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The sound called "Arabic long vowel ii", is somewhat like the "ee" of English "bee" or "key" or "seed". (Incidentally, it has nothing to do with the vowel sound in English "fine", which is sometimes called "long I".)
If you use the English EE sound instead of Arabic ii, they'll understand you most of the time.
However, there's a trick to get a better accent.
Pronounce the English word "feel". For most English speakers outside Ireland and India, since the beginning of the EE sound until the end of the L sond, the tongue moves back and down. In Ireland, however, the back of the tongue stays firmly in the same place. The Arabic word fiyl فيل ("an elefant") must be pronounced like that, with a quiet tongue, and a clear L at the end.
The only diference between the Arabic "long vowel ii" sound and the Arabic "short vowel i" sound is that the long one lasts twice as long as the short one. There is no other difference. For both sounds, the tongue does not move at all.
For an English ear, the Arabic vowels short i and long ii may have diferent "colours", depending on the neighbouring consonants. Sometimes they sound like the ee in "seed", sometimes like the "AI" in "sAId", sometimes like the "I" of "hit". As for instance, the "i" in the word qiTT قط is more like English "kit" or "kettle" than like "keet", but the same "i" in kitaab كتاب is more like "keet". You should try to keep an ear for these differences and imitte them. As for instance, the Arabic I sounds like English "ee" in most Arabic words, but do not force an "ee" sound into qiTT قط, because Arabs will think you said kit كت. Just repeat what you hear.
For most English speakers, telling the long Arabic vowel ii from the short Arabic vowel i is very hard.
The problem is that the English ee-sound in "heed" and the english vowel sound in "hid" always sound very different, regardless of how many milliseconds they last. In some English dialects, their duration is the same, but you can still tell which is which because the tongue position is different.
However, the Arabic sounds in miyl ميل and mil مل have exactly the same "color". The tongue is placed in the exact same position for these two words, only the timing of the vowel is different. This means that if you hear one of these words, spoken in isolation, you cannot tell which is which.
However, learning to notice the difference is very easy. You just have to repeat short Arabic sentences you hear from your native teacher, trying to imitate the exact intonation and rythm. If you can sing, you can do that.
The same story applies to the vowels a and aa, and the vowels u and uu.
Both a and aa may sound like the "a" in "father" or like the "a" in "bat", depending on the nearby consonants.
Both u and uuw may sound like the "oo" in "book" or like the "oo" in "boot".
Here, too, the difference in vowel color is irrelevant, but the difference in vowel timing is all-important.
In Arabic, the vowel before a long consonant is nearly always short (there are a few exceptions, some words in which a long vowel comes just before a long consonant, we'll see them later).
The vowel before a group of two consonants is always short. No exceptions here.
The vowel at the end of a sentence (or at the end of an isolated word) is always long. Feel free to pronounce it for so long or so short a time as you like; they will invariably hear a long vowel, no matter how short the actual sound lasts.
In Arabic words, the short a i u sounds are mostly left unwritten. So to spell the word kutub ("some books"), you just write the three letters كتب KTB.
However, the long vowels are written most of the time:
So the word kitaab ("a book") is spelled كتاب, namely K+T+alif+B ( ك + ت+alif+ ب).In this website, I'll write these sounds as aa, iy, uw respectively.
Two caveats:
In this website I'll use a spelling convention which will be disconcerting at first. When I write a lone word like #alkitaabu الكتاب, with just ONE "a", "i", "u" at the end, this vowel must NEVER be pronounced.
This final a i u must not be pronounced when the word is at the end of a sentence, either.
So, when I write "alkitaabu" with a final U, you should think that the real word is simply #alkitaab الكتاب.
In correct Arabic, these "a" "i" "u" MUST be pronounced when the word is inside a sentence, followed by any other word. So in #alkitaabu lŠibar الكتاب العبر "the book of tears", the short U is pronounced like a short U. In incorrect Arabic, people will say #alkitaab lŠibar with no U, or will slip ANY vowel between the two words, for ease of pronunciation. Please don't do that while you are still learning, but if you do it, they will understand you all the same.
We'll talk more about these "link vowels" later.
In English, consonant timing is largely unimportant. Theoretically speaking, the k-sound in the center of the word "bookcase", should last longer than the k-sound in the center of the word "bookish". But, in practice, the difference is seldom perceptible in many English dialects, unless when speaking very slowly and carefully.
In Arabic, however, a long k ك always lasts *noticeably* more time than a normal k ك. The difference affects meaning:
katab "he wrote"
kattab "he had it written" or "he copied"To pronounce the second word kattab, say "cat", hold the tongue there in the "T" position for a little while, then add "tab".
But this hardly helps the student at first, because the double TT in English words like "latte" does not last any longer than the simple T in words like "late".
This is why all students commit the same mistake at first, when trying to read romanized Arabic: they see kaTTab or muhaMMad with double letters, and read aloud kaTab or muhaMad with a short consonant.
For native grammarians, Arabic vowels come in just three flavors: the a (that they call fat'ha), the i (or kasra), and the u (Damma). What we call "long ii", is for them "a kasra followed by a lengthening ي". It is a purely anecdotic fact about the language that this combination "kasra plus lengthening yeah" is realized in speech just like a kasra sound held twice as long.
| transcription | western-grammarians' description | native-grammarians' description |
|---|---|---|
| kitaa كتا | SHORT i followed by taa sound. | kasra, then taa-with-fat'ha, then lengthening alif |
| kiytaa كيتا | LONG i followed by taa sound. | kasra, then lengthening-yeah, then taa |
| kiyaa كيا | SHORT i followed by yeah sound. | kasra, then yeah-with-fat'ha |
| kiyyaa كيا | LONG i followed by yeah sound. | kasra, then yeah-with-shadda-and-fat'ha |
In Qur'aanic Arabic script, the sound kiyyaa is written like kiyaa but with a consonant-lengthening mark above the letter ي.
Copyright (c) 2001-2009
Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/net/arabe/longitud.en.html
Last revised: 2008-08-29
| ways to read the letter ي yaa# |
| some notes on Arabic pronunciation |
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writing_arabic -> long vowels and consonants