Tunisian Arabic phonemes

Consonants

Tunisian Arabic qāf has [q] and [ɡ] as reflexes in respectively sedentary and nomadic varieties: he said is [qɑːl] instead of [ɡɑːl]). However, some words have the same form [ɡ] whatever the dialect: cow is always [baɡra] (the /g/ deriving from an originally Arabic [q]), and a specific species of date is always [digla] (the /g/ deriving from an originally Semitic [q] - e.g. Aramaic: /diqla/: date tree).

Interdental fricatives are also maintained for several situations, except in the Sahil dialect.

Furthermore, Tunisian Arabic merged /dˤ/ ⟨ض⟩ with /ðˤ/ ⟨ظ⟩.

Consonant phonemes of Tunisian Arabic

		Labial		Interdental		Dental/Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
		plain	emphatic	plain	emphatic	plain	emphatic
Nasal		m m	(mˤ) ṃ			n n	(nˤ) ṇ
stop	voiceless	(p) p				t t	tˤ ṭ		k k	q q		(ʔ)
	voiced	b b	(bˤ) ḅ			d d			ɡ g
Affricate	voiceless					(t͡s) ts		(t͡ʃ) tš
	voiced					(d͡z) dz
Fricative	voiceless	f f		θ		s s	sˤ ṣ	ʃ š		χ x	ħ ḥ	h h
	voiced	(v) v		ð ð	ðˤ ḍ	z z	(zˤ) ẓ	ʒ j		ʁ ġ	ʕ ʿ
Trill						r r	rˤ ṛ
Approximant						l l	ɫ ḷ	j y	w w

Phonetic notes:

• /p/ and /v/ are found in borrowed words and are usually replaced by /b/, like in ḅāḅūr and ḅāla. However, they are preserved in some words, like pīsīn and talvza.
• /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡z/ are rarely used, for example tšīša, dzīṛa and dzāyir.
• Like in Standard Arabic, shadda "gemination" is very likely to occur in Tunisian. For example, haddad هدد meaning to threaten.

Vowels

Tunisian Arabic vowels. It is unclear if the vowels written a are allophones or phonemic.

		Front			Back
		unrounded		rounded
		short	long	long	short	long
Close		ɪ i	iː ī	(yː) ü	u u	uː ū
Open-mid	oral		eː ā	(œː) ë	(ʊː) ʊ	(oː) o
	nasal	(ɛ̃) iñ			(ɔ̃) uñ
Open					(ɑ̃) añ
	oral	æ a			ɐ a	ɐː ā

• Unlike other Maghrebi dialects, short u and i are reduced to [o] and [e] when written between two consonants unless when they are in stressed syllables.

Syllables and pronunciation simplification

As well as those characteristics, Tunisian Arabic is also known for differently pronouncing words according to their orthography and position within a text. This phenomenon is known as pronunciation simplification and has four rules:

• [iː] and [ɪ], at the end of a word, are pronounced [i] and [uː]. Also, [u] is pronounced [u] and [aː]. [ɛː], [a] and [æ] are pronounced [æ]. For example, yībdā is practically pronounced as [jiːbdæ]
• If a word finishes with a vowel and the next word begins with a short vowel, the short vowel and the space between the two words are not pronounced (Elision).
• If a word begins with two successive consonants, an epenthetic [ɪ] is added at the beginning.

External links

• Tunisian Arabic phonology