Classical Arabic - Phonology

Phonology

Classical Arabic had three pairs of long and short vowels: /a/, /i/, and /u/. The following table illustrates this:

Like Modern Standard Arabic, Classical Arabic had 28 consonant phonemes:

1. Non-emphatic /s/ may have actually been, shifting forward in the mouth before or simultaneously with the fronting of the palatals (see below).
2. As it derives from Proto-Semitic *g, /ɟ/ may have been a palatalized velar: /ɡʲ/
3. /l/ is emphatic only in /ʔaɫɫɑːh/, the name of God, i.e. Allah, except after /i/ or /iː/ when it is unemphatic: bismi l-lāhi /bismillaːhi/ ('in the name of God').
4. /ɾˠ/ (velarized) is pronounced without velarization before /i/: .

The consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" /dˤ, ɮˤ, sˤ, ðˤ/ were either velarized or pharyngealized . In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, /sˤ/ is written ⟨S⟩; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, ⟨ṣ⟩. The consonants are pronounced with velarization.

There are a number of phonetic changes between Classical Arabic and modern Arabic dialects. These include:

• The palatals /ɕ/, /ɟ/ (⟨ش⟩‎, ⟨ج⟩) shifted. /ɕ/ became postalveolar, and /ɟ/ became postalveolar, or as it was or, or velar .
• The uvular fricatives /χˠ/, /ʁˠ/ (⟨خ⟩‎, ⟨غ⟩) became velar or post-velar:, or left as they are but without velarization, .
• /ɮˤ/ ⟨ض⟩ became /dˤ/ (Certain Tajweed traditions actually preserve the original value of this sound synchronically.) See also Voiced alveolar lateral fricative

See Arabic phonology for further details of the IPA representations of contemporary Arabic sounds.

The language of Classical Arabic is essentially that of the so-called poetic koine of the pre-Islamic poets, a standardized prestige dialect based on conservative Bedouin dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula. A similar but slightly different koine had been adopted in Mecca, in a form adapted somewhat to the phonology of the spoken Meccan dialect of the time, and it was in this form that the Quran was given. The Quran was later rephonemicized into the standard poetic koine. Two of the differences between these dialects are represented in the modern Arabic writing system:

• The original poetic koine had preserved the Proto-Semitic glottal stop in all positions, whereas the Meccan variant had eliminated it everywhere except initially, following the spoken Meccan dialect. (Similar changes occur in all the modern varieties of Arabic.) Depending on the surrounding vowels, the glottal stop was either deleted entirely, converted to /w/ or /j/, or deleted after lengthening a preceding short vowel. The Quran as originally written down represented these changes; since the document was considered sacred, the letters were not changed. Instead, the letter representing the "incorrect" /w/, /j/ or long vowel that ought to be pronounced as a glottal stop had a diacritic (termed hamza) written over it to cancel out its inherent sound; if no such letter existed, the hamza was written between the existing letters. This is the origin of the complex rules regarding the writing of the glottal stop.
• In the dialects underlying the poetic koine, original word-final /aja, aji, aju/ had developed into /aː/, merging with final /aː/ from other sources. In the spoken Meccan dialect, however, these word-final sequences did not merge in this way, instead remaining as a separate vowel, perhaps pronounced /eː/. Correspondingly, the Meccan koine variant split the standard koine's final /aː/ in two, in ways that corresponded with the spoken dialect. In writing the Meccan variant, final /aː/ was written with the letter alif, while final /eː/ was written with the letter yāʾ, normally used for /j/. When rephonemicized into the standard poetic koine, the occurrences of yāʾ meant to be pronounced as /j/ or /aː/. Only recently, two dots was created to be written under the final yāʾ in order to distinguish it from the pronunciation of /aː/. This invention was not adopted by all Arabic speaking nations, as for example, Egypt and Sudan never add two dots under the final yāʾ in handwriting and print, even in printed Quran. Yāʾ for /aː/ was named alif maqṣūra "limited alif" or alif layyina "flexible alif". This is why, final /aː/ can be written either with a normal alif or alif maqṣūra.