01/10/2021
About PAL book
Phonology-based Arabic Learning
(PAL)
Preface
Phonology-based Arabic learning (PAL) is a book designed for correction of pronunciation of Arabic by second language speakers. It is not intended for teaching Arabic for starters. The book’s aim is to correct in an easy manner the way Arabic is pronounced by those who acquired it as a second language. It is intended for students to self-correct their own Arabic speech and for teachers interested in teaching speech correction of Arabic language.
Teaching Arabic has taken the path of getting into the practice of language use (pragmatics) first, while obtaining from it the grammatical rules (morphosyntax) and the word meaning (semantics). During this process, phonology or pronunciation is served only by learning the sounds of letters of the language and by making students listen and imitate what they hear. Phonology has its own rules. Concentrating in depth on those would make speech of Arabic second language users intelligible.
The idea of formulating a book to guide Arabic second language speakers to pronounce it more intelligibly occurred to each of Dr. Shadia Mohamed Fahmy and myself separately. Her work for more than 20 years in American University in Cairo (AUC) in speech correction of those who learnt Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as second language; and my work for more than 35 years in phoniatric unit in Ain Shams Faculty of Medicine in remediation of Colloquial Egyptian Arabic (CEA) language delay; have inspired this idea: Let’s make Arabic easier to pronounce. Six years ago, we decided to merge our experience and efforts in one book correcting pronunciation of two forms of Arabic: MSA and CEA.
The production of this book alternated between periods of intensive work; periods of regular observations, discussions, and alterations; and periods of hibernation. The drive behind all this was that we, the authors, through our fields of work were progressively convinced that learning Arabic is not a one-time task. It had to be followed by speech correction after it has been put into use. We continued to observe while using the methods described in the book in our daily practice.
The book is accompanied by an auditory section, showing how words are correctly pronounced. We hope the book would be as rewarding to you when you read and listen, as it has been rewarding to us when we wrote and audiotaped. Always remember, language is a meaningful activity. In order to be understood, you need to pronounce it correctly.
Marwa Mahmoud Saleh, MD, PhD
Professor Emeritus of Phoniatrics
Department of Otolaryngology
Ain Shams Faculty of Medicine
Cairo, Egypt