Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

Shahlaa Dashti
CSUN

Professor: Scholten, Christina G

May 4, 2015

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

Languages around the world have their own phonetic and phonological
rules, and, when speakers try to speak another language, they carry those
rules with them as a background from which it is hard to detach. Learners of
English from different languages face difficulties and cannot easily
differentiate the sound systems of English, thus creating a foreign accent
(Yava, 2006). This observation compares a native language (L1) speaker and
a nonnative language (L2) speaker, which will be the target language. The,
native speaker, L1, is a male whose birth place is Lewisville, Texas, in the
United States of America. He is twenty one years old and has spoken English
since childhood. He speaks Spanish as a second language. The nonnative
speaker, L2, is male and speaks Arabic with an Egyptian Arabic dialect (EA).
He is from Cairo, Egypt. He is forty years old and he had never spoken any
language other than Egyptian Arabic until he began learning English
academically for three years in Britain. The observation is based on a
recording of the two speakers reading he speech of Please Call Stella, and
it is intended to reveal the phonemic and phonological differences . The
phonemic transcription came out as the following:
Native Speaker (L1)

Nonnative speaker (L2)

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

[plis kl stl sk b is

[bz kl e : si : sitl ask hr tu

z w fm st sks

br : s szd wz hr fr m: z

spunz v f sno pi:z faiv k

sto:r sks spunz : f fr : sno:

slbz v blu tiz n mebi

ps : : fav nk k lps v blu

snk f h b bb wi also

iz nd mebi sneik f o:l hr

nid sml plstk snek n

brzer bob wi olso: nits smo:l

bg t fg f kdd z i kn

plastk snek and bg t

skup is z n t i d bgz

f frg : fr z kitz : i kan skup

n wi wl go mi wnzde t

: z sz ntu ri rd bgzd nd

tren steinn ]

wi: wl go: mt mit hr wnzde

at tre:n sten]
Before analyzing and contrasting the data from the L1 and L2 speakers,
a brief background about the Egyptian Arabic which is the target language
should be provided. The Coptic language is an adoptive Greek language
which have historically influenced the Egyptian language and affected its
sound system (Watson, 2007). The Egyptians first written script was Coptic,
yet it developed decades, the Egyptian Arabic replaced the Coptic, but it still
has had been effected by its phonemes which makes it different from the
Classical Arabic Language. (Thompson, 2013).
The phonemic inventory mismatches between the L1 and L2 speakers is
shown through the consonants . At the beginning of the recording of Please
Call Stella, the native speaker pronounces the consonant bilabial voiceless
stop /p/ of the word [plis], yet the target, nonnative speaker pronounces it
as /b/ in the word [bz], resulting from the absence of the consonant /p/ in

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

Egyptian Arabic (Refer to Appendix for the Egyptian Arabic consonants). The
speaker replaces the /p/ with the closest sound, which, in this case, is /b/. As
Yava mentions, the interdental fricatives of English // and // are absent in
many of the worlds languages and are often substituted by /s, z/ or /t, d/
(Yava, 2006) . That is the case in the Egyptian Arabic language The L2
speaker kept substituting most of // and // such as in [z], [w], [],
and [b] with /s/ and /z/where they were pronounced as[ sz], [wz],
[z], and [brzer] because of the absence of the Egyptian consonant
phonemes // and //. The absence of /t/ in the Egyptian Arabic phonemic
inventory was also a problem when pronouncing English words with this
phoneme. The /t/ was replaced by // in the recording by the following words,
and, as the native speaker pronounced the word [tiz], the nonnative speaker
pronounced the word as [iz] with // sound, respectively. That is when the
nonnative speaker turned the alveopalatal fricative from voiced to voiceless.
Furthermore, the phoneme of // is absent in the Egyptian Arabic inventory,
making it difficult for the speaker to produce that sound, which he simply
replaced with /r/. For example, in the recordings the L1 speaker represented
the words as [],[ b], [fm], [f], [b], [fg], while the L2 speaker
pronounced the words as [hr], [br],[frm],[fr],[brzer],[ frg],
respectively.
The Egyptian Arabic language has four short vowels and six long
vowels, which are shown in the Appendix. Before making a comparison
between the two speakers and showing how the nonnative speaker clearly

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

demonstrated an accent with respect to his vowels, we have to know that

the vowels in Egyptian Arabic have rules and that they are always short in an
unstressed syllable, long in open stressed syllables, and either short or long
in closed stressed syllables (Soliman, 2007). The evidence of those rules was
shown in this observation, as the nonnative speaker faced difficulties in
pronouncing vowels in the recording and carried his background rules when
he substituted wi: instead of wi and [olso:] instead of [also]following the
rule of a long vowel in open stressed syllablesand [smo:l] instead of [sml],
[bob] instead [bb], and [ps] instead of [pi:z]following the rule of either
short or long in closed stressed syllables. In her thesis, Ellen I. Broselow says
about Egyptian Arabic that
either vowels are lengthened before clitics (or before a single word
boundary), or long final vowels are shortened before two word
boundariesthat is, word-finallybut not before a single word
boundary. Since almost any word . . . can appear with a clitic element
attached the later alternative requires that all final vowels be
underlyingly long. This solution therefore presupposes a rule of final
vowel shortening. (p. #)
This is clearly shown when the L2 speaker uses long /:/, starting off his
conversation by adding [e :]. These were not included in the text before
Stella, which he used here as a clitic and added a /:/ . Having an /:/ in
between text in this case is an example of markedness between the two
languages.

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

In Egyptian Arabic languages, there are no diphthongs; instead, they

have become long vowels, which is clearly shown from the number of long
vowels in the language itself. For example, whereas the L1 native speaker
reproduces the words [go] [tren], the nonnative speaker reproduces them
with long vowels as [go:], and [tre:n].
According to the phonemic inventory, a contrastive phonological
structure in other nonnative languages exists that creates an accent for
speakers who are trying to speak a different language. Replacing sounds in
the new language with the closest available sounds in the native language
inventory results in a phonological violation. For example, aspirated voiceless
stops are nonaspirated in the Egyptian language. As the native speaker
produces [plis], [kl], [pi:z], [t], [kdd z] with an aspiration, the nonnative
speaker does not, instead producing [bz] [kl] [ps] [t] [kdd z]. Equally
noticeable is the /t/ in [t], which is emphatic and shares the background of
the Egyptian Arabic phonemes, which includes the phoneme /t/ (Thompson,
2013).
Additionally, we find an allophonic variation in Egyptian Arabic that is
not found in English. The nonnative speaker produces [wl], whereas the /l/
sign behind the lateral /l/ is not found in English. The nonnative speaker also
devoices the voiced alveolar fricative /z/: when between voiced consonants;
for example, instead of pronouncing [bgz], he says [bgzd].
In addition, sonority plays a huge role in Egyptian Arabic and coming
from languages that do not allow onset clusters it is exposed to different

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

patterns with respect to different types of English clusters in context

situations (Yava, 2006). As Yava also mentioned, if the error shown by the
nonnative speaker in the recording displays that sonority sequencing does
not violate the st stop cluster, it should receive an epenthetic vowel, which
results in a speedier. That is also a clear example of Markedness between
the two languages, because the Egyptian is a language that do not permit
any onset clusters and give different patterns when it is exposed to different
types of English onset clusters (Yava, 2006). That is when errors occur in the
language as it happened to the Egyptian Speaker.
For example instead of saying Stella [stl], the nonnative speaker
says [: sitl]. Also in [wnzde], he breaks the syllable because of the three
onsets and adds an epenthesis to pronounce it as [wnzde]. Because
Egyptian Arabic is a stressed-timed language, the vowel reduction does not
follow the English rules, which might cause difficulties when speaking
English. With limited double codas and no onset clusters and epenthesis /:/
breakup and is shown a lot in speakers recordings and between his speech,
while it is not shown in the native speaker pronunciation, and that is the
results in having syllables of the words in the native language for example
[wnz.de] has two syllables yet with the nonnative speaker became three
[wn..zde].
Syllables in Egyptians Arabic are CV, CV:, CVC, CV:C, and CVCC.
Whereas in English the vowels within the syllables are not lengthened. Which
Can be another reason for vowels to be lengthened by the nonnative speaker

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

at the end of the word such as [wi:] and not in by the native speaker such as
[wi] . Besides, the Coptic has an effect on Egyptian Arabic, where it is very
common for vowels to come before consonant clusters at the beginning of
words, which both adds a separate syllable and causes the loss of the
dentals at the end of the word (Soliman, 2007). For instance, when the
nonnative speaker produces the word snek, he adds a // to [sneik]; in
[faiv], the nonnative speaker pronounces [fav]; and instead of [n], he
says [nd].
Moreover, Egyptian Arabic is a stress-accent language with rich accent
distribution and a pitch accent: On every sentence of the speech. a pitch falls
towards the end or the beginning of the words, yet never in the middle
(OdKulk, Woidich, 2003). The Egyptian speaker keeps his tone high mostly in
the beginning of the sentences, clearly shown as he shortens vowels in
[pi:z] into [ps] and [bgz] into [bgzd].
The nonnative speaker may pronounce a nonnative word, which he
actually did: [nk k lps] instead of [k slbz], and in [nk]. This is an
example of insertion, which occurs more easily in his language because of
the number of onset syllable structures. In [lps] he pronounced the //,
although it is not part of the phonemic inventory of his language, as shown in
the Appendix. He could have said /z/ or /s/ instead, yet he could not switch
back to his normal phonemic inventory, and /k/, /s/, and /l/ followed as onsets
that should have been separated by epenthesis, which was too hard for the
learner to realize. It could also have been predicted that an epenthesis //

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

might been inserted between [kan skup] because of the markedness of the
language difference between English and Egyptian Arabic. It was difficult to
find more predictable errors with respect to the huge differences the
nonnative target speaker represented in the recording.
In conclusion, the phonemic and phonological differences of the
nonnative speaker are clearly shown in this mini-observation. The nonnative
speaker is affected by his linguistic background when speaking the English
language, and his background rules cause him difficulties and mistakes when
he speaks, creating an accent. That can be recognized and fixed if the
nonnative speaker studies more and improves his understanding of all the
phonemic and phonological rules, uses them on a daily basis, and practices
them. When learning a new language, speakers must accept the structure of
the whole system to achieve perfection.

References
Broselow, E., Chen, S., & Wang, C. (1998). The emergence of the unmarked
in second language
phonology. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20(2), 261-280.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/85659798?
accountid=7285

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

10

Coptic Language. In Wikipedia (2015, April 12). Retrieved May 2, 2015, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_language
Ode, Cecilia. Kulk, Frisco. Woidich, Manfred. (2003) The Intonation of
colloquial Damascene Arabic. Retrieved from

http://www.academia.edu/2912439/THE_INTONATION_OF_COLLOQUIAL_
DAMASCENE_ARABIC_a_pilot_study1
Thompson, Irene. (2013). Arabic (Egyptian Spoken). Retrieved from.
http://aboutworldlanguages.com/arabic-egyptian
Watson, J. C. (2007). Phonology and Morphology of Arabic. Oxford, GBR:
Oxford University Press, UK. Retrieved from
http://www.ebrary.com
Weinberger, Steven H. (2013) The speech accent archive study. George
Mason University. Retrieved from
http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?
function=detail&speakerid=970
http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?
function=detail&speakerid=125
Yava, Mehmet. (2006).
Retrieved from

Applied

English

Phonology.

Blackwell,

2006.

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

https://suncat.csun.edu/articles/2110458.4025/1.PDF

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Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

12

Appendix
Consonants of Egyptian Arabic Language

Labio
x

Bilabial
Plain Emphatic

Stops

voiceless

(p)

Palato-

dental

Alveolar

Pharyngea

alveolar Velar Uvular

Glottal

Plain Emphatic
t

Xx

Accent Study: A Comparative Study between English and Egyptian Arabic

voiced

(b)

voiceless
Fricatives

voiced

(v)

()

Affricates
Nasals

(m)

x
n

Laterals

~r

X
X

Tap or trill
Approximants

x
m

13

X
~r

xx
J

X
X

(p), (v), () occur mostly in loanwords

(b), (m) have marginal status

/t, d, s, z, r, , / are pharyngealized consonants that have no equivalents in English. Not all speakers of
Egyptian Arabic can pronounce these consonants.

// = sound between the vowels in uh-oh.

// = sh in sheep

// = s in vision

/q, , , , / have no equivalents in English.

Vowels of Egyptian Arabic Language

Front

Back

Close

i, i:

u:

Close-mid

e, e:

Mid

, :

Open

Source:

, :

Thompson,

Irene

(2013)

Arabic

http://aboutworldlanguages.com/arabic-egyptian

(Egyptian

Spoken)

Retrieved

from