a little more accurate. I would write an emphatic 'b' in Arabic as well but there is only one letter. Also, I would argue that z is Z _not_ because of spreading from ط, but because of etymological inheritance of the emphatic trait from its classical reflex ض (in مضبوط).


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## elroy

Thanks for all that information.  I have one objection, though: 





clevermizo said:


> In a word like شطرة, the presence of ط forces the ر to sound more "emphatic" thus blocking the pronunciation of ة as [e].


 First of all, it's spelled شاطرة, and secondly, you should know that in some parts of the Galilee it's pronounced [shaaTre]. Do you have a linguistic explanation for that?


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## clevermizo

Yes I do. As I said, there's no consensus on how far spreading works. It may be that in some dialects it only works as minimally as on the one syllable context (say, "shaaT", in which the "sh" would also be affected), and that in others it spreads further over the word. Usually _at least_ the emphasis spreads over the syllable in which the emphatic consonant resides. This is why the vowel right before or after it is affected. We could do a study on emphasis spreading in Galilean to see if the syllable boundary is always the upper bound for spreading. Or someone else may have already written a paper on the topic...


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## clevermizo

Moderator's Note:

This thread was initially primarily about the pronunciation of ــَة suffix as -e, but we've decided to expand it's scope to include all the dialect variations of the pronunciation of fatḥa فتحة, i.e. ـَ or what we commonly designate /a/ in Standard Arabic.

Cheers,

clevermizo
Moderator.


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## rayloom

Going back to the original topic 

Regarding the pronunciation of the fatHa before the taa marbuTa, the imala (pronouncing it as /e/) is actually an ancient variant which has persisted to this day.
Indeed some classical readings of the Quran (which follow ancient dialectal variants of Classical Arabic) pronounce it with an imala in pausa (in sandhi it's pronounced normally).
If anyone is interested, search Youtube for:
محمد عبد الحكيم قراءة الكسائي
(first video in the results "قراءة الكسائي").
Who reads Surat Al-Qiyama in the reading style of Al-Kisaa'i (which varies from the most common reading of the Quran رواية حفص عن عاصم).
Note how the /a/ before the taa marbuTa is pronounced, while before the haa it's pronounced without an imala (the imala applies also to most final alifs of a yaa origin, more evident in Mishary Al-Afasi's recitation of Surat Al-A3la مشاري العفاسي ، سورة الأعلى ، قراءة دوري الكسائي on youtube).

In the common reading of the Quran قراءة حفص عن عاصم, it's all pronounced the same way (like in Classical and Standard Arabic).

Regarding how that fatHa is pronounced in Hijazi Arabic, it's pronounced /a/ (no imala).


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## GoldBug

clevermizo said:


> As I said, there's no consensus on how far spreading works.


Pounce on me if I'm expanding this discussion beyond reasonable boundaries but I'd like to add:

In my experience "spreading" is more common that is generally supposed.

1. When I hear the word *مصر* for example, all 3 consonants sound emphatic to me.

2. When I hear the phrase: *صلى الله عليه وسلم* the entire phrase sound emphatic to me.

There are probably multiple reasons why "emphasis spreading" occurs. But one basic requirement, seems to me is that at least one "emphatic" consonant must be present "somewhere" in the word/phrase. Without it, no emphasis can occur.


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## bearded

According to grammar books, the correct MSA pronunciation of 'alif' (far from emphatic consonants) should be a sound halfway between a (like 'ama' in French) and e (like 'bébé in French), i.e. a sound similar to a in the English words 'that, fact'. Now my question: is it true that in the Arab world there are variants, namely in certain regions alif is pronounced more open, towards a, and in other regions or countries more towards e ? And if it is true, does this fact depend on the pronunciations in different local dialects? How do dialects behave in this respect?
Example: in the word 'kalb' (dog) does the vowel have the same sound all over the Arab world?
Thank you in advance for your reply.


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## Tracer

B' sera

First of all, some of your premises are faulty:

1.  There is no “Alif” in the word “kalb”.     كَلْـبٌ        What you have is the diacritical “fatHa” which is way different from an “Alif”.

2.  The diacritical “fatHa” does have regional variations.  It is often pronounced closer to an “e”.  In some dialects, it drops out altogether…in others,  it can re-appear between the L and the B  = kleb.

3.  You give the English terms “that” and  “fact” to make your point, but British (that,fact) are pronounced very differently from American (that, fact) so you should specify which you mean.

4.  Ideally, MSA is pronounced equally across the entire Arabic speaking world.  We know this is not the case, of course, but it is the ideal.  The dialects, on the other hand, vary widely in all linguistics categories…phonetics, phonemics, morphology etc.   

To answer your specific question, “ideally” all the “Alifs” appearing in MSA are pronounced equally everywhere.  In fact, we know this is not the case.  Dialects do indeed interfere with how MSA is pronounced not only with the Alif but with just about every Arabic sound.


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## bearded

You are right, Tracer, I should have mentioned both alif and fatHa.  Concerning 'fact' and 'that', maybe the different pronunciation in BE and AE corresponds to differences in Arabic between a-pronunciation and e-pronunciation...? Anyway, what I meant was basically BE.
If you know it, can you please let me know which dialects (and consequently MSA spoken with a dialect pronunciation) tend towards a and which towards e ? Thank you and kind regards,
b.m.


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## k8an

It depends on the position of the letter. 

In Lebanese, it's usually pronounced as an "é" in the middle of the word - for example the name of the country لبنان = "libnén". In MSA it's pronounced "lubnaan". Other examples - the word أيام is pronounced "ayém"; حياتي is pronounced "7ayété". 

In Gulf Arabic it's usually a very strong "aa", and sometimes in some Gulf dialects (I can't quite remember which) even as strong as the Persian alif (if you don't know it, it's kind of like an "aaw" sound). To give the same comparison words as the Lebanese words, I believe Gulf people usually say "ayaam" and "7ayaati". 

As for Egyptian, it kind of sounds like the "a" in "fact" of American English. Eg: "ayam", "7ayati". 

Different explanations are welcome


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## themadprogramer

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
I hear people pronounce the short arabic a as a and ae. Which one is more common. Please tell me both the MAS and colloquial one


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## Hemza

Hello,

The "é/ae" sound you hear is typically colloquial, not in Standard Arabic. It's called "امالة" (imaala) and it's used a lot by Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians, Tunisians and Mauritanians. It was an old feature in Eastern Arabia too as far as I know. In Standard Arabic, it's pronounced "a", as well as Western Arabian dialects since it's based on Western Arabia's Arabic.


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## Russkitav

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello again,

I am interested if there is any consensus on what is/are the pronunciation(s) of the fatḥa vowel in Classical Arabic. I see that this vowel is commonly written as "a" (and often as /a/), but I wish to make sure that by /a/, they actually mean that the pronunciation of the fatḥa vowel in the classical period is the same as what the IPA now calls that "open front unrounded vowel". I have seen "/a/" used for cases in other languages where the actual value is actually more back than the IPA symbol they used would suggest (presumably since writing /a/ is easy and that sound doesn't contrast with any other open vowel in these languages).

So, should I take it that it is believed that the pronunciation actually was as an open front unrounded vowel, or is a different  pronunciation (such as the more central IPA /ä/) a supportable possibility?

P.S. I am assuming that the vowel quality is the same for long "a" and short "a". This maybe is a wrong assumption. I am also assuming that the vowel quality in classical Arabic was the same regardless if the previous consonant was emphatic or not (or perhaps after certain consonants), which is an assumption I am more readily willing to accept could be false (especially given that this is often the the case in modern dialects)


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## GLearner

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello all, i am starting to learn Arabic and my first confusion is regarding the fatha sound. Almost everywhere i have read that it should sound like the English short vowel "a" as in "father". However when i hear native speakers, how they pronounce words, some times the fatha sounds indeed as "a" in father, but in some words it sounds more like "e" in "pet" . For example the word "كتاب" most of the pronunciations i have heard sound like kit*e*b, not kit*a*b. Furthermore, i have noticed that the same word is pronounced by some people with the "e" sound and by other people with the "a" sound, which is the more correct pronunciation? I am beginning to suspect that fatha have both - the short "a" and short "e" sounds am i correct in my assumption? Also i was wondering if fatha and* ا* (alef) are representing the short "e" sound, then why when transliterating foreign names or loan words, most of the time the short "e" in them is substituted by kasra or  *ي* (Yaa), which sound like the short vowel "i" as in "bit", thus changing the original pronunciation of the name. Why just don`t use alef or fatha, so the original pronunciation can be preserved?
If someone can help me  clear my confusion i will be very great-full, thanks in advance!


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## analeeh

There isn't really one correct pronunciation, at least practically speaking. In any given dialect - and this goes, to varying extents, for speakers' pronunciations of MSA too - there is usually a range of different pronunciations of the short and long /a/ vowel (and other vowels, too) depending on the surrounding consonants, whether the syllable is stressed and other similar factors. These different realisations - which by native speakers are perceived, generally, as the same sound - are called allophones. If you want to learn to pronounce things like a native, you'll have to copy natives and try and imitate their pronunciations. 

As for foreign words and transliteration - often vowels that are pronounced as short are written long. This is probably for ease of reading - since short vowels aren't written it's otherwise impossible to know what the vowel is. Arabic's spelling, particularly of loanwords, is not 100% transparent, but you get used to this quite quickly.


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## GLearner

Thanks for your reply analeeh!

[moderator note: the question about transliterating foreign names and words is off-topic here, so I moved it to this thread. Please don't forget to always remain on-topic. Cherine]


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