Re: so much allophony in Arabic ?

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 07/24/04 

Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:38:38 GMT

M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
>
> belamiNoSpam@sympatico.ca (Raymond Roy) wrote ...
> > I read following sentence:
> >
> > "Standard Arabic has only three vowels, in long and short variants,
> > namely /i, a, u/. Naturally, considerable allophony occurs."
> >
> > on page http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Arabic_language.
> >
> > Is there indeed so much allophony in Arabic? I can't think of a single
> > example, after threes years of study.
>
> [qurAn] and [qorAn] are alternate pronunciations; /u/ has the
> allophones [u],[o].

You've left out the alif

> [muhAmad] and [mohAmEd] are alternate pronunciations; /a/ has the
> allophones [a],[E],[V].

You've left out the dot under the h

They're not "alternate pronunciations"; they're different
transliterations, depending on how the first person to write the words
each way heard the /u/.

Allophony refers to the fact that the pronunciation of the vowels varies
according to the neighboring consonants. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net