The Production of Word-initial Consonant Clusters in a Saudi Southern Dialect (SSD): Evidence from Al-Baha Region

This study investigates how speakers of the Al-Baha variety of the Saudi Southern Dialect (SSD)—a regional Arabic variety that prohibits word-initial consonant clusters—produce English onset clusters. While Arabic learners of English are known to simplify clusters through vowel epenthesis, little is known about how dialect, sonority, and proficiency shape these strategies. To address this gap, 30 SSD-speaking learners of English were recorded producing target words containing both /sC/ clusters (which violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle, SSP) and SSP-conforming clusters. Acoustic analysis with Praat showed that vowel epenthesis was the primary repair strategy, though its placement differed: /sC/ clusters were typically repaired with pre-cluster vowels, especially among less proficient speakers, while SSP-conforming clusters more often elicited intra-cluster epenthesis. Proficient participants achieved significantly higher accuracy (76.8% vs. 50.7%), relied less on prothesis, and occasionally produced target-like clusters without overt repair. However, /sC/ clusters, particularly those containing glides, remained challenging regardless of proficiency, reflecting the combined influence of markedness, articulatory complexity, and L1 transfer. These findings suggest that learners who speak the Al-Baha variety of the Saudi Southern Dialect (SSD) have their interlanguage phonology shaped by the interaction of L1 phonotactic restrictions, universal sonority constraints, and developmental proficiency effects. The results refine theoretical accounts of L2 cluster acquisition and highlight and promote more target-like cluster production.