# Arabic/Maltese: Pharyngeal Fricative



## tvdxer

Is this sound present in all variants of Arabic?  Do any not possess it?


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## SofiaB

The ح is a voiceless pharyngeal constricted fricative. As far as I know it is present in all variants of Arabic. At least in widely spoken variants.
*
*


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## Anatoli

Does it also exist in Maltese?
Couldn't find anything in Wikipedia.

I know that it is a separate language with Arabic roots and similar pronunciation, I thought a sound similar to *ح *would be there too.


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## Josh_

Hello tvdxer,

The 'een sound *ع* is the voiced pharyngeal fricative and it is present in all varieties of Arabic.


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## Sorridom

tvdxer said:
			
		

> Is this sound present in all variants of Arabic? Do any not possess it?



Let me guess...looking for an excuse to bypass having to pronounce it? 

Maltese _does_ have a voiceless pharyngeal fricative (_Ħ_ _ħ_), but, to my knowledge, lacks a voiced one.


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## Anatoli

From Wikepedia:


> Ħ ħ no English equivalent; sounds like a breathy "h", heavy or like the "ch" in German or Scottish 'loch'.


 I think the Maltese Ħ ħ corresponds the Arabic  خ, usually transliterated as "kh".


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## MarcB

Anatoli, 
Maltese ħ  corresponds to * ح * in Arabic, not خ.


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## Anatoli

Than Wikipedia is wrong as for the Maltese alphabet. I quoted what the description of the letter is.


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## SofiaB

Hi Anatoli,
I looked at wiki. but did not see a conflict. does it say that ħ is خ? All that I have seen agrees that it is *ح* .


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## Anatoli

It doesn't show Arabic letters but my post #6 has the quote, which describes the letter خ, not *ح. 
*


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## SofiaB

There are thre h sounds in Arabic. So you may be right but I think it is *ح*.Let's wait for others to confirm.


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## Anatoli

I looked at some other sites, it's not consistent and I got confused.

see here:
malta DOT lebaneseclub DOT org SLASH alphabet.htm


> ħ   like h in hand, maybe   pretty much like the Lebanese ح


h is ه, isn't it?

The Lebanese ح is the same as ح in MSA, isn't it?

What we are after is probably *għ:*

On Omniglot site


> *għ* is silent but pharyngealizes and lengthens vowels


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## SofiaB

I think the h is stronger than h in hand.
 
Your site says : ħ like h in hand, maybe pretty much like the Lebanese ح.
h in hand is ه


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## Anatoli

You are repeating my quote SophiaB.

So, which one is Maltese letter ħ corresponding to in Arabic ه (h), ح (guttural stop)  or خ ( kh)?


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## Manuel_M

Anatoli said:
			
		

> Than Wikipedia is wrong as for the Maltese alphabet. I quoted what the description of the letter is.


 
Nowadays there is only one h (aitch) sound in Maltese: *ħ *which ( corresponds to the _h _in _house_, _have_, _h_orror). Up unti  afew yeras ago, in small villages in Gozo, older people still udes to voice the _kħ,_ but thsi sound has now all but disappeared from the language. The old _kħ _is rendered in writing by _għ_ - actually one unvoiced consonant_._


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## Anatoli

Do you have a guttural stop in Maltese, Manuel_M? Like Arabic *ع*?


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## Whodunit

What is a guttural stop, please? Áre you referring to the Arabic *ع *(pharyngal) or *ء* (glottal stop)?


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## Anatoli

Arabic ع (pharyngal), please. My textbooks describe it as a guttural stop. Anyway, the same sound as ع letter. Not sure if this is one of għ,  ħ or non-existent in Maltese.

Using these descriptions I can't make sure if there is a 100% mapping between Arabic and Maltese phonetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language


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## Whodunit

Well, I just read the German article and it says that the Maltese ħ corresponds to Arabic* خ*, the q corresponds to *ء*, and għ has developed from *ع*. The last letter is a bit complicated to explain, because in Arabic it is a consonant as k or m in English, whereas in Maltese it is used to lengthen the preceding vowel.

Maybe a native speaker of Maltese can explain it better.


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## Anatoli

Thanks for the answer, it remains unexplained, though. Need to find someone knowledgeable in both Arabic and Maltese to compare and say if the sounds exist or not and if they have a match in Arabic.


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## Anatoli

I don't know how trustworthy this source is but here's the relationship between Arabic ع and Maltese għ:

http://pne.livejournal.com/491020.html



> Maltese *għ* derives from two Arabic sounds: `ayn/ʕayn *ع* and ghayn/ġayn *غ*, only the second of which is a voiced velar fricative. (The first is a voiced pharyngeal fricative.) However, the (reflexes of the) two sounds merged in standard Maltese, though I believe there are (or at least, used to be not that long ago) dialects which preserve the distinction and not only pronounce għajn but pronounce it differently depending on whether it's a reflex of `ayn or ghayn.


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## Lugubert

Anatoli,

Your quote is confirmed by _Teach Yourself Maltese_. It has for ħ
"Unvoiced pharyngal (sic) fricative".

Their description is 





			
				TYMaltese said:
			
		

> like Eng. 'h' in 'horse', but comparatively stronger, occurring not only initially but also medially and finally. Exx. *ħabb* (*ħapp*) 'he loved'; *baħar* (*'baħar*) 'sea'; *ruħ* (*ruuħ*) 'soul'.


So, all three examples have an ح in Arabic!

The book also confirms the double ancestry of għ (ع٬غ) and that it is obsolete.

The reference to German 'ach' caused some confusion on the first page. The way I have perceived what I have heard in Germany and have been told by teachers of German is that it shouldn't have the grating sound of خ, but really correspond more to the ح.


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## clevermizo

The Maltese _ħ _is quoted in most textbooks as being pronounced like  in English _hand_, however to my ears, it sounds identical to the pharyngeal ح [ħ] of Arabic. The confusion over خ [kh (IPA:x)] is that Maltese _ħ_ is *cognate* with both Arabic خ and Arabic ح which have merged into one Maltese sound _ħ_. For example: _riħ_ (wind, Arabic ريح) but also _ħobz_ (bread, Arabic خبز). Maltese _h_ is silent, except at the end of a word when it is pronounced like ħ.

Again, when I watch video clips or listen to Internet radio of speech, Maltese ħ sounds pharyngeal and not like the normal  of English. However, the two are not distinguished and modern Maltese speakers probably use  more and more as Manuel_M attested earlier in this thread. English has had a lot of influence on the language.

The letter _għ_ represents the phonemes ع and غ from Arabic in cognates, but it is more or less silent, [a] or [e]-coloring. Therefore, Maltese does not have a pharyngeal sound like ع in Arabic. It's effect is on the surrounding vowels. Għi is pronounced [ai] or [ei], Għu is pronounced [au] or [eu]. Għa, għe and għo are just long vowels [a:, e: and o:]. When the pseudo-phoneme occurs as the last letter of a word it is often represented with an apostrophe *'*, but reappears upon addition of other morphemes. For example: _ma'_ (with) but _miegħek_ (with you).

These phonemes from Arabic are better preserved in the dialect of Gozo as was mentioned earlier. I believe the dialect of Gozo is stigmatized however as rural or old-fashioned sounding.


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## Anatoli

Thanks, Clevermizo. It must be indeed, a difficult sound. If I am not mistaken, it has practically disappeared from the modern Hebrew.


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## clevermizo

Well 'ayin didn't just disappear in Hebrew in modern times. The pharyngeal pronunciation of 'ayin may have already been weakened during Talmudic times. The fact that Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews preserved 'ayin is probably due to reinforced pronunciation because of its presence in _Arabic_. Anyway, less conjecture would be that Ashkenazi Hebrew has no pharyngeal 'ayin (it's silent or perhaps a glottal stop). Modern Hebrew phonology was originally piecemealed together from Ashkenazi and Sephardic reading traditions, and now has blossomed into its own system, though 'ayin is still absent for most speakers. This it has inherited from Ashkenazi pronunciation (along with the uvular pronunciation of _resh_).

'Ayin in the Tiberian vocalization system was decidedly [a] coloring, much the way it is in modern Maltese. This is probably the origin of the _patach ganuv_ in Hebrew niqqud.

'Ayin was also lost to Akkadian. Modern Aramaic speakers have an 'ayin sound, I believe, though this again is probably reinforced by an Arabic-dominant environment. Ge'ez had an 'ayin sound, modern Amharic does not. Arabic and South Arabian(and perhaps some Aramaic as mentioned above) are the Semitic languages that have best preserved this phoneme. However, even in modern dialects, you hear a rather weak version of it, especially in the urban speech of Egypt and the Levant. It sounds very "smooth" or "light" though definitely still audible.

I believe, again, that 'ayin is preserved in the more conservative Maltese dialect of Gozo. Also the wiki entry on Maltese you linked much earlier in this thread is corresponding the Maltese phonemes with their _cognates_ in Arabic words. The correspondence is not meant to indicate the Maltese sounds are just like the Arabic consonants represented.


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## Haskol

Certain African Arabic dialects do not have any pharyngeal fricative, whether ح or ع. The ones I know of are Nubian Arabic, Juba Arabic and Chadian Arabic, which I believe are quite similar to one another, but I don't know enough about them. These dialects could be (or are) classified as creoles, though. 

As for the Maltese _ħ, _its pronunciation varies depending on its place in the word. In general it is pronounced /h/, but the end of a word or if doubled it is pronounced more like /x/. But I've also heard it almost pronounced like a regular Arabic /ħ/ once or twice. Btw, the regular Maltese _h_, which is generally silent, is pronounced identically to _ħ _at the end of a word.

There are no Maltese dialects that I know of that preserve the ع. Gozitan dialects (not sure if all of them, or only some) preserved the غ, which in I've seen described in standard Maltese as rgħain. These dialects, or at least pronunciations, are disappearing and only have a few elderly speakers who use them today. There is a great video somewhere online of an interview with an old Gozitan woman who pronounces the rgħain, but I can't find it.


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## Brautryðjandinn í Úlfsham

In my experience of listening to Maltese, I feel that the pronunciation of _ħ_ varies from person to person. More English-influenced speakers pronounce it identically to English "h", others pronounce it like the Arabic ح, and still others like the Arabic خ. My guess is that the local dialect of the speaker might have something to do with this. I agree with Haskol that at the end of a word it seems universally to be pronounced either as خ or ح and we therefore can say that Maltese does have a pharyngeal fricative, even if in almost all other cases it is pronounced as the English "h".

Also, apart from the mark the _għ_ has left on the vowels _i_ and _u_ when preceding them by altering their pronunciation to "ai/ei" and "ow/ew", it also is pronounced identically to the _ħ_ when it appears word finally. So the word "qiegħ" ("bottom") is pronounced as if it were spelled "qieħ". In this way it is similar to the _h._ The _għ_ is also pronounced like a geminated _ħ_ when it directly precedes the _h_. So the word "tagħha" ("hers") rhymes with "saħħa" ("health"). The _h_, apart from being pronounced as _ħ_ when occurring at the end of a word, is also pronounced as _ħ_ in certain circumstances when it is the third component of a triconsonantal root (like "x-b-h" (denoting "resemblance" or "image")) and a verb derived from that root has an ending following the _h_. For example, "jixbhu" ("they resemble") is pronounced "jixbħu", "bellaht" ("I/you stupefied") is pronounced "bellaħt" (from the root "b-l-h").


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