Accent Deep Dive will be a series of posts that provides details on the phonemic inventories of languages and compares them with the phonemic inventory and qualities of common American English pronunciation. Each post explains how the phonemic inventory of a language is likely going to affect the pronunciation of American English.

We’re starting the series with Arabic for no other reasons than it is a widely used language, and A in English is a good starting point.

Around 310 to 350 million people use Arabic as a first language. For perspective, that’s about the size of the United States population in 2024, according to census.gov. When including second-language speakers, the number increases to approximately 420 million. Arabic is the official language of 22 countries across the Middle East and North Africa and is widely used as a liturgical language in Islam, further broadening its reach among the global Muslim population. This makes Arabic one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, ranking among the top 5 most spoken languages based on native speakers.

The 22 countries using Arabic as the official language are: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Modern Standard Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes, 6 vowel phonemes and 2 diphthongs. It is a language spoken in many different dialects. None of the patterns or descriptions detailed here will be found in all speakers of Arabic with 100% consistency.

Phonological Comparisons

Arabic has pharyngeal consonants – consonants that are primarily articulated in the pharynx. The process of producing a pharyngeal sound is called pharyngealization, which involves strongly constricting the pharynx to create a gagging-like effect. You’ll often hear a pharyngealized initial /h/ among Arabic speakers using English. Unlike the breathy and almost silent initial /h/ in house, horse and home, the pharyngeal /h/ is a more audible and raspy phoneme, but typically voiceless.

An initial pharyngeal voiceless /h/ can be informally transcribed as /hx/ or /ħ/. The latter is called an h-bar by phonology geeks. The subscript x is often used as informal shorthand for indicating the quality of added friction in a phoneme.

While English has aspirated stops and consonants like /p/ and /v/ (which are not used in Arabic), Arabic uses emphatic consonants. All Arabic consonant sounds contrast between emphatic and non-emphatic. An emphatic consonant is a type of sound made in the throat or mouth that is pronounced with extra tension or force compared to a similar sound. It often contrasts with other similar sounds, like voiced or voiceless ones, by adding this extra articulation or emphasis. To the American ear it may sound like a very quick plosive quality just before the release of air. Produce the /k/ phoneme with a more deliberate blockage of airflow followed by an unaspirated release, and you’ll be approximating an emphatic production.

American English has a richer set of vowels and diphthongs, which can be challenging for Arabic speakers due to Arabic’s simpler vowel inventory. These differences may affect how native modern Arabic speakers might produce American English sounds.

When Arabic speakers produce accented American English, common norms include substituting sounds that don’t exist in Arabic, including:

  • replacing /v/ with /f/ (e.g., “very” sounding like “ferry”); This is a very common substitution because Arabic does not use initial or final /v/.
  • substituting /b/ for /p/ (e.g., “park” sounding more like “bark”);
  • replacing /ð/ and /θ/ (voiced and unvoiced “th”) with /d/ or /t/’ The “th” phonemes are not used in Arabic, causing “think” to sound more like, “tink” among many Arabic speakers.
  • difficulty distinguishing between short and long vowel sounds. English has many vowel pairs that differ only in length (like “bit” and “beat”), which can be challenging for Arabic speakers to differentiate.
  • simplifying or reducing English diphthongs into single vowel sounds, since Arabic has fewer diphthongs than American English.

Common Patterns and Substitutions

Here are the patterns and substitutions often heard in American English pronunciation produced by Arabic speakers. Arabic is a language spoken in many dialects by speakers with varying levels of influence from other languages; none of these patterns have a 100% probability rate among all Arabic speakers.

Consonants

  • Initial /p/, /t/ and /g/ may be less aspirated and lack the plosive quality typical of American English pronunciation;
  • Final /b/, /d/ and /k/ (voiced consonants) are voiceless, sounding more like /p/, /t/ and /k/. In other words, a voiced consonant at the end of a word is likely going to be devoiced.
  • /θ/ (as in “think:”) becomes /s/ for some speakers and /ð/ becomes (as in “these”) becomes /d/ for some speakers;
  • Final voiced /v/ becomes voiceless /f/;
  • Final /θ/ becomes /s/; Final /θ/ may be produced as /θ/ or /z/;
  • Final /z/ becomes voiceless /s/;
  • Initial /dʒ/ may be simplified to /ʒ/. In the final position it may become /tʃ/ or /ʒ/;
  • Final /ŋ/ will be produced as /ŋk/ or /ŋg/ by many speakers;
  • Final /l/ is produced with a more forward tongue position by some speakers;
  • Initial /r/ will be trilled /R/ by many speakers;

Consonant Blends

All consonant blends with /r/, including the 3-element blends /spr/, /str/ and /skr/, are likely to be affected by some degree of trilling the /r/ component;

The /pl/ blend may be produced with a non-plosive /p/;

Vowels

/I/ (as in “hit”) may become /i/ (as in “heat”);

/e/ (as in “late”) may become /ɛ/ (as in “let”);

/æ/ may become either /a/ or /ɛ/;

/ɝ/ may become either /ɝR/ or /eɚ/;

/ɚ/ may become /ə/ or /ɚR/

/ʊ/ may become /u/;

/a/ may become /ʌ/;

Diphthongs

/au/ may become /ʌ/;

/eɚ/, /oɚ/ and /aɚ/ may be produced with a trilled /R/;