# Vowel Allophones



## Sorridom

Greetings again,

For MSA, in what instances are the vowels _a_ and _ā_ pronounced as open back unrounded vowels (as in "father")?

I know it happens after _S_, _D_, _T_, Z, and, I believe, _q_ an _r_. Does it happen _before_ those consonants as well? And are there any other letters around which this occurs?

Thanks in advance.


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## elroy

Hi Sorridom, and welcome to the Arabic forum. 

If you mean when does this pronunciation _have _to occur, then the answer is before and after all but one of the letters that you mention, namely ر, which can take both the pronunciation you describe (as in رقم or بار) or the other one, which does not exist in English (as in راتب or درب).  All the other letters of the alphabet can precede of follow either pronunciation.


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## Abu Bishr

Classically speaking and according to the Quranic science of recitation called "Tajwiid" (Orthoepy), the fathah is pronounced as a "round" vowel (or with Tafkhiim) in the following cases:

(1) the letters خُصَّ ضَغْطٍ قِظْ , that is, the خ، ص، ض، غ، ط، ق، ط , these letters are further called حروف الاستعلاء as opposed to the rest of the Arabic alphabet which  are called حروف الاستفال , and of these seven letters you have the ص، ض، ط، ظ which are called حروف الإطباق since their "rounding" is stronger, as opposed to the rest which are called the حروف الانفتاح ,
(2) the letter ر , and finally
(3) the Lam in (الله) "Allah"
(4) the Lam, occasionally, after the letters ص، ط، ظ , like صلاة (salaah).

Now, I've often heard Arab speakers of MSA (a minority, I'd say) pronounce the letters ق، غ، خ، ر with Tarqiiq (i.e. "flat" and "unround"). So whether this is acceptable in MSA or not, I'm not sure.

As for your second query, Sorridom, I've also heard Arab MSA speakers "rounding" the vowel before one of the above mentioned letters so as to prepare, as it were,  for the "rounding" of that letter like باطل (baatil), or the hamzah which is the first letter of(اَلله) , and so on. For a phonetic feature to be distributed over most part of the word if not the whole word is by no means uncommon in Arabic. If we accept this particular variation in MSA, then it could a case of vowel allophones in the same phonetic environment since different MSA speakers will pronounce them differently.


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## linguist786

Abu Bishr said:


> (3) the Lam in (الله) "Allah"


Except when the letter (or consonant should I say?) before it has a kasrah. (e.g. في حزب الله = fii hizb*i*llaah - not pronounced as a "round" vowel). 

Just as a side thing which may be relevant, I referred to this as "full mouth" and "not full mouth" when I was taught tajweed.


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## elroy

Just to clarify: The rules I described in post #2 apply to MSA - _Modern_ Standard Arabic, the rules for Qur'anic recitation notwithstanding.  I was referring to the way the vowel is pronounced today, by nearly all speakers of Arabic.  I see no reason why these pronunciations shouldn't be acceptable in MSA.


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## Sorridom

Once again, thanks.  


So...in MSA, the change is only mandatory around _S_, _D_, _T_, _Z_, and _q_, and it's optional around every other letter.

But _kh_, _gh_, and _r_ are more typically pronounced _with_ the change, yes?


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## elroy

Sorridom said:


> But _kh_, _gh_, and _r_ are more typically pronounced _with_ the change, yes?


 I don't know any statistics, and I would hesitate to confirm this suspicion.  I can think of quite a few words with these letters that are pronounced without the "change."


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## MissLingO_o

Hi people, 

I'm new in this forum, I've just registered actually! ) 

I'm interested in learning about the allophones of Arabic- either for consonants or vowels- and how they're related to English ones.

Can any one give me a brief idea about this?!?

Thanks!


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## rayloom

Hi MissLing
Welcome to the forum 

Your question is somewhat unspecific.
I would recommend reading the wikipedia page on Arabic phonology, which is quite well written.
If any questions arise, please post them in the forum as separate specific questions.


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## MissLingO_o

Thanks Rayloom for your reply!
I'm just looking for a specific problem about vowels that  arabic people may encounter when they learn English as a second/foreign langauge. I've been trying to find (a) spasific question(s) to start argue about but I have'nt found any so far!!!!!!


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## إسكندراني

I am not totally clear on what an allophone is. The wiki article seems to imply it's when someone believes two different sounds to be the same one.
A good example is the egyptian ب, which lies somewhere between b & p , the result being that egyptians learning english as a second language often can't distinguish between the two sounds and hence confuse them regularly.


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## clevermizo

إسكندراني said:


> I am not totally clear on what an allophone is. The wiki article seems to imply it's when someone believes two different sounds to be the same one.


This is _almost_ a good explanation of allophony. I don't want to delve into linguistic theory here because I think it's beyond the scope of the Arabic forum, but to understand allophony, you must understand the concept of the phoneme.

But very simply, in the examples discussed in this thread, one that has come up are the two allophones of ــا or the phoneme /ā/. To illustrate this, write the words كاتب and write the word طالب. Each has the same form, فاعل, but you notice how the two ـا actually sound different? They both function for the same grammatical purpose: to generate اسم الفاعل. However, they have two different sounds, because of the effect that comes from the other sounds. The two sounds are different "realizations" of the "basic" ـا sound, and this is what is meant by "allophones."

In Arabic this occurs with vowels the most markedly because vowels often change in quality due to effects from surrounding consonants.

Two sounds that are perceived as just "variations" of the same sound in one language, may be completely different sounds in another language (meaning speakers "recognize" that they are different). For example, if you say the word _bat_ with the ـا from كاتب, you have the word "bat" (the animal or a baseball bat). However if you change the vowel *a* to more like the sound of ـا in طالب you actually get a different word and people will think you are saying _bot_ as in robot, or _bought_ as in the past tense of buy.

Think of the variation in ـا throughout the Arab world: the way a Lebanese person says ناس versus an Iraqi. It's still the same word. If those were English words, just because the vowel is different in quality we would think they were different words.


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## MissLingO_o

Does anyone know a book that discusses the Arabic allophones? Dunno how to find that!


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## rayloom

Any book on Arabic phonology will discuss allophony in Arabic.


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## MissLingO_o

clevermizo said:


> But very simply, in the examples discussed in this thread, one that has come up are the two allophones of ــا or the phoneme /ā/.[...]



Thanks for your great explanation!

as far as I understood, vowels allophones are described in two different ways: 1- quality, as u said, which depends on the positions of the tongue and lips when the vowels (including diphthongs) are influenced from neighbouring segments; 2- quantity, which is related to the vowel length. But here the length is also a result of the neighbouring segments??

I think now i'm confused!!  :S


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## clevermizo

MissLingo_O said:


> But here the length is also a result of the neighbouring segments??



No, I did not say that the length was altered. Only the quality is altered.


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## MissLingO_o

Sorry, I meant in general.... for example, the a-sound in the word father takes about twice long as that in fatter due to the affect of voicing segment in father. does that make them allophones of /a:/? umm, is that applicable in Arabic as well?


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## clevermizo

MissLingo_O said:


> Sorry, I meant in general.... for example, the a-sound in the word father takes about twice long as that in fatter due to the affect of voicing segment in father. does that make them allophones of /a:/?


No. In most English dialects I can think of, the two a's in f*a*t and f*a*ther are different vowel phonemes. Your confusion stems from the fact that English spelling does not accurately reflect its phonemes. In order to do phonemic analysis of English, you have to transcribe the language in a phonetic alphabet. But in general:


> umm, is that applicable in Arabic as well?


I don't see how the specific example you give relates to Arabic, however in general _length_ is always phonemic contrast in Arabic and therefore allophones of the same vowel phoneme are not distinguished in length in Standard Arabic. In other words a long [a:] and a short [a] can't be allophones of the same vowel in Arabic. The vowels in كاتب and طالب are the same length; just the quality of the ـا is different. (Dialects may be different in this regard.) In analogy with your English example, the vowel ــُو in the words خروج and جيوش does not change in length depending on whether ج is voiced or ش is voiceless. Furthermore the quality of the و is the same in both cases, so we can't say that it is affected by the surrounding sounds.

In English, pure length is not usually a phonemic contrast; it is mostly quality. For example, the vowel /i/ can be long or short: eat [it] or need [ni:d], and in this case you are correct, the vowel length is allophonic. However, 'eat' can be pronounced [i:t] with no change in meaning, so true length is not a very useful metric. In any case, in standard Arabic, long vowels are always long and short vowels are always short, and though they may differ in quality, allophones of the same vowel don't change in length.

For more in depth discussion of English phonology I suggest you visit the English Only or Etymology and History of Languages forums. I wanted to address the couple points above, but in general this is off topic to this thread and out of scope in our forum.

To continue, we know for example, that length is contrastive in Arabic, because the form فــَا عَلَ has a different meaning than the form فـَعَلَ. So you couldn't have a situation where فــا عل was pronounced فــَعل without changing the meaning (or it most likely would change the meaning). So again, length cannot be allophonically variable. However, depending on what the ف is, the vowel ـا may have a different quality, though it maintains the same length.

The basic features of Arabic phonology that gives rise to vowel allophones is the pharyngealization or velarization found in the consonants ط ظ ض ص as well as the place of articulation of consonants like ق ع ح ء. These consonants most strongly affect the sounds of the vowels around them. However other properties such as voicing of consonants typically does not affect the length nor quality of Arabic vowels.


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## WadiH

clevermizo said:


> I don't see how the specific example you give relates to Arabic, however in general _length_ is always phonemic contrast in Arabic and therefore allophones of the same vowel phoneme are not distinguished in length in Standard Arabic.



I know you're only talking about MSA here, but if we were to extend the discussion to spoken Arabic, I believe long vowels commonly have short allophones in Egyptian Arabic, e.g. جامعة becomes _gam3a_ (unless I'm applying the concept of allophones incorrectly?).


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## clevermizo

Yes indeed, the situation becomes more complex with spoken dialects that shorten vowels based on accentuation. Short [a] could be a separate phoneme /a/ or an allophone of /ā/. That's why I limited myself to speaking about standard Arabic.

Now in the specific instance of جامعة, etymologically we know this is a shortening of /ā/ based upon the accentuation rules of Egyptian Arabic. However, if we deal with spoken Egyptian Arabic as an isolated system (which is artificial of course), you could argue that the word is simply جَمعة in which case you simply have the phoneme /a/ as /gamʕa/ and not /gāmʕa/>[gamʕa] (which is etymological and not synchronic).

If you want to talk about this process in synchrony, a better example might be a verb that undergoes a stress change or a morphological change. For example, يساعد to يساعدُه [yesæ:ʕed]  - [yesaʕdo]. You might say that here [a] and [æ:] are both possible realizations of /ā/ and thus allophones.

This analysis of vowels may be a little tricky. You might argue that pure vowel length (i.e., timing) is less of a contrastive feature in spoken Egyptian Arabic and that stress, syllabification and quality are of greater importance. For example, although /yesāʕed/ has a long vowel which carries stress, this is pronounced [yesæ:ʕed] where there is a difference in quality between ــَا and just ـَ, in addition to length. I wonder if [yesæʕed], maintaining the quality but losing the length, would really be misunderstood - in fact I wonder if it doesn't regularly occur.


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## elroy

clevermizo said:


> The basic features of Arabic phonology that gives rise to vowel allophones is the pharyngealization or velarization found in the consonants ط ظ ض ص as well as the place of articulation of consonants like ق ع ح ء.


 I believe it's only the pharyngealized/emphatic consonants and ق - and sometimes ر - that affect the quality of vowels.  The other three you mentioned do not...right?


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## WadiH

Also the "velarized" or "dark" ل: e.g. صلاة and الله.


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## إسكندراني

The ا in صلاة is مفخّمة?!


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## rayloom

In MSA no.

In Quranic Arabic, I think only in one of the reading styles of the Quran; it's called the reading of Warsh رواية ورش عن نافع, it closely reflects the language of Quraysh. You can also hear it thus in the Meccan Adhan.

Otherwise, the other Quranic readings pronounce it as usual.

The matter also varies in colloquial Arabic.


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## MissLingO_o

Clever answers Clevermizo! Thanks!


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## إسكندراني

The ا in الصلاة seems not to be مفخّمة in the 'usual' Meccan adhans, where can I find a 'real' Meccan adhan as pronounced by the locals?


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## MissLingO_o

Hi إسكندراني

what do you mean by 'usual' makkan adhans? do u mean the one which is called out in al Haram?
Well, I can do makkan accent and I think it's مفخّمة when I tried to pronounce it!


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## إسكندراني

Yes, I mean in الحرم. I've heard the Makkan dialect is different from that usually used there but I've not verified that nor can I find youtube videos or such to listen to their dialect! Which is very unfortunate


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## MissLingO_o

You mean the old Makkan dialect and the new one!! They both exist!


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## إسكندراني

So it's changed significantly? For example is the ء still not pronounced?


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## MissLingO_o

I'm not quite sure what u mean by ء!! Yep! it's changed alot though old people still keep the old dialect.Young people to aviod using the old lexems and sometimes they try to use lexems that are more closer to Satndard Arabic. They also try to change the way they pronounce the vowels and consonant, for example, they say thakrt (I studied) instead of zakrt and shaqa (flat) instead of shoqa!


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## WadiH

clevermizo said:


> Now in the specific instance of جامعة, etymologically we know this is a shortening of /ā/ based upon the accentuation rules of Egyptian Arabic. However, if we deal with spoken Egyptian Arabic as an isolated system (which is artificial of course), you could argue that the word is simply جَمعة in which case you simply have the phoneme /a/ as /gamʕa/ and not /gāmʕa/>[gamʕa] (which is etymological and not synchronic).


Yes and also a word like عاوز.  The feminine and plural forms are both realized with a shortened [a].  I presume this is a better example than gam3a?


إسكندراني said:


> The ا in صلاة is مفخّمة?!


Well think about your own speech: when you say something صلاة الظهر, does the aleph sound the same as in a word such as باب?


إسكندراني said:


> The ا in الصلاة seems not to be مفخّمة in the 'usual' Meccan adhans, where can I find a 'real' Meccan adhan as pronounced by the locals?


I think there's been some confusion here.  Nobody in Mecca speaks the dialect of Warsh ibn Nafi3 or anything close to it.  I don't think the Meccan adhaan sounds as Rayloom has described but, even if it does, it does NOT reflect how natives of Mecca pronounce such words today.

As for Miss Lingo, she was referring to the speech of Mecca from two or three generations ago (before the effects of mass urbanization, immigration from the countryside, influence of other dialects through mass media, etc.) as opposed to how young Meccans speak today.  Neither of these two manners of speech are relevant to how Meccan speech sounded in the 7th century or exhibit the taf5eem of the aleph in words such as zakaat, salaat, etc..  In fact, to someone from another region, such as yourself, the "old" and "new" dialects of Mecca will be difficult to distinguish without paying close attention.


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## إسكندراني

جزاكم الله خيراً يا جماعة ولم أكن أعرف أنّ لهجة مكّة تغيّرت بهٰذا القدر في السنين الأخيرة لٰكن «أكيد» لا يزال يوجد من الناس من يتحدّث باللهجة الأقدم وإن كانت هي تغيّرت عن لهجة قريش الأصلية في حدّ ذاتها.. لٰكن أكيد تتفهّمون لماذا أهتمّ بتلك الأمور؟ قريش كانوا أفصح العرب في الروايات فلو كانت لهجتهم الأصلية تختلف في مخارج الحروف مثلاً عن الفصحى الحديثة فلماذا نصرّ على الفصحى الحديثة؟! إلّا لو كان عندهم ازدواج فصحى ولهجة مثلما نرى اليوم وهذا ما أرجّحه بديهياً وإن لم يكونا بنفس البُعد الموجود اليوم..ـ
وعموماً رُبّما نسمع لهجة قريبة لما كان يتحدّث بها الحبيب ﷺ فقد سمعت من قبل مثلاً أنّ وقتها كانوا قريش لا ينطقون الهمزة..


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## WadiH

انت فهمت الموضوع غلط
التغير الذي نقصده هنا هو مثل الاختلاف بين كلام المصريين في عام 2010 وكلامهم في 1940
لو شاهدت فيلماً مصرياً من الأربعينات وقارنت كلام الممثلين فيه بكلام الممثلين في فيلم شبابي من 2010 فستجد اختلافات عديدة في الصوتيات والصيغ والتراكيب والمعجم
لكن يبقى كلا الفليمين باللهجة المصرية
ونفس الشيء تجده بين كلام أهل مكة اليوم وكلامهم قبل خمسين عاماً
ولا علاقة لذلك بكلام قريش زمن النبي
بالنسبة للهمزة فلا توجد لهجة  في الجزيرة العربية تستخدم الهمزة إلا لدى الأجيال الجديدة بتأثير التعليم العام والفصحى
فقد يقول الشخص بدأنا بينما يقول جدّه بدينا وهكذا


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## MissLingO_o

As for Miss Lingo, she was referring to the speech of Mecca from two or three generations ago 

In fact, to someone from another region, such as yourself, the "old" and "new" dialects of Mecca will be difficult to distinguish without paying close attention.[/QUOTE]

Sorry im referring to the speech of Makkah's ppl nowadays!!! 
and i think its not that tricky or difficult to distinguish the old makkan accent from the new one. if you have a conversation with people from the old and new generation, you will be able to see the differences from the way they talk.


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## licinio

elroy said:


> If you mean when does this pronunciation _have _to occur, then the answer is before and after all but one of the letters that you mention, namely ر, which can take both the pronunciation you describe (as in رقم or بار) or the other one, which does not exist in English (as in راتب or درب).  All the other letters of the alphabet can precede of follow either pronunciation.



It appears that  "r" in Msa pronunciation behaves in two different ways, requiring the darkening of the vowel before or after it, or not:
سارة نجار
راتب  درب
The consonant sound itself doesn't seem to change much, unlike the vowel.
I would expect this behaviour to vary considerably from dialect to dialect and from speaker to speaker under the influence of the local pronunciation.


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