Stress and the helping vowel

Hi everyone!

In my last post we looked at the sounds of Syrian Arabic broadly defined. In this post we will look at two other important phonological features: the stress system and the helping vowel.

Stress

Stress is the emphasis placed on a particular syllable above others. The Syrian stress system (and the system of Eastern dialects more broadly) is more or less identical to the one you were probably taught for fuS7a. I won’t spend too much time on it because it should be fairly familiar. The rules should be applied in order:

1. The final syllable will be stressed if it has a long vowel: مفتاح miftaa7 ‘key’, شفتوه shiftuu ‘you saw him’.
2. If the final syllable cannot be stressed, a penultimate (second-to-last) syllable will be stressed if it has a long vowel: طناجر Tanaajer ‘pots’.
3. If neither the final or penultimate syllable can be stressed, the antepenultimate (third-to-last) syllable will be stressed: مكتبة maktabe ‘library’, مسكت masaket ‘she caught’.

There are a few examples of irregular stress that we’ll discuss in the relevant places.

The helping vowel

The helping vowel  (sometimes called an ‘epenthetic vowel‘) is used to break up difficult-to-pronounce consonant clusters. I write this vowel as a superscript ^e in final syllables and as ⁱ elsewhere, since it is pronounced just like these vowels in those contexts. Note, however, that it is never stressed. Stress falls exactly where it would fall if the epenthetic vowel wasn’t there. Compare the actual stress placement on the left to the placement we would expect if the helping vowel was stressable on the right:

Correct stress		Expected stress
خوفت khawwafet I scared [someone]	NOT	*khawwafet
يسجنك yisijnak he imprisons you	NOT	*yisijnak
بتكتبو btikitbo she writes it	NOT	*btikitbo

 

Which consonant clusters are usually or always broken up, which are optionally broken up, and which are rarely or never broken up varies between speakers. It would be too complicated to attempt a comprehensive description here, and I suggest, as always, trying to imitate the native speakers around you. Note, however, that final consonant clusters that are difficult for English speakers (sr and sm, for example) are reliably difficult for Syrians too:

ضرب Dareb hitting	حمص 7imeS Homs
مصر maSer Egypt	شفت shifet I saw

The helping vowel never breaks up a doubled consonant. The only exception to this is the maaDi suffix -t, which can be separated from a stem-final t by the helping vowel:

بعتت ba3at-et I sent

بتت bit-et I stayed the night

Note, however, that when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added – or when the following word begins with a vowel – the helping vowel is dropped from final clusters. Similarly, when the next word begins with a consonant cluster, the helping vowel often shifts into the space between the words:

ضرب Dareb hitting	BUT	ضربي Darb-i ‘hitting me’
شفت shifet I saw	BUT	شفتك shift-ak ‘I saw you’
مصر maSer Egypt	BUT	مصر الحلوة maSr il7ilwe ‘beautiful Egypt’

In the middle of a word, the system is simpler. The vowel always appears after the first consonant of a cluster:

بتكتبي btikitbi you write	أدوية 2adiwye medicine
شفتكن shifitkon I saw you	مشكلة mishikle problem

 

That’s all for now. If you want to keep up with this and other translation/Arabic-related content, follow me on Twitter at Chris Hitchcock (@chm3na).