And then there is this beast: ع a consonant pronounced so far back in the throat that you must wait two hours after eating to safely attempt it. Naturally it's one of the most common sounds in the language.
I remember looking up from my grammar book one day I felt particularly stupid and saying to one of my classmates that this language must have been thought up by a sadist on a bad day! To which they replied that he was, in fact, probably having his best day ever.
(I never learned to speak it, properly, but I feel better for having attempted)
: We have a muscle in our throat which is never used except in vomiting. Think about that and pretend you are about to be sick. You will find that what is normally called in English gagging is actually a restriction in the deep part of the throat. If you begin to gag, and then release the airstream from the lungs, you will have produced a perfect : (called :ain in Arabic).
I say letter in quotes because I'm not sure of its status as a letter or not, I think it is a letter but my Arabic game is pretty weak.
Also, what about the word for "thing" شيء it's not placed on the yaa, but written by itself. Or the plural form, things: أشياء has two hamzas in it, only one sits atop an alif.
So that's a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngeal_consonant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvular_consonant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_of_articulation#/media/F... (9 vs 10)
I’m a bit of a parrot and so sounds I can’t reproduce draw me in like a moth to a flame. The click sound in some African languages and the very guttural singsong of Vietnamese/Thai are my only nemeses... so far.
An articulation point is simply supposed to be the place where you put your tongue. In this case it's so far back in your throat, I'm not sure you actually can put your tongue there.
But the muscles are in your tongue, the articulation points are just places in your mouth. Like the palate, for palatal consonants, or lips for labial, in some more familiar examples.
I can't speak for the other Romance languages, but that's for sure the wrong way to make that sound in French, and a lot of people can't seem to hear the difference.
There's a reason some comedians make fun of european languages by clearing their throats. The rolled consonants are throaty, not mouthy (a word I just made up right now, sue me).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental,_alveolar_and_postalveo...
Another fun trill is the bilabial one [2], like imitating a fart with your lips. It doesn't really qualify as a rolled R, though.
The normal (American) English term for this is "raspberry".
That’s the stuff. Thanks for the vocab lesson. And look at that map. Most of northern and Central Europe is a guttural r.
You trilled R motherfuckers in French class ignored your poor teachers’ pained expressions for years, while the rest of us wanted to go up, pat them, and say it’s okay, we share your pain.
Apparently I have some unresolved hostilities toward some people who got A’s but had disastrous pronunciation.
No need for suing.
So is a "Hay" (ה) with a Dagesh (usally not written) at the end of a word is pronounced short way back in the throat by Jews who came back to Israel after exile in North Africa (Tunisia, etc.)
Basically "ah-in" or "ah-yin" ("ah" being pronounced like when a doctor tells you "open your mouth and say ah"). It makes the use of that letter much closer to "a" (א or ה in Hebrew).
We don't really involve the deep part of the throat, though I think it's pretty well known that you're "supposed to".
Growing up in Israel, among "Arab Jews" who did not have this problem, I was reminded daily of the difficulty I have in pronouncing my own name.
It's in the word "Saudi" for example - right when you transition from the a to the oo sound, your throat just does a bit of the work along with your mouth.
There's another letter that's way harder in my Arab-Australian opinion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qoph#Arabic_q%C4%81f
That one legit is close to a cough, just higher up in the throat.
As a native speaker of both Arabic and English, I have no trouble with pronouncing letters in either language.
This is a neutral and more grammatically correct version of the language. Its use is mostly limited to the written medium, but is also used for verbal communication in news channels and academic contexts.
>neutral and more grammatically correct version of the language
is nuts. Arabic isn’t a language any more than the Romance languages are. Moroccan, Egyptian and Yemeni Arabic are at least as divergent as Spanish, French and Romanian. FuSha is like if the entire Romance speaking world wrote in Latin.
The academic contexts FuSha is used in are also limited to primary and secondary instruction, Arabic language and religion mostly. Tertiary education across the Arab world is often conducted in English or French so the educated classes will speak at least one of those languages at a near native level. That’s part of why there are fewer books translated into Arabic each year than into Dutch.
It’s especially apparent when after learning to make the “p” sound, ESL (or ETL/EFL even!) Arabs go around saying “apsoloutely no broblem.” The most common reverse substitution is probably “peautiful” with considerable emphasis on the p.
It doesn't help that alphabetical writing systems are sold to us from young age as if they were actual representing the sounds. They are not, and in more subtle ways than you'd think.
For example, in the context of B's and P's, English has "explosive consonants". In many words the "p" sound is actually followed by a puff of air. But this also happens incidentally when B is followed by some other sounds. Imagine pronouncing "beautiful" without emitting any puff of air after the B and you'll notice you sound Italian or Indian.
So, if your native language doesn't have the p sound at all and you learn it from examples in English it's quite likely you'll latch on the "puff of air" feature of exaggerated explosive variant of the p sound you might be practicing a lot.
You'll then hear a similar sound in beautiful, and try to repeat that too but native speakers might percieve that as a p sound
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/accents-are-fo...
"People talk about a 'window of opportunity' for learning language," Kuhl says. "The implication is that if you miss that opportunity, it's too late. I don't agree. It is more difficult with the years. But not impossible."
Personally, I think the largest difficulty is the amount of practice required. Kids can babble about all day, but as an adult, even investing an hour a day into language practice is hard to find the time for.
After some research, although I had a flawed understanding of vowels and consonants, I think it's classified as a semivowel.