# Questions regarding Historical Arabic Palatalization of Velar Plosives (ج & ك)



## Russkitav

Hello. I have some questions regarding aforementioned-in-the-title topic. I would appreciate answers or discussion regarding any of these questions. If there was a discussion that already answered some of these, I apologize for asking again. I also apologize if I asked too many questions in one post.

*1)* To our knowledge, when did the first Arabic dialects start to exhibit palatalization in any velar plosive? Is there any particular reason why it occurred?

*2)* Did both voiceless ك /k/ and voiced ج /g/ tend to palatalize together, or did only ج do so in most dialects? If only one, is there a reason why?

*3)* By the Qur'anic era, how widespread was velar palatalization (i.e. did it only occur in some dialects, or most dialects? Or did most dialects retain /g/ and /k/?)

*4a)* For dialects that did exhibit palatalization by the Qur'anic era, did /g/ only shift as far as /ɡʲ/ or /ɟ/, or did it already progress as far as /d͡ʒ/ in some dialects?
*4b)* If there were any dialects with palatalized ك /k/, did they only shift as far as /kʲ/ or /c/, or did it already progress as far as /t͡ʃ/ in some dialects?
*4c)* What was the state of the ج & ك in the Meccan dialect at this time?

*5)* Assuming that the Arabic (perhaps more specifically of the Meccan dialect) in Qur'anic times did not already shift to /d͡ʒ/, when did that shift complete and when did a /g/, /ɡʲ/, /ɟ/ pronunciation of ج stop being considered "correct"?

*6)* Is the modern Egyptian Arabic realization of ج as /g/ a retaining of the original sound or an innovation from some palatalized version of the original /g/? If the former, did that /g/ originate from a non-Meccan dialect? If the latter, are there theories as to why did developed into a /g/ from whatever sound it was when other dialects did not?

*7)* Assuming there were any dialects that exhibited palatalization of ك, did they retain that palatalization past the Qur'anic period? Did any survive to the modern day? I know there are modern dialects with ك realized at least in some situations as /t͡ʃ/, but I don't know if that a continuation of ancient Arabic palatalization, or is it a relatively modern influence from languages such as Persian.


----------



## Ihsiin

I have a little knowledge, but not much. I will fumble my way to suggesting some answers to your questions.

1) I'm not sure. As far as I know, the earliest example of ك being palatalised is amongst Bedouin dialects in classical times, where the singular feminine pronominal suffix ـكِ /ki/ was pronounced /tʃi/, whilst the masculine pronoun ـكَ remained /ka/. Till this day dialects which palatalise ك use the distinction between /k/ and /tʃ/ as the main feature to distinguish between these two pronouns, rather than the vowels. As such, I would assume that the presence of a front vowel was the original trigger for the palatalisation of ك. As for ج, I don't know.

2) ج is palatalised in most dialects, apart from Egyptian and Yemeni. ك is palatalised only in some dialects, all of which have also palatalised ج (though not necessarily as frequently). Many of the dialects that have palatalised ك have also palatalised ق (that is to say, /q/ -> /g/ -> /dʒ/, etc.). I don't think (though I'm not sure, others can correct me if I'm wrong), that any dialect has palletised both ج and ك to the same degree. There can be a number of explanations for this, including classicism and what is perceived to be 'correct', but generally I don't think that ج and ك palatalised together.

3) As I have said, palatalisation of ك was a feature of Bedouin dialects. As for ج, the next question addresses this issue.

4a) I think it's safe to say that the dominant pronunciation of ج advanced no further than /ɟ/ by this time. I deduce this from the fact that ج is treated as حرف قمري, and had it reached /dʒ/ it would have been treated as حرف شمسي (as it is in modern dialects that pronounce it such). I don't know when these descriptions were set in stone, as it were, but I believe it was after the Qur'an and before ج had progressed further than /ɟ/ in the majority of Arabic speech. There may have been dialects which _had_ reached /dʒ/, but I don't think they would have been prevalent.
4b) I'm minded to suggest that had dialects which palatalised ك not reached /tʃ/ they would not have been described as being different from /k/. This is speculation on my part - others may have evidence.
4c) I don't know anything about the particular dialect of Mecca at the time.

5) I don't know when, but for the reasons I have already provided, I think that this would have been post-classical (whenever you define that as being).

6) It is a conservative pronunciation, not a fresh innovation. Egypt was settled by tribes from Yemen who had never palatalised ج, and till now those Yemeni dialects pronounce ج as /g/. Bear in mind, however, that Egypt was not properly Arabised until roughly 300 years after the birth of Islam (I think), so the situation of dialects at the time of the Qur'an is not strictly relevant.

7) Of course, the modern dialects that have a palatalised ك have inherited this feature from ancestor dialects which palatalised ك naturally and it is not imported from any foreign language. These dialects (painting with very broad brushstrokes) are Iraqi, Najdi, Khaliji, certain Bedouin and Tribal dialects and rural Palestinian.


----------



## Russkitav

(I was away for a long while, so I'm sorry for the super late response)

Thank you for taking the time to answer so many of the questions.

I guess my only comment is that I am kind of surprised that the moon-letter rule stuck for ج, yet the sound, which clearly wasn't a coronal sound at the time, did not get some status behind it to help it from shifting into a affricate (to say it in another manner, I am surprised that apparently not a single Qur'anic recitation chain retain the sound, as ض did in some recitation traditions so I have heard) ESPECIALLY since there were still dialects that could be looked at that retained the sound. Like, during the period where it shifted to /dʒ/ in some areas and remained a plosive in others, why did the /dʒ/ pronunciation get prestige and beat the plosive pronunciation nearly everywhere, not just in dialects, but in retroactively-considered "conservative" readings such as in the Qur'an (where people will resort to more "conservative" sounds that their own dialects have merged...but not for ج apparently, because for some reason, the "conservative" pronunciation of ج even in Egypt is considered /dʒ/)? Didn't they know that the plosive pronunciation was the more conservative one?

Btw, if anyone else wants to pitch any to answer any of the questions asked in this thread, or otherwise add on to the discussion, feel free.


----------



## hadronic

I'm adding another question to yours : does k palatalize only before or after /i/, or does it palatalize in other contexts too in the dialects that do? /g/ palatalized unconditionally.


----------



## Russkitav

hadronic said:


> I'm adding another question to yours : does k palatalize only before or after /i/, or does it palatalize in other contexts too in the dialects that do? /g/ palatalized unconditionally.


Assuming Ihsiin is correct in saying that Modern Arabic dialects that have /tʃ/ are native developments that aren't based in Persian or some other influence, this wikipedia page for Baghdadi Arabic gives some examples for words with a palatalized /k/ (/tʃ/) that are not preceded nor followed by /i/ (like chalib "dog" and shubaach "window"). Other examples of the top of my head include "semech masgouf" ("semech" from "samak" fish), but in that case, since the underlying /k/ is preceded by the front vowel /e/, it is more understandable that it palatized (just as it often does with /i/). In any case, it seems to be unconditional, at least in that specific dialect. Maybe in other dialects, it is conditional.

Still wondering as I said in my last post though why /k/ is recognized as the conservative pronunciation for ك, but /g/ is not recognized as the conservative pronunciation for ج. I really wonder why the palatalization of the latter got so much currency in the Arabic-speaking world (so much that it even is considered the proper standard pronunciation rather than the objectively more conservative plosive sound /g/~>/ɡʲ/~>/ɟ/) while the palatalization of the former has nowhere near that prevalence (and correctly, unlike the case with ج, has the conservative pronunciation as a plosive /k/ everywhere).


----------



## Ihsiin

Russkitav said:


> I guess my only comment is that I am kind of surprised that the moon-letter rule stuck for ج,



Bear in mind that the rule only stuck as far as the standard language is concerned. In spoken dialects in which ج is realised as /dʒ/ or /ʒ/ it is a sun-letter. If 'stuck' is the right word. It seems to me more likely that the application of this rule is a matter of retrospect.



> yet the sound, which clearly wasn't a coronal sound at the time, did not get some status behind it to help it from shifting into a affricate



I think the important thing to remember is that sound-shifts tend to go by unnoticed by the people who speak the language. They just happen, and the 'rules' shift along with them. So why would anyone ever think that they need to 'preserve' the realisation of a certain phoneme? Also, it would have been very easy for the early grammarians to list which letters were sun-letters and which were moon-letters. Much more difficult for them to actually describe the realisation of each phoneme. I mean, they tried, but without a standard vocabulary for describing phonetics it wouldn't have been easy. Not easy for them, but also not easy for us to figure exactly what it was that they were describing (though of course, other sources of evidence can help us greatly in this regard). So years (centuries?) after ج had been described as a moon-letter any casual pseudo-linguist, concerned about pronouncing Arabic 'correctly', would have perused those old treatises and would have determined that people were 'incorrect' in their treatment of ج as a sun-letter (easy), rather than in their realisation of the phoneme itself (difficult). This is my opinion.



> (to say it in another manner, I am surprised that apparently not a single Qur'anic recitation chain retain the sound,



Why do you think that the recitation of the Qur'an should retain more conservative pronunciation traits? It manifestly doesn't.



> as ض did in some recitation traditions so I have heard)



Really? I have never heard of this. Can you provide some examples?



> ESPECIALLY since there were still dialects that could be looked at that retained the sound. Like, during the period where it shifted to /dʒ/ in some areas and remained a plosive in others, why did the /dʒ/ pronunciation get prestige and beat the plosive pronunciation nearly everywhere, not just in dialects, but in retroactively-considered "conservative" readings such as in the Qur'an (where people will resort to more "conservative" sounds that their own dialects have merged...but not for ج apparently, because for some reason, the "conservative" pronunciation of ج even in Egypt is considered /dʒ/)? Didn't they know that the plosive pronunciation was the more conservative one?



I don't think it's a question of one realisation 'beating' another. It's just that in some (most) dialects ج was palatalised, and in others it wasn't. And I don't think many people think about what is more conservative, but what is 'correct'. Most Arabs have an idea that Standard (Classical) Arabic is correct and vernacular Arabic is just 'slang', therefore incorrect wherever it is at variance with the standard language. It's pretty clear that written Arabic has 28 letters, therefore 28 phonemes, but as to how these phonemes are (or rather, 'should be' realised), that's another matter. If there are some dialects which realise ج as /g/ and some as /dʒ/ (and some as /ʒ/ and some as /j/), who's to say what's the 'correct' pronunciation? I mean yes, you and I know that /g/ is the older realisation, but then we also know that /p/ is the older realisation of ف, even if no dialects have preserved this pronunciation. So it's not really a question of what is conservative, but what is more dominant and what is considered to be correct. As to why /dʒ/ became the 'correct' realisation in the standard language, I would suggest that because it (along with /ʒ/ as a variant of it) is a much more common realisation of ج than /g/, so the /g/ pronunciation is a lot more easily considered to be marginal and therefore incorrect. Others may know more than me, of course. 



hadronic said:


> I'm adding another question to yours : does k palatalize only before or after /i/, or does it palatalize in other contexts too in the dialects that do? /g/ palatalized unconditionally.



No, ك is palatalised all over the place. There are plenty of example of palatalised ك with no front vowel at all.



Russkitav said:


> Assuming Ihsiin is correct in saying that Modern Arabic dialects that have /tʃ/ are native developments that aren't based in Persian or some other influence, this wikipedia page for Baghdadi Arabic gives some examples for words with a palatalized /k/ (/tʃ/) that are not preceded nor followed by /i/ (like chalib "dog" and shubaach "window"). Other examples of the top of my head include "semech masgouf" ("semech" from "samak" fish), but in that case, since the underlying /k/ is preceded by the front vowel /e/, it is more understandable that it palatized (just as it often does with /i/). In any case, it seems to be unconditional, at least in that specific dialect. Maybe in other dialects, it is conditional.



I'm unhappy with some of these transliterations. I would say "dog" is _čelib _and "fish" is _simič_. But yes, "window" is _šubbāč_, and there's also the likes of _čān_ for "he was".



> Still wondering as I said in my last post though why /k/ is recognized as the conservative pronunciation for ك, but /g/ is not recognized as the conservative pronunciation for ج. I really wonder why the palatalization of the latter got so much currency in the Arabic-speaking world (so much that it even is considered the proper standard pronunciation rather than the objectively more conservative plosive sound /g/~>/ɡʲ/~>/ɟ/) while the palatalization of the former has nowhere near that prevalence (and correctly, unlike the case with ج, has the conservative pronunciation as a plosive /k/ everywhere).



I think you also have to bear in mind that all the dialects (I believe) that have palatalised ك also have unpalatalised realisations of this phoneme. For example, as I have said before, the main distinction between masculine and feminine pronominal suffixes in the second and third person is the distinction between /k/ and /tʃ/, even though they both originally go back to /k/. On the other hand, in dialects which have palatalised ج either have no /g/ at all, or only have /g/ as the realisation of _another_ phoneme, namely ق.


----------



## Russkitav

Ihsiin said:


> Bear in mind that the rule only stuck as far as the standard language is concerned. In spoken dialects in which ج is realised as /dʒ/ or /ʒ/ it is a sun-letter. If 'stuck' is the right word. It seems to me more likely that the application of this rule is a matter of retrospect.
> 
> I think the important thing to remember is that sound-shifts tend to go by unnoticed by the people who speak the language. They just happen, and the 'rules' shift along with them. So why would anyone ever think that they need to 'preserve' the realisation of a certain phoneme? Also, it would have been very easy for the early grammarians to list which letters were sun-letters and which were moon-letters. Much more difficult for them to actually describe the realisation of each phoneme. I mean, they tried, but without a standard vocabulary for describing phonetics it wouldn't have been easy. Not easy for them, but also not easy for us to figure exactly what it was that they were describing (though of course, other sources of evidence can help us greatly in this regard). So years (centuries?) after ج had been described as a moon-letter any casual pseudo-linguist, concerned about pronouncing Arabic 'correctly', would have perused those old treatises and would have determined that people were 'incorrect' in their treatment of ج as a sun-letter (easy), rather than in their realisation of the phoneme itself (difficult). This is my opinion.
> 
> I don't think it's a question of one realisation 'beating' another. It's just that in some (most) dialects ج was palatalised, and in others it wasn't. And I don't think many people think about what is more conservative, but what is 'correct'. Most Arabs have an idea that Standard (Classical) Arabic is correct and vernacular Arabic is just 'slang', therefore incorrect wherever it is at variance with the standard language. It's pretty clear that written Arabic has 28 letters, therefore 28 phonemes, but as to how these phonemes are (or rather, 'should be' realised), that's another matter. If there are some dialects which realise ج as /g/ and some as /dʒ/ (and some as /ʒ/ and some as /j/), who's to say what's the 'correct' pronunciation? I mean yes, you and I know that /g/ is the older realisation, but then we also know that /p/ is the older realisation of ف, even if no dialects have preserved this pronunciation. So it's not really a question of what is conservative, but what is more dominant and what is considered to be correct. As to why /dʒ/ became the 'correct' realisation in the standard language, I would suggest that because it (along with /ʒ/ as a variant of it) is a much more common realisation of ج than /g/, so the /g/ pronunciation is a lot more easily considered to be marginal and therefore incorrect. Others may know more than me, of course.
> 
> 
> I think you also have to bear in mind that all the dialects (I believe) that have palatalised ك also have unpalatalised realisations of this phoneme. For example, as I have said before, the main distinction between masculine and feminine pronominal suffixes in the second and third person is the distinction between /k/ and /tʃ/, even though they both originally go back to /k/. On the other hand, in dialects which have palatalised ج either have no /g/ at all, or only have /g/ as the realisation of another phoneme, namely ق.[


You are right. I should keep these sort of things in mind.





Ihsiin said:


> Why do you think that the recitation of the Qur'an should retain more conservative pronunciation traits? It manifestly doesn't.


I would think that because stressing proper pronounciation would make it less likely for a sound shift to happen relative to dialects. Letters like ث, ذ, ظ, and ق often have different realizations in modern dialects from the original/conservative pronunciation, yet the original pronunciation is still recognized as the standard. As far as I am aware, the only two Arabic letters that in "properly conservative Arabic (like in recitation for example)" do not have the same value as their Qur'anic era value are ج & ض. All other letters as far as I know still have the "proper conservative" pronunciation as the same sound as the more ancient sound (only debate might be about the velar fricatives since they are commonly velar in modern Arabic but uvelar in older Arabic, but in modern Arabic there is still allophonic variation between the velar and uvelar pronunciations, so it isn't a solid shift to a new sound).





Ihsiin said:


> Really? I have never heard of this. Can you provide some examples?


I don't recall where I read this as being the case, so I do not immediately have a source for examination for you (closest thing is perhaps the article "New Data on the Delateralization of Dad and Za", but I know that is not where I originally heard the claim, and I don't know exactly when the article claims the sound was used in). As for a recording, I have never heard of it.


----------



## Coatdumid

Ihsiin said:


> So it's not really a question of what is conservative, but what is more dominant and what is considered to be correct. As to why /dʒ/ became the 'correct' realisation in the standard language, I would suggest that because it (along with /ʒ/ as a variant of it) is a much more common realisation of ج than /g/, so the /g/ pronunciation is a lot more easily considered to be marginal and therefore incorrect. Others may know more than me, of course.





Russkitav said:


> Letters like ث, ذ, ظ, and ق often have different realizations in modern dialects from the original/conservative pronunciation, yet the original pronunciation is still recognized as the standard. As far as I am aware, the only two Arabic letters that in "properly conservative Arabic (like in recitation for example)" do not have the same value as their Qur'anic era value are ج & ض. All other letters as far as I know still have the "proper conservative" pronunciation as the same sound as the more ancient sound


What you are saying Ihsiin makes sense, but if I am not mistaken, wouldn't the application of this logic to ث and ذ have give them standard pronunciations that were not dental fricatives since iirc they most commonly were alveolar fricatives or plosives (and perhaps either ظ or ض as well would have had a different standard pronunciation if the majority sound was made the standard)? If I am not mistaken about the most common sounds of those letters in the dialects, then would there be another reason that the standard sounds are the way they are (like, if a particular dialect at at particular time was used as the basis for the standard? When where the sounds "standardized" anyways)

I echo what Russkitav said too. Modern Standard Arabic seems to only have two sounds that don't match the historically conservative pronunciation, even though there are other sounds that are maintained in the standard that are not commonly maintain in dialects unless as loaned/educated sound borrowings (like th and dh). ض I don't know too much about to say anything, since I have no idea how many dialects had a lateral even back in Classical/Qur'anic pronounciation or when the sound shift to something non-lateral (unlike ج, it seems no dialect has retained the original lateral pronunciation to the modern day. I imagine though that it must have been still a been considered a standard sound at least until the end of the 8th century since Sibawayh gave a lateral sound as the proper pronunciation of that Arabic letter); but for ج, there were dialects that maintained the sound (to this day as can be clearly seen) yet unlike with ث and ذ, the conservative pronunciation as a plosive has not survived to the modern day (again, basing myself on Sibawayh, I think that a (palatal) plosive pronunciation of ج was the standard professed at the time of the 8th century if I am not mistaken)

Maybe I am wrong though about ث and ذ though, since maybe at the time the "standard" was made, they were more commonly dental fricatives, but as far as I am aware, that is not the case. And again, Sibawayh seems to suggest that more conservative pronunciations for ج & ض existed at least until the end of the 8th century, which I guess gave recitors 150+ years to establish those as the (religious) conservative pronunciations, yet for some reason that did not happen for those two sounds when it did for every other Arabic sounds I am aware of. I presume that the phonology used for 7th-8th century "standard" Arabic would have been based in whatever phonology was considered 'original" for Qur'anic recitation (and as far as I can tell, the maintaining a lateral ض and plosive ج for at least until the end of the 8th century did occur...so I further assume that such a standard would be based on the phonology used in contemporary recitation of the Qur'an, so thus I assume that a lateral ض and plosive ج would have been present in the Quranic phonology of the time and thus such pronunciations would have had prestige or formality associated with them just as the conservative pronunciations for ث, ذ, ظ, and ق did, and that such prestige would have help safeguarded the sounds from change and maybe even influence other dialects into using those conservative sounds at least in high register.......again though, for some reason, this did not happen and the two sounds slipped into something else in the standard)


----------



## Ihsiin

Coatdumid said:


> What you are saying Ihsiin makes sense, but if I am not mistaken, wouldn't the application of this logic to ث and ذ have give them standard pronunciations that were not dental fricatives since iirc they most commonly were alveolar fricatives or plosives (and perhaps either ظ or ض as well would have had a different standard pronunciation if the majority sound was made the standard)? If I am not mistaken about the most common sounds of those letters in the dialects, then would there be another reason that the standard sounds are the way they are (like, if a particular dialect at at particular time was used as the basis for the standard? When where the sounds "standardized" anyways)



Not quite. It is true that the majority of modern Arabic dialects have lost the dental fricatives, but in these dialects they are merged into the alveolar plosives, or reborrowed as alveolar sibilants. From a phonological point of view, then, these dialects have lost the ث and ذ phonemes, so they are no good as a basis from which to decide the 'correct' pronunciation for these letters. Remember, 28 letters means 28 phonemes, or, as far as the 'standardisers' are concerned, 28 distinct sounds. And the only dialects which have these letters as distinct phonemes are the dialects which have preserved the dental fricatives, even if they are less widely spoken than those that haven't. Funnily enough, the loss of the dental fricatives is also the source for the realisation of ض as /dˁ/, since all dialects had already merged this letter with ظ. The most phonologically conservative dialects preserve 27 phonemes, but 28 letters means 28 phonemes, so the /dˁ/ - /zˁ/ distinction was seized upon in order to distinguish between ض and ظ, with /zˁ/ corrected to /ðˁ/ (because ظ as /zˁ/ is obviously akin to ذ as /z/, which is no good as we've already discussed).

It doesn't make sense to me to think of the pronunciation of the Arabic language as having been 'established' and 'frozen' at a certain time. If you ask the religiocrats who are convinced that the pronunciation with which the Qur'an is currently read is the 'correct' and 'original' pronunciation about how they know that to be the case, they will more likely as not tell you that the pronunciation has come down to us unchanged since the revelation via a continuum of recitation. Of course, continuous discourse is exactly the manner in which languages change, without the speakers realising it. It seems supremely evident (to me, anyway) that the 'correct standard' of Arabic pronunciation is a matter of sporadic correction more than anything else.


----------



## Coatdumid

Ihsiin said:


> Not quite. It is true that the majority of modern Arabic dialects have lost the dental fricatives, but in these dialects they are merged into the alveolar plosives, or reborrowed as alveolar sibilants. From a phonological point of view, then, these dialects have lost the ث and ذ phonemes, so they are no good as a basis from which to decide the 'correct' pronunciation for these letters. Remember, 28 letters means 28 phonemes, or, as far as the 'standardisers' are concerned, 28 distinct sounds. And the only dialects which have these letters as distinct phonemes are the dialects which have preserved the dental fricatives, even if they are less widely spoken than those that haven't. Funnily enough, the loss of the dental fricatives is also the source for the realisation of ض as /dˁ/, since all dialects had already merged this letter with ظ. The most phonologically conservative dialects preserve 27 phonemes, but 28 letters means 28 phonemes, so the /dˁ/ - /zˁ/ distinction was seized upon in order to distinguish between ض and ظ, with /zˁ/ corrected to /ðˁ/ (because ظ as /zˁ/ is obviously akin to ذ as /z/, which is no good as we've already discussed).


Ahh, you make a good point regarding the insistance on retaining 28 distinct consonant sounds as possibly being a reason that the more conservative, but minority, sounds were made the standard in the case of ث and ذ - in contrast to ج, where the new majority sound was not a merger with any other sound and thus was "valid" to be used as the standard sound by virtue of its distinctiveness and majority.



Ihsiin said:


> It doesn't make sense to me to think of the pronunciation of the Arabic language as having been 'established' and 'frozen' at a certain time. If you ask the religiocrats who are convinced that the pronunciation with which the Qur'an is currently read is the 'correct' and 'original' pronunciation about how they know that to be the case, they will more likely as not tell you that the pronunciation has come down to us unchanged since the revelation via a continuum of recitation. Of course, continuous discourse is exactly the manner in which languages change, without the speakers realising it. It seems supremely evident (to me, anyway) that the 'correct standard' of Arabic pronunciation is a matter of sporadic correction more than anything else.


As I have said, clearly the sounds did in fact change. I have never contested that the sounds did change regardless of tajweed training on sounds. What just gave me a surprise is that I would have expected that since Sibawayh seems to indicate that ج & ض maintained their more conservative pronunciations for at least 200 years or so, that this would have been tajweed-pratitioners time to solidify the pronunciation rules for those to sounds as was done for all the other sounds. Somehow, this did not happen though, and I really am wondering why. Like, if ش‎ for example was actually a voiceless palatal fricative [ç], but it still shifted to [ʃ], I at least can understand since they are very similar sounds and I can see how some teacher taught [ç], but the student said [ʃ], and the changed sound was not noticed as changed since both student and teacher could not hear the difference between [ç]and [ʃ] and the teacher heard both as the former and the student heard both as the latter. For ج though, [d͡ʒ] is very plainly distinct from [ɟ], so if a teacher was saying [ɟ], and the student said [d͡ʒ], I don't think the teacher would have not noticed the difference, nor would he have considered [d͡ʒ] as "close enough" to [ɟ] to warrant not being corrected. Similarly, ض had a pronunciation unlike any other consonant in the language, and that was stressed by the fact that a moniker for Arabic language itself was "language of the ض", so I again find it confusing as to how a teacher teaching a lateral pronunciation would not notice a non-lateral pronunciation by his student and correct it (especially if the sound of ض expressed by the student exhibited the ongoing colloquial merger with ظ) .....however, I must be wrong about something somewhere, because clearly the sounds did change regardless of what I have said.


----------



## Ihsiin

You're assuming that _tajwīd_ was something that was practiced way back then. Actually I don't know when it was that _tajwīd_ became a thing (to coin a colloquialism) - the Qur'an itself recommends _tartīl_ rather than _tajwīd_. But I don't think that _tartīl_ or _tajwīd_ are really concerned in of themselves with the correct way of pronouncing letters. This only becomes an issue when it is perceived that people the pronunciation people are using is incorrect. Otherwise why would one speaker of Arabic sit down and try to teach another how to pronounce the language they're both already speaking? It's only when Arabic has reached a certain point of divergence that people would begin to worry about what is actually correct and what isn't, and this would have been long after Sibawayh.


----------



## Coatdumid

Ihsiin said:


> You're assuming that _tajwīd_ was something that was practiced way back then.


...I am assuming that, yes. If tajwīd wasn't actually a thing back then, that would explain things. As far as I know though, tajwīd was practiced back then, but I have never looked into the history of tajwīd to confirm that tajwīd practices existed in the early Islamic era (or if the practice differed from how it is now) - I am just assuming that it did (and I was thinking that the pronunciation standard Sibawayh was using was based on the tajwīd standard aka. the "proper" pronunciation for Qur'anic recitation).



Ihsiin said:


> This only becomes an issue when it is perceived that people the pronunciation people are using is incorrect. Actually I don't know when it was that _tajwīd_ became a thing (to coin a colloquialism) - the Qur'an itself recommends _tartīl_ rather than _tajwīd_. But I don't think that _tartīl_ or _tajwīd_ are really concerned in of themselves with the correct way of pronouncing letters.


As far as I know, at least in the modern era, tajwīd is indeed concerned with proper pronunciation of sounds. I assume that if tajwīd existed back then, that this too would be a feature of instruction, but I am not sure.



Ihsiin said:


> Otherwise why would one speaker of Arabic sit down and try to teach another how to pronounce the language they're both already speaking? It's only when Arabic has reached a certain point of divergence that people would begin to worry about what is actually correct and what isn't, and this would have been long after Sibawayh.


I assume that a teacher could receive students that hail from areas that speak a different dialect that would have had sound changes, so the students initial pronunciation of a sound would contrast with the conservative pronunciation of the teacher. Or if someone went to another city's mosque or the Hajj and heard the prayer use a different phoneme than they do, I would imagine this already would develop into a concern about who is using the right phoneme for Qur'anic recitation since they want to pronunce things as concervatively as possible (and/or they want to follow the sunnah and imitate the way Muhammad recited the Qur'an). I would have thought that as soon as a clear difference in the pronunciation of a sound in Qur'anic was discovered to exist among Arabic speakers (like some dialects started to use [d͡ʒ] as the Qur'anic pronunciation of ج, while others maintain the concervative [ɟ] at that point in time, I imagine some religious personnel must have noticed the difference and have been concerned about one of the two sounds being incorrect, even if the new sound was not a merger with another sound), that an effort would have been made to establish a correct standard pronunciation (so even if in X dialect, the sounds happen to already be conservative, the practice of tajwīd already would include an emphasis on correct pronunciation, as a preventative measure for the phenomenon of sound change, which was already known to occur in dialectal Arabic)


----------



## Ihsiin

Coatdumid said:


> As far as I know, at least in the modern era, tajwīd is indeed concerned with proper pronunciation of sounds. I assume that if tajwīd existed back then, that this too would be a feature of instruction, but I am not sure.



Even in the modern era, _tajwīd_ is not _really _primarily concerned with the basic realisations of the Arabic phonemes. Rather, this is something which one is expected to have correct from the outset.



> I assume that a teacher could receive students that hail from areas that speak a different dialect that would have had sound changes, so the students initial pronunciation of a sound would contrast with the conservative pronunciation of the teacher.



Is it necessary for one to change one's accent in order to read something? Remember that there wasn't a huge amount of diversity amongst the various dialects of Arabic at that time - certainly nothing comparable to the situation today. An American needn't Anglicise (Britishise?) his accent when reading the text of an English author, nor vice-versa. So why would a teacher compel a foreign student to adopt his accent? This scenario does not seem plausible to me.



> Or if someone went to another city's mosque or the Hajj and heard the prayer use a different phoneme than they do, I would imagine this already would develop into a concern about who is using the right phoneme for Qur'anic recitation



I think you mean a different allophone. Using a different phoneme would certainly be problematic and rightly considered incorrect, but there's plenty of room for allophonic variation within a particular phoneme. This is not a problem.



> (and/or they want to follow the sunnah and imitate the way Muhammad recited the Qur'an).



I don't think that even when the idea of following the sunna first came about it stretched so far as imitating the Prophet's accent.



> I would have thought that as soon as a clear difference in the pronunciation of a sound in Qur'anic was discovered to exist among Arabic speakers (like some dialects started to use [d͡ʒ] as the Qur'anic pronunciation of ج, while others maintain the concervative [ɟ] at that point in time, I imagine some religious personnel must have noticed the difference and have been concerned about one of the two sounds being incorrect, even if the new sound was not a merger with another sound), that an effort would have been made to establish a correct standard pronunciation (so even if in X dialect, the sounds happen to already be conservative, the practice of tajwīd already would include an emphasis on correct pronunciation, as a preventative measure for the phenomenon of sound change, which was already known to occur in dialectal Arabic)



I don't think so. In my view, the only point at which the idea of 'correct' pronunciation really becomes in issue is when the spoken language has become substantially different from the classical language. At this point Classical Arabic becomes something that needs to be learnt, and phonology would be part of that learning. Before then it's just Arabic, the same language that is used by its speakers everyday - it doesn't need to be taught, and so the issue of 'correctness' just doesn't come up in the same way it does today.


----------



## Coatdumid

Ihsiin said:


> Even in the modern era, _tajwīd_ is not _really _primarily concerned with the basic realisations of the Arabic phonemes. Rather, this is something which one is expected to have correct from the outset.


I could be wrong, but I imagine that in most traditions, you would be corrected for pronouncing ج as [g] for instance if you were a student speaking with the pronunciation. If I am not recalling incorrectly, Egyptian speakers who follow tajwīd do not use [g] in Qur'anic recitation even though the use of that sound would not cause any confusion since it isn't a "merger" with any other sound (it's funny to say [g] could be a "merger" since actually it is the more original pronunciation and thus didn't "move" into any new pronunciation in order to potentially merge with anything) - they have a "recognition" that their pronunciation of the sound is "incorrect" and "dialectal" rather than "proper", so when they learn Qur'anic recitation, they are made to use [d͡ʒ] (which again is different from the case of other letters' (like ث, ذ, ظ, and ق) educated pronunciation because for this letter, you can't use the argument that a sound different from the dialect was used to maintain a 28-consonant distinction, because [g] would have worked just fine too - yet for Egyptian recitation, they still choose to not use [g])



Ihsiin said:


> Is it necessary for one to change one's accent in order to read something? Remember that there wasn't a huge amount of diversity amongst the various dialects of Arabic at that time - certainly nothing comparable to the situation today. An American needn't Anglicise (Britishise?) his accent when reading the text of an English author, nor vice-versa. So why would a teacher compel a foreign student to adopt his accent? This scenario does not seem plausible to me.


Presumably, because the purpose of tajwīd is for correct pronunciation. If no one cared about about how you pronounced anything, the concept of tajwīd wouldn't even exist. You are acting like people view the reading of the Qur'an like any other reading, where nobody cares about pronouncing anything right. "why would a teacher compel a foreign student to adopt his accent?" is a strawman. I never claimed the teacher is compelling the student to follow his accent. If the teacher was at all trying to give the student "proper" pronunciation of consonant and vowel sounds, the teacher would appeal to a sound value being more conservative to the original pronunciation of (whether or not he is right about a sound being more conservative than another sound is another question) - the teacher's own vernacular dialect could use non-conservative sounds, but he uses a different phonology for Qur'anic recitation because he perceives those sounds to be more more "original" and it is that (i.e. not his own dialect or accent) that he would enforce if enforcement ever occurs.

You can have a dialect that reduces [aw] and [ay] to [o] and [e] and those new sounds would not be a merger with any other sound (provided imala does not come into play with [a]) and thus you could have a Qur'anic recitation that uses those sounds without causing confusion - yet I imagine most recitators correct against this change simply because [o] and [e] are regarded as innovated sounds that deviate from the "original". Most people who recite today who have not studied linguistics at all would, for example, claim that the reason they use [dˤ] for ض and /ðˤ/ for ظ rather than /ðˤ/ or [zˤ] for ض and [zˤ] or [dˤ] for ظ is because they would claim that [dˤ] for ض and /ðˤ/ for ظ are the (more) original pronunciations of the word (they would be wrong about the former, but still, it is perceived to be true and thus that is their argument). An appeal to "original" or "more conservative" pronunciations as a basis for pronunciation standards (whether they are right about what sound is more conservative or not) clearly has a role in modern recitation traditions.




Ihsiin said:


> I think you mean a different allophone. Using a different phoneme would certainly be problematic and rightly considered incorrect, but there's plenty of room for allophonic variation within a particular phoneme. This is not a problem.


Allophone is what I meant, yes, but my point is that I would have expected that if a [ɟ] speaker went to another city and heard the distinctively different sound [d͡ʒ] being used, that someone must have noticed the change and thought that one of the sounds was "wrong". For small sound changes like خ [χ] -> [x], غ [ʁ] -> [ɣ], and if it existed, ش‎ [ç] ->[ʃ], I can understand if either [a] a speaker never even noticed the sound change or the sound change was noticed, but the distinction was so small that the two sounds weren't considered actually as different sounds, rather they were perceived as just some idiosyncratic pronunciation that still was in the realm of the original sound. ج [ɟ] -> [d͡ʒ] is drastic though, so I don't see how the difference between the two could be considered "close enough". I would imagine that a [ɟ] speaker could have walked into a new city for the first time and heard a word with [d͡ʒ] and not immediately understand what word the city native was trying to say because the traveler would not immediately recognize [d͡ʒ] as being ج, but if the city native used [ɣ], [x], and [ʃ] for خ, غ, and ش (when the traveller's dialect uses [ʁ], [χ], and [ç]), the traveler would recognize those sounds as خ, غ, and ش as just being said with some slight difference (assuming he would even notice the difference, which he might not. I think a lot of Arabic speakers even now would not notice a difference between uvelar fricatives and velar ones unless explicitly told to listen carefully)
*
*


Ihsiin said:


> I don't think that even when the idea of following the sunna first came about it stretched so far as imitating the Prophet's accent.


Oh, certainly not normally. I imagine though that there were some people that did care to match his pronunciation, since, if I recall correctly, there were even a few hadith regarding how he pronounced things (I don't know any of the top of my head, nor do I know if they are highly graded hadiths, but the point is that assuming such hadith exist, even if historically fabricated, indicates that at least some people cared about how he pronounced things...I think there was one about Muhammad pronouncing the ض sound with both sides of his tongue, but again, I don't know what the actually hadith is (assuming the account I read that from did not fabricate the existance of that hadith) nor do I know the grade of it assuming that hadith does exist)





Ihsiin said:


> I don't think so. In my view, the only point at which the idea of 'correct' pronunciation really becomes in issue is when the spoken language has become substantially different from the classical language. At this point Classical Arabic becomes something that needs to be learnt, and phonology would be part of that learning. Before then it's just Arabic, the same language that is used by its speakers everyday - it doesn't need to be taught, and so the issue of 'correctness' just doesn't come up in the same way it does today.


Were there not already difference in dialectal pronunciation in the first 200 years of the Islamic era? Even if one's own dialect matches the "classical language" 's phonology, certainly another dialect's would not have matched, and thus for that dialect, phonological instruction would have been already included as part of the training in that area I would think (unless you are saying they didn't train people in anything regarding standard Arabic until MULTPLE ASPECTS of dialectal Arabic diverged from Classical Arabic -grammar, phonology, etc- and only then did they start teaching pronounciation simply because that is part of language instruction).


----------



## Ihsiin

Coatdumid said:


> Presumably, because the purpose of tajwīd is for correct pronunciation.



I think this is where you're mistaken. The purpose of _tajwīd_ is not correct pronunciation. Its purpose 'better' recitation, and pronunciation is only one part of that. The pronunciation rules stipulated by _tajwīd_ (such as إدغام and whatever) are not rules which are considered necessary for correct pronunciation of Arabic - they are rules for the 'perfection' of recitation (which is why _tajwīd _sounds so ridiculous in my opinion, but this is a separate point). The idea of a 'correct' pronunciation is another matter, and one that practitioners of _tajwīd_ are expected to have mastered beforehand.




> If no one cared about about how you pronounced anything, the concept of tajwīd wouldn't even exist. You are acting like people view the reading of the Qur'an like any other reading, where nobody cares about pronouncing anything right. "why would a teacher compel a foreign student to adopt his accent?" is a strawman. I never claimed the teacher is compelling the student to follow his accent. If the teacher was at all trying to give the student "proper" pronunciation of consonant and vowel sounds, the teacher would appeal to a sound value being more conservative to the original pronunciation of (whether or not he is right about a sound being more conservative than another sound is another question) - the teacher's own vernacular dialect could use non-conservative sounds, but he uses a different phonology for Qur'anic recitation because he perceives those sounds to be more more "original" and it is that (i.e. not his own dialect or accent) that he would enforce if enforcement ever occurs.
> 
> You can have a dialect that reduces [aw] and [ay] to [o] and [e] and those new sounds would not be a merger with any other sound (provided imala does not come into play with [a]) and thus you could have a Qur'anic recitation that uses those sounds without causing confusion - yet I imagine most recitators correct against this change simply because [o] and [e] are regarded as innovated sounds that deviate from the "original". Most people who recite today who have not studied linguistics at all would, for example, claim that the reason they use [dˤ] for ض and /ðˤ/ for ظ rather than /ðˤ/ or [zˤ] for ض and [zˤ] or [dˤ] for ظ is because they would claim that [dˤ] for ض and /ðˤ/ for ظ are the (more) original pronunciations of the word (they would be wrong about the former, but still, it is perceived to be true and thus that is their argument). An appeal to "original" or "more conservative" pronunciations as a basis for pronunciation standards (whether they are right about what sound is more conservative or not) clearly has a role in modern recitation traditions.



You're thinking very modernly. This is certainly the attitude amongst religiocrats today, but today is a time when the language of the Qur'an is substantially different from the spoken language of the Arabs. 



> Allophone is what I meant, yes, but my point is that I would have expected that if a [ɟ] speaker went to another city and heard the distinctively different sound [d͡ʒ] being used, that someone must have noticed the change and thought that one of the sounds was "wrong". For small sound changes like خ [χ] -> [x], غ [ʁ] -> [ɣ], and if it existed, ش‎ [ç] ->[ʃ], I can understand if either [a] a speaker never even noticed the sound change or the sound change was noticed, but the distinction was so small that the two sounds weren't considered actually as different sounds, rather they were perceived as just some idiosyncratic pronunciation that still was in the realm of the original sound. ج [ɟ] -> [d͡ʒ] is drastic though, so I don't see how the difference between the two could be considered "close enough". I would imagine that a [ɟ] speaker could have walked into a new city for the first time and heard a word with [d͡ʒ] and not immediately understand what word the city native was trying to say because the traveler would not immediately recognize [d͡ʒ] as being ج, but if the city native used [ɣ], [x], and [ʃ] for خ, غ, and ش (when the traveller's dialect uses [ʁ], [χ], and [ç]), the traveler would recognize those sounds as خ, غ, and ش as just being said with some slight difference (assuming he would even notice the difference, which he might not. I think a lot of Arabic speakers even now would not notice a difference between uvelar fricatives and velar ones unless explicitly told to listen carefully)



Unless this allophony was something familiar and generally accepted. I don't think that /ɟ/ to /dʒ/ is as drastic as you seem to make out (/g/ ~ /dʒ/ is more so, and this variation remains till today). But regardless, if they are identified as allophones of the same phoneme within the same language, I don't see why anyone would have thought it a big deal. There were a variety of geographic and tribal dialects, and you'd expect individuals to pronounce Arabic in a certain way depending on where they'd come from. The same is true today as well, of course, even when it comes to reciting the Qur'an. Most Arabs when reciting the Qur'an, even if they take care to realise the consonants with the 'correct' standard realisations, while apply _imāla_ in the manner it is applied in their dialect. For example.



> Oh, certainly not normally. I imagine though that there were some people that did care to match his pronunciation, since, if I recall correctly, there were even a few hadith regarding how he pronounced things (I don't know any of the top of my head, nor do I know if they are highly graded hadiths, but the point is that assuming such hadith exist, even if historically fabricated, indicates that at least some people cared about how he pronounced things...I think there was one about Muhammad pronouncing the ض sound with both sides of his tongue, but again, I don't know what the actually hadith is (assuming the account I read that from did not fabricate the existance of that hadith) nor do I know the grade of it assuming that hadith does exist)



If we're going to get into the realms of religious canon, there are also traditions which tell of Prophet Muhammed hearing people recite the Qur'an in a number of different ways (accents) and being equally accepting of all of them. But that's neither here nor there, really.



> Were there not already difference in dialectal pronunciation in the first 200 years of the Islamic era? Even if one's own dialect matches the "classical language" 's phonology, certainly another dialect's would not have matched, and thus for that dialect, phonological instruction would have been already included as part of the training in that area I would think (unless you are saying they didn't train people in anything regarding standard Arabic until MULTPLE ASPECTS of dialectal Arabic diverged from Classical Arabic -grammar, phonology, etc- and only then did they start teaching pronounciation simply because that is part of language instruction).



There were different dialects even before the Islamic era, but they had the same phonology. That is to say, they all had the same 28 phonemes (actually I believe some had 29 phonemes, but this would have been well Islam, I think, so let's not think about that). There would only have been variation with regards to how these phonemes were realised, but this is not the same as the modern situation in which we have dialects that have different (if related) phonologies and a carrying number of phonemes. But yes, this is precisely what I'm suggesting: there would have been no need to instruct Arabs on how to pronounce Arabic _until_ the point when the classical language becomes substantially different from the spoken language, at which point instruction is necessary. This is the nub of the matter. While the Qur'an certain isn't in a colloquial language, it is identifiably the same language as its contemporary vernacular. The Qur'an itself seems to make this point a number times. At the time there was nothing strange about the language of the Qur'an, it was not a historical, somewhat inaccessible language as it is now. The issue of how to 'correcting' one's pronunciation of Arabic, for the purpose of reading the Qur'an or any other reason, just wouldn't have come up then as it does now.


----------



## inquisitiveness1

If anyone knows anything about this, I want to know if there is any evidence at all that the pronunciation of 8th/7th/6th century ج *was NOT* a plosive. Is it beyond a shadow of a doubt, 100% confirmed by all the available evidence, that ج up to the start of the 9th century was for sure either /g/~>/ɡʲ/~>/ɟ/? It's not that I doubt that is the case, but I am intrigued about if there is any evidence at all to the contrary. I want to know if there is absolutely no doubt in the mind of the scholary consensus that it was a plosive.

And when did it change to an affricate? Could I safely say, for example, that by the beginning of the 10th century that it was not [d͡ʒ] yet?

I guess I am referring to the "standard" Arabic of the time.


----------



## Sphendaroh

I've got a kind of similar question. Is there any supporting evidence that ج was pronounced in the earliest Classical Arabic as a plain g rather than as a palatal sound, or does all evidence point towards the latter?


----------

