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Arabic for the day
Mar. 2nd, 2005 01:26 pmDid you know that, "while English has 22 vowels and diphthongs to 24 consonants, Arabic has only eight vowels and diphthongs ... to 32 consonants"1?
That explains a lot. English speakers' problems pronouncing Arabic tend to be with the consonants we don't have (kh, q, gh, '), while Arabic speakers' problems pronouncing English tend to be with the vowels they don't have (like saying "noyce" instead of "nice"). Or with consonant clusters, since they have very few of those in Arabic, so a phrase like "next spring" that presents six consonant sounds in a row (kstspr) is pretty daunting to a native Arabic speaker.
(Since I know Mary will ask, the vowels they DO have in Arabic are i:, a:, u:, i, @, u, ei and au. The consonants they don't have that we do are p, v, Z, N and r, which in Arabic is a flap. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification because different Arabic dialects use different phonemes, if that's the right word, to pronounce a given letter. For example, the letter jim is pronounced "j" here and "g" in Egypt.)
I'm reading up on ESL and, specifically, first language interference. It's really very fascinating, and I keep having "aha" moments when I recognize that many of the weird sentences I see in student papers would be completely grammatical in Arabic. I wish I'd been able to study this a bit before starting this job.
1 Smith, B. (2001.) Arabic speakers. In Swan & Smith, Learner English. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP.
Edit: I mistyped the quote, adding an extra 24 before the word "diphthongs." 22 vowels and 24 diphthongs would be a bit much, wouldn't it? Anyway, I've taken the stray number out.
That explains a lot. English speakers' problems pronouncing Arabic tend to be with the consonants we don't have (kh, q, gh, '), while Arabic speakers' problems pronouncing English tend to be with the vowels they don't have (like saying "noyce" instead of "nice"). Or with consonant clusters, since they have very few of those in Arabic, so a phrase like "next spring" that presents six consonant sounds in a row (kstspr) is pretty daunting to a native Arabic speaker.
(Since I know Mary will ask, the vowels they DO have in Arabic are i:, a:, u:, i, @, u, ei and au. The consonants they don't have that we do are p, v, Z, N and r, which in Arabic is a flap. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification because different Arabic dialects use different phonemes, if that's the right word, to pronounce a given letter. For example, the letter jim is pronounced "j" here and "g" in Egypt.)
I'm reading up on ESL and, specifically, first language interference. It's really very fascinating, and I keep having "aha" moments when I recognize that many of the weird sentences I see in student papers would be completely grammatical in Arabic. I wish I'd been able to study this a bit before starting this job.
1 Smith, B. (2001.) Arabic speakers. In Swan & Smith, Learner English. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP.
Edit: I mistyped the quote, adding an extra 24 before the word "diphthongs." 22 vowels and 24 diphthongs would be a bit much, wouldn't it? Anyway, I've taken the stray number out.
