The Truth About Emphatic Consonants in Arabic: Are They Really That Different?

When starting to learn Arabic, students are immediately confronted with four Arabic letters usually called “emphatic” in Western textbooks: ص، ض، ط، ظ.

They are often taught through near-partners that look reassuringly familiar on the page, but feel much less reassuring in the mouth.

We’re talking about the following pairs:

Teachers stress the importance of distinguishing between the emphatic and non-emphatic letters, and textbooks warn of dire consequences if sounds are confused or distinctions ignored.

But really? Are the sounds always that different?

I was listening to a BBC Arabic news report recently and was hearing the word “mumaatala” in relation to diplomatic talks between Iran and the US.

I didn’t recognise the word, and went to my Hans Wehr looking for م-ت-ل. Not finding anything, I then identified the correct root: م-ط-ل.

• The word was مُماطَلَة (mumāṭala) — from ماطَلَ (māṭala) – يُماطِلُ (yumāṭilu) — the verbal noun (مَصْدَر) of the third form, meaning “postponement” or “delaying tactics”.
• Lisān al-ʿArab gives المَطْل as التسويف والمُدافَعة — putting off, delaying, fending someone off — especially with a promise or a debt. It also preserves the older physical sense of stretching or lengthening something, as when iron is beaten and drawn out.
• Edward Lane in his famous Lexicon similarly glosses مَطَلَهُ بِدَيْنِهِ and ماطَلَهُ as delaying or putting someone off in the matter of a debt, “by promising time after time to pay him”, and notes ممطول as something extended, elongated, or lengthened.

I continued listening carefully, and the word was used again several times in the broadcast, and to my ear the ط sounded much closer to a ت than I had expected.

That reminded me of something that one of my own Arabic teachers, Dr. Jack Smart, told us right at the start of our Arabic journey at Exeter in the early 1980s.

Dr Smart was not just a name on a textbook cover: he was one of the people who taught us Arabic, and one of those teachers who made the language feel spoken, lived-in and human, rather than simply arranged in grammar tables.

1. Dr Jack Smart said that there was often very little difference in practice between the pronunciation of emphatic and non-emphatic consonants.
2. He cited سَوْط (sawṭ, “whip”) and صَوْت (ṣawt, “voice”). Strictly speaking, this is not a perfect minimal pair, because more than one sound shifts. But as a learner’s trap, it is perfect.
3. Another example is كَلْب (kalb, “dog”) and قَلْب (qalb, “heart”) — again, not an emphatic/non-emphatic pair in the strict technical sense, but very much part of the same learner’s panic: one letter changes, and suddenly the mouth has to move into unfamiliar territory.

Dr Smart spoke excellent Arabic, having spent long periods in Egypt, Sudan and the Gulf. He published as J. R. Smart, and many Arabic learners know him through the Teach Yourself Arabic tradition. He was associated with Frances Altorfer, with Gulf Arabic teaching material, including Complete Spoken Arabic of the Arabian Gulf. That was very much his strength: not turning Arabic into a mystical fortress, but making it usable, audible and human.

Teach Yourself Arabic by J. R. Smart

While the original book is out of print, used copies are widely available. Please note that a newer edition by different authors has since been published.

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Complete Spoken Arabic of the Arabian Gulf: A Teach Yourself Guide

A Teach Yourself Guide provides you with a clear and comprehensive approach to spoken Arabic, so you can progress quickly from the basics to understanding, speaking, and writing spoken Arabic with confidence.

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At Exeter, Dr Jack Smart was Lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies from 1976 to 1997. Teach Yourself material describes him as someone who taught Arabic at university level for over thirty years and lived and worked in Egypt, Sudan and the Gulf. Dr Smart died suddenly on 29 February 2012, aged 73, at Cullompton in Devon.

He told us, with a weary expression, that when asking Bedouins about words and phrases, they would often insist that there was a huge difference in the pronunciation of emphatic and non-emphatic consonants. And if one doubted it, they would spend the next hour inserting words into the conversation — such as سَوْط and صَوْت — and over-pronouncing them, to try to make their point.

Of course, I don’t dispute that there frequently is a difference in pronunciation.

But Dr Smart was an excellent teacher — always trying to make things simple and make clear how Arabic was actually spoken, regardless of what the textbooks said.

Incidentally, Dr Smart also spoke highly of G.W. Thatcher’s Arabic Grammar of the Written Language, a rather old grammar book.

Thatcher’s Grammar was obscure even when I was first learning Arabic in the 1980s, but reprints are easily available. I have a copy on my shelves. It is indeed a useful guide — old-fashioned, but useful.

Arabic Grammar of the Written Language

Reprint: G. W. Thatcher’s Arabic Grammar is a classic, traditional reference guide for mastering written Arabic.

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The book belongs firmly to the older world of Arabic grammar teaching. Library records place Thatcher’s English adaptation in the early twentieth-century tradition, with a 1922 Heidelberg edition listed as a second edition and explicitly described as based on Ernst Harder’s book Arabische Konversations-Grammatik (published in German in 1898). In other words: heavy grammar books, long exercises and no mercy — but also, often, a surprising amount of clarity.

By the way, I’ve always found the letter ح by far the most difficult Arabic letter to pronounce correctly, and to distinguish from ه.

Traditional scholars already knew why this is such a common headache. The letter ه comes from the farthest part of the throat together with ء, while ح comes from the middle of the throat together with ع.

So yes, they are both “throaty”. But they are not the same kind of throaty. Arabic, naturally, makes sure of that.