1.2 The Sounds from the Throat — Epoché
What you will be able to do Produce all six of the sounds English does not have: ع , ح , خ , غ , ق and hamza. Say where in your own throat each of the six is made, and feel the difference between the three places involved. Accept, and work with, the fact that not one of the six is a sound of English, so that you stop looking for a shortcut through English spelling. Keep عَيْن apart from أَيْنَ , which is the pair that separates a learner who has done this lesson from one who has not. Name the English substitution you are likeliest to make for each of the six, and the word it turns into. Prerequisites : 1.1 and the three vowels with their two lengths This is the hardest lesson in the volume and probably in the whole first period, so it is worth saying plainly at the start what the difficulty is and what it is not. The difficulty is not that these sounds are exotic; a quarter of the world's population makes them daily without thinking. The difficulty is that English has none of them . Not one. When an English speaker learns French, the new sounds are few and each of them sits next to something English already does. When an English speaker learns Arabic, six of the twenty-eight consonants are made in a part of the vocal tract that English never uses for making distinctions at all, and the mouth has no habit to build on. Better to have that news now than in the third month. The good news is that these sounds are not delicate: they do not depend on tiny differences of tongue position, the way English vowels do. They are made by squeezing, and once you have found the squeeze you can hear it in your own voice. Most learners who work at it get four of the six within a week. ع takes longer, and is worth the wait. Two of the six live in the same place as sounds that English makes by accident. English speakers produce a glottal stop, which is hamza, dozens of times a day, in the middle of uh-oh and at the front of an emphatic absolutely , and Scots and many Northern English speakers produce the sound of خ in loch . But in both cases the sound is a noise, not a letter. English never uses either of them to tell one word from another, so an English speaker has never had to make them on demand, in a particular slot, at speed. Arabic asks for exactly that. How it sounds Three places behind the mouth Everything in this lesson happens in three places, all of them behind the part of the mouth that English uses. Going from the front of the three to the back, or rather from the top of the throat downwards, they are the uvula , the pharynx and the glottis . The uvula is the small flap you can see at the back of your mouth when you say ah into a mirror. Two Arabic sounds are made by bringing the back of the tongue up against it so that air rasps past, and one by closing it off completely. The pharynx is the wall of the throat below that, and two sounds are made by tightening it, as if you were about to lift something heavy. The glottis is the space between the vocal folds at the top of the windpipe, and two sounds are made there: hamza, by closing it and letting go, and the ordinary h of English, by letting breath through. Letter Name Where it is made Voiced The nearest thing in English ء hamza glottis, closed completely and released no the catch in the middle of uh-oh ه ha glottis, breath passing through no h in hat; this is the one English sound in the group ح Ha pharynx, tightened no nothing at all ع ayn pharynx, tightened, with the voice on yes nothing at all خ kha uvula, tongue rasping against it no ch in Scottish loch غ ghayn uvula, the same rasp with the voice on yes r in Parisian French ق qaf uvula, closed completely and released no nothing; it is not the k of English Read down the Voiced column and notice the design. The sounds come in pairs that share a place and differ only in whether the vocal folds are humming: ح and ع are one such pair, خ and غ are another. English has this design too, in s against z and f against v , so the idea is familiar even though the sounds are not. If you can make one member of a pair, you can find the other by simply turning your voice on or off, and that is the fastest route into ع for most learners. hamza, the catch you already make Say uh-oh . The little break between the two halves is a complete closure of the vocal folds, and that closure is hamza. Say a apple slowly and carefully, with a break, and you have made it again. English treats this as a way of separating vowels, and English spelling has no sign for it, which is why English speakers do not think of it as a sound. In Arabic it is a consonant like any other. It has its own letter, it begins hundreds of words, it can sit in the middle of a word and at the end, and leaving it out changes what you have said. The one habit to break is the English habit of smoothing it away between vowels. In مَاء the word ends in hamza, and it must end audibly: the vowel stops, the throat closes, and that is the end of the word. An English speaker who lets the vowel trail off has said something that is not a word. ha, the h you have to squeeze Arabic has two letters an English speaker will hear as h . One of them, ه , really is the English h : breath through an open throat, nothing more. The other, ح , is made by tightening the wall of the throat until the breath has to force its way through a narrow gap. It is louder, rougher and more effortful than h , and it is felt low down rather than in the mouth. Here is the way in. Pretend you are about to lift something heavy and take a breath in with the throat braced. Now breathe out with the throat still braced and let the breath be noisy. That rough outward breath is ح . A second route: whisper hah as loudly as you can without using your voice, as if calling to somebody across a library. Most people brace the throat automatically when they do this. The mistake to avoid is turning it into a gargle. ح has no rasp and no rattle; it is a smooth, strong, hissing breath. If you hear scrap