Tips on Difficult to Pronounce Arabic Sounds for
Non-native Speakers
The Arabic alphabet contains a number of sounds that are
difficult to pronounce for non-native speakers.
Tip 1: Start by listening to recordings of the individual sounds
and then proceed to listening to recordings of individual
words, before listening to whole sentences.
Tip 2: To make learning the Arabic sounds easier I have
divided them into three groups, easy, medium and hard:
1. Easy Arabic Sounds
The following Arabic letters are pronounced more or less like
in English:
‫ﺍا‬
ā
long sound like in the English word “mad”
‫ء‬
’
a glottal stop; depending on where it’s put it
can be a short “u”, “a”, or “i” sound
‫ﺏب‬
b
the same as our English “b” in “bread”
‫ﺕت‬
t
the same as our English “t” in “tea”
‫ﺙث‬
th
“there”!
like the “th”-sound in “three”; but not like the in
‫ﺝج‬
dj
as in the -sound in the name “John”
‫ﺩد‬
d
the same as our English “d” in “door”
‫ﺫذ‬
dh
“three”!
like the sound in “there”; but not like the
‫ﺯز‬
z
the same as our English “z” in “zoo”
‫ﺱس‬
s
the same as our English “s” in “serpent”
in
‫ﺵش‬
sh
the same as our English “sh” in “shine”
‫ﻑف‬
f
the same as our English “f” in “ferry”
‫ﻙك‬
k
the same as our English “k” in “kilo”
‫ﻝل‬
l
the same as our English “l” in “look”
‫ﻥن‬
n
the same as our English “n” in “nose”
‫ﻡم‬
m
the same as our English “m” in “mouse”
‫ﻩه‬
h
the same as our English “h” in “hurricane”
‫ﻭو‬
w
the same as our English “w” in “water”
‫ﻭو‬
ū
“boom”
a long “u”-sound as in our English word
‫ﻱي‬
y
the same as our English “y” in “year”
‫ﻱي‬
ī
a long “i”-sound, like the two “e”s in “three”
2. Moderate Arabic Sounds
Arabic sounds that are slightly different from English:
‫ﺭر‬
r
similar to the English “r”- sound at the
beginning of a word, e.g. in “road”, but more towards the
front of the tongue and trilled like the Spanish “r”
‫ﺡح‬
H
similar to the English letter “h”, but stronger
and more from the throat
‫ﺹص‬
S
similar to the English letter “s”, but more
emphatic and “darker”
‫ﺽض‬
D
similar to the English letter “d”, but more
emphatic and “darker”
‫ﻁط‬
T
similar to the English letter “t”, but more
emphatic and “darker”
‫ﻅظ‬
Z
“dh” sound
sounds like a “darker” version of the Arabic
3. Hard Arabic Sounds
These Arabic sounds have no direct equivalent in the
English language and they are difficult to pronounce at first.
‫ﺥخ‬
kh
like the sound in the English word “loch”; if
you know German, it’s the sound in the word “Sprache” or
the “j” in the Spanish word “jamón”.
‫ﻉع‬
c
this sounds like a high-pitched version of the
English sound, but squeezed from the back of the throat
‫ﻍغ‬
gh
the same position of the throat as above, but
the tongue touches the roof of the mouth; like a French “r”
‫ﻕق‬
q
like the English letter “k”, but produced from
much further back the throat and much “darker”
Perfecting Your Arabic Pronunciation
As you can see this method does NOT rely on hours of
excruciating rote memorization. It is a fun and easy way to
start out on your Arabic language learning journey.Have you
experienced that sinking feeling when you try a wellconstructed Arabic sentence only to be met with a blank
face, or – even worse – with laughter.
Why is this?
Languages are essentially built on sounds. If I speak English
and live in an English-speaking country I expect a speaker to
pronounce sounds in a certain way. When we can’t identify
the sound we try and adjust the way we are listening, similar
to tuning a radio, but if we cannot guess the sound, the
chances are we won’t comprehend what the other person is
trying to say.
The Two Elements of Arabic Pronunciation
There are two different elements to good Arabic
pronunciation: the pronunciation of individual sounds and
words on the one hand and the “melody” or prosody
associated with the pronunciation of whole sentences. Both
of these are important.
1 Individual sounds
Try pronouncing all the Arabic letters. Notice how your mouth
and tongue are moving to produce the sounds. If you can’t
figure out how a sound is physically made you will find it very
difficult to say it.
Sounds that are the same
Arabic has a lot of sounds that do not exist in English.
Difficult sounds
Start by going through a list of the Arabic letters and make a
mark next to the ones you find difficult to pronounce. Pay
extra attention to these. Try and physically make the sound
and observe the movement of your mouth and tongue. Say
the alphabet. Look at how children use the alphabet song in
English to help them remember the alphabet, doing the
same in Arabic will also help you memorize the letters and
sounds.
By the way, this here is an awesome “nasheed” version of
the Arabic alphabet song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAzXdkgwpfo&feature=pla
yer_embedded
Read out aloud
Get a short piece of Arabic text from a course book or
website and read it out aloud. This technique has two
advantages. First, you are testing your ability to pronounce
all individual sounds. Secondly you are practising the sounds
that you expect to hear and you become used to the sounds
of Arabic.
2 Sentence Melody
Arguably, this aspect of pronunciation is the more important
one. Many people learn how to pronounce the individual
letters and sounds of a language, but still they have a very
“foreign” ring to them when they communicate.
This is because their sentence “melody” is not quite right.
Italian, for instance has a strong rising and falling rhythm to
it, whereas English is somewhat “flatter”. The best way to get
your Arabic sentence melody right is to do a lot of listening to
recordings by native speakers.
Try to listen repeatedly to the same short recording of one
minute length or so and pay extra attention to the way the
sentences rise and fall. After a while try to speak along with
the recording, only barely making any sound in the beginning
and getting louder as you repeat the process. In the end,
your own voice should be louder than the actual recording.
This process works best with headphones.
When is your pronunciation good enough?
In other words, when to stop focussing on pronunciation?
For many Arabic learners getting by in the language is
satisfactory. If we can say what we want, simply, slowly and
the person we are speaking to is able to understand us, then
our pronunciation is probably good enough for basic
communication. How much better you want to become is up
to you after this. Some people have an innate talent for
pronunciation and will become very close to sounding like a
native. But, even those of us who are not that gifted can
achieve a very good level of pronunciation, where the people
we speak to will not notice our accent after a few minutes of
talking. With the methods described here you too can
achieve this level of success with Arabic pronunciation.