# ج - جيم pronunciation



## Qcumber

Tariq Ibn Ziyad, you wrote a good summary on the various pronunciations of the letter qaaf. Could you please do the same for the letter jiim?


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## MarcB

Qcumber,
 I will start a partial list and others can add to it.
Most Maghrebi like the s in pleasure. Most Khaleeji like j in judge, some like y,some s in pleasure.Most Shami like s in pleasure some like j some y.Northern Masr g in go,south and some villages s in pleasure. Sudan Chad most s,some j. Adeni and some other parts of Yemen g in go.
Fus7a= j, Ancient semitic g in go.


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## cherine

MarcB said:


> Northern Masr g in go,south and some villages s in pleasure.


For those who don't know, MaSr/MiSr = Egypt.

Marc is right, and I'd add : some few rural places pronounce it like a d, but.. umm, people usually laugh at this pronounciation.


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

Qcumber said:


> Tariq Ibn Ziyad, you wrote a good summary on the various pronunciations of the letter qaaf. Could you please do the same for the letter jiim?


well.. "Jiim"is a little bit more complicated than "qaf".even arabic linguist argued on this fact,but the correct pronounciation in fus7a should be "J"(the english j),but MSA tends to use "zh"(french j) in most countries.
In dialects,my knowledge is much bigger concerning north africa than the middle east or the gulf so please correct me if i say something wrong.

Jiim(english j):
- is used in bedouin dialects:even sometimes instead of gaf(qaf) (examples: soug,plural:aswâj:markets ; kashûga,plural:khawashîj:spoons ; jiddâm:in front)
-In most rural dialects,except in morocco and tunisia
-In some cities such as baghdad and algiers(and central algeria)
-in gulfic dialects(which are more or less bedouin)

zhiim (french j)
-in most urban dialects(except gulfic,central algerian,northern egyptian,yemeni,omani,and countries very influenced by bedouin)
-in western and eastern algerian
-in morocco and tunisia this is the only pronounciation(whith some exceptions)

NB: in many dialects using "zh" some exceptions are made,for example after the article "al"(or "el""il"),speakers tend to pronounce "J"

Giim:
-In northern egyptian(cairo dialect)
-In yemen
-In oman there is a co-existence with "J"(example:some speakers prefer to say "wâjid" than "wâgid"=much)
In Morocco,there are some words where letter "g" comes from "jîm" instead of "qaf"(which is generally the casa with "g" in moroccan dialect)
examples:Gezzâr:butcher,gles:to sit
the reason is that moroccan arabic doesn't like having Jiim(pronounced zhiim) with S,Sh or Z in the same word

Yîm:

I don't know very much about that one,i know that you can hear it in Gulfic dialects(example: wâyyid=much,instead of wâjid)

Dîm:
never heard about that one,can anybody think of an example? thanks!


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## cherine

Tariq_Ibn_zyad said:


> Dîm:
> never heard about that one,can anybody think of an example? thanks!


See my post 

I'll give a fantasy example :
Such people say : ديت من دنب الديران deit men dan ed-deraan for جيت من جنب الجيران geit men ganb el-geraan (Cairo and bigger cities) or jeit men janb ej-jeraan (rural areas).
(I came from beside the neighbors' )


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

that's interesting,it must sound funny..for me pronouncing "zh" even "gim" sound very strange to me when i hear egyptians,but "d",i look forward to hear someone speaking like that


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## Qcumber

Thanks a lot, MarcB, Cherine, and above all Tariq Ibn Zyad.
As with qaaf, what strikes me is the contrast between the urban pronunciation and the rural one.

I also found in the Encyclopedia of Islam that there are Beduin tribes and Eastern Arabs who pronounce it gyiim.


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## mansio

I read somewhere that the "g" pronunciation of the letter "jiim" was the original pronunciation in archaic Arabic.
Does anyone know about that?


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

I read the same thing.
I think it comes from yemen where it is still pronounced like that,and the yemeni dialect(southern arabic) appears to be the one the most ancient.Nowadays linguists tend to say that yemeni dialect is the closest to classical arabic.

In a linguistic point of view,this is quite logic that "gim" is more ancient than "jim":
gim has been palatalised to jim than to zhim(which the the most recent pronounciation,it's no surprise that it's used mostly in cities)


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## Qcumber

Tariq_Ibn_zyad said:


> In Morocco,there are some words where letter "g" comes from "jîm" instead of "qaf"(which is generally the casa with "g" in moroccan dialect) examples:Gezzâr:butcher,gles:to sit
> the reason is that moroccan arabic doesn't like having Jiim(pronounced zhiim) with S,Sh or Z in the same word


 
An arresting case of dissimilation.


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

it's very frequent in moroccan arabic.
in the case I mentionned,J became G,but there are many other cases,letter shiin is also affected by this:
zhuzh= two   from zawj(pair)
shemsh=sun  from shams
daaz(or gaaz in tangiers):he passed  from jaaza
dzayer=algeria from al jazaa'ir
shedd=he closed  from sadda(block)
mzhowwezh=married  from mutazawwij
etc etc


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## Qcumber

Tariq_Ibn_zyad said:


> zhuzh= two from zawj(pair)
> shemsh=sun from shams


These are two cases of assimilation, not dissimilation like the others.
Thanks a lot. Quite exciting.


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## MarcB

MarcB said:


> Fus7a= j, Ancient semitic g in go.


I mentioned that in post 2. cf. Syriac= gamal, Hebrew= gimel, Aramaic =gimel. Some tribes from Yemen(not all) and some who migrated to Egypt conserve this sound. As we can see the sound in spoken Arabic has changed from place to place. In fus7a it changed to j.


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

Qcumber said:


> These are two cases of assimilation, not dissimilation like the others.
> Thanks a lot. Quite exciting.


you're welcome


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## mansio

Tariq_Ibn_zyad said:


> I read the same thing.
> I think it comes from yemen where it is still pronounced like that,and the yemeni dialect(southern arabic) appears to be the one the most ancient.Nowadays linguists tend to say that yemeni dialect is the closest to classical arabic.
> 
> In a linguistic point of view,this is quite logic that "gim" is more ancient than "jim":
> gim has been palatalised to jim than to zhim(which the the most recent pronounciation,it's no surprise that it's used mostly in cities)



Thanks for your explanation. 
I noticed also that some linguists transliterate the "jiim" with a "g" topped by an inversed ^. 
That could illustrate the fact that they consider the "jiim" as being a derived pronunciation (through palatalization as you said) of the "g".


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## Litewiz

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello all, this is my first post, and so first of all Id like to say assalamuailaykum to all.

I have a problem, when reading the quran its common to read the letter Jeem with a hard J,

example of 'hard J' (J) take the English word: JOKE, or JAM.
'Soft J' (j) is for example the French name: Jacques.

Now when reading text in Modern standard Arabic do I read the letter Jeem with a hard J? or a soft J "

for example take the word Bijanib (beside), is it biJanib or bijanib?

Jisr (bridge) is it jisr or Jisr?

Hope you guys get my drift, all help appreciated!

peaaace


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## elroy

Welcome to the forums, Litewiz. 

Personally, I pronounce the letter ج exclusively with a "soft _j_" sound - but I've heard it pronounced the other way (which I think is less common).

I think both are fine as long as you're consistent.


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## Tajabone

Salut Litewiz,

 I was discussing the two phonetic values of the letter Jim some hours ago with friends of mine 

 In the center area of Algeria (Algiers for instance), we clearly use Jim in a strong way, like "Joke" in English.

 This is why we write "Djamal" instead of "Jamal" (or Djazaïr instead of Jazair)

 I saw Al-Jazeera yesterday and I noticed that some journalists and commentators where also using Jim in the strong way (nothing to do with the J of Jacques for instance).

 However, it makes strictly no semantic difference since it's only a geographic mark.

 Bye


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## Nikola

I have read that in classical Arabic the sound is/was like the hard sound of judge. However, in spoken Arabic the sound ranges from j=judge,s=pleasure,g=go,y=yes.MSA which is also fusHa uses the two sounds you have mentioned. You may wish to follow tajweed.


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## Anatoli

I read that the standard (MSA or Classical Arabic) way is the English J but many dialects use the French J and also pronounce the MSA that way.


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## xebonyx

I've experienced speaking with a soft j and having it corrected, and when I changed them to hard j's, I would run into the same problem, haha. I think it was more accepted for me to say the hard J-- but maybe that's because it's expected from me naturally since that's the only type of J we use (in English)...??


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## elroy

Anatoli said:


> I read that the standard (MSA or Classical Arabic) way is the English J but many dialects use the French J and also pronounce the MSA that way.


 I have never heard that the "hard _j_" is *the* standard way.  Perhaps it depends on the region.  In Israel and the Palestinian Territories, with few regional exceptions, it is pronounced like the French _j_ - and that's what's taught in schools.


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## Anatoli

I am about confused about somewhat controversial statementsin this Wikipedi article regarding consonants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_phonology#Consonants

_Is this regional pronunciation of classical or literary Arabic?:_



> ...[*dʒ*] is pronounced as [*ɡ*] by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced as [*ʒ*], and in certain regions of Oman it is pronounced as [*j*].



The main table contains only [*dʒ*] (English "J")

below:


> Most variations on spoken Arabic have different reflexes of *Classical Arabic phonemes* than the pronunciation of *literary Arabic*. Or, to put it differently, *spoken and literary Arabic* differ not only in specific words but also contain changes in the pronunciations of certain sounds.





> This does not mean that Egyptians recite the Qur'an differently or that they do not know the *standard *pronunciation: speakers have no difficulty pronouncing /q/ correctly and understand Standard Arabic when necessary.



[*ʒ*] (French "j" symbol) is quoted in the same paragraph as Egyptian "g" and Yemeni "j" ("y" in "yes"), hardto tell if there are multiple standard of MSA or these variations are considered only part of spoken dialects. The last statement is certainly against that.

The books I've got (on MSA) all explain the standard pronunciation as English J, even the Russian ones, although it would be easier to refer to "jiim" with the Russian letter "ж" (pronounced as French j, Polish ż, etc). The English J sound is absent in Russian.

You natives speakers should know better, maybe standards have changed?


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## Qcumber

Anatoli said:


> I read that the standard (MSA or Classical Arabic) way is the English J but many dialects use the French J and also pronounce the MSA that way.


Leaving aside the areas where it is pronounced /g/, I read the contrary: that true Arabic has the French <j>, whereas most modern Arabics have the English <j>.


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## Anatoli

Here's some more:
Classical Arabic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


> In modern Arabic, /dʒ/ is pronounced as [ɡ] by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced as [ʒ]. *However, the true classical pronunciation was most likely a voiced palatal plosive ([ ɟ ]) or palatalized velar stop ([gʲ]*.


There's still some uncertainty, and I am not quite sure about what sounds these symbols represent [ ɟ ] ("f" turned 180 around its axis) and [gʲ] ("g" with a little superscript "j", I think)


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

Qcumber said:


> Leaving aside the areas where it is pronounced /g/, I read the contrary: that true Arabic has the French <j>, whereas most modern Arabics have the English <j>.


There is no "true" Arabic
English J appears to be a more ancient pronounciation(in general badawi and rural dialects) while french j is more modern(in general urban dialects).
As fus7a is a written language,people tend to pronounce j as it's pronounced in their dialect.

I also noticed that English J was more pronounced when speaking Classical Arabic,especially when reading the qur'an,while French j seems to be only used in Modern Standard Arabic


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## Qcumber

Abu Bishr, who has books written by Medieval Arab grammarians, should tell us how they phonetically describe the sound represented by the letter jiim.


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## Outsider

Anatoli said:


> There's still some uncertainty, and I am not quite sure about what sounds these symbols represent [ ... ] ("f" turned 180 around its axis) and [...] ("g" with a little superscript "j", I think)


That's right. You can listen to the former here, and you can try to understand palatalization (which is what the little "j" stands for) here. Wait, you're a Russian speaker -- then palatalization should be a familiar concept to you.

An interesting note. There is a river in the Iberian Peninsula called the Tagus. This is how it's known in English, and it's also the Latin name. But in Spanish it's called Tajo, and in Portuguese Tejo. I read a while ago that the switch from "g" to "j" was due to Arabic influence. The Moors (I apologize if this name is considered offensive) did not have the sound of the Latin (hard) "g" in their language, so they replaced it with "j".


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## Qcumber

If Paul Meier's pronunciation is correct - which is not always the case - [c] = [kj] <ky> as in Eng. _cute_, and [*ɟ*] = [gj] <gy> as in Eng. _gewgaw_.


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## Anatoli

Outsider said:


> That's right. You can listen to the former here, and you can try to understand palatalization (which is what the little "j" stands for) here. Wait, you're a Russian speaker -- then palatalization should be a familiar concept to you.
> ...


Interesting link, thanks. These symbols confused even more, it doesn' match any MODERN Arabic pronunciations of the letter.

Of course, I am familiar with palatalisation, only wasn't too sure about the notation.


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## SerinusCanaria3075

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
مرحبا​I have a question about the way the letter ğim (ج) should be pronounced (and transliterated) when it is at the end of a word. I've seen a Spanish website that transliterates تاج as "taay" and بُرْج "bury" which in my opinion is very misleading. Is it safe to say that ج at the end is always pronounced as /*ʒ*/ (*ž* / *ж */ *zh*) or /ʤ/?
And should تا*ج* and بُرْ*ج* be pronounced as "taaj and burj" (respectively) rather than "taai and buri"?

Thanks in advance for clearing up this doubt of mine.


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## MarcB

The jim in classical Arabic is like the j in judge, this sound is not part of Spanish phonemes although some people use it. In MSA it can also be like the s in pleasure or French j.In dialects it can be those two sounds or like y in year( some Gulf) and g in go most of Egypt, parts of Yemen and Oman.


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## cherine

SerinusCanaria3075 said:


> I've seen a Spanish website that transliterates تاج as "taay" and بُرْج "bury" which in my opinion is very misleading. Is it safe to say that ج at the end is always pronounced as /*ʒ*/ (*ž* / *ж */ *zh*) or /ʤ/?​And should تا*ج* and بُرْ*ج* be pronounced as "taaj and burj" (respectively) rather than "taai and buri"?


I agree with Marc. If the Spanish website chose to transliterate it with a "j" it would be misleading, so the "y" is closer, specially that I've heard many Spanish speakers pronouncing the English words with "j" as "y".
If you were to transliterate the Egyptian pronounciation, the "g" (or "gu" if it's followed by a vowel) would be a good choice.


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## huhmzah

The letters Y and LL are pronounced /ʒ/ in some dialects of Spanish - case in point Argentinian.
So an Argentinian will pronounce Taay and Bury like a Maghrebine would pronounce تاج and برج


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## SerinusCanaria3075

Yes, that was my thought exactly. However, when I see a "y" (in Spanish) at the end of a word (as in _ha*y*_) I always think of /ai/ whereas _ta*ll* _would be more reasonable (in my opinion) for /taj/ as in English Taj Mahal.

I just needed to verify that تاج had the sound of S in _plea*s*ure_ or J in _*j*our_. 
Contrary to Macedonian J where ча*ј* (tea) sounds similar to Bulgarian ча*й* /chai/ and Arabic شا*ي */shay/.

Thanks to all for your contribution.


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## nn.om

Ashamed of myself=[
ما هي حالات حرف الجيم التي يُنطق فيها بهذا الصوت
[dʒ]
?​


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## WadiH

Isn't this the symbol of the standard Arabic جيم (more or less equivalent to the English 'j'), or do you have a different sound in mind?


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## elroy

nn.om said:


> ما هي حالات حرف الجيم التي يُنطق فيها بهذا الصوت
> [dʒ]​
> ?​



أنا شخصيًا لا أنطقه أبدًا هكذا. أعتقد أن لفظ هذا الحرف يعتمد في المقام الأول على لهجة المتكلم، أي أن الحرف يُلفظ بهذه الطريقة وبتلك ولا يعتمد لفظه على الكلمة ولا يخضع لأية قوانين نطق معينة.​ 
أنا ألفظ الحرف ليس كحرف الـ-j الإنجليزي بل كحرف الـ-g الفرنسي أي كحرف الـ-s في الكلمة الإنجليزية pleasure، وهذا هو اللفظ الأكثر انتشارًا لدى الفلسطينيين. أما اللفظ الآخر فهو موجود في بعض مناطق الضفة الغربية.​


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## Ghabi

Yes, /dʒ/ is the IPA for the _fuSHa_ جيم.


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## nn.om

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Isn't this the symbol of the standard Arabic جيم (more or less equivalent to the English 'j'), or do you have a different sound in mind?


 
 قيل لي إن الجيم في الفصحى ينطق /dʒ/ في حالات معينة، وفي حالات أخرى ينطق /ʒ/. لا أدري


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## WadiH

nn.om said:


> قيل لي إن الجيم في الفصحى ينطق /dʒ/ في حالات معينة، وفي حالات أخرى ينطق /ʒ/. لا أدري



This is a big topic.

Basically, /dʒ/ (the English 'j') is the received pronunciation in _fuSHa_ today.  It is not rigorously observed, of course, as people tend to carry over their own local variation into their MSA speech, but if you listen to Quranic recitations for example, this is the pronunciation you will hear.  In fact, under the rules of _tajwiid_, جيم is considered one of حروف القلقلة.

Now, does this mean that this was the original pronunciation of Classical Arabic, or of Old Arabic (i.e. pre-Islamic Arabic, in all its dialects and variations)?  Who knows.

As far as Classical Arabic is concerned (the so-called_ lughat quraysh_, the composite dialect on which MSA was later based), I've heard that the top two candidates are [ʒ] (Elroy's pronunciation, which you hear in most urban dialects, including the Hejaz), and the voiced palatal plosive, which is the bedouin pronunciation (and here I mean bedouin in the literal sense.  City slickers like me pronounce it as [dʒ], as in MSA).  But I don't see why it couldn't have been [dʒ].

In Old Arabic, of course there were all kinds of variations, including all of the above as well as [g] in Yemen and Oman, which carried over into Egyptian Arabic.  Naturally, all four of these varieties ([dʒ], [ʒ], [g], and the voiced palatal plosive) still coexist in the Arabian Peninsula today.


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## elroy

What do you mean by "received pronunciation"?  It is well known that the rules of تجويد do not necessarily apply to "regular MSA."  What other reasons do you have to corroborate the claim that [dʒ] is somehow superior to [ʒ] in the regular, everyday modern standard Arabic of 2009?


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## WadiH

I don't know what you mean by "superior," but I think that most Arabic-speakers consider [dʒ] to be the "correct" فصحى pronunciation, and that's what I mean by "received pronunciation."  If you watch Al-Jazira or Al-Arabiya you'll find most anchors will try to pronounce it [dʒ] (unless I'm not listening closely enough?), even though their guests probably will not try to do the same. (nevermind lol)

By the way (and I know this is anecdotal), all of my schoolteachers for 12 years came from either Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, or Jordan, and they all taught us that [dʒ] was the way to go in فصحى.  Once in first grade, my Lebanese teacher mentioned in passing that she'd "heard" that the correct pronunciation was [ʒ] but that she was "not sure."


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## elroy

Well, I, for one, do not consider it "*the *correct pronunciation."  I was never taught that it was, and I don't know anyone who pronounces it that way unless they also do so in colloquial Arabic.  At least on Israeli TV, the pronunciation you consistently hear on Arabic shows and broadcasts (including the news) is [ʒ].  Throughout all of my formative years, which I spent in the Jerusalem area, I was so "immersed" in the [ʒ] pronunciation - both in colloquial and MSA contexts - that I simply cannot come to terms with the suggestion that it is not correct in MSA.  As far as I'm concerned, it is no less correct than any other standard pronunciation.  In fact - and I know this may sound shocking - if I personally had to identify one of the two as "the correct one" (not that I think there's a reason to; see my first post in the thread), I would choose [ʒ] based on my personal experiences.  And by the way, that is the pronunciation I always teach to foreigners.  Teaching them the other one would feel highly unnatural to me.


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## WadiH

Elroy,
If you'd grown up in Egypt, you'd have likewise been immersed in the [g] pronunciation, both in ordinary speech and in MSA.  You probably would have heard it from all of your schoolteachers, and everyone on TV and even in speeches by the president himself.  However, it still would not be considered "proper" MSA pronunciation.  Like I said earlier, people carry over features of their ordinary speech into their version of MSA, which is why we can usually identify a person's country of origin even when they're speaking MSA, but that doesn't mean that these features are recognized as part of MSA.

By the way, I'm not trying to give a normative description of how you _should_ pronounce it.  You should know by now that that's not exactly how I "think" about Arabic.

By the way, you're right that we don't apply the rules of _tajwiid_ outside of Quranic recitation.  For example, we don't follow rules such as إدغام, إخفاء, غنّة, إقلاب, or قلقلة (well maybe إدغام finds its way in our speech sometimes).  However, when it comes to مخارج الحروف, I'd say there is a an exact correspondence between Quranic recitation and "correct" MSA.  What else makes people think that anything other than ق=[q] or ض=[D] is "wrong?"

I suppose one way to resolve this issue is simply to refer to a standard textbook on MSA.  Hopefully one of our other posters can help us with that.


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## Ghabi

Actually I've come across Western textbooks of _fuSHa_ that teach the /ʒ/ pronunciation, although the /dʒ/-approach might be a bit more popular. 

As a foreign learner, I've accepted from the very beginning the multi-faceted nature of ج (as well as ق), and never considered that an "issue".


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## Anatoli

I always thought that only [dʒ] is the correct or more standard MSA, that's the way Western textbooks are written and recorded.



> I suppose one way to resolve this issue is simply to refer to a standard textbook on MSA.


These textbooks use [dʒ]: Teach Yourself Arabic, Mastering Arabic, Introduction into Modern Standard Arabic. So do Madina university textbooks - they are downloadable. They always say [radʒul], not [raʒul]

This site with Qur'an recitation also uses [dʒ], if I remember correctly.
http://transliteration.org/quran/WebSite_CD/MixNoble/Fram2E.htm

I think Al-Jazeera broadcasters use [dʒ]. I try to listen to them sometimes. 
I've got a Russia made Arabic reader where they use [ʒ] and someone (a learner) criticised the textbook for this when I shared one of their recordings.

I understand there is no "prescribed" pronunciation in Arabic for ج and [dʒ], [ʒ] and [g] are all acceptable regional versions of ج. Although Lebanese people in Australia say [ʒ], so do the local Arabic radio broadcasters - [ʒ]. I already got used to both accents: [dʒ] and [ʒ] for the words I understand. I think I will use more [ʒ] than [dʒ], it seems a bit more casual. I hear [dʒ] from very serious people on Australian SBS radio.

From Wikipedia:


> ج‎ dʒ ~ ɡ
> 
> ج‎ (/dʒ/) is pronounced [ɡ] by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced [ʒ], and in certain regions of the Persian Gulf it is pronounced [j]. In classical Arabic, this was either [ɟ] or [ɡʲ].


EDIT:
The last part about classical Arabic means that none of the 3 current versions match the original, classical pronunciation  but this pronunciation can still be found in some dialects:
[ɟ] (_voiced palatal plosive_) is spoken in Yemen and Sudan, along with other pronunciations. [ɟ] is like palatalised d in "dělám" (Czech) or "д" in "делаю" (Russian)

 [ɡʲ] is palatalised "g" like in Polish or Russian gitara/гитара.


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## Anatoli

This text-to-speech engine uses [ʒ] (both male and female voice):
http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html


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## elroy

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Elroy,
> If you'd grown up in Egypt, you'd have likewise been immersed in the [g] pronunciation, both in ordinary speech and in MSA.  You probably would have heard it from all of your schoolteachers, and everyone on TV and even in speeches by the president himself.  However, it still would not be considered "proper" MSA pronunciation.


 I highly doubt that [g] is not perceived as "proper MSA" in Egypt; otherwise, it would not be used by so many educated Egyptians.  Similarly, [ʒ] is the standard pronunciation used by Palestinians, and it is by no means considered incorrect.  As a matter of fact, [dʒ] sounds dialectal to most Palestinians, and downright laughable to some.

So I disagree with your insinuation that [dʒ] is considered _the_ correct pronunciation by the majority of Arabs everywhere.  That's simply not true.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> However, when it comes to مخارج الحروف, I'd say there is a an exact correspondence between Quranic recitation and "correct" MSA.  What else makes people think that anything other than ق=[q] or ض=[D] is "wrong?"


 Your argument is not valid.  My guess would be that the reason only [q] and [D] are accepted as standard pronunciations of ق and ض, respectively, is that the other pronunciations found in some dialects could be confused with other phonemes found in MSA (the same applies to ث and ذ, for example).  ج is truly unique in that all 4 pronunciations found in the Arab world are _allophones_ of the same phoneme.  Thus, whether you pronounce جزر "ʒazar," "dʒazar," "gazar," or "ɟazar" (with a voiced palatal plosive), there is no confusion or ambiguity, whereas قُم could be confused with أُم if the ق is pronounced as a glottal stop, and ثار with سار if the ث is pronounced as a س, etc.

So I don't think it has anything to do with تجويد.  It simply wouldn't be practical to allow those other pronunciations in MSA, whereas allowing the different allophones of ج presents no problems.


----------



## Mahaodeh

Elroy, what you are saying is not entirely true; the jeem as pronounced by the Palestinians can actually be confused with a sheen. It may not be as identical to a sheen as the two examples you gave but it's close enough for me to notice that children in primary schools confuse the two in spelling tests when the teacher giving the test (hence pronouncing the words) is Palestinian.
 
I personally don't think that confusion is the reason any letter is considered "standard", I mean, why don't they assume that g is the proper pronunciation of qaaf rather than q? or that ض and ظ are identical? Being identical won't make any confusion, neither would using g for a qaaf.
 
However, I wouldn't assume it all depends on tajweed either; fus7a was never a dead language and while everyone has been speaking colloquial for centuries, everyone has also been writing and reading in fus7a and pronouncing fus7a letters. This practice never stopped so it would be hard to imagine that one day everyone woke up and thought "I wonder how one would pronounce the qaaf? Is it hamza or gaaf?". The reason why there is now confusion between whether ʒ or dʒ is the correct pronunciation is simply because the two sounds are quite close to each other and everyone (as persons) accepts both of them as jeem.
 
One must admit though, that tajweed was never dead either; and since day one its main purpose was to make sure all the letters (as well as words) are pronounced properly; so one can not dismiss tajweed when deciding which one is the correct pronunciation.


----------



## WadiH

elroy said:


> I highly doubt that [g] is not perceived as "proper MSA" in Egypt; otherwise, it would not be used by so many educated Egyptians.  Similarly, [ʒ] is the standard pronunciation used by Palestinians, and it is by no means considered incorrect.  As a matter of fact, [dʒ] sounds dialectal to most Palestinians, and downright laughable to some.
> 
> So I disagree with your insinuation that [dʒ] is considered _the_ correct pronunciation by the majority of Arabs everywhere.  That's simply not true.
> 
> Your argument is not valid.  My guess would be that the reason only [q] and [D] are accepted as standard pronunciations of ق and ض, respectively, is that the other pronunciations found in some dialects could be confused with other phonemes found in MSA (the same applies to ث and ذ, for example).  ج is truly unique in that all 4 pronunciations found in the Arab world are _allophones_ of the same phoneme.  Thus, whether you pronounce جزر "ʒazar," "dʒazar," "gazar," or "ɟazar" (with a voiced palatal plosive), there is no confusion or ambiguity, whereas قُم could be confused with أُم if the ق is pronounced as a glottal stop, and ثار with سار if the ث is pronounced as a س, etc.
> 
> So I don't think it has anything to do with تجويد.  It simply wouldn't be practical to allow those other pronunciations in MSA, whereas allowing the different allophones of ج presents no problems.



So your view is that whatever pronunciation exists in any dialect will be considered standard by speakers of that dialect, unless that pronunciation causes ambiguity with other letters?

Also, can you think of any other example of a letter whose مخرج in MSA differs from its مخرج in Quranic recitation?

Anyway, here's an excerpt from a review of a book on linguistics by a Lebanese scholar named نادر سراج:

وقدم عرضا استشهد فيه بباحثين وكتاب قدامى ومحدثين وتحدث فيه مثلا عن الجيم في توصيف كل من سيبويه (183 للهجرة) وابن جني (393 للهجرة) عطفا على آخرين. وتحدث عن الجيم معطشة وشامية كما وردت عند رفاعة الطهطاوي في "تخليص الإبريز في تلخيص باريز" (1834) ثم عن الجيم الفصيحة عند الدكتور إبراهيم أنيس في "الأصوات اللغوية" والذي انتهى إلى أن للجيم من الناحية الصوتية ثلاثة أنواع هي.. "شديدة خالصة الشدة وتلك هي الجيم المصرية ومزدوجة من الشدة والرخاوة فيها من الصفتين معا وتلك هي المسماة بالفصيحة وأخيرا تلك الجيم الرخوة الخالصة الرخاوة وهي الجيم الشامية. ومخرج النوعين الأخيرين من وسط الحنك..."

Of course he's quoting إبراهيم أنيس, who was Egyptian.


----------



## Anatoli

This comment when describing the pronunciation of letter ﺝ is quite common:



> in Arabic, it represents a voiced postalveolar affricate [dʒ] in the _standard language_, though this varies (with [ɡ] and [ʒ] being the most common) from dialect to dialect.


Interesting that textbooks fail to mention any variations of the pronunciation_. Student Grammar or Modern Standard Arabic_ says "as g in gentle" and _Elementary Modern Standard Arabic_ describes "as j in judge".

Russian textbooks always use "дж" ([dʒ]) or refer to English "j", not "ж" ([ʒ]), the former is harder for Russians to master than the latter but the former is considered the standard for Russian Arabists. Therefore, words of Arabic origin with ﺝ are usually transliterated with "дж" in Russian, Хадж (حج‎), джинн (جني).


----------



## nn.om

أريد فقط أن أشكر الجميع هنا على مشاركاتهم. جزيتم خيراً كثيراً. لم أظن أن المسألة معقدة كهذا، ولقد وقفت عند بعض النقاط التي لم أستوعبها جيداً، أو ربما لا أرى أنها صحيحة، ولكني تركت عني التفكير في دخول جدال عنها كوني لم أدرس إلا القليل جداً عن علم الأصوات. أريد أن أشكركم مرة أخرى على هذا النقاش الطيب.


----------



## elroy

Mahaodeh said:


> Elroy, what you are saying is not entirely true; the jeem as pronounced by the Palestinians can actually be confused with a sheen.


 Not if each letter is pronounced clearly.  This has never caused me any confusion. 





> I personally don't think that confusion is the reason any letter is considered "standard", I mean, why don't they assume that g is the proper pronunciation of qaaf rather than q?


 Okay, that's a good counter-example.  My thoughts were simply speculative, although I should mention that the fact that there is a counter-example doesn't necessarily mean that my theory has no merit.  There may be other factors that hindered the acceptance of [g] as an acceptable pronunciation of ق. 


> or that ض and ظ are identical? Being identical won't make any confusion


 Actually, it would (ضل vs. ظل), so this is not a good counter-example. 



> This practice never stopped so it would be hard to imagine that one day everyone woke up and thought "I wonder how one would pronounce the qaaf? Is it hamza or gaaf?".


 Of course not.  These developments must have taken place over many years. 


> The reason why there is now confusion between whether ʒ or dʒ is the correct pronunciation is simply because the two sounds are quite close to each other and everyone (as persons) accepts both of them as jeem.


 For me, there is no confusion.  As I said, they are simply allophones of the same phoneme.  No big deal.  It happens in every language.  I don't see why we have to choose one as _the_ correct one, when both are used by educated native speakers across the Arab world.



> One must admit though, that tajweed was never dead either; and since day one its main purpose was to make sure all the letters (as well as words) are pronounced properly; so one can not dismiss tajweed when deciding which one is the correct pronunciation.


 Actually, I personally think its authoritative role is pretty much limited to Qur'anic recitation.  As Wadi Hanifa said, rules that must be followed in تجويد are broken all the time in modern MSA.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> So your view is that whatever pronunciation exists in any dialect will be considered standard by speakers of that dialect, unless that pronunciation causes ambiguity with other letters?


 I did not say that.  I was just _speculating_ as to the possible reasons for the fact that [ʒ] is used in MSA but not [s] for ث, etc.


----------



## WadiH

So, Elroy, do you believe that الجيم الشامية is the standard MSA pronunciation, or do you believe that the standard pronunciation encompasses several different variations?



elroy said:


> Actually, I personally think its authoritative role is pretty much limited to Qur'anic recitation.  As Wadi Hanifa said, rules that must be followed in تجويد are broken all the time in modern MSA.



Well I think you're confusing two separate things: rules of tajwiid, and مخارج الحروف (i.e. phonology).

Rules of tajwiid are not "broken" in everyday speech; they are not meant to be used in normal speech to begin with.  Rules such as قلقلة, مد متصل, مد منفصل, أحكام النون المشددة والميم المشددة, etc. would sound ridiculous in ordinary speech.  This is because their purpose to achieve a certain kind of "music" while reciting the Quran (التغني بالقرآن).  By the way many of these are optional, and there are different "schemes" of tajwiid that a reader may follow.

مخارج الحروف is a different subject.  Obviously, good tajwiid requires that you use the proper مخارج الحروف, but this is not because these are special to Quranic recitation, but rather because respect for the sacred text requires that you use "proper Arabic" pronunciation.   So, the fact that people use a certain value for a letter while reciting the Quran is evidence that this is the value that people consider to be "proper Arabic," regardless of their own dialect.

Of course, I'm talking about perception here.  As we've discussed in other threads, the linguistic picture of Arabic 1400 years ago was much more complex than what we've been taught as schoolchildren.  The phonetic values that were given the stamp of approval in Classical Arabic (and which were carried over into MSA) represent only a subset of the phonology of Arabic in ancient times, and are probably different from لغة قريش even though everyone thinks that Classical Arabic and MSA both correspond to لغة قريش.  We've discussed in other threads how the "true" value of ضاد has been lost in all dialects and in MSA, how the ق of the Hejaz was probably closer to [g] than to [q], and I mentioned earlier how the جيم of the Hejaz may have been entirely different from the [dʒ] that people use in reciting the Quran today, and may have in fact been [ʒ].


----------



## Finland

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello!

I am moving to Algeria for a year and would like to clear one thing in my head: I remember hearing North Africans pronounce ج in two ways: either j (like the s in leisure) of dj (like the j in jump).

I would be interested in knowing how these pronunciations are distributed. Merci en avance de vos lumières !

S


----------



## Xence

In most Algerian regions the ج is rather ponounced *dj*. Except in a few locations in the North East, near the Tunisian borders (Annaba, Tebessa, Souk Ahras, etc) and perhaps a few cities in the West too, such as Oran, or in the Sahara.

Welcome to Algeria!


----------



## Sidjanga

Hi all,

Interesting thread.

Just to give my own perspective: Absolutely all textbooks and dictionaries I have come across so far (quite a few; including A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic; see e.g. p.41) give the same pronunciation for ج in MSA, namely [dʒ]. 
Yet I, too, have frequently been corrected when I pronounced it this way.

Also, all those books classify ج ([dʒ] according to all of them) as a "moon letter", i.e., the [l] oft the article is preserved in pronunciation (so that الجمل would be [a*l*dʒamal]).

I find this particularly interesting and relevant given that I've heard that ج is actually handled as a "sun letter" when it's pronounced as [ʒ], at least in spoken language, so that الجمل   would be [a*ʒʒ*amal]).

Can anyone confirm this?
And provided that [ʒ] is (also) an accepted MSA pronunciation variant of ج, would this be a corresponding rule also for MSA? (i.e. that whenever ج is pronounced as [ʒ] it is to be handled as a "sun letter" and, following the article, is doubled while the [l] of the article is "absorbed"?)


----------



## clevermizo

Sigianga said:


> I find this particularly interesting and relevant given that I've heard that ج is actually handled as a "sun letter" when it's pronounced as [ʒ], at least in spoken language, so that الجمل   would be [a*ʒʒ*amal]).
> 
> Can anyone confirm this?


I think it depends on dialect. In the Levant ج is pronounced [ʒ] and it is treated as a sun letter.


> And provided that [ʒ] is (also) an accepted MSA pronunciation variant of ج, would this be a corresponding rule also for MSA? (i.e. that whenever ج is pronounced as [ʒ] it is to be handled as a "sun letter" and, following the article, is doubled while the [l] of the article is "absorbed"?)



No. In Standard Arabic, ج is, to my knowledge, only a moon letter, regardless of regional difference in its pronunciation.


----------



## suma

I too learned that it's pronounced as J in jam, joke (MSA, FuS7ah).
I've only heard the soft j as in French Je from native speakers from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria.


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## doveed

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Peace everyone,

Over the years I've found WordReference.com through Google searches many times, and found many great answers, especially from a user named "Elroy". Thank you all for your efforts.

In Palestinian pronunciation is the letter جيم said as a French "j" (_*j*e suis_), an English "dj" (_pretty *g*ems_), or an Egyptian "g" (_salat al-fagr_)?

So, is it *j*eem ...or... *dj*eem ...or... *g*eem ?

Thank you,

-Doveed


----------



## clevermizo

doveed said:


> In Palestinian pronunciation is the letter جيم said as a French "j" (_*j*e suis_),



This is the pronunciation, to my knowledge, in Palestinian Arabic (and across the Levant). There may be some variations; I'm not sure.


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## sun rise

it has a relation with the dialect only..

So, is it *j*eem ...in Maghreb , and most the Arab countries..such as : جبل

or... *dj*eem ... in Arabian Gulf .. djabal

and... *g*eem ?in Egypt ...gabal


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## Finland

Hello!


sun rise said:


> So, is it *j*eem ...in Maghreb , and most the Arab countries..such as : جبل


Actually in Algeria one mostly hears djeem, as in djabal.

HTH
S


----------



## elroy

Welcome to the forum! 


doveed said:


> Over the years I've found WordReference.com through Google searches many times, and found many great answers, especially from a user named "Elroy".


 Glad I could help. 


> In Palestinian pronunciation is the letter جيم said as a French "j" (_*j*e suis_), an English "dj" (_pretty *g*ems_), or an Egyptian "g" (_salat al-fagr_)?


 The first one (the French "j") is the most common, as Clevermizo said.  The second one ("dj") occurs in some regions.  "G" does not occur in Palestinian Arabic, with the exception of a handful of words (like "gada3").


----------



## Abu Fahm

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
I know that in general Jim in Iraqi is standard and often changed into "ya" in Khaliji. I am wondering if in Saudi (apart from people of al shargiya) any major groups share that dialect feature with Khaliji?

I know that in Iraqi there are some words that perhaps are taken from Khaliji like yam (next to) probably originally Jamb or janib. I am wondering if words like wayid with jim changed into ya used in areas outside of khaliji dialect?


----------



## Ghabi

I think our friend Ayed pronounces it as /ɡʲ/.


----------



## Masjeen

by the way half of kuwaiti citizen do not change the "Jim" to "ya".. The same applies to Qatar


----------



## WadiH

Outside of the eastern province, the only place where ج used to be pronounced as [y] was a town called Hotat Bani Tamiim حوطة بني تميم, south of Riyadh.  But I've been told by those who have visited there that this feature is no longer heard there nowadays.



Ghabi said:


> I think our friend Ayed pronounces it as /ɡʲ/.



I rarely hear that pronunciation from younger people anymore (i.e. younger than 60).


----------



## Ghabi

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I rarely hear that pronunciation from younger people anymore (i.e. younger than 60).


Including badawi speakers? Sounds to me that the way Ayed pronounces the letter lies between _g_ and _y_, but I'm not sure.


----------



## WadiH

Perhaps I just don't notice it when I hear it?

I forgot to mention that "yamm" يمّ is unrelated to "janb" جنب.

يمّ means "in the direction of" or "towards" (same as in fuS7a).  It can also simply mean "to", e.g. رحت يمّ الطبيب.


----------



## Abu Fahm

Thats explains why its used by Iraqis

Thanks lots for your replies


----------



## L.2

I heard a Saudi say رياجيل for رجاجيل (men) she replaced the first jeem with yaa but kept the second unchanged. I don't know where she is from but sounds bedouin maybe from Najd.
Some people in the north pronounce it as s in English _pleasure, occasion._


----------



## WadiH

L.2 said:


> I heard a Saudi say رياجيل for رجاجيل (men) she replaced the first jeem with yaa but kept the second unchanged. I don't know where she is from but sounds bedouin maybe from Najd.



This is actually the traditional pronunciation of all bedouins in what is now Saudi Arabia.  It developed from the /ɡʲ/ pronunciation that Khalid mentioned above.



> Some people in the north pronounce it as s in English _pleasure, occasion._



This is a feature that is widespread in the Hejaz (where it co-exists with /ɡʲ/), both in the big cities and in the countryside (e.g. Taif and Al-Baha).  You can hear it here (the speaker was from a village near Al-Taif).  Listen for example at 1:33, 1:55, 2:13, and 2:38.


----------



## إسكندراني

Since nobody has mentioned this yet, some areas of Tunisia and eastern Algeria pronounce it <z> in certain words.


----------



## Hemza

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello everyone:

I would like to know from where, comes the strong "dj" pronounciation of Algerian Arabic. I'm myself Moroccan, we don't pronounce it "dj" nor Tunisians nor Libyans, so it's weird that only Algerians pronounce it in this way. I think about a strong Hilalian influence (of Banu Hilal) but they also emigrated to Morocco and Tunisia and our pronounciation is different from Algerians.

Thank for your replies


----------



## vinyljunkie619

I would assume because our dialects of Berber have a strong J sound, actually in some villages, it's pronounced DZ...


----------



## Hemza

Does it means that all (or at least, some) Algerian Berber dialects have a "dj/dz" pronounciation? So it means that Moroccan, Tunisian and Libyan berber dialects (and may be, Egyptian) don't have this sound or pronounced differently. Thank you for your reply


----------



## vinyljunkie619

I only speak Kabyle, so I couldn't say too much on that subject.


----------



## إسكندراني

Dj, again, is the correct pronunciation of ج, and they pronounce it like this in the gulf for example. I have noticed that algerians say dz though.


----------



## Hemza

Yes, that's what I've noticed, also in Najdi, but in Algerian, it's much stronger. What is the difference between "dj" and "dz"? I think I'm speaking about "dz", but I wrote "dj", because I didn't know "dz".


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## vinyljunkie619

the dz pronunciation is similar to saying "bu*ds*" in English. 
In the case of dz, I wouldn't be able to tell you the history behind that, however a similar thing happens in Sudan where J is pronounced "dy"


----------



## Hemza

Oh thank you ^^. So I'm speaking about "dj". I knew about Sudan/"dy", but I never heard an Algerian saying "dz"... Can you give me an example of a word pronounced with "dz"? Because I can't see how they pronounce that.


----------



## vinyljunkie619

In Algeria, we don't say "Al-Jezayer" we say "Le-Djzayer" or "Le-Dzayer"
Dz and Dj are completely interchangeable.
EX: 
itnedzem itshouf el talfazyoom - can you see the TV?
stagseet dzari 3an le 5bar - I asked my neighbor about the news.


----------



## Hemza

Oh I see know, thank you for examples. I always thought Algerians pronounce only "dj" and not "dz". Thank you all for replies .


----------



## Zoghbi

> In Algeria, we don't say "Al-Jezayer" we say "Le-Djzayer" or "Le-Dzayer"
> Dz and Dj are completely interchangeable.
> EX:
> itnedzem itshouf el talfazyoom - can you see the TV?
> stagseet dzari 3an le 5bar - I asked my neighbor about the news.



I never heard something like that. The "dz" of dzair is a contraction between the "dj" and the "z" of al-djazair, they say even that this noun (dzair) is more ancient than al-djazair and is related with the founder of Algier's city Bologhine Ibn Ziri.
And the exemples you gives sound very weird to me, are you from djidjel? 

To reply to Hemza 's question: all algerians don't prononce the "djim", it's more considered to be a typical feature of the centrals areas (Algiers mainly, Blida, Medea, Qsar el Boukhari...) where the "djim" is prononced in all words. After you have the djim and the jim who cohabit in Oran, Setif, Constantine,... so the majority of country's big cities (maybe due to the influence of medias). Then, in the rural region (even those who are considered to have the stronger hilalians influence like Djelfa, Laghouat, al Bayadh, el Ouad) the djim are non-existent.


----------



## Hemza

I see now (better). Thank you, Zoghbi. Do you know from where this pronounciation comes from?

I have to admit that without translation, I would have hard time to understand verbs used vinyljunkie619, like "itnedzem" and "stagseet", I never heard them in Morocco, nor by my Algerian friend (from Setif).


----------



## Zoghbi

The city of Algiers is one of the more ancient pole of arabic in the region, maybe a strange caracteristic of the dialect of this city eventually extend to all the central region of the country. Maybe a similar phenomenon occur in egypt with the gim more related to Cairo city. I think hilalians (also Sulayms and qa7tans) had a jim prononciation like 7assani dialect (Mauritania), south tunisian and lybian dialects (the most conservatives bedouins dialects in the maghreb).

For the verbs: *ينجمّ*  iendjem = he can , also very used in Tunisia. he come from classical جمّ roots: be close to happen, be filled.
*يستقصي *istaqsi or istagsi, it's the good form of the most widespred: "isaqsi" without the ta. It's a classical verb who mean "to probe, investigate ", the morrocan equivalent is souwwel if I am not wrong.


----------



## Hemza

So it's for historical reasons. Thank you for help.

I know 7assani speakers (from Morocco) but they don't pronounce "ج" as a "dj". May be, it's because they're influenced by Northern Moroccan dialects, I don't know.

Oh, I didn't know this verb. We say "yiqdar". And you're right, we say "suwul" (without shadda on the "و").


----------



## Zoghbi

Yes that what i was saying: I think arabic tribes who come in the maghreb in the 11th-12th century had to prononce "ج" as "j" like in the french word "jamais".


----------



## vinyljunkie619

Zoghbi said:


> I never heard something like that. The "dz" of dzair is a contraction between the "dj" and the "z" of al-djazair, they say even that this noun (dzair) is more ancient than al-djazair and is related with the founder of Algier's city Bologhine Ibn Ziri.
> And the exemples you gives sound very weird to me, are you from djidjel?



I have family in Tlemcen, Jijel, Batna and Algiers; not all of them speak the same.


----------



## Hemza

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello,

I recently watched an Omani film and actors were pronouncing the letter "ج" as "ga". I already knew about this feature but I would like to know if it's used for all word (like Urban Egyptian) or only some words (like in Moroccan) and is it widely used or only certain areas/kind of people (urban/rural, bedouin)  use it?

Thank you all for your reply(ies) .


----------



## Rmacaw

I have some well known Yemeni music (at least, well-known in Yemen) where they clearly sing انا اترجاك as _ana ataraggaak_.


----------



## Hemza

Thanks for your reply ^^. And is it always the case, I mean is it always pronounced "ga" in the song?


----------



## Lark-lover

Yemeni usually say "sit down" as _*igliss *_إقلس


----------



## Hemza

So it's exactly like Urban Moroccan ^^.

And I thank you too for your reply. And what about Omani, if you know?


----------



## Lark-lover

They are very closer to the Yemeni borders and definitely would be somewhat the same thing, I guess.


----------



## Schem

As far as I'm aware, only Omanis that are geographically close to Yemen (i.e. those in Dhofar) have this feature. Keep in mind that this feature, although very common, isn't dominant in all Yemeni dialects either.


----------



## Hemza

Shukran for accuracy .


----------



## MarcB

Hemza regard ça
In Yemen Sana'i and Yafi'i=jim. Hadhrami=yim. Tihami=gim.


----------



## Hemza

If you allow me to correct you, it's "regard*e* ça" .

Thank you for the link. As *Cherine* stated in the link you gave me, I think it's originally a dialectal feature which spreaded through North Africa, because it's also used in Morocco for some words and as in Morocco, some Yemeni tribes and Andalusian from Yemeni origin settled, so I would see a Southern Arabian origin in it. That's just an hypothesis of course ^^.

Thanks to everyone for your replies


----------



## MarcB

faute de frappe, merci.


----------



## lcfatima

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
In Sudanese dialects, is there a predictable pattern or rule of when jeem will be articulated as j and when it will be a g?


----------



## parlesay

Well, brother, one has to point out that not all Algerians pronounce " dj", but only part of Algeria, at the center if I'm not mistaken. In the capital and the regions around it. So, to rectify you information, Algerians have both pronunciations . In Constantine, Annaba, Djelfa, Oran... and most of the West and the East and even the South ( to verify), the sound you can hear is 'J". By the way, I, once, did a research on how that consonant sound should be articulated in pure Arabic, and found out that " dj" is the correct one, with few exceptions that depend on the surroundings of the letter, for instance, the "dj" sound in "al moujtama3" could not be other than "j'' because it's influenced  and got affected by the the "t" which comes after it. This could be just my point of view. If in doubt, see " Rules of Reading Qur'an "!


----------



## Hemza

Sorry if I'm being off topic, but I wonder exactly the same thing about Morocco... Why for some words, we pronounce the ج as j and in some others, as a g...


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## Eternal student

In Moroccan it works like this. The rule is that ج is normally like the French "j". The exception to the rule is, always and only when later in the root there is a س or ز, the ج will be pronounced "g". The exception to the exception concerns words somewhat recently borrowed from فصحى, like الجزائر. Here the ج is pronounced like the French "j" again.

I don't know so much about Sudanese Arabic, but I'm pretty sure all original Sudanese words with ج pronounce it as "j", and it is only words recently borrowed from Cairo Arabic (or sometimes from فصحى via Cairo Arabic, as in _giddan_) where it is pronounced as "g".


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## Hemza

أهلا يا أخي

شكرا جزيلا على الشرح . ما كنت أعلم بتلك التفاصيل


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## Eternal student

العفو. You are most welcome!


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## Arabus

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello,

According to Jean Cantineau and other sources, the letter ج is pronounced _dʲ_ (that is, _d_ with a _y_ sound) by some Bedouin tribes of northern Arabia. Other sources say that ج is pronounced _dz _in Najd. I do not remember hearing such pronunciations from Saudi people. Do such pronunciations still exist?


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## ayed

رياجيل men
*مسيد *masjid
are still used by Badawi people in Najd


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## Arabus

I found something interesting [Video link removed by mod as per Forum Rules#4. Please search قصة باللهجة الشمرية: خدعه وخطب حبيبته]. This Shammari man pronounces ج as [g] (the so-called "Egyptian ج").

What other tribes have this pronunciation?


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## Hemza

^It is not exactly Najdi but I know that the "g" pronunciation also exists in Yemen and Oman to some extent.


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## Schem

According to my non-expansive experience with Saudi dialects, the overwhelming majority of Najdi-speakers use /dʒ/ for jeem. Some older communities in the town of Arrass in Gassim (north-central Najd) will subtitute that for a /g/ in some words according to a pattern I've yet to discover. In the Hejaz, most of the urban communities will pronounce the jeem as a /ʒ/ although I've heard the /dʒ/ pronunciation is gaining more prominence within that sector while I've also heard /z/ was a once common pronunciation, although perhaps restricted to some words or used only by a group of Hejazi-speakers.

Speakers of Gulf Arabic in Alahsa and the Persian Gulf littoral will alternate between a Najdi-like /dʒ/ and a /j/ sound for some words in accordance with other Gulf dialects. I don't have much knowledge on southern dialects but I believe /dʒ/ is the prominent pronunciation among the Bani Yam of Najran while I think many of the patterns found in Yemen (which has pockets of /dʒ/, /ʒ/, and /g/ speakers) would also be mirrored in the south.

As for a /dz/ pronunciation, no Saudi dialect as far as I know uses that pronunciation for jeem. However, it is one of two standard pronunciations of qaf in Najdi Arabic, the other being /g/. It is a sister phenomenon to the palatalization of kaf to /ts/ which is a prominent feature of Najdi Arabic, both phenomena mirroring the qaf to /dʒ/ and kaf to /tʃ/ shifts found in Gulf Arabic.

Edit: I believe I have also encountered the /dʲ/ pronunciation of jeem among some of the more recently settled Bedouin communities of the Najd. These in my region would be members of Ḥarb, ʿtaibah, Mṭair, or ʿnezah with the first three being Hejazi-Najdi Bedouins while ʿnezah are concentrated in the Najd and further north into the Syrian desert.


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## Arabus

I thought that the /j/ pronunciation existed only in Kuwait. Does it exist also in Dammam, Qatar, Bahrain?


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## Schem

It definitely exists in Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and at least among some communities in Dammam given its position as the region's melting-pot capital.



ayed said:


> رياجيل men
> *مسيد *masjid
> are still used by Badawi people in Najd



We also have this in some words in the sedentary speech of Gassim. Examples would be مسيَد (mosque) and يِيزي (enough) while we use رجال or رجاجيل for your other example. However, in most of the few words where this occurs, the pronunciation takes on a crystallized form where most speakers wouldn't even realize it's a jeem in play. The other examples where it's obvious such as مسيَد have already been replaced with /dʒ/ versions of the same word. I believe the situation is somewhat similar to the /g/ pronunciation used in some words by the sedentary communities of Arrass.


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## tounsi51

Schem said:


> Examples would be مسيَد (mosque) and يِيزي (enough) while we use رجال or رجاجيل for your other example.


يِيزي

Wow this what we say in Tunisia for enough.

Also رجاجيل is used among rural areas


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## Hemza

Do you mean that "ييزي" actually contains a ج?


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## Gavril

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hello,

I know that the Arabic letter ج (jīm) is pronunced both as [dƷ] (the standard pronunciation) and [g] (in Egypt, Yemen, and certain other regions).

But, are there any regions where it is pronounced as a true voiced palatal stop, i.e. [ɟ], or as a similar palatalized stop, [dj]?

I'm asking because I recall an earlier thread where it was mentioned that the dialects of southern Egypt and Sana'a pronounce this letter as "[dj]". But, I'm not sure whether this transcription was meant to indicate a sequence of [d] and the glide [j], or if it was just an alternative way of writing [dƷ].

Thanks for any help


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## djara

In Tunisian it is pronounced /ʒ/ (as in Coranic recitation)


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## Hemza

Hello,

In a Sudanese song (sung by an Ethiopian) the singer says "دموعي تدري" which is actually "تجري" (ج becomes د). But it's better to wait for Sudanese speakers to talk about it. I don't know though if this feature (if used in Sudan or just the song) also exists in Egypt.


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## Awwal12

Gavril said:


> But, are there any regions where it is pronounced as a true voiced palatal stop, i.e. [ɟ], or as a similar palatalized stop, [dj]?


Well, according to Wikipedia, [ɟ] is typical for Sudan and some regions in Yemen.


Hemza said:


> (ج becomes د)


The respective dialects still contrast ج and د.


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## cherine

There are some rural dialects in Egypt that do pronounce the ج as د, but I don't know where exactly (which region of Egypt).


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## akhooha

A friend of mine from the Delta town of el Mahalla el Kubra (المحلة الكبرى) told me that his name (جابر) was pronounced as if it were دابر


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## Schem

Hemza said:


> Do you mean that "ييزي" actually contains a ج?


Yes, ييزي originally comes from يجزي I believe.


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## Hemza

ayed said:


> رياجيل men
> *مسيد *masjid
> are still used by Badawi people in Najd



You mean that the pronunciation مسيد exists in Najdi? It is also the case in some Maghreb areas were the ج had been elided as well as رجاجيل being used (but @tounsi51 said it)


Schem said:


> Yes, ييزي originally comes from يجزي I believe.



Thanks


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## Zoghbi

> يِيزي
> 
> Wow this what we say in Tunisia for enough.



It doesn't seems to be exactly the same thing, according to the transcription given by Schem and his comment what happened to يجزي is ي<--ج so it should be pronounce "yiyzi" (  much more dificult than yidjzi) or rather "yyizi".
While in the Maghreb ("yizzi" or "yidzi" exists in all Algeria as a synonym of "yekfi" it is less used than in Tunisia because we have "barka ma" for "stop doing ...") it's ز<--ج (or د in algerians areas where the ج is prononced like in fus7a)


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## Schem

ييزي is pronounced yeezy (like English easy with y preceding) in Najdi Arabic and has the meaning of يكفي or يسد or خلاص, all of which mean enough. I haven't come across the North African word to determine if they at least sound the same or have a synonymous usage.


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## Tamar

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
Hi everyone!

I have a question about the pronunciation of the word 'khali*ji*' (dzh)
I also pronounce it as the latin characters show (like in English), but I've been told that the correct pronunciation is 'khali*gi*' (g)
And I once played it on google translate (not the best of choice, but I don't have any other option  ) and there the pronunciation was 'khali*zhi*'.

I'd like to know what is the pronunciation in Emirati and Egyptian arabic mostly (but all other dialects are also welcome, of course  )


Thank you!
Shukran!


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## analeeh

There's the usual pronunciation differences between dialects. The plural also differs.

In fuSHa the prescriptive option is /xali:dZi(jj)/, and the plural is with _-uun_.

In Egyptian the pronunciation is /xa'li:gi/. The plural, as I recall, is usually /xali'gejja/, with shortening of the i because of the stress shift.

In Levantine both dZ and Z exist as pronunciations, and the usual plural is either /xali:dZijje~xali:Zijje/ or /xala:jdZe~xala:yZe/ (the latter is on the same pattern as e.g. _maghaarbe_ 'Moroccans').


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## Mahaodeh

Just to add, in Emarati Arabic it's khaleeji with the j pronounced as in jinx or John.



analeeh said:


> In fuSHa the prescriptive option is /xali:dZi(jj)/, and the plural is with _-uun_.



Are you sure this is the 'prescriptive option'? I'm assuming here the j is as in garage (American English). But that may only be because someone from the Levant or Egypt pronounced it; if it were someone else he may have pronounced it as the Emarati does. The thing is, while Arabs do clearly distinguish between the Egyptian/Yemeni way of pronouncing it and the way everyone else does, but the difference between the other two ways is not really distinguished - mind you, that doesn't mean that people don't hear the difference, just that they see it as one and the same despite the difference and hence everyone pronounces it the way they are used to. It's like two ways of pronouncing the laam.


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## analeeh

/dZ/ is the sound as in John and jinx or garage in UK English (the _/_jj/ is nothing to do with this sound). This is the prescriptive pronunciation that for example al-Jazeera teaches to its newsreaders and the one if I remember correctly they teach in tajwiid classes. I remember being corrected from /Z/ to /dZ/ in fuSHa classes. This is not to say of course that people don't pronounce it other ways in fuSHa, because they do.


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## cherine

analeeh said:


> In Egyptian the pronunciation is /xa'li:gi/. The plural, as I recall, is usually /xali'gejja/, with shortening of the i because of the stress shift.


I don't understand the symbol ' after the a, but we say khaliigi, the plural is khaligiyyiin and khalayga.


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## Mahaodeh

analeeh said:


> /dZ/ is the sound as in John and jinx or garage in UK English



Oh, sorry, then I guess we mean the same thing. I just assumed it was the Levantine jeem that is somewhere between j and z that you were talking about.


cherine said:


> the plural is khaligiyyiin and khalayga



I've actually heard khalayga before; it's not very common so maybe it's regional in Egypt or maybe it's an effect of some other dialect.


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## cherine

Sorry if my post wasn't clear, I was indeed talking abou Egyptian pronunciation and usage.


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## Tamar

Thank you guys so much! Then I can just take my pick on the pronunciation I like the most


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## mrsonic

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
is there any evidence for the claim that in the 6th century, the speakers of fusha would have pronounced jibreel as gibreel?
so instead of using jeem, they used ghayn.

is there evidence that both pronunciations existed?


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## Mahaodeh

There is no evidence that they used g instead of j (similar to the Yamani and Egyptian way of pronouncing it).

Having said that, some linguists believe, based on classical descriptions of how it was pronounced, that it was slightly different than it is pronounced in MSA, a clearer j sound whereas in MSA it is a compound sound that combines j with d. This is what I have read.

As for pronouncing it as a hard g, there is no evidence in history that it was pronounced this way in Arabic, but there is evidence that it is pronounced this way in many other Semitic languages including South Arabian languages that were/are spoken in parts of Yemen. It is believed that this is where the hard g sound entered Arabic dialects. In Lower Egypt (Cairo and other northern parts of Egypt) the g sound came from Yemeni immigrants to Egypt during the Middle Ages.



mrsonic said:


> so instead of using jeem, they used ghayn.



I don't understand this, why would they replace the jeem with a ghayn? You must be confusing the different ways of pronouncing jeem with the use of ghayn in some regions to represent a hard g that does not exist in MSA or Classical Arabic (such as in the Levant, where they transliterate Portugal as برتغال. In this case it's only used in foreign words that were transliterated to Arabic.


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## Ihsiin

Mahaodeh said:


> There is no evidence that they used g instead of j (similar to the Yamani and Egyptian way of pronouncing it).



I disagree, I think there is some decent evidence to suggest that ج was pronounced as [g] or perhaps [ɟ] during classical times, namely that the letter is established as حرف قمري rather than حرف شمسي as it would be if it were realised as [dʒ] or [ʒ] (and as it is in modern dialects that realise it as such). It was certainly realised as [g] in proto-Arabic (compare with other Semitic languages) and it seems rather unlikely that the Yemani (and subsequent Egyptian) dialects ever shifted from this.

Of course, غ has nothing to do with this.


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## Mahaodeh

There were classical descriptions that show that it was not pronounced as [g] or even [ɟ], but it was harder than the current MSA pronunciation of [dʒ] and certainly not [ʒ]. I understand that several modern specialists claim what you say, but I do believe that they are ignoring documented evidence or dismissing it as 'not reliable'. I'm not going to argue what is reliable and what is not, but they (modern specialists) are definitely ignoring an important point: for teaching the Quran, the pronunciation is very important and documented evidence by Muslims is not going to ignore that for any reason. They are only focusing on the fact that most other Semitic languages pronounce it as [g], forgetting that Arabic was not really documented very well prior to the 1st century AD and for all they know Arabic could be older than Akkadian (we have no proof that it isn't, not that I'm claiming it is) so there is plenty of time for the shift to occur hundreds of years before Islam.

I don't know how it was pronounced in proto-Arabic, that was hundreds, if not thousands of years earlier - even specialists don't know because it's a theoretical language that is reconstructed based on guesses more than anything else (even if the guesses were educated, they are still guesses and estimations). This is not what mrsonic was asking about anyway. 

As for the Yemeni shift, this is also documented. Around the 6th century, only a small portion of Yemenis spoke Arabic as they spoke four other South Arabian Languages, most common among them is Sabba'i (Hadrami dialect of Sabba'i at the time of Islam). The language has a relation to Arabic and some Arabic pre-Islamic text used the Sabba'i script, so keeping their way of pronouncing the jeem is no big surprise really. The unlikely thing is not that the dialects shift, the unlikely thing is that Classical Arabic would shift so significantly AFTER Islam despite it's significance for Islam and despite extensive documentation and preservation. I'm not saying that subtle changes wouldn't occur, but [g] or even [ɟ] are significantly different than [dʒ], this shift would not be subtle at all.


PS: I have to point out that I'm giving an opinion based on some sources I have read, not based on a full study of phonetics and how they change through time. I'm no specialist in this area and thus do not expect anyone to take my word for it. Just consider me devil's advocate here .


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## Ihsiin

I too am not an expert on this issue, but am only following the ideas as they occur to me. Certain points occur:

1. We know that the porto-semitic phoneme was realised as [g] and that all of Arabic's closest relations realised it as such. So the shift from [g] to [dʒ] (and to other realisations) must be an innovation in Arabic that occurred sometime between the point at which Arabic split off from the Semitic tree and the present day. This is of course something we can all agree on, the only question is identifying at what point in time roughly that shift occurred, and indeed to what extent.

2. I assume (and I may be wrong on this, I'll be happy to be corrected), that the rules of الحروف الشمسية and الحروف القمرية were codified after Islam. We not that ج is codified as حرف قمري which would imply that at that time the dominant pronunciation was palatal or backer, that is to say it had not progressed further than [ɟ]. Had it done so, had it progressed to [dʒ] or something similar, it would have been codified as حرف شمسي.

3. We also know that in classical times foreign words with the [g] sound were imported into Arabic with the letter ج. As you have noted, in modern dialects that lack a /g/ like sound such as Levantine, [g] is represented with غ as that is the closest sound they have available to them. This would imply that in classical times the realisation of ج was closer to [g] than any other Arabic letter.

4. Regarding the teaching of the Qur'an and the pronunciation thereof, there is no doubt that that _has_ changed over the centuries, for example with regards to the letter ض (which has been the subject of other threads on this forum). There can be no doubt that Arabs have allowed their vernacular pronunciations to influence their rendition of the classical language over the years.

5. With regards to the idea that Yemani Arabic was influenced by South Arabian, well there is no reason I can see for why this can't be the case, though we could also ask why Iraqi and Levantine (for example) weren't influenced by Aramaic to also produce ج as [g] (though this is, I admit, a rather pointless question). But if we take the above evidence into account and entertain the notion that ج had a [g] realisation in Classical Arabic, it becomes rather redundant to postulate South Arabian influence on Yemani.

6. As far as the descriptions of the letter's sound in classical texts, I must confess that I am not familiar with them and I bow before greater authorities. However, in the light of my points 2 and 3 it would be a good idea to put a lot of pressure on these descriptions and come up with precise realisations that also account for these points. Also, in the light of my point 1, we must consider precisely at what time these texts are written. As I said, I am not familiar with them so I will no go any further than these suggestions.

It also seems that this thread has been merged with an earlier one - I have not perused the earlier thread, so if the answers to all this already lie before us, I apologise.


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## Abu Talha

Ihsiin said:


> 3. We also know that in classical times foreign words with the [g] sound were imported into Arabic with the letter ج. As you have noted, in modern dialects that lack a /g/ like sound such as Levantine, [g] is represented with غ as that is the closest sound they have available to them. This would imply that in classical times the realisation of ج was closer to [g] than any other Arabic letter.


Do you know any examples where [g] was imported as ج? If Middle Persian _ruzig _was borrowed into Arabic as رزق then does that mean at least in this case [g] was imported as ق?


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## Ihsiin

Abu Talha said:


> Do you know any examples where [g] was imported as ج? If Middle Persian _ruzig _was borrowed into Arabic as رزق then does that mean at least in this case [g] was imported as ق?



I believe this was imported via Aramaic (though I'm not sure, others can correct me) and Arabic took the /q/ in this word from there. But as for words where [g] is imported with ج, there are many. Off the top of my head we have of course Hebrew גבריאל -> Arabic جبريل/جبرائيل and Latin _magus -> _Arabic مجوس.


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## Ghabi

Sibawayhi gives the examples جُرْبُز/آجُرّ/جَوْرَب when talking about Persian loanwords containing "the letter between kaaf and jiim" (الحرف الذي بين الكاف والجيم). I suppose he means /g/. He also mentions that some people use the qaaf instead of the jiim for these words. (§525)


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## Hemza

Since some of you quoted Persian loanwords, what about گزاف which became جزاف in Arabic? Here, the g sound sound became j in Arabic while it could have become a ق (and be pronounced with a q sound or the bedouin ق which is a g sound). Or that may merely be a transcription using the ج letter while the sound remained g? I'm faaaar from being an expert but shouldn't we remain careful to avoid confusing sounds and their transcriptions and by the way, the letters used to transcribe those sounds?

As for the transcription of the g sound into Arabic, I think that in ancient times (and it's a shot in the dark), Arabic may have used ج to transcribe the g sound since some Arabs used to pronounce this letter as a g in their dialect and this may have become a "standard rule". Now, if we compare this to the current situation, a similar phenomena occurs: correct me if I'm wrong but:

In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, the Arabian peninsula (except some Yemeni/Omani places may be) and in bedouin dialects speaking places (whatever the country), the ق is used to transcribe the g sound.
In Morocco, Mauritania (probably a Moroccan influence for this latter) and Iraq, the ك is used for this purpose.
In الشام it seems that the غ is used.
In Egypt and some Yemeni/Omani places, the ج is used.

I wonder if it's not the same thing which happened a while ago: to transcribe g sound containing words, Arabs may have resorted to use the ج under dialectal influence?


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## Ihsiin

Ghabi said:


> Sibawayhi gives the examples جُرْبُز/آجُرّ/جَوْرَب when talking about Persian loanwords containing "the letter between kaaf and jiim" (الحرف الذي بين الكاف والجيم). I suppose he means /g/. He also mentions that some people use the qaaf instead of the jiim for these words. (§525)



Here's a thought. I believe some sources describe classical ق as voiced; would it therefore be farfetched to suggest that the dominant pronunciations in classical times had ق as [ɢ] and ج as [ɟ], and that when a foreign word with [g] was imported into Arabic the sound would be approximated with either ق or ج, being the two closest voiced plosives?


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## Mickey2019

Hello everyone,

My question is regarding _Modern Standard Arabic_.

Some people say that the ج should be pronounced like g as in "*Age*" or "*Montage*". I mean it should be either soft or hard j.

Why the president Mubarak pronounce it like g as in "*good*". Presidential speeches must be reviewed so why didn't anyone told him about this mistake. He speaks like that in all his speeches and nobody noticed.

We can't say that this is the Egyptian Arabic (Dialect or colloquial Arabic) because Egyptian Arabic is totally different from what he speaks. He speaks Modern Standard Arabic with different pronunciation of the ج so why does this happen? Why does not he follow the standard pronunciation and grammar rule?


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## Ghabi

Mickey2019 said:


> Presidential speeches must be reviewed so why didn't anyone told him about this mistake.


Why do you think it's regarded as a "mistake"?


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## Mickey2019

Ghabi said:


> Why do you think it's regarded as a "mistake"?


Thanks for your reply. Some people told me that the standard pronunciations are j and dj only. G is not standard. What do you think?


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## cherine

Please read the previous posts before continuing with the disucssion, so as to avoid unnecessary repetitions.

As a quick note: Most Egyptians pronounce the ج as g, even when reading/speaking fuS7a.


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## Mickey2019

cherine said:


> As a quick note: Most Egyptians pronounce the ج as g, even when reading/speaking fuS7a.


I already read the previous discussion but I'm still confused because some people told me that fuS7a (Modern Standard Arabic) has no accents or varieties because it's "standard". Now, it turns out to be that there is the Egyptian accent of the Modern Standard Arabic.

I also figured out that they produce:
- Soft ع sound (Not strong).
- Sometimes, the ق is also weak or soft.
- Sometimes, they pronounce ذ  as ز
- They pronounce ث (th) as س (s).

So, do you think that each country speaks Modern Standard Arabic with its own accent or let's say "Features" or "characteristics" ?


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## cherine

Yes, not all Arab countries pronunce and use MSA the exact same way.

But this was mentioned in another thread, so please try to look up that previous discussion, as this thread is dedicated to the letter جيم.


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## philosophastry

Anatoli said:


> I read that the standard (MSA or Classical Arabic) way is the English J but many dialects use the French J and also pronounce the MSA that way.



I just came across a thread that describes how the Persians added a letter to the Arabic alphabet in order to represent the French j. If ج were pronounced like the French j, they would not have needed to invent the letter ژ. I think it's rather clear that it's only quite recently that some Arabs started pronouncing ج that way. Furthermore, the books of grammar clearly state that the definite article does _not_ assimilate into ج. If it were a fricative like the French j, it would behave like the other fricatives in the Arabic language, e.g. ش and س.


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## Awwal12

philosophastry said:


> I think it's rather clear that it's only quite recently that some Arabs started pronouncing ج that way.


Even the affricate wasn't really common back in the 7th century (although it was already present in the Hejazi dialect, thus becoming a part of Quranic and, ultimately, standard Arabic pronunciation). Many early Persian loanwords from Arabic reflect simply [g] (as in "go"). Of course, [ʒ] must be originating from [dʒ].


philosophastry said:


> If it were a fricative like the French j, it would behave like the other fricatives in the Arabic language, e.g. ش and س.


As a matter of fact, in many dialects (but not in MSA) /j/ does behave as a sun consonant, assimilating the /l/ of the article. And, of course, it's not about the manner of articulation (say, both /s/ and /f/ are fricatives) but rather about the active place of articulation (coronal vs. non-coronal consonants); actually /j/ is the only coronal moon consonant of MSA, which reflects its velar past).


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## Ali Smith

Thackston in _An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic_ clearly states that جيم is pronounced like the English _j_ as in _judge_ (see attachment).


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## Ihsiin

Ali Smith said:


> Thackston in _An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic_ clearly states that جيم is pronounced like the English _j_ as in _judge_ (see attachment).



So what?


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