A Phonetic Description of Arabic Spoken by Indian Workers in Jordan

This study aims to provide an analysis of the pronunciation of Jordanian Arabic sounds when uttered by some Indian workers in Jordan. The sample consisted of ten participants working at Al-Hassan Industrial City in Irbid, north Jordan. Information was collected via individual conversations during which the participants were shown pictures and then asked several questions about their contents, so that the number of words produced by each participant was fifty at least. The information was analyzed by transcribing the conversations, comparing the pronunciation of each sound with the original pronunciation in Jordanian Arabic, and then noting the similarities and differences. The study found that Indian Jordanian Arabic shares sounds with Jordanian Arabic and these are: (b, t, d, k, f, z, ʃ, d͡ʒ, n, r, and w), in addition to the identical sounds (ʔ, s, h, m, l, and j). These sounds are originally present in the phonological system of their mother tongue, and this helped the participants to pronounce them correctly in many cases. The study also found that there were at least 11 sounds that the participants could not pronounce correctly and these are: (ʕ, ħ, q, x, ɣ, tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, θ, ð, and ðˤ). The participants managed their pronunciation of these consonants by changing articulation point, articulation manner, deleting some difficult sounds, or replacing them with sounds from their mother tongue, creating an interlanguage peculiar to Indian workers. Regarding vowels, the Indian interlanguage was characterized by using the schwa instead of the vowel /a/ and the diphthong /aj/ instead of /e:/. The study recommends conducting research on other aspects of the Indian Jordanian interlanguage such as syntax, morphology and semantics.