Arabic Pronunciation: “Difficult” Sounds

Thouria Benferhat
4 min readJul 15, 2021

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Freshmen Arabic students commonly remark:

1. “Arabic has a lot of difficult sounds”, and

2. “Arabic has a lot of guttural sounds”.

They always stress “difficult” …

Well, they are only difficult if you do not understand how they are pronounced yet.

So, here we go…

We’ll get to the guttural sounds later. For now, let’s concentrate on those simply “difficult” sounds.

Well…. They are not as difficult as you think!

Here’s how I simplify these sounds for my students:

Arabic has a number of sounds that sound difficult to you and are in fact easy to grasp and practice, because they are simply pronounced a little deeper in the mouth, which makes them resonate in the palate area of the mouth, rather than in the front part of the mouth.

Front and Back Consonants:

Here are the “front and back” consonants (the dark blue consonants are pronounced in exactly the same manner as the light blue consonants, except a bit deeper in the mouth):

Guttural Sounds:

Now, let’s get to those “guttural” sounds.

We’ve already seen the sound “q”, in the above chart.

Two of them are represented by numbers, which they resemble:

To make the sound “7”, pretend you are cleaning your eyeglasses by blowing on them from your throat. This sound is sharper than the English H, because the air passage is smaller. This is voiceless sound, so you will not activate your vocal cords.

You will not feel your vocal cords vibrating if you put your hand on your neck while pronouncing this sound.

The sound comes from the friction (“7” is a fricative) created by the passage of the air through the restricted passage at the point of articulation.

It’s basically like making an “s” in the back of your palate.

Do you know the sound a caller makes in a scary movie? “7777777”……….

Now…. don’t get scared! I am only making you exaggerate the sound so you can feel and experience it.

Try searching for “famous Arabic songs” and click on songs with the letter “7”!

Do it now! Don’t wait! I want you to KNOW this sound is beautiful!

The sound ( ء), represented here by an apostrophe ( ‘ ), and also written on other letters like so ئ إ ؤ أ , is the glottal stop. You pronounce it by stopping the air with the vocal cords, which are located in the glottis. It is the first sound when you say, “Uh oh!” in English, blocking the air then releasing it, before uttering the vowel. In fact, this is a consonant you make every time you pronounce a vowel in English; it just so happens that we actually write it in Arabic. Also, it can occur without a vowel in Arabic, in words such as “ra’s” which means “head”; it is a full-fledged consonant. Just as you block the air at the lips for “p” or behind the teeth for ”t”, you block the air for ء ( ‘ ) at the glottis. You will notice that this sound is often elided in colloquial Arabic.

To pronounce the sound “3”, first pronounce a succession of glottal stops, as in “Uh oh!”. When you do that, you are repeatedly blocking the air at the point of articulation.

However, “3” is not an occlusive, or a stop (a consonant that involves stopping the air, like “p” or “k”); it is a continuant, which means that you don’t stop the flow of air from your lungs when pronouncing “3”.

So…. at the same spot where you pronounce “uh oh!”, make the passage narrow enough to create air friction (“3” is a fricative), without blocking the air. This is a voiced consonant, so you need to activate your vocal cords and you will feel them vibrating if you put your hand on your neck.

Let’s make sure you are pronouncing this correctly:

Let’s pretend it’s Halloween and you’re trying to scare someone by jumping at them from behind the door.

It’s the sound you make when you jump from behind the door to scare someone.

Try it!

Did you say “Ahhhh!” ….

No! That’s called relaxing, not SCARING someone. Try again!

Now…. don’t get carried away! I am only making you exaggerate the sound so you can feel and experience it.

This sound (“3”) is beautiful!

Try searching for “famous Arabic songs” and click on songs with the letter “3”! Do it now! Don’t wait! I want you to KNOW this sound is beautiful!

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