Are the (h-plosive) and (ħ-pharyngeal fricative) Two Separate Phonemes?
Before an answer to this question is provided, it is useful to define both "phoneme" and "allophone."  Phonemes are used to differentiate words.  Thus, they change the meaning of a particular word.  For instance, "top" and "mop" begin with different phonemes, /t/ and /m/ respectively.  On the other hand, allophones are predictable variants of a particular phoneme and do not change the meaning of a word.  For example, if you pay careful attention to your pronunciation of the English word /kat/ "cat," you will notice a slight aspiration after the /k/ as if the word is actually spelled /khat/. Since this type of variation is predictable in English (aspiration typically occurs after stop consonants, i.e, /t/, /p/, and /k/) and does not change the meaning of a particular word, /kh/ is considered to be an allophone of /k/.

Now, let us consider an example in Arabic: Arabic has two separate letters, or phonemes (they are used to distinguish words): the first approximates the English /h/ and is classified as a glottal fricative  (it will be represented as /h/), and the second is a pharyngeal fricative /h/ and is characterized as a pharyngeal fricative  (it will be represented as /ħ/). In the word /habba/ "gust of wind," the first letter is /h/. However, in the word /ħabba/ "pill," the first letter is /ħ/. Since these two letters serve to distinguish word meanings, they are considered to be separate entities and do not represent two allophones of a single phoneme.


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I would like to thank all of the linguists who have volunteered their time to answer queries posted to the Linguist List. These pages represent a compilation of frequently asked questions about the Arabic language. The HTML of these pages was created by Carmen Cross, a Ph.D. student in Arabic linguistics at Georgetown University.  Please e-mail Carmen or the panel of linguists if you have any further questions about linguistics in general or Arabic in particular.