# Homophonous ض - ظ pairs (pronunciation of ض as ظ)



## Arab_Student

Most Gulf Arabic speakers pronounce both ض and ظ as ظ ... So I was wondering if this could sometimes cause confusion i.e. via homophonous words.


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## Zoghbi

Hello,

As far as I know there is no such homophonous word, in fact when we look at arabic's interdentale consonants in larger perspective (ذ ظ ث) we discover that they are not very discriminating to their dentale equivalents (د ض ت), the roots concerned by this phenomenon (like هدر هذر تمّ ثمّ ذكر دكر...) are not common at all in the basic language but my impression in the case of ض/ظ it's that there is no confusion possible, the ظ seems to be the less prolific consonant of the arabic alphabet, I still don't find any homophonous roots in this case, and I don't know any dialect who make the difference between these two letters, In rural Algeria the ض is pronnouced as a  ظ like  Gulf arabic speakers (also the case for tunisians, iraqians etc..) do, at contrary in the littoral cities its the ظ who are pronounced as ض (In Algiers we have another unique feature, in some words the ض is prononced ط !), these two tendancies divide all arabic world.

My opinion it's that the distinction of these two letters only exist in the ancient arabic poetry of Mecca (wich is at the origin of the classical arabic) , all the other arabs of the past only knew ظ, and the ض is the  arabized people's prononciation of this letter.


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## Ihsiin

All dialects have merged ض and ظ.
ض was distinct in all of Arabic before the merger, not only in "the ancient arabic poetry of Mecca", neither is this the origin of Classical Arabic.
Some people attempt to distinguish ض from ظ as plosive from fricative. This is an instance of hyper-correction.
I can't think of any homophonous (nice word) pairs, but then I never attempt to distinguish the letters anyway.


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## fdb

Minimal pairs:
ظَلَّ – ضَلَّ
ضِرّ – ظِرّ
I am sure there are more.


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## Zoghbi

Indeed these homophonous exist, contrary as I was thinking, but I remark that in these exemple everybody know the  ظ word but the ض comparatives are quite unused and ignored even for the arabs natives and educated people, so I don't think the distinction of these letter is important for a student (like in the case of ط/ت ض/د ص/س):
ظل بمعنى بقي والظل بمعنى الفيء / ضل بمعنى ضاع 
/ حظ بمعنى نصيب / حضَّ بمعنى حثَّ وحرَّض
/ غيظ بمعنى غضب / غيض بمعنى غار واختفى الماء في الأرض 
/ ظن بمعنى اعتقد / ضن بمعنى بَخِلَ 
/ النظر بمعنى الرؤية / النضر بمعنى الحسن الهيئة

The last نضر is used in the Quran (تعرف في وجوههم نضرة النعيم).


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## fdb

Zoghbi said:


> but I remark that in these exemple everybody know the  ظ word but the ض comparatives are quite unused and ignored even for the arabs natives and educated people, so I don't think the distinction of these letter is important for a student (like in the case of ط/ت ض/د ص/س):


I am sure even uneducated people know ولا الضالين.


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## Zoghbi

I clearly heard an Imam recitating:  و لا ظالّين don't know if it was by ignorance ( not very probable) or by a choice of adopting a way well known and accepted by the scholars community.
But you right in theory ( cause we can find this word in the fatiha sourah) everybody should know this root, but a lot of quranic vocabulary still obscur even for someone who learn modern arabic at school and who read and listen perfectly the news in this language.


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## cherine

Ihsiin said:


> All dialects have merged ض and ظ.


I'm afraid this is incorrect. In Egypt we have a clear distinction between the two sounds. We pronounce the ض as an emphatic د , and the ظ as an emphatic ز . This is why we find it strange when we hear people from other Arab countries pronounce words like ضمير as ظمير.


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## fdb

This is all slightly more complicated. In Ancient Arabic ظ was a voiced emphatic interdental and ض was a voiced emphatic lateral. This distinction is still maintained in the dialect of Dathīna, and possibly some of the other Arabic dialects in the Arabic – South Arabian transition zone in Southern Arabia. The tajwīd manuals stipulate that ض be produced with the side of the tongue in contact with the palate, and some qurrāʼ do actually pronounce ض as a lateral.

Most Arabic dialects have in fact merged ض and ظ. Those dialects that preserve the interdentals (ث, ذ, ظ) pronounce ظ and ض both as a voiced emphatic interdental. Those dialects (like Cairene, and most other urban dialects) that have lost the interdentals pronounce both ض and ظ as [ḍ] in genuine dialect words, but in words borrowed from the literary language these speakers pronounce ظ as [ẓ] and ض as [ḍ]. The sibilant [ẓ] is an attempt by interdental-free speakers to reproduce the emphatic interdental.


fdb said:


> ....pronounce both ض and ظ as [ḍ] in genuine dialect words



For example: In Egypt you say /ḍahr/ not /ẓahr/ for ظهر.


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## analeeh

I'm dubious, actually, that it's entirely true that 'genuine dialect words' have /dˠ/ and reborrowed words as /zˠ/. This is the normal explanation and is certainly true for modern words taken from literary contexts (_ṯawra_ as _sawra_etc) but so many words like تذكر - which is, one would think, a pretty basic word - both have fricatives as the outcome of classical interdentals and have no variant with a stop. This suggests to me, at least, that dialects may never have simply collapsed all instances of interdentals into stops, but instead merged them two ways.


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## Ghabi

fdb said:


> Those dialects (like Cairene, and most other urban dialects) that have lost the interdentals pronounce both ض and ظ as [ḍ] in genuine dialect words, but in words borrowed from the literary language these speakers pronounce ظ as [ẓ] and ض as [ḍ].


As far I know, the correspondence is two-way, as fuS7a ض can correspond to EA ظ. Thus fuS7a ضبط corresponds to EA ظبط, and ضرط to ظرط. And I think the presence of ظرط shows that ظ isn't a consonant confined to elevated speech in EA.


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## fdb

If I may clarify one point: I did not say that [ẓ] is “confined to elevated speech”. I said that the realisation of ظ as [ẓ] is characteristic of words used in colloquial speech, but borrowed from literary Arabic. I am talking about etymology, not register.


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## Arab_Student

As far as I know, The Levant (i.e. Syrian, Lebanon, Jordon and Palestine), the Sudan, Egypt and Hijazi Arabic, pronounce ض as an emphatic د and the ظ as an emphatic ز whereas the Gulf dialects (as I've already stated) pronounce both as ظ. As for the others- Maghreb dialects (i.e. Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian and Libyan) I'm not sure , and it would be great if those with any knowledge or experience with the region would shed some light on the matter.


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## Ghabi

For further reading I would like to point to this detailed post by Rayloom.


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## cherine

fdb said:


> Most Arabic dialects have in fact merged ض and ظ. Those dialects that preserve the interdentals (ث, ذ, ظ) pronounce ظ and ض both as a voiced emphatic interdental. Those dialects (like Cairene, and most other urban dialects) that have lost the interdentals pronounce both ض and ظ as [ḍ] in genuine dialect words, but in words borrowed from the literary language these speakers pronounce ظ as [ẓ] and ض as [ḍ].


I'm afraid I can't comment, nor discuss, the phonolgy/phonetics-related terms, so I'll focus on the "simpler" description of the sounds.
Egyptian Arabic does differentiate between ض and ظ (I think we both agree on this) but it's not a matter of etymology nor register. I can't tell whether words like حظ، محظوظ، حَظَّاظة، لحظة، ظرف are "genuinely dialectal" or "borrowed from the literary language", but they sure don't sound literary to anyone I know, and they don't have colloquial alternatives. The same goes for ضمير، حُضْن، حَضانة، ضَنْك ...


Ghabi said:


> For further reading I would like to point to this detailed post by Rayloom.


Thanks for the link, I was just going to look up for that thread. You saved me some trouble.


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## WadiH

analeeh said:


> I'm dubious, actually, that it's entirely true that 'genuine dialect words' have /dˠ/ and reborrowed words as /zˠ/. This is the normal explanation and is certainly true for modern words taken from literary contexts (_ṯawra_ as _sawra_etc) but so many words like تذكر - which is, one would think, a pretty basic word - both have fricatives as the outcome of classical interdentals and have no variant with a stop. This suggests to me, at least, that dialects may never have simply collapsed all instances of interdentals into stops, but instead merged them two ways.



This was discussed in the old thread.  First of all, one pronounciation can become influential and "spread" to the other words.  So, a word may have been pronounced with a stop a few generations ago but is now pronounced with fricative.  Second, a word may have existed in the dialect yet is perceived by speakers as being from MSA.  Third, a word may be rendered differently depending on context (i.e. it is a matter or register).  I gave an example of a similar situation in S. Arabia with the [q]/[g].  Words perceived to be literary are often pronounced in Riyadh with a [q], even if in previous generations they were pronounced with [g].  Examples of this are words like قناع, قاضي,, قسط, and even قرآن.  And you have words whose pronunciation varies by context, e.g. قراءة, pronounced with a [q] when used in certain subjects, and with a [g] (قراية) when used in less "serious" contexts.

In any case, I suspect many of the example given above such as يتذكر and ضرط were not widely used in the dialect and were in fact borrowed relatively recently (i.e. in Ottomon times at the earliest).


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## fdb

A very good explanation by Wadi Hanifa.


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