English Pronunciation for Arabic Speakers

"Ben" for pen. "Ferry" for very. "Istudent" for student. If Arabic is your first language, you have probably heard at least one of these, and if you teach English in Cairo, Riyadh or Dubai, you hear all three every week.

None of them is random. Each one is Arabic pronunciation doing its normal job inside an English word, so the list is short. Bernard Smith's chapter on Arabic speakers in Swan and Smith's Learner English describes it, and a later study that recorded advanced Arabic speakers reading English, called "the recorded study" below, found many of the same errors still present (both are under Sources at the end). Arabic speakers also start with something most learners lack: both English th sounds are already in the Arabic alphabet.

Arabic is one written standard, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and many spoken dialects. This guide starts from MSA and says where a dialect changes the picture, because an Egyptian and a Kuwaiti learner do not have the same list. Teachers will find a section on what to drill first near the end. There is also an Arabic version of this guide.

About the transcriptions. Every table gives a US and a UK form, taken from a pronunciation lexicon IPAtics maintains and printed exactly as it appears there. The US column puts a stress mark before the stressed syllable even in one-syllable words (pen is /ˈpɛn/) and marks no vowel length. The UK column marks length with ː and often leaves stress out. Both write the English r as /ɹ/.

p and b

Arabic has /b/ but no /p/. MSA never uses it, and the dialects have it only in some loanwords, sometimes written with the Persian letter پ. Without a /p/ of its own, the ear files English /p/ under the nearest Arabic sound, ب, and the mouth produces what the ear heard. Learner English lists /p/ and /b/ as a pair Arabic speakers confuse.

The lips do the same thing for both sounds. /b/ is voiced: the vocal folds vibrate. /p/ is voiceless, and at the start of a stressed syllable English adds a puff of air after it, called aspiration. That puff is what tells an English listener pen and not Ben.

The test is a sheet of paper. Hold it a few centimetres in front of your mouth and say pen: the paper should move. Say Ben: it should stay still. At the end of a word there is no puff to check, but the vowel helps you: English makes a vowel shorter before /p/ than before /b/, so cap is clipped and cab is drawn out.

Once you have a /p/, keep it for the words that need it. The recorded study found the confusion running both ways in advanced speakers: /p/ said as [b], and /b/ said as [p]. Problem /ˈpɹɑbləm/ has one of each, and it is a good word to check yourself on. The page on the /p/ sound has more words to practise with.

v and f

The same thing happens one pair over. Arabic has /f/ (ف) and no /v/, so very comes out as ferry and van as fan. Learner English lists /f/ and /v/ as a confused pair. The recorded study adds a useful detail: the problem ran one way only. Its speakers said /v/ as /f/, but almost never /f/ as /v/.

The mouth position is the one you already use for ف: lower lip lightly against the upper teeth. The only change is the voice. Put two fingers on your throat, start a long /f/, and switch your voice on halfway through without moving your lip. The buzz you feel is /v/. Do the same at the end of leave, where the buzz is easy to lose.

Vowels: quality, not only length

MSA has three vowels, a, i and u, each short or long, plus two diphthongs, ay and aw. Length changes meaning, so Arabic speakers already know to listen for it. English has far more vowels, and in English the shape of the vowel matters as much as its length, often more.

ship, sheep and bet

Arabic has one short and one long i. English needs three vowels in that space: /iː/ in sheep, /ɪ/ in ship and /ɛ/ in bet. Learner English names bit and bet as the pair Arabic speakers mix up, and the recorded study found that confusion running in both directions.

/iː/ is the Arabic long ii, with the lips spread. /ɪ/ is shorter and looser, with the tongue a little lower and further back. /ɛ/ drops the jaw again. Practise all three in a row, beat, bit, bet, and feel the jaw open a step each time.

cat and cut

Arabic has one short a, but you do not always say it the same way. Next to plain consonants it sits at the front of the mouth, close to the vowel of English cat. Next to the emphatic consonants, such as ص and ط, it moves back. Arabic speakers hear that as one vowel taking on the colour of its neighbours. English uses vowels in this area to tell words apart, so cat and cut are different words.

For /æ/, open the jaw wider than for an Arabic a and keep the tongue forward. For /ʌ/, say a short, relaxed a with the jaw only half open. Neither vowel changes with the consonant next to it, so bag keeps its front vowel even though /ɡ/ is made at the back of the mouth.

late, let, coat and caught

Learner English also notes that Arabic speakers tend to flatten English diphthongs, the vowels that glide from one position to another. The recorded study found it in exactly two of them: the vowel of late came out close to let, and the vowel of coat close to caught.

The fix is to let the vowel move. Start late on an e and slide toward ee before the /t/. Start coat on an o and close the lips toward oo. If you learn British English, Learner English lists one more pair: cot /kɒt/ and caught /kɔːt/. Many American speakers say those two alike, which is why the US column writes caught with the vowel of cot.

Stress and vowel reduction

Arabic stress follows from the shape of the word: count the syllables, see which ones are heavy, and the stress falls where the rules put it. English stress has to be learned with each word, and it moves inside one family of words: photograph is /ˈfoʊtəˌɡɹæf/, but photography is /fəˈtɑɡɹəfi/. Look at what the stress does to the first vowel. It is a full /oʊ/ when stressed and a weak /ə/, the schwa, when not. English reduces almost every unstressed vowel this way, and that reduction gives English its rhythm.

Spelling makes this harder for Arabic speakers than for most. Smith calls Arabic spelling "virtually phonetic": once you know the letters, you know the sounds. Readers who expect the same of English tend to say what is written, and English writes many vowels that are reduced or not said at all.

The fix is the opposite of what feels clear. Make the stressed syllable long and loud, then let the others go short and weak. Our guide to the English schwa covers the reduced vowel in detail, including the small grammar words such as to and for that reduce in every sentence.

Consonant clusters: the extra vowel

An Arabic syllable cannot begin with two consonants. When Arabic borrows a word that does, it adds a vowel in front: Spain is إسبانيا, Isbānyā. The same habit turns English student into "istudent" and school into "eschool". Learner English gives spring said as "ispring" or "sipring", and the recorded study found that almost all of its speakers' inserted vowels sat inside consonant clusters.

At the end of a word Arabic allows two consonants, as in بنت, so the trouble starts at three. The past tense adds a cluster to almost every regular verb, and Learner English notes the extra vowel there too: walked said as "walk-id". After most consonants the -ed ending is one sound, /t/ or /d/, and walked has one syllable.

Two fixes help. Start with a long hiss, "sssss-kool", and shorten the /s/ until it sounds normal. Or lean on the word before: say a school as as + cool. Arabic syllables can end in /s/, so the /s/ closes the first syllable and leaves no room for a vowel. For clusters at the end, build from the back: "t", "kt", "skt", asked.

ng: nothing after it

English /ŋ/ is a single sound, an n made at the back of the mouth, and in sing nothing follows it. Learner English notes that Arabic speakers often add a /ɡ/ or /k/ after it. The recorded study found this many times, always in words ending in -ing, where the written g invites it.

The last two rows show the cost: an added /k/ turns thing into think. Hold the /ŋ/ like a hum and let it fade, without closing the back of the tongue at the end.

The r

The Arabic ر is a trill or a tap: the tip of the tongue strikes the ridge behind the teeth once or several times. The English /ɹ/ touches nothing. The tongue tip curls back or the whole tongue bunches up, the lips round a little, and the voice passes through. Learner English lists the wrong kind of r among Arabic speakers' typical errors. In the recorded study it was one of the most frequent errors, and the authors call it highly noticeable.

To find /ɹ/, say a long uh, then slowly curl the tip of your tongue back without letting it touch anything. The vowel takes on an r colour. Hold that position and start red from it. The page on the English r sound /ɹ/ has more words.

The last three rows raise a second question. American English pronounces an r after a vowel; standard British English drops it and lengthens the vowel instead. Both are correct, and our comparison of American and British IPA shows the patterns. What sounds unplaced is a mix of the two, so choose one.

Where Arabic gives you a head start: th

English writes two sounds as th: /θ/ in think and /ð/ in this. For French, German, Turkish and Japanese learners they are among the hardest sounds in English. For an Arabic speaker, /θ/ is ث and /ð/ is ذ. Read think with a ث and this with a ذ and you are done.

The catch is dialect. In Egyptian Arabic and in the urban speech of the Levant, ث became /t/ in everyday words (Egyptian talāta for ثلاثة) and /s/ in words taken from MSA, and ذ became /d/ or /z/ in the same way. Speakers who grew up with those habits can carry them into English. Learner English lists /s/ or /t/ for /θ/ and /z/ or /d/ for /ð/, and the recorded study heard /θ/ mostly as /s/ and /ð/ as /z/ or /d/: think like "sink", this like "zis" or "dis". Gulf dialects keep both sounds.

For these speakers the fix is not a new sound. It is the ث and ذ they already use when they read MSA aloud, brought into English. The harder question is which of the two a word takes, and our guide to the two TH sounds gives the spelling patterns.

g, j and ch: your dialect decides

Three more sounds depend on where you are from, and two of them on how you say one letter, ج.

/ɡ/. MSA has no /ɡ/, but most dialects have it somewhere. In Egypt it is the normal sound of ج, so good and game cause no trouble. In the Gulf, most of Iraq, the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and Bedouin dialects everywhere, ق is said as /ɡ/, as in Gulf gahwa for قهوة. Speakers with neither, such as many city speakers in the Levant, where ج is /ʒ/ and ق is a glottal stop, have no /ɡ/ in their own words. Learner English lists /k/ and /ɡ/ as a confused pair, and these are the speakers to watch: goat can come out as coat.

/dʒ/. The j of jam is the ج of Iraq, most of the Arabian Peninsula and MSA as it is usually read. In most of the Levant and North Africa, ج is /ʒ/ instead, the sound in the middle of measure, and that is what turns up in jam and large. Learner English lists /dʒ/ and /ʒ/ as a pair, and in the recorded study /dʒ/ was the sound most often replaced, usually by /ʒ/.

/tʃ/. Arabic has /ʃ/ (ش) but MSA has no /tʃ/, the ch of chair. Learner English lists chair and share as a pair that can merge. Gulf Arabic has the sound in its own words, so it is mostly an issue for other speakers, and the recorded study found it rare among advanced learners.

/ɡ/ is /k/ with the voice on; check it with fingers on your throat, as for /v/. /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ both start with a short stop, /d/ or /t/, so neither can be held. /ʒ/ and /ʃ/ can last as long as your breath does. If your j or ch can be stretched, it has lost its stop.

For teachers: what to drill first

Not every item above deserves equal class time. Rehman and colleagues, the authors of the recorded study, ranked the errors by how often they occurred and by how many English words depend on the contrast. Their likely priorities were /p/ and /b/, the gliding vowels of late and coat, bit against bet, /v/, and /z/, which often came out as /s/ at the end of a word. That last one is easy to miss: the plural in dogs /ˈdɑɡz/ and the verb is /ˈɪz/ both end in /z/. The extra vowels in clusters and after /ŋ/ came next. The th sounds ranked low.

A practical order for a mixed class:

1. /p/ and /v/. Every Arabic speaker needs them, and /p/ against /b/ separates a great many English words. Drill them as minimal pairs, with the paper and the throat tests.
2. The vowels. bit, bet and beat; cat and cut; late and let.
3. Endings. Clusters, the -ed ending, final /z/ and -ing. These change the shape of the word, and with it what the listener expects to hear.
4. Stress, from the transcription. Your students trust spelling, so show them the IPA. A stress mark and a schwa on the board do more than repeating the word.
5. The r. It is very audible, but it rarely changes which word a listener hears. Fix it once the rest is stable.

Then adjust for the room. An Egyptian class needs the th sounds and /tʃ/, but rarely /ɡ/. A Gulf class can usually skip th, /ɡ/ and /tʃ/. A class from Beirut or Damascus may need th, /ɡ/ and the j of jam. The phoneme pages include notes on Arabic speakers, for example on /v/, and our list of English minimal pairs every learner confuses supplies drill material for most of the contrasts above.

A four-week plan

1. Week 1: /p/ and /b/. Ten minutes a day with the paper test and the pairs in the first table.
2. Week 2: /v/ and /f/. Fingers on your throat; then the r.
3. Week 3: the vowels. The bit, bet, beat row first, then cat and cut, then the gliding vowels.
4. Week 4: stress and clusters. Thirty words you use every day: check where the stress falls and which vowels reduce, and say the clusters without an extra vowel.

Record yourself each week and listen back. You cannot hear your own accent while you speak, but you can hear it on a recording.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to lose my Arabic accent completely?

No, and it is not a realistic goal for an adult learner. The goal is an accent that does not slow the listener down. The sections above are the difference between the two: a listener who hears ferry for very or "istudent" for student has to stop and repair the word, while a listener who hears a slightly different r does not.

Should I learn American or British English?

Either, but one. Many school courses in the Arab world use British materials, while films and online video are mostly American. The biggest differences are the r after vowels and a few vowels, and a mix of the two sounds less fluent than either accent on its own.

How long does it take?

Single sounds such as /p/ and /v/ improve within weeks, because they are a matter of where the lips and tongue go. Stress and rhythm take months, because they are a habit rather than a fact. The order matters: fixing /p/ and /v/ first gives the biggest gain for the least effort.

Trying It Yourself

Most of these patterns show up in words you already know, the moment you check them. IPAtics shows the IPA for any text you select, in any app, with one hotkey, and plays the word, so you can check a vowel or a stress mark while you read. To convert text in the browser without installing anything, paste it into the English to IPA converter or the IPA translator.

Sources

• Smith, Bernard. "Arabic speakers." In Michael Swan and Bernard Smith (eds.), Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 195–213. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667121.014. The source for the typical errors attributed to Learner English above.
• Rehman, Ivana, Alif Silpachai, John Levis, Guanlong Zhao and Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna. "The English pronunciation of Arabic speakers: A data-driven approach to segmental error identification." Language Teaching Research 26(6), 2022, pp. 1055–1081. doi.org/10.1177/1362168820931888. The recorded study: four advanced Arabic speakers reading English sentences, and the teaching priorities in the section for teachers.
• Wikipedia, "Arabic phonology": the MSA vowels, the front and back variants of a, predictable stress, the trilled r, syllables that cannot start with two consonants, and the dialect pronunciations of ج.
• Wikipedia, "Varieties of Arabic", "Gulf Arabic", "Levantine Arabic" and "Mesopotamian Arabic": ق as /ɡ/ or a glottal stop, the loss or survival of ث and ذ, and /tʃ/ in Gulf Arabic.