Re: questions about Arabic

En réponse à David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:
>
> Arabic has always been said to be derived from the Koran, so it's never
> undergone any structural change since the Koran was written.  As for the
> way
> it was actually spoken, all the consonants and vowels were supposed to
> sound
> a certain way (like Arabia alfooshaa), and those who spoke have just
> pronounced it differently.
>
Well, Arabic still underwent some changes due to phonological changes. For
instance, semivowels in verbs often disappeared in the past tense (like verb
*kawana: to be, pronounced /kawana/, then /kO:na/, and finally kâna /ka:na/,
while present stayed yakwanu /jakwanu/ IIRC) bringing a whole class of irregular
verbs called "sick" in Arabic ("sick" verbs in Arabic are categorized after the
place of the semivowel in their root. For instance, kâna is "concave" since its
root is k-w-n, with the semivowel w as second consonnant).

> <<Also, what sort of sound changes usually occur from Classical Arabic
> to the
> dialects? I'm planning to use those sound changes for my conlang, but I
> can't
> find much information on Arabic sound change.
>
> In Classical Arabic, the character "jiim" is supposed to be pronounced
> like
> the "s" in "measure".  However, in Egypt, it is pronounced as the "g" in
> "go", and in many other places it's pronounced as the "j" in "Jackson".
Remember in this case that /g/ is the original sound in Arabic. In this case,
the Egyptian dialect is more conservative then Modern Standard Arabic.

> Also, while in Classical Arabic I'm fairly certain alif is supposed to
> be
> pronounced as the "a" in "mad", it is pronounced like the "a" in
> "father" in
> some places.
Well, alif has no pronounciation whatsoever. It's just a graphic carrier for
different things, like the hamza (or glottal stop), vowels for the rare words
beginning with a vowel, or the tanwîn /an/ at the end of a noun in indefinite
accusative case. It is also used as a graphic mark for a long â /a:/, in which
case it has to be preceeded with a consonnant bearing a fatha (just like a kasra
followed by a yaa marks a long î, and a damma followed by a waaw marks a long û.
But contrary to yaa and waw, alif doesn't have any phonetic value).

  Similarly, the dipthongs have two types of sounds.  The
> dipthong fatha followed by a long yaa is pronounced either as the "i" in
> "fine", or as the "ai" in "bait".  The dipthong fatha followed by waw is
> pronounced either as the "ow" in "now", or as the "o" in "no".
For what I know, it's less common than the /a/ pronounced /E/ in the article and
in pronouns like 'enta for Standard 'anta: you (singular masculine). Don't
forget also that in most dialects, unstressed short vowels are generally reduced
to schwa, if not to nothing.

  The
> phyringialized interdental fricative (I think it's Dhaad) is pronounced
> "z"
> in most places and not as a phyringialized, interdental fricative.
> Also,
> ghayn is pronounced many ways.  It's supposed to be either a voiced
> velar
> fricative or a voiced uvular fricative or a uvular trill (they all sound
> the
> same to me), but it can be pronounced as a short [w], or I've even heard
> [x].
The standard is voiced uvular fricative (somewhat like French "r", which is more
exactly an uvular approximant). But all the others are found everywhere, and
sometimes even in the same dialect depending on position.

>  Sometimes it even sounds like ayn, though there's no reason why it
> should.
ayn is just one step back in the throat (it's a voiced pharyngeal fricative), so
I can understand the confusion. Though my poor throat would have thought rather
that ayn would have been confused with ghayn, not the contrary! :)

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr