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The hamzah sound is the sound you can hear between the two vowels of the English word "uh-uh".
In some dialects of English, the TT is pronounced like hamzah: bo'el for bottle, be'er for better, li'l for little. In English the hamzah sound is socially deprecated. Pronouncing bottle like bo'el is considered sloppy, or, at best, colorful.
In Arabic is just the other way round. Pronouncing certain words like mi'l or bi'r or dhi'b is something like having an Oxford accent, while the common hamzaless pronunciations meel, beer, dheeb of the same words are considered sloppy.
As far as "Oxfordian" Arabic is concerned, the hamzah sound works like a normal consonant. This is far from obvious to natives, because of its highly irregular spelling.
In some words, the sloppy pronunciation has become tolerable. The word fi#r فئر "a mouse", nowadays, can be pronounced fiyr, and most dictionaries list the spelling fiyr فير as acceptable alongside fi#r فئر.
Copyright (c) 2001-2009
Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/net/arabe/pronuhamza.en.html
Last revised: 2008-03-30
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writing_arabic -> the hamza sound