- Forum >
- Topic: Arabic >
- "جودي دُكْتورة فَرَنْسِيّة غَ…
15 Comments
Hard to understand why I need to learn the word weird as opposed to other more common adjectives. ;)
584
They just introduced the letter غ /ghayn. They have to combine it with letters we already know to come up with easy words with which we can practice the new sound. غريب is a word they chose. My paperback dictionary lists the meaning as: strange, odd, peculiar, foreign, stranger, and foreigner. People say "that's weird" or "that's strange" all the time. It'd be weird if they didn't.
- 294
Is there a big difference in pronunciation between ghayn and "3"? I don't think I can really hear it in these lessons.
They are very different, Ghayn can be seen s a G in the back of the throat, like gargling. Ayn (written as 3 in latin alphabet) is more of a force in the throat to stress a vowel (press air out of your throat while saying the letter A for instance, in uni my arabic teacher always told us ''You aren't doing it right until you find yourself sounding a bit ridiculous'' (no offense to native arabic speakers obviously)
- 151
Ghayn is R in a french accent. 3 is almost like swallowing - closing the deepest part of the throat
- 294
Thank you, rickkorst and ErezGavish for your help with ghayn. May I ask you about another difficult consonant in Arabic? Some authorities say ق is voiceless, and some say voiced. I had assumed it must be voiceless, since it had been presented as comparable to ك . What do you say?
- 151
@KatieC993112 to your question - this is like a K pronounced from the back of the tongue. It can be voiced or not - usually at the end of a word it is voiceless (Iraq). Same letters can represent different phonemes - think the 'N' in "Bank" and in "Neck"
It's the pronunciation of the female ending ة
Edit: the ة at the end usually is a h-sound. It becomes a t-sound in connection with the -un ending which I think signals the Nominative case.
- 294
Thank you, ErezGavish for your answer about ق. So is it like in German and Russian, but unlike in English, where normally-voiced consonants are devoiced at the end of a word? Would you then say that ق is normally (ie other than in final position) voiced?
جودي دُكْتورة فَرَنْسِيّة غَريبة . Sure, she is, but aren't we all, in our own way, weird French doctors?
