# Non-Arabs: how can you pronounce the letter ح



## the-moon-light

Hi all 

I like to ask non-Arabs who learned Arabic. How can you pronounce the letter *ح*?

1- What is the things you used to practice to pronounce it correctly?

2- Did you learn about the letter *ح* exit in the mouth? does this help you?

3- How did you practice to pronounce this letter correctly?

I'll be happy to know your experiences


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## Abu Rashid

Darth vader breathing


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## Muwahid

Well I'm Arab, but not a native speaker, however I was always exposed to the language in some way or another. When it came to pronouncing it I just replicated what I heard by constricting my throat muscles a bit, and making the regular 'h' sound. It's one of the easiest non-equivalents to learn in my opinion, I think most English Natives new to the language would have a hard time distinguishing حا from ها.


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## Josh_

Blowing out candles on a birthday cake with the letter "h."

The ح is an aspirated sound.  I find that non-natives have trouble with it, at least initially, because they can't seem to understand the mechanism behind it.  They understand that it is supposed to be like the normal "h," but they seem to not understand the aspiration part, or at least how to produce it with an "h" sound.  In trying to produce it, they often will pronounce it like the خ. For instance the name أحمد is often pronounced like أخمد.  

So I find that explaining it as blowing out birthday candles with the letter "h" helps.  The way we learn something new is by relating it to something we already know. A non-native (at least an English speaker) understands the letter "h" and he/she understand blowing out candles (forcefully pushing air out).  So combining the two one starts to understand the mechanism behind it. 

The only difference is that with blowing out candles one is pursing (constricting) the lips, while with the ح the constriction occurs further back.


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## Sidjanga

Josh_ said:


> Blowing out candles on a birthday cake with the letter "h."


Hm..., maybe this does help some, but I think I would find it misleading, as ح and h are not pronounced in the same spot.

I've read - and now have the same impression from my own experience - that ح and ع are basically pronounced the same way and in the same place, with the main difference being that ح is voiceless and ع voiced.

I don't quite remember anymore, but _I think_ I finally got to pronounce the ع properly when practicing to pronounce _aa _while at the same time "trying to swallow it".

And while in the beginning I'd always thought that what I'd first taken to be "my would-be valid pronunciation of the ح" had also helped me to get to pronounce the ع properly, it then really helped me to do it the other way round, i.e. imagining to pronounce a voiceless ع did the trick for me with respect to the pronunciation of ح.

(This principle generally helps me a lot: when I sometimes find it difficult to pronounce a certain word because ع or ح are in an "ususual" or "uncomfortable" position there, I practice pronouncing that word while substituting the sound in question with the respective other one, and this normally does the trick really well.)

That said, when pronouncing either sound now I basically have the impression I just somehow contract my larynx.


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## Muwahid

> I read - and now have the same impression from my own experience - that ح  and ع are basically pronounced the same way and in the same place, with  the main difference being that ح is voiceless and ع voiced.



I would agree, I use the same part of my throat to make both sounds, except as Josh pointed out the 7aa is obviously aspirated.


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## Sidjanga

Muwahid said:


> I would agree, I use the same part of my throat to make both sounds, except as Josh pointed out the 7aa is obviously aspirated.


I'm not sure I understand what "aspirated" is meant to refer to in this context. 
Do you mean anything beyond the fact that ح, in contrast to ع, is voiceless and therefore - obviously - sounds different?
It's normal that the pronunciation of a voiceless sound requires more air than that of its voiced equivalent.


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## Muwahid

Aspirated meaning, when pronouncing it you release a breath of air, as you would with a normal 'h' sound. In the case of 7a I find that I constrict my throat as I would with the 'ع', the difference being I would let air which I guess what you would call 'voiceless'.


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## Sidjanga

Muwahid said:


> (..) the difference being I would let air which I guess what you would call 'voiceless'.


"vioceless" just means that your vocal cords don't vibrate while the air streams out beteween them (normally becuase they're basically open/not tensed, with the h being an exeption in this latter respect, as it's precisely there where this sound is pronounced - though in this case the vocal cords obviously don't vibrate either, as h too is a voiceless consonant). As a consequence, with voiceless sounds you don't feel your larynx vibrating if you put a finger there while pronouncing the sound in question).

Given that the ع is a fricative/proximant, this sound also is the result of air escaping relatively homogenously through the respective part of your throat, just as with ح.
But yes, you let (considerably) more air for ح than for ع.


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## AndyRoo

I was told it is like when you breathe on your glasses to clean them.


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## Sidjanga

AndyRoo said:


> I was told it is like when you breathe on your glasses to clean them.


And does this actually work for you?

That's just how I tried to do it in the beginning (there does seem to be _some_ similarity, at least on first and second listening) - but the result was quite disappointing and simply didn't work; no one would understand the resulting sound to be a proper ح.

I obviously don't know how people breathe out when cleaning their glasses or something were you live . But the way I do it and what I see and_ hear_ when other people clean their glasses around here (and in pretty much all other places I've been to) has little in common with the ح, which - at least from my experience - is produced a lot further down in your throat than the sound you hear when breathing out "for cleaning purposes".


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## AndyRoo

Sidjanga said:


> And does this actually work for you?


 
For me the sounds are very close (I'm sure you'd be understood), but as you say, ح is pronounced a little further back in the throat.

I just checked and I saw a couple of courses also use the breathing on the glasses comparison, e.g. Michel Thomas, Teach Yourself. It's not a bad starting point.


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## dkarjala

For some reason, students have more trouble with this than the ع

When I teach, I have noticed that doing the sound emphatically and eliciting imitation is the quickest path to getting the sound, at least once. The best is in a classroom where multiple students are doing it at once...they kind of pick it up by observing the students who are doing it correctly.

One tip that has helped some students of mine is to say "pretend you have a hair caught in your throat" or "pretend you drank soup that was too hot and you are trying to cool your throat".

Otherwise I just tell them they should feel like they are gagging a little and like their throat is squeezing shut. Pleasant, I know!


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## HKK

Abu Rashid said:


> Darth vader breathing



This one did it for me too 
In fact, if I blow out a candle or breathe on glasses, it doesn't sound like 7aa' at all, I use my lips to restrict the airflow.


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## tabyyy

Someone told me to make the "ahhh" sound as if I just had drank something really refreshing. That, or breathe into your hands as if you were trying to warm them (this is what really helped me!) Darth Vader breathing is a good one too 


Strangely I didn't find the ح sound too hard. The hardest for me was غ (which took me FOREVER) - I guess everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.


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## dkarjala

tabyyy said:


> Someone told me to make the "ahhh" sound as if I just had drank something really refreshing. That, or breathe into your hands as if you were trying to warm them (this is what really helped me!) Darth Vader breathing is a good one too
> 
> 
> Strangely I didn't find the ح sound too hard. The hardest for me was غ (which took me FOREVER) - I guess everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.



I'm confused because neither blowing in your hands nor making the refreshed 'aah' sound involve constricting the larynx, which is how the sound is made. They are both made at the glottis, and so wouldn't produce the right sound...unless you force yourself to make it different than a regular 'h' in which case you wouldn't need the tricks in the first place.


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## tabyyy

dkarjala said:


> *I'm confused because neither blowing in your hands* nor making the refreshed 'aah' sound *involve constricting the larynx*, which is how the sound is made. They are both made at the glottis, and so wouldn't produce the right sound...unless you force yourself to make it different than a regular 'h' in which case you wouldn't need the tricks in the first place.



Really? I think it does. Anytime I've blown into my hands to warm them I've constricted my larynx. It's actually news to me that you wouldn't!

The refreshing "ahh" sound is admittedly off, but it provides a start for non-native learners. If you've never* heard/made the sound before, it gives you a bit of a guide. By the way, it was native Arabic speakers who informed me of these tricks


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## dkarjala

tabyyy said:


> Really? I think it does. Anytime I've blown into my hands to warm them I've constricted my larynx. It's actually news to me that you wouldn't!
> 
> The refreshing "ahh" sound is admittedly off, but it provides a start for non-native learners. If you've never* heard/made the sound before, it gives you a bit of a guide. By the way, it was native Arabic speakers who informed me of these tricks



Well, I'm sure that everyone does things like this differently, I'd just be surprised if the constriction was enough to produce the same amount of friction. But I hear you.

And by the way, a good rule of thumb is to NOT trust native speakers to help you produce sounds...their knowledge is passive and they've never had to learn 'tricks' to say those things...unless they've been coaching English/Spanish speakers their whole lives or have been trained at University for such a thing. Of course, once you get the sound, they can definitely tell you if it's right or not!


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## Sidjanga

tabyyy said:


> By the way, it was native Arabic speakers who informed me of these tricks


I don't think it matters much that it was a native speaker who gave you these tricks - maybe just on the contrary. I mean he/she has never had to really try and find out for themselves - not since their very early childhood, anyway. 

Since I've been able to pronounce these sounds, I don't really consider myself a reliable reference in that respect any more either (with respect to _new _methods, that is, i.e. methods I didn't try myself when learning to pronounce them).

The thing is just that when you're already comfortable pronouncing the sound in question, it'll come out very easily anyway - in particular when you're thinking of it - even though the "method" you're trying out or are recommending/teaching may in itself not contribute a lot to its production.

So what I'm basicaly saying is that the only thing I think really matters is whether a given "method" or trick works for people trying to learn to pronounce the sound in question - and not so much who recommended it. 

EDIT: I've just seen I've repeated part of what dkarjala said a few minutes ago.


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## tabyyy

dkarjala said:


> Well, I'm sure that everyone does things like this differently, I'd just be surprised if the constriction was enough to produce the same amount of friction. But I hear you.
> 
> And by the way, a good rule of thumb is to NOT trust native speakers to help you produce sounds...their knowledge is passive and they've never had to learn 'tricks' to say those things...unless they've been coaching English/Spanish speakers their whole lives or have been trained at University for such a thing. Of course, once you get the sound, they can definitely tell you if it's right or not!



Well one of the people who told me those tricks was just a native speaker.. but the other was a Linguistics/Arabic professor at my university, so I trusted her judgement


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## dkarjala

Sidjanga said:


> EDIT: I've just seen I've repeated part of what dkarjala said a few minutes ago.



You are free to repeat the things I say, as they will probably be clearer! 

Anyway, I totally agree. I think the best thing is to tell people to make SURE that they are articulating it differently than glottal _haa_ (هـ) and in time it will come. Distinction is the most important thing.


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## tabyyy

dkarjala said:


> Anyway, I totally agree. I think the best thing is to tell people to make SURE that they are articulating it differently than glottal _haa_ (هـ) and in time it will come. Distinction is the most important thing.



I agree with this. Another thing that helped me was listening to the difference in pronunciation of haa' and 7aa' several times.


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