# EA: zar2a (pronunciation of qaaf)



## pennylane128

In the Egyptian Arabic program I use, the feminine form of blue is transliterated as zar'a.

I would expect that to be written as zaay raa' hamza taa' marbouta, but instead it is written as zaay raa' qaaf taa' marbouta.

I don't understand why there is a qaaf in there, since the q sound is not pronounced. I also don't understand why there is no hamza, since the word is pronounced with a glottal stop.

If anyone could help me on this grammar problem that'd be great!


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## elroy

Hi pennylane128,

The reason is that the word is spelled (and pronounced) with a qaaf in MSA, but in many dialects (such as Egyptian) the qaaf is pronounced as a glottal stop (hamza).  Despite dialectal deviations in pronunciation, words tend to be spelled as in MSA by those wishing to write in colloquial Arabic.


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## pennylane128

Okay, thanks. One thing that still confuses me is how do Egyptian Arabic speakers know when to pronounce qaaf as hamza? Is it just something that they learn because they are native speakers and they are used to it or is there some kind of sign I'm missing that tells them when to pronounce a qaaf as a hamza and when to pronounce it as a qaaf?


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## elroy

A speaker of Egyptian Arabic would be more suited to answer your question, but I would say that it is definitely something that they do intuitively as native speakers, which is not to say that there aren't any phonological rules that could be taught to foreigners learning the dialect.


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## clevermizo

pennylane128 said:


> Okay, thanks. One thing that still confuses me is how do Egyptian Arabic speakers know when to pronounce qaaf as hamza? Is it just something that they learn because they are native speakers and they are used to it or is there some kind of sign I'm missing that tells them when to pronounce a qaaf as a hamza and when to pronounce it as a qaaf?



It is not so much "knowing to pronounce a qaaf as hamza." When a native speaker acquires a word, such as [2alb] قلب, they acquire the word just as it is - just as you would learn the word "heart" while growing up in an English speaking environment. 

Then later on they go to school, and they learn how the word is spelled in Standard/Classical Arabic and that the sound that the letter ق makes is [q] - [qalb].

Thus they have two words they have learned that mean the same thing: qalb (in MSA) and 2alb (in Egyptian). When they go to choose a written form they will usually use the MSA form because that is perceived as the only correct written form (and I have a feeling that writing ألب would look odd to most people). 

There's no clue - they simply speak their native language, but often choose written forms from a different register of language. This is because there is always a little variation involved in spelling dialectal words - because they are not standardized spellings - and probably a little awkwardness choosing forms that although better representing the spoken form, look awkwardly misspelled.

For you as the non-native, you simply have to learn MSA as well in order to understand why people write they way they do.

On another note - is it more common among Egyptians to write زرقاء (the MSA feminine form) or زرقة when writing in dialect? Perhaps زرقا? Maybe it varies among speakers?


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## Josh_

Egyptian colloquial Arabic is an Egyptian's native language that they hear from birth and start to acquire when speech develops. MSA, on the other hand, is actually not a native language for anyone, but is learned in school. So the answer is that they pronounce the qaaf as hamza intuitely as this is what they have heard from birth. Only when they start learning the the alphabet and reading and writing do they discern the differences between the colloquial and standard form. So in essence before an Egyptian knows that in MSA pronunciation of blue is zarqaa' they know it as zar'a. And zar'a, with very little exception, is used when speaking, while zarqaa' is used when writing or reading. 

It should also be pointed out that colloquial dialects are generally not written and there is no universally accepted way to write them. Some prefer sticking to standard written forms (which is apparently the case with the program you are working out of) while others will manipulate the alphabet to best represent the colloquial pronunciation.

I kind of have a little insight on the issue here and can kind of use myself as an example as, like a native Arabic speaker, I learned a dialect before MSA. I learned the Egyptian dialect, from a book that taught using transliteration and contained no MSA, before learning MSA. And so I learned blue as zar'a before zarqaa' and thought zarqaa' strange at first as blue was just zar'a to me. In fact I can remember when I starting learning MSA I had a hard time (not really really hard, but more difficult than someone starting from scratch with no preconceived notions about Arabic) separating it from my Egyptian foundation whcih was my point of departure and which influenced how I learned MSA. And even today I sometimes will read some words as they are pronounced in Egyptian as that is the stronger of my two Arabics, as it were.


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## MarcB

I have nothing to add to the already good answers as far as the spoken vs written. What I can tell you is qaaf is almost always pronounced as hamza in urban spoken Arabic of Egypt and the Levant. There are a few exceptions including MSA loan words. In the rest of Africa and Arabia the usual sound of qaaf is g as in go. Some urban parts of Africa use qaaf as in MSA.Egyptian Urban also pronounces jiim as giim as in go.This site http://areg.amaksoud.com/ shows MSA and Egyptian side by side.


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## cherine

I don't have much to add either, only few things:
- Egyptians do learn the spoken form long before the written one. I can never forget a newspaper report about how the level of education is getting worse; they gave an example of some students writing some words influenced by the colloquial: a boy wrote مأمور (sherif) with a qaaf مقمور because he believed that every alef was in fact a qaaf.  A girl didn't know that ألماظ is only the colloquial form of الماس so she wrote a sentence with الماس والألماظ ....

This can seem funny, but for those who care -and worry- about the education level, specially concerning Arabic, find it a very sad thing 

- Egyptians pronounce most ق as همزة with very few exceptions. I can only think of القاهرة which we don't pronounce as al-2aahera.
Another example is عبقري - عبقرية (I was just reminded by it while watching tv. )


clevermizo said:


> is it more common among Egyptians to write زرقاء (the MSA feminine form) or زرقة when writing in dialect? Perhaps زرقا? Maybe it varies among speakers?


As we all agree, there's not one way to write spoken Arabic, but I don't think that many people would write it زرقاء it would either be زرقا or زرقة . And with the current state of the education level, you can also expect to see people writing زرأة


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## pennylane128

Thank you, everyone! You all gave really great, helpful responses.

Clevermizo, you said that I should learn MSA as well. Do you think it would be best to do that or would that just complicate my EA studies?


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## clevermizo

You will have to eventually to be fully competent in Arabic, but if you're a little hesitant, just focus on EA. There's nothing wrong with studying a dialect thoroughly before MSA, just know that you may encounter some unpredicted spellings in writing dialect words in Arabic letters.


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## pennylane128

Yeah, I think it might be best if I just stuck to one dialect right now, so as not to get overwhelmed. I was thinking that once I got into college I would take MSA courses, once I have a bit of a solid background in EA.


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## clevermizo

Sounds like a plan. Don't forget to take a trip to Egypt too.


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## Andrew___

The Egyptians also seem to pronounce the adjective حقيرة as an MSA qaaf, right?


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## WadiH

clevermizo said:


> It is not so much "knowing to pronounce a qaaf as hamza." When a native speaker acquires a word, such as [2alb] قلب, they acquire the word just as it is - just as you would learn the word "heart" while growing up in an English speaking environment.
> 
> Then later on they go to school, and they learn how the word is spelled in Standard/Classical Arabic and that the sound that the letter ق makes is [q] - [qalb].
> 
> Thus they have two words they have learned that mean the same thing: qalb (in MSA) and 2alb (in Egyptian). When they go to choose a written form they will usually use the MSA form because that is perceived as the only correct written form (and I have a feeling that writing ألب would look odd to most people).
> 
> There's no clue - they simply speak their native language, but often choose written forms from a different register of language. This is because there is always a little variation involved in spelling dialectal words - because they are not standardized spellings - and probably a little awkwardness choosing forms that although better representing the spoken form, look awkwardly misspelled.
> 
> For you as the non-native, you simply have to learn MSA as well in order to understand why people write they way they do.
> 
> On another note - is it more common among Egyptians to write زرقاء (the MSA feminine form) or زرقة when writing in dialect? Perhaps زرقا? Maybe it varies among speakers?


 
This phenomenon is hardly limited to Arabic, though, is it?  I mean why do we write "laugh" rather than "laf"?  Isn't it because the "gh" represents some lost sound?  Some English speakers (according to dialect) will drop some t's or r's, but they still show up in writing.


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## clevermizo

I was going to bring this up (laugh), but it's a little bit different in English, because there is never a circumstance under which the etymological _gh_ (a خ sound) is pronounced. The same with _knife_. However, the principle, if you forget for a moment about the status Classical Arabic/MSA in modern times, is the same. It would be identical if there were a register in English in which we still read words according to Middle English pronunciation. Also no one is ever taught in school how these words would sound with their spelled pronunciations, rather than their modern dialectal pronunciations, unless you take classes in the history of the English language.

Most English dialects in America are not too divergent in terms of consonant sounds, but there is no "standard" dialect taught all over America (actually I think educators try to pick something that sounds "neutral"). In the UK I bet there is a closer comparison with divergent English dialects around the country, versus Received Pronunciation which is what is considered "educated". In any case, the accepted spelled forms of English words represent combinations of sounds that are often part of extinct phonology of English, and so you simply have to accept the spelled form as you learn it, without opportunity to vocalize it.


cherine said:


> As we all agree, there's not one way to write spoken Arabic, but I don't think that many people would write it زرقاء it would either be زرقا or زرقة . And with the current state of the education level, you can also expect to see people writing زرأة



Out of curiosity, but not to put the native speaker on the spot - how would _you_ write it?

My colloquial Syrian course always wrote these words زرقاء, بيضاء etc., but the transliteration would of course be "zar2a" and "beeDa" and not "zar2(q)aa2" nor "bee/ayDaa2".  I thought this was weird until I learned that these were the correct forms in MSA.


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## cherine

clevermizo said:


> Out of curiosity, but not to put the native speaker on the spot - how would _you_ write it?



I think I would write it زرقا , though I usually -and I'm not alone in this- write colloquial in transliteration (zayy keda masalan). It always looks weird to me to see colloquial Arabic written.
If you have a facebook account, take a look at any Arabic group, you'll see wonders  (and same in most, if not all, Arabic non-official sites).


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## Ali Smith

elroy said:


> Hi pennylane128,
> 
> The reason is that the word is spelled (and pronounced) with a qaaf in MSA, but in many dialects (such as Egyptian) the qaaf is pronounced as a glottal stop (hamza).  Despite dialectal deviations in pronunciation, words tend to be spelled as in MSA by those wishing to write in colloquial Arabic.


I thought قاف was simply dropped in Egyptian Arabic. For instance, Egyptians pronounce سُوْق (market) as سُوْ.
هيّ رايحة السو (She's going to the market.)


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## analeeh

That might (?) be the case for سوق, but I suspect you're just not hearing the glottal stop clearly. Certainly in Levantine the glottalised q is never dropped, even if it's difficult to hear if your native language doesn't have a phonemic glottal stop.


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## wriight

To add on to that: English lacks precise terminology for the glottal stop until you get to higher-register vocab like... well, "glottal stop". An English source might describe ق as being "dropped" in the same way that the glottalization of English T (e.g. "meet" pronounced as مِيء) is colloquially referred to as "dropping the T", even if the source is aware of the difference between ء and no sound, just because that's the easiest way to describe it in English. They do really mean ء, though.


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## Ali Smith

wriight: That's so interesting! And is this conversion of a final t into a glottal stop (i.e. همزة) common in American English? I never realized that my American friends do actually pronounce "meet" as ميء rather than ميت when speaking English.


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## analeeh

It's common to a greater or lesser degree in most varieties of English, though I think it's more widespread in BrE than AmE.


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## Ali Smith

Thanks! So, in colloquial Egyptian and Levantine the word سُوْق (market) is pronounced identically to the word سُوْء (evilness, badness), right?


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