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How about ذ (zal), ز (zaa) and ظ (sor)? Perhaps they are more 'z' than 's'? Then there is ث (tha) though that is more of a 'th' sound I think, but people in the subcontinent pronounce it as an 's'. The differences are really subtle to me.



It's way dialectical, of course, but in MSA at least 'ز' is a [z] sound, 'ث' is a [θ] (as in "three"), while 'ذ' and 'ظ' are variants of [ð] (as in "the")— with ظ being the pharyngealized version, similar to 'د‎' and 'ض'. The differences are much easier to hear than to reproduce :P


The pronunciations you've listed are used in some Arabic dialects. In classical Arabic, ذ is pronounced as <i>dhel</i>, and ظ is more of a <i>dhah</i>.


the pronunciation you mentioned are actually for the letters د and ض


No, they aren't. د and ض are pronounced as dal and dahd respectively. I know this because I'm a native Arabic speaker.

http://arabic.speak7.com/arabic_alphabet.htm


I'm a native arabic speaker too. I think I misunderstood your intention of using "dh" in "dhad", I would have used "thad." This misunderstanding stems from the fact that we're both trying to write a sound that cannot be expressed correctly in latin.


This conversation would be much more productive if you both used IPA rather than trying to write sounds that don't exist in English :P




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