# All dialects/MSA: ث th



## eastren

Can anyone tell me  what is real sound  to pronounce Arabic word tha ث while in Quranic Arabic tha ث sound is like sa or ce like. scissors. Why Egyptian and Levantine and othre Arab pronounc tha ث as ta? Is it wrong tell me.


----------



## tounsi51

hey

We Tunisians, can pronounce all arabic letters correctly... tha is like th of think!

Some Arabs pronounce t like in Morocco, s or t like in Egypt or Levant.


----------



## Hemza

I think it's because it's more simple. In Morocco for example, to say "3", we say "talata" instead of MSA "thalatha". Most of the time, bedouins dialects (or based dialects) like Palestinian, Najdi, Emirati, Qatari pronounce letters like ث ذ or ض or ظ, correctly. But for some other letters, they pronounce differently. Also, Tunisian is an exception among Maghrebian dialects (Mauritanian, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan) because they pronounce those letters correctly compared to others.


----------



## fdb

Many Arabic dialects, especially rural and bedouin dialects, retain the classical pronunciation of the interdental consonants ظ , ذ , ث . But in most urban dialects they are replaced by t , d , ṭ in genuine dialect words, and by s , z , ẓ in words perceived as belonging to classical or “standard” Arabic. Thus, in Egypt one says /tāni/ “second”, but /madrasa sānawiyya/ “secondary school”.


----------



## tounsi51

In Tunisia for example on of the differences between urban and rural/bedouin accents is the qef pronounced by old urban cities and g in rural and bedouin areas


----------



## Hemza

It's the same in Morocco. I'm from Fès (urban area) and I'm used to say "qa" but a lot of my friends say "ga" and make fun of my "qa" ^^. And a part of inhabitants of my city say "2a" like in urban Lebanese, Egyptian and Syrian.


----------



## إسكندراني

We can talk about Qaf separately. Since the topic of this thread is ث , I hope the OP understands now that neither s nor t is the correct pronunciation, both are a dialectal variation of the original, which is like the th in thing.

Indeed, in Egyptian, as mentioned, in old words it becomes t and in new words or formal registers it becomes s .


----------



## Hemza

Oh, right, sorry, sorry, I was off topic


----------



## tounsi51

إسكندراني said:


> Indeed, in Egyptian, as mentioned, in old words it becomes t and in new words or formal registers it becomes s .



So this will be reflected also in their English pronounciation.

"Think" will become "sink", "thirty" will become "sirty"


----------



## Xence

Hemza said:


> Also, Tunisian is an exception among Maghrebian dialects (Mauritanian, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan) because they pronounce those letters correctly compared to others.



I disagree.

In Algeria, apart from people who live on coastline and in some western areas, Algerians do pronounce correctly all the Arabic sounds, included ث - ذ - ظ - ق etc.

Also Mauritanians have a correct pronounciation, except from the sound غ which is often pronounced ق (as in some bedouin areas in Algeria).

On the contrary, Tunisians tend to confuse ض with ظ , and sometimes ث with ف like in ثَمّ/فَمّ.


----------



## dkarjala

I would add that talking about the dialect of a whole country is a bit futile - variation occurs on too many levels to make blanket statements about a whole country or region.


----------



## Hemza

Xence said:


> In Algeria, apart from people who live on coastline and in some western areas, Algerians do pronounce correctly all the Arabic sounds, included ث - ذ - ظ - ق etc.
> 
> Also Mauritanians have a correct pronounciation, except from the sound غ which is often pronounced ق (as in some bedouin areas in Algeria).
> 
> On the contrary, Tunisians tend to confuse ض with ظ , and sometimes ث with ف like in ثَمّ/فَمّ.



So you mean that for "smart", Algerians say "ذكي" instead of "دكي"? Or "ثلاثة" instead of "تلاتة"? I have doubts...

About Mauritanians, don't you know how they pronounce "ف"? Like a "v".

Also, ثَمّ and فَمّ are not the same word, the first means "garlic" and the second means "mouth" so the confusion is not possible. The first is pronounced "tum" and the second "fum".


----------



## Xence

Yes, many Algerians from inland regions (and I am among them) would say ثلاثة - ذكي - هذا etc, and believe me they are numerous, maybe the majority.

As for the Tunisian ثَمّ , I am not talking about garlic but the adverb _thamma _(there / there is) which is pronounced _famma_.


----------



## Hemza

Oh, ok sorry, I didn't know. Thank you for the information. May be, bedouin/rural dialects are more conservative than urban

Oh, ok, second mistake from me, sorry, sorry ^^'. Yes, they pronounce it "famma" that's true.


----------



## tounsi51

Xence said:


> Yes, many Algerians from inland regions (and I am among them) would say ثلاثة - ذكي - هذا etc, and believe me they are numerous, maybe the majority.
> 
> As for the Tunisian ثَمّ , I am not talking about garlic but the adverb _thamma _(there / there is) which is pronounced _famma_.



Yeah i know people from the East and the South like El Oued have similar accent with Tunisians.

But ثَمّا is pronounced as thamma in some regions and famma in others. But this is the only one example.

@Hemza, I have heard people from the Rif saying "thlathin" instead of "tlatin" like other Moroccans


----------



## akhooha

Hemza said:


> ...Also, ثَمّ and فَمّ are not the same word, the first means "garlic" and the second means "mouth" so the confusion is not possible. The first is pronounced "tum" and the second "fum".



FYI, the word for "garlic" is ثُوم


----------



## Hemza

tounsi51 said:


> @Hemza, I have heard people from the Rif saying "thlathin" instead of "tlatin" like other Moroccans



Really? Oh, I didn't know, because all Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians I know pronounce "tha" like "ta". So I apologize toward the author of the thread, if I get him/her wrong.


----------



## tounsi51

No as I said we Tunisians in all words expect 30 we pronounce tlathin and thamma, we say famma

But my comment was about the Rifi people (Berber Rifi) in Morocco who say thlathin not tlatin.


----------



## Hemza

I know two Tunisians, and both say "tlatin". May be, it depends of the person, or those Tunisians are exceptions, I don't know...


----------



## dkarjala

I'll say it again, each country varies from city to city, village to village in many aspects of the language. Surprise is not called for.


----------



## WadiH

Xence said:


> On the contrary, Tunisians tend to confuse ض with ظ , and sometimes ث with ف like in ثَمّ/فَمّ.



The latter is not a confusion; it's a common phenomenon in many languages to switch between unvoiced "th" and "f" or between voiced "th" and "v" ("Th-fronting", as it's called in English).  In Arabic it's very ancient, e.g. the Quran refers to garlic as فوم, and in Arabia today some dialects (like mine) refer to the mouth as ثم or أثم while others as فم or أفم, and this was carried to places like Syria where it become تمّ.


----------



## tounsi51

Hemza said:


> I know two Tunisians, and both say "tlatin". May be, it depends of the person, or those Tunisians are exceptions, I don't know...



It is weird because I never heard tunisians saying tlatin


----------



## Hemza

As someone said, it depends of every person. May be,those Tunisians have been influenced (we're living in France). But I swear they pronounce "t" instead of "th".


----------



## fdb

tounsi51 said:


> But my comment was about the Rifi people (Berber Rifi) in Morocco who say thlathin not tlatin.



The Berbers speak Arabic as a second language: they learn it in school. That is why they often speak it better than the Arabs.


----------



## tounsi51

The ones I know (there are my brother's family in law) don't speak Arabic at all.


----------



## Aloulu

Pronouncing the "th" as "t" is rather non-Tunisian, most often the time the person has lived a long time abroad and been subject to many other Arabic dialects or has in rare cases a pronounciation problem.
Tunisian dialect among fellow Tunisians means pronouncing the "th" consequently, the only exception is in the word of "thamma", where the "th" is often (but not always!) pronounced as a "f" (ie: famma).

I speak rural (southern) Tunisian dialect and we also pronounce the "th" as it is.


----------



## Apollodoros

I cannot say I speak Arabic and I am not even anywhere close to it but I am curious and interested in phonetics as such. 

While seeing some Lebanese TV shows (and Arabic Superstar with Lebanese Majdala Khattar as moderator also comes to my mind) it seemed to me that ث in Lebanese was very close to a palatalized 't' that I hear for example in French 'Thierry' almost close to 'ts' as the palatalized t in Russian. 

One word I remember they pronounced like this was كثير. This was probably because it was one of the few words I understood . It sounded something like k'tsir. It sounded very French and 'sweet' to my ear and I suspected this might be due to the French influence there. Another thing I noticed was that this pronunciation was much more apparent in women than in men. Could there b such a difference? Could anyone shed some light on this pronunciation please?


----------



## Hemza

It's the "normal" pronounciation of Lebanese people. They say "ktir" instead of "kathir" like in MSA. Lebanese accent (I mean Beirut accent) is known for being "sweet" (as you say).


----------



## tounsi51

It reminds me that in some areas of Algeria and Morocco the t is also pronounced ts like okhti will become "okhtsi" or "enta" pronounced "ntsa", this is a pre-hilalian mark


----------



## Hemza

Right, in Morocco, it's widespread.


----------



## القرطاجني

I am familiar -due to some origins- with the way, the inhabitants of *Mahdia*, a central-eastern city of Tunisia pronounce the 'th'. It used to be like 't'. It's still common in the city to a large degree, while some youngsters prefer 'the conform' way of speaking. So, they would pronounce '333' as 'tlata miya w tlata w tlatin'. I only encountered this pronunciation in this city, not even in it's neighbourhood.  
As for ' *ثمة*' & '*فمة *used for 'there'، both pronunciations exists and are perfectly interchangeable.


----------



## vinyljunkie619

Moroccan - T
Western Algerian - T
Eastern Algerian - T/ TH (some cities/villages T, some TH)
Tunisian - TH (sometimes T and sometimes F, depends on word)
Libyan - T/TH (depends on word, mostly TH)
Egyptian (upper and lower) - T/S
Syrian/Lebanese/Palestinian/Israeli - T/S
Jordanian - T/TH
Some areas in KSA - F (mostly older people in certain villages)
Hijazi/Western Saudi/Sudanese - T/S
Gulf/Kuwaiti/Iraqi/Yemeni/Omani - TH
Maltese - T/S


----------



## Hemza

The "T/S" pronounciation is realized in Urban Hijazi, not the bedouin one .


----------



## ahmedcowon

In Morocco, the word ثقافة is pronounced as "taqaafa"?


----------



## Hemza

Yes, at least, that's how me and people I know pronounce it. But may be, some people pronounce it "thaqafa" like in MSA, it depends of the area. But no one pronounce it "saqafa" like Levantine.


----------



## eastren

thanks to all my friends those who have sent comments and reply me to know the real situation where we find the way to watch the reality


----------



## Borsippa

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
I'm not sure if this should be two separate threads (or multiple ones??) - Arabic ث is pronounced as t or s in Egyptian and Levantine dialects.  I'm generalizing here and there may be exceptions.

What I want to understand is when does ث become a t and when does it become an s in Egyptian?   Why is it ta3lab and sawra and not the other way around?

Is it the same in Levantine dialects?

The only "rule" I know of is that high prestige words, religious words and technical terminology have the original pronunciation retained, but other than that, is it just random guesswork?


----------



## Ghabi

Borsippa said:


> The only "rule" I know of is that high prestige words, religious words and technical terminology have the original pronunciation retained...


This is a general trend indeed, thus sawra but toor, sanya but taani.


----------



## akhooha

How does this explain ir-raagil it-taani, but madrasa sanawiya?


----------



## analeeh

akhooha said:


> How does this explain ir-raagil it-taani, but madrasa sanawiya?



Because _saanawi_ is the name of an institution.

Effectively, I think what happened was that internally these dialects experienced a shift of th dh DH to t d D fairly early on and this probably applied to all of their vocabulary. Since then lots of words have been taken from fuSHa and these, at least more recently, have generally been borrowed with their fuSHa sounds (which for lots of people are rendered as s z Z). With the spread of mass education a lot of words have moved towards their fuSHa forms in many places (_matalan > masalan_ for example) especially in educated sociolects.

Because of this process, as well as other exceptions like _tzakkar_ which have no immediate explanation without more etymological investigation, there is no way of predicting with 100% accuracy what a given word will have. That's why it's a trend rather than a rule. I think Arabic teachers tend to teach dialect basically as fuSHa plus a series of simple transformation rules which are supposed to accurately produce dialect forms from their fuSHa equivalents, but that's not really how it works.


----------



## akhooha

analeeh said:


> ... without more etymological investigation, there is no way of predicting with 100% accuracy what a given word will have ...


Thanks for your reply. This is pretty much the conclusion I'd come to as well. I'd be interested to find references to more etymological investigation......


----------



## calcraft

I had a question regarding the word ابعت in Egyptian Arabic.  I assumed that the root of this verb is ب ع ت, but that does not appear in the dictionary.  Then I noticed that words formed from ب ع ث can mean "send".  Is it possible that the  ت is Egyptian pronunciation of  ث here?  If so, though, isn't  ث usually actually _written_, but pronounced as an 's' , as in أثار ?


----------



## elroy

calcraft said:


> Is it possible that the ت is Egyptian pronunciation of ث here?


 Yes, exactly.  This is not a general rule, though; sometimes, ث is pronounced [s] in Egyptian, while other times it may be preserved as is (but an Egyptian will have to confirm).  At least in Palestinian all three pronunciations occur, depending on the word. 





calcraft said:


> If so, though, isn't ث usually actually _written_, but pronounced as an 's' , as in أثار ?


 If you're writing _in MSA_, it's always written ث; how it's pronounced depends on the dialect of the speaker.  In Egypt, for example, [s] is the widespread pronunciation, if I'm not mistaken, but that's not the case in Palestine, where [s] is rare.  I believe in Morocco at least some speakers will pronounce it [t] when reading or speaking in MSA, but a Moroccan will have to confirm.

If you're writing _in Egyptian_, there are no set rules.  Depending on the word and/or the user, ث may be represented in writing as ت to reflect its pronunciation, or ث to reflect its etymology.  I don't believe, though, that it would ever be spelled س.


----------



## cherine

There are no set rules for writing in dialects, but I'd say that using ث would be only for the (few) words where it's pronounced as س like: آثار، عثمان while the words where it's pronounced as [t], we usually if not always write them with a ت  like: تمن، بعت، تلاتة، يوم التلات ...etc.

I can't think of a word where we pronounce either ث or ذ as they are pronounced in fuS7a, they are difficult sounds for Egyptians, and they represent great difficulty for those who didn't learn English properly or at a young age.


----------



## elroy

cherine said:


> I can't think of a word where we pronounce either ث or ذ as they are pronounced in fuS7a


 I think this is a significant way in which Palestinian pronunciation differs from that of Egyptian and even other Levantine dialects.  There are many words -- usually higher-register words -- with ث or ذ that are pronounced with the MSA sounds for those letters.  Examples off the top of my head:

ثورة، ثقة، بعثة، بث، ثعلب
مذهب، ذئب، ساذج، شاذ، نبذة

(I realized as I was thinking of words that it was easier to think of ث examples than ذ examples, which makes me think that ذ is more likely to be pronounced differently.)

For this reason, these sounds do not generally pose a problem for Palestinians.


----------



## Hemza

elroy said:


> I believe in Morocco at least some speakers will pronounce it [t] when reading or speaking in MSA, but a Moroccan will have to confirm.



Many people who are, I believe, taught at school this way by their teachers who themselves do this mistake, confusing ث with ت, both merging into a [t] sound even when speaking فصحى  which is something really odd to me (probably because I wasn't raised there). But in some rural areas (those not influenced by urban speech's features like the ث turning ت, which are few nowaday) and bedouin speakers, it's always ث.

The same thing happens with ذ that many Moroccans, even in فصحى, would pronounce it د


----------



## calcraft

Thank you very much for your replies.  I've learned a lot from you guys !


----------



## momai

elroy said:


> ذئب ... ثعلب


Both nouns historically used to have genuine counterparts in SA, namely تعلب and ديب. The latter is even a common surname today in Syria. 
Yet sometimes Syrian words and their MSA counterparts with ث coexist, but the former usually have then develped similar but still different meanings as انتاية and دكر which completely lost their "neutral"/original meanings for أنثى and ذكر.


----------



## djara

tounsi51 said:


> and g in rural and bedouin areas


Many cities in Tunisia pronounce ق g. Examples: Gabes, Medenine, Gafsa, Kef, etc.


----------



## elroy

momai said:


> Both nouns historically used to have genuine counterparts in SA,


 What do you mean by "genuine counterparts"?


momai said:


> انتاية and دكر which completely lost their "neutral"/original meanings for أنثى and ذكر


 What do these mean?

(By the way, your reminded me that ذكر and أنثى can be added to my list of words in which interdental fricatives are preserved by most Palestinians.)


----------



## momai

elroy said:


> What do you mean by "genuine counterparts"?


Genuine counterparts because they are the original words for male and female in SA, which correspond to modern ذكر و أنثى.


> What do these mean?


Male and female, but exclusively for animals. Apart from that, دكر could mean حمش for humans. انتاية means the opposite of courageous or manly when it is said to a male.


----------



## Wai Ho

Moroccan and Algerian people pronounce the "ث" sound as "t" when there are speaking, but when they spell, "ث" and " ت " are always distinct.


----------



## Hemza

Wai Ho said:


> Moroccan and Algerian people pronounce the "ث" sound as "t" when there are speaking, but when they spell, "ث" and " ت " are always distinct.


Neither all Moroccans nor all Algerians do that. Traditionally, only urban dialects merge the ث and the ت sound (as well as the ذ>د) but under the influence of urban dialects through media and their "prestige", the merging started to expend, especially in Morocco. This is not proper to Morocco and Algeria, this happens in many other countries as well.


----------

