# الإدغام assimilation



## Ghabi

From a recent thread:


clevermizo said:


> Assimilation is an interesting topic in its own right and there may be  other threads about it, or we could always start a new one.


Let's get the ball rolling.


> The تـ of افتعل assimilates both in voice and emphasis to  the consonant before it, if the first root consonant is a stop or a  fricative. For example, ز ي د  in افتعل is از*د*اد not ازتاد. If  the consonant before is ص or ض (or arguably also ظ and ط, I just can't  think of examples now) the ت becomes ط: like اصطاد and اضطرب. This sort  of assimilation is very common in colloquial Arabic, but this is one of  the few instances of it being codified in standard grammar (so I assume  it was happening a very long time ago). To understand this, try to say  اصتحب five times fast and it's much easier to say اصطحب.


I'm not sure I understand you here, but you seem to suggest that this kind of assimilation is more prevailing in the colloquial than in fuS7a, and that the pronunciation *iSta7aba (instead of iSTa7aba) once existed, do you? (Forgive me if I get you wrong.)

I think the word has been pronounced as iSTa7aba since day one, as the pronunciation *iSta7aba is simply un-imaginable in real, connected speech. And I think there's no discrepancy between the colloquial and fuS7a as far as this kind of assimilation is concerned. We pronounce اصطاد as iSTaaDa in both the colloquial and fuS7a, do we? (I just can't bring myself to say iSTaada).

I think the Arabic writing system is not fully phonemic as far as the emphatic consonants are concerned. Consider the roots ن-ض-د and ض-د-د. How do we pronounce the د? I can only say minDaDa for منضدة and DüDD (ü as in German) for ضدّ. Perhaps it's just me. How do the native speakers say them?


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## Serafín33

> and that the pronunciation  *iSta7aba (instead of iSTa7aba)  once existed, do you?
> 
> I think the word has been pronounced as iSTa7aba  since day one


But languages were not created in a single day. It's likely that it was historically a *t, and then it underwent assimilation.


> We pronounce اصطاد as iSTaaDa in both the  colloquial and fuS7a, do we?


I've always considered that to be due to the fact that nobody is a native speaker of MSA, but people pronounce the language with a huge influence of the phonology of their native dialect. 

I don't see why it couldn't be that historically the د here was pronounced as a [d].


Ghabi said:


> I think the Arabic writing system is not fully phonemic as far as the emphatic consonants are concerned. Consider the roots ن-ض-د and ض-د-د. How do we pronounce the د? I can only say minDaDa for منضدة and DüDD (ü as in German) for ضدّ. Perhaps it's just me. How do the native speakers say them?


Actually this could still be called fully phonemic, considering the emphasization to spread across phonemes—it's just not fully _phonetic_.  

(But that's hardly a problem, as phonetic orthographic systems as such can't exist as people tend to pronounce things different in different situations, level of formality specially, and then you have regional/age-related/ethnic group-related dialects. IPA is major exception, but it's used for the purposes of linguists.)


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## clevermizo

Ghabi said:


> I'm not sure I understand you here, but you seem to suggest that this kind of assimilation is more prevailing in the colloquial than in fuS7a, and that the pronunciation *iSta7aba (instead of iSTa7aba) once existed, do you? (Forgive me if I get you wrong.)


No that's not what I meant. I have no idea how long the assimilation we find in the form اصطحب has been around, probably since day one as you say.

All I meant is that the assimilation with افتعل is the only example of something recorded in standard Arabic in general use. The actual process of assimilation itself however, extends itself in colloquial Arabic. For example, the word تذكّر in Syrian Arabic is pronounced ادْزَكّر, were the ت of تفعّل is assimilated in voice to the ز (the pronunciation of the ذ). This is the same sort of phenomenon as ازداد of the form افتعل, the only difference being that ازداد is standard Arabic, while ادزكر is not standard Arabic.

The colloquial assimilation has to do with vowel deletions of course. Since _tadhakkara _is pronounced _t*z*akkar_, the vowel between the _t_ and the _z/dh_ is gone, so the t>d: _dzakkar_.


> as the pronunciation *iSta7aba is simply un-imaginable in real, connected speech.


Of course, I agree.


> And I think there's no discrepancy between the colloquial and fuS7a as far as this kind of assimilation is concerned. We pronounce اصطاد as iSTaaDa in both the colloquial and fuS7a, do we? (I just can't bring myself to say iSTaada).


Probably for most people. What I meant again, is that in colloquial it applies to _other verb forms_, not just افتعل.


> I think the Arabic writing system is not fully phonemic as far as the emphatic consonants are concerned. Consider the roots ن-ض-د and ض-د-د. How do we pronounce the د? I can only say minDaDa for منضدة and DüDD (ü as in German) for ضدّ. Perhaps it's just me. How do the native speakers say them?


I think most native speakers will pronounce the د as ض, however the point again is that the spelling does not reflect this. However, in the case of افتعل the spelling _does_ reflect this, which is something I find interesting.

There's a lot more assimilation in Classical Arabic in the Qur'anic reading traditions I think. It's called الإدغام but I'm not sure about all the rules.

Finally, just to re-iterate I'm talking about the way assimilation is recorded _in writing_ in reference to standard Arabic (obviously with reference to colloquial Arabic, anything spoken goes.)


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## Josh_

Ghabi said:


> I'm not sure I understand you here, but you seem to suggest that this kind of assimilation is more prevailing in the colloquial than in fuS7a, and that the pronunciation *iSta7aba (instead of iSTa7aba) once existed, do you? (Forgive me if I get you wrong.)
> 
> I think the word has been pronounced as iSTa7aba since day one, as the pronunciation *iSta7aba is simply un-imaginable in real, connected speech. And I think there's no discrepancy between the colloquial and fuS7a as far as this kind of assimilation is concerned.


If assimilation is the linguistic term for this kind of change, then so be it, but I actually would not consider this change as such since no letter is being incorporated or merged into another.  Rather, there is a change, or an exchange, of one letter for another.  In Arabic linguistics this kind of change is considered a form of إبدال, (ex)change, not إدغام, assimilation.  Who knows what the original pronunciation is like, but the stated purpose of this kind of change is (what we already know) لتسهيل اللفظ to facilitate pronunciation.



> We pronounce اصطاد as iSTaaDa in both the colloquial and fuS7a, do we? (I just can't bring myself to say iSTaada).


I pronounce it iSTaada (and I suspect most others do as well); pronouncing it iSTaaDa sounds odd to me. let me explain. I have a feeling you may be confusing the different 'a' sounds (and their influence on surrounding letters) with emphatic letters. As you know, there are two 'a' sounds in Arabic -- 'a' as in 'apple' and 'a' as in 'father'.  Most transliteration schemas do not differentiate this in writing (both sounds being represented by one 'a'), but at least one does -- The Badawi-Hinds dictionary.  The 'a' as in 'apple' is represented by this symbol for the letter --> 'a', while the a as in father is represented by this symbol for the letter --> 'a'.  Note the difference in shape.

So, using this, let me restate what I said above.  I pronounce اصطاد as iSTaada. The a's are pronounced as in father due to the emphatics S and T.  Due to this the د is pronounced further forward in the mouth (from the regular position), but it is not pronounced as مفخّمًا or emphatically/heavily/deeply/with as much force the ض.  This more forward pronunciation is merely an allophone of the regular دال pronunciation due to the long 'a' sound.  I can see how this can be confused. 

Now, here, Cherine said that the ت in فضلات faDalaat is pronounced as a ط (faDalaaT)(something I thought about commenting on at the time, but decided not to), however I think it is the same thing as I described above.  All the a's are pronounced long as in father (so Badawi and Hinds transliterate it as faDalaat) due to the ض and the ل, so this in turn forces the ت to be pronounced more forward in the mouth.  But there again, it is not pronounced as deep and dark or with as much force as a proper ط, at least in my estimation.



> I think the Arabic writing system is not fully phonemic as far as the emphatic consonants are concerned. Consider the roots ن-ض-د and ض-د-د. How do we pronounce the د? I can only say minDaDa for منضدة and DüDD (ü as in German) for ضدّ. Perhaps it's just me. How do the native speakers say them?


The same goes for these words.  I pronounce the منضدة as minDada and ضدّ as Didd.  The د is different from the normal position, but is not pronounced as deeply or with as much force as the ض.

Hopefully all that made sense.  I am not a linguistician and do not know the correct jargon to explain what I mean.


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## clevermizo

Josh_ said:


> If assimilation is the linguistic term for this kind of change, then so be it, but I actually would not consider this change as such since no letter is being incorporated or merged into another.  Rather, there is a change, or an exchange, of one letter for another.  In Arabic linguistics this kind of change is considered a form of إبدال, (ex)change, not إدغام (assimilation).  Who knows what the original pronunciation is like, but the stated purpose of this kind of change is (what we already know) لتسهيل اللفظ to facilitate pronunciation.



Well the linguistic term refers to phonetics not to writing. If إدغام refers to writing/spelling, then you're right not to call this إدغام.

The change of ازتاد* to the actual form ازداد is explainable because the [t] assimilates in voicing to the [z]. It is an assimilation of _features_ in phonology. The [z] is [+voice] the [t] is [-voice]. If the [t] gets [+voice] then voilà you have [d]. In other words, this is a treatment of the sounds, assuming افتعل with the [t] is the "underlying" form of the word.


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## Josh_

Oh, ok.  I see what you mean.


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## WadiH

So, how do we explain the occurrence in the Quran of words like:

مذّكّر
مدّثّر
مزّمّل

?

I can understand this occurring in modern spoken Arabic because, in spoken Arabic, there is no vowel preceding the ت in مُتَفَعّل patterns.  But in Classical Arabic, there is such a vowel (_mutafa33il_, not _mutfa33il_), so why would this "assimilation" have been necessary?

Another example:

ناراً تلظّى (instead of تتلظّى)
وترى الشمسَ إذا طلعت تَزَاور عنهم (instead of تتزاور)

Again, in modern vernacular Arabic, the pattern is usually _titfaa3al_ so I can see how _tafaa3al _makes it flow easier, and in my group of dialects, the change from something like تِتْلَظّى to تَلَظّى is very common.  But in CA the pattern is _tatafa3al_, so I don't see why the change to _tafaa3al _is necessary (unless we should view _tafaa3al _simply as a separate pattern?).


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## Ghabi

Bumping this thread ...


Wadi Hanifa said:


> So, how do we explain the occurrence in the Quran of words like:
> 
> مذّكّر
> مدّثّر
> مزّمّل
> 
> ...
> Another example:
> 
> ناراً تلظّى (instead of تتلظّى)
> وترى الشمسَ إذا طلعت تَزَاور عنهم (instead of تتزاور)


So the _tatafa33al_/_tatafaa3al_ pattern becomes _(i)ttafa33al_/_(i)ttafaa3al_? Is it only in the Qur'an?


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## WadiH

No, it happens in Najdi and Gulf dialects, for example.  And the مذّكّر phenomenon happens in many (maybe most) dialects.


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## Ghabi

I meant the written language, do we see that in other texts?


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## rayloom

Ghabi said:


> Bumping this thread ...
> 
> So the _tatafa33al_/_tatafaa3al_ pattern becomes _(i)ttafa33al_/_(i)ttafaa3al_? Is it only in the Qur'an?



tatafa33alu/tatafaa3alu become tafa33alu/tafaa3alu, due to the effect of تخفيف, not assimilation.
This occurs mostly in Classical Arabic.

Assimilation, as Wadi Hanifa said, occurs in most dialects today. But I see that was discussed before in this thread.


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## WadiH

Ghabi said:


> I meant the written language, do we see that in other texts?



I'm sure it occurs in classical poetry, though I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.


rayloom said:


> tatafa33alu/tatafaa3alu become tafa33alu/tafaa3alu, due to the effect of تخفيف, not assimilation.
> This occurs mostly in Classical Arabic.



There is an alternate rendering as تزّاور (with a shadda on the ز).  I think that can only be explained by assimilation.


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## rayloom

Wadi Hanifa said:


> There is an alternate rendering as تزّاور (with a shadda on the ز).  I think that can only be explained by assimilation.



Yes I agree...that's due to assimilation.


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## Serafín33

rayloom said:


> tatafa33alu/tatafaa3alu become tafa33alu/tafaa3alu, due to the effect of تخفيف, not assimilation.
> This occurs mostly in Classical Arabic.


The term in English is "haplology", jokingly called "haplogy".


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## rayloom

Thanks Neqitan...I was looking for the term


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## Ghabi

When a voiced consonant meets its unvoiced counterpart, is it always that the unvoiced one gets assimilated, as in ادّعى? Say, how do you pronounce عدت? Do you say _3uddu_ or _3uttu_? I think I hear the latter, but I'm not sure.


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## إسكندراني

دْت is pronounced t not dt even in Quranic Arabic I believe


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## rayloom

ادغام is a big topic in Quranic Arabic.
It has certain rules in Arabic, called تماثل, تجانس, تقارب.

Tamaathul is when the consonants assimilated are the same. يدرككم
should be yudrikukum, read yudrikkum. Also commonly إننا into إنّأ.

In tajaanus, the consonants have to have the same place of articulation and always changes into the latter consonant (or a sound in between).
Of the tajaanus you have عبدتم (among many other examples) pronounced as عبتّم. Also اركب معنا is pronounced اركمّعنا.

Taqaarub the consonants are phonologically similar, an example of the taqaarub قد سمع pronounced as قسّمع. Taqaarub also includes the assimilation related to the tanwiin and the silent nuun. Also the assimilation of the laam with the solar letters.

Old grammarians have gone into great lenghts describing the conditions and when this or this occurs and how.


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