Acoustic Analysis of Iraqi Arabic Simple Vowels
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v50i5.545Keywords:
Acoustic analysis, Iraqi Arabic vowels, Iraqi speakers, vowel mapping, genderAbstract
Objectives: The study aimed at mapping IBA simple vowels as they are produced by Iraqi speakers. The study also aimed to identify the effect of gender on the pronunciation of Iraqi Arabic simple vowels. The study attempted to compare between the vowel chart proposed in this study and other Iraqi and Arabic vowel charts proposed in the literature.
Methods: A quantitative method was adopted in this study. Thus, 10 Iraqis were asked to read stimuli, and their voices were recorded using high quality smart phones. The recordings were analyzed via PRAAT, and the frequencies obtained were descriptively and statistically processed.
Results: The chart showed a clear tense-lax dichotomy where each short vowel has a long counterpart except for /ee/. Moreover, the results showed significant differences in vowel formants based on gender variable. Female speakers tend to produce vowels at higher levels, while males tend to produce vowels in more front positions. The results also revealed differences between Iraqi variant in one hand, and Maslawi and other Arabic varieties on the other hand.
Conclusions: Iraqi speakers showed a good ability to map vowels in distinct places. Biological differences in male and female vocal apparatuses are behind differences in the pronunciation of vowels. It is recommended that the vowel chart offered here can be used as a reference for teachers of English pronunciation at various levels as it indicates to difficulties Iraqi EFL leaners encounter in the pronunciation of English vowels that are mostly resulting from L1 transfer.
Downloads
References
Abdul-Kadir, N., & Sudirman, R. (2011). Difficulties of standard arabic phonemes spoken by non-arab primary school children based on formant frequencies. Journal of Computer Science, 7(7), 1003.
Ahmed, A. A. M. (2008). Production and perception of Libyan Arabic vowels (Doctoral dissertation, Newcastle University).
Al-Abdely, A. A. (2002). Syllable Structure and Syllabification in Heet Iraqi Accent of Arabic and RP English (Doctoral dissertation, MA. Dissertation, University of Jordan).
Al-Abdely, A. A. W. (2016). Perception and production of English Vowels by Native Iraqi Arabic Learners. Unpublished Ph. D thesis, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia.
Al-Abdely, A. A.-W., & Yap, N. T. (2016a). Learning English vowels by Iraqi EFL learners: perceived difficulty versus actual performance. 3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature®, 22(1).
Al Abdely, A., & Yap, T. N. (2016b). The Interrelation between the Perception and Production of English Monophthongs by Speakers of Iraqi Arabic. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 24, 1-10.
Al Abdely, A. A.-W., Jalaluddin, I., Thai, Y. N., & Ghani, C. A. A. (2016). First language and proficiency level effects on English vowel perception by Iraqi learners of English in Malaysia. Asean Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (AJTLHE), 8(1), 26-45.
Alqarni, H. (2018). The production of English vowels by native Arabic speakers (Doctoral dissertation, Colorado State University).
Alghamdi, M. M. (1998). A spectrographic analysis of Arabic vowels: A cross-dialect study. Journal of King Saud University, 10(1), 3-24.
Al-Khalesi, Y. M. (2006). Modern Iraqi Arabic with MP3 files: A textbook. Georgetown University Press.
Al Mahmoud, M. (2021). ACOUSTIC EFFECTS OF DURATIONAL CUES IN THE PERCEPTION OF
NAJDI ARABIC VOWEL CONTINUA. Language Literacy: Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Language Teaching, 5(1), 57-70.
Al-Mazrouei, A., Negm, A., & Kulikov, V. (2023). The vowel system of Qatari Arabic: Evidence for peripheral/non-peripheral distinction between long and short vowels. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 1-19.
Almbark, R. (2012). The perception and production of SSBE vowels by Syrian Arabic learners: The foreign language model (Doctoral dissertation, University of York).
Almbark, R., & Hellmuth, S. (2015). Acoustic analysis of the Syrian vowel system. In The 18th I CPhS. University of Glasgow.
Alotaibi, Y. A., & Hussain, A. (2010). Comparative analysis of Arabic vowels using formants and an automatic speech recognition system. International Journal of Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition, 3(2), 11-22.
Alsaawi, A. (2020). The use of language and religion<? br?> from a sociolinguistic perspective. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication.
Al-Tamimi, J. E., & Ferragne, E. (2005). Does vowel space size depend on language vowel inventories? Evidence from two Arabic dialects and French. In 9th European Conference on Speech, Communication and Technology (Interspeech 2005). Newcastle University.
Altoma, S. J. (1969). The problem of diglossia in Arabic: A comparative study of classical and Iraqi Arabic. (No Title).
Alzahrani, D. S. M. (2014). The acquisition of tense/lax distinction by Arabic speakers learning English as a second language. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
Amir, N., Amir, O., & Rosenhouse, J. (2014). Colloquial Arabic vowels in Israel: A comparative acoustic study of two dialects. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 136(4), 1895-1907.
ʿĀnī, S. Ḥ. A. (1970). Arabic phonology: an acoustical and physiological investigation. Ianua linguarum/Series practica, 6100.
Bassiouney, R. (2017, December). A new direction for Arabic sociolinguistics. In Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXIX: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic (pp. 7-30). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Blanc Blanc, H. (1964). Communal dialects in Baghdad. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs X). Cambridge, Mass.
Cartei, V., Cowles, H. W., & Reby, D. (2012). Spontaneous voice gender imitation abilities in adult speakers. PloS one, 7(2), e31353.
Erwin, W. M. (2004). A short reference grammar of Iraqi Arabic. Georgetown University Press.
Fathi, H. M., & Qassim, Z. R. (2020). An acoustic study of the production of Iraqi Arabic vowels. Journal of Al-Farahidi's Arts, 12(40), 692-704.
Huthaily, K. (2003). Contrastive Phonological Analysis of Arabic and English (University of Montana).
Holes, C. (2004). Modern Arabic: Structures, functions, and varieties. Georgetown University Press.
Jastrow, O. (2007). Where do we stand in the research on the Anatolian qəltu dialects?. Peripheral Arabic Dialects.
Johnson, K., Ladefoged, P., & Lindau, M. (1993). Individual differences in vowel production. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 94(2), 701-714.
Kalaldeh, R. (2018). Acoustic analysis of Modern Standard Arabic vowels by Jordanian speakers. International Journal of Arabic-English Studies, 18(1), 23-48.
Khoshaba, M. P. (2006). Iraqi dialect versus standard Arabic. Medius Corporation.
Ladefoged, P., & Johnson, K. (2010). A course in phonetics. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth.
Ladefoged, P., & Johnson, K. (2006). A course in phonetics Boston. MA: Wadsworth.
Mitchell, T. F. (1990). Pronouncing Arabic. USA: Oxford University Press.
Mohammad, D. (2014). The role of first language in learning English as a foreign language in Sudan. International Journal of English and Education, 3(2), 274-281.
Munro, M. J. (1993). Productions of English vowels by native speakers of Arabic: Acoustic measurements and accentedness ratings. Language and Speech, 36(1), 39-66.
Nikolova-Simic, A. (2010). L1 interference in the perception and production of English vowels by Arabic speakers (Doctoral dissertation, Alliant International University, Shirley M. Hufstedler School of Education, San Diego).
Nydell, M. K. (2002). Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Westerners. Intercultural Press.
Palva, H. (2009). From qəltu to gələt: Diachronic notes on linguistic adaptation in Muslim Baghdad Arabic. In Arabic Dialectology (pp. 17-40). Brill.
Rogers, H. (2014). The sounds of language: An introduction to phonetics. Routledge.
Ryding, K. C. (2005). A reference grammar of modern standard Arabic. Cambridge university press.
Saadah, E. (2011). The production of Arabic vowels by English L2 learners and heritage speakers of Arabic. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Weeden, M. (2008). JN Postgate (ed.): Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern. ix, 187 pp. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2007. ISBN 978 0 903472 21 0. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 71(2), 397-399.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Dirasat: Human and Social Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2022-08-15
Published 2023-09-30
