Vowels

The vowel phoneme /eː/ (from standard Arabic /aj/) is usually realised as an opening diphthong, for most speakers only slightly diphthongised [ɪe̯], but for others a more noticeable [iɛ̯], such that, for instance, lēš ("why") will sound like leeyesh, much like a drawl in English. There's a vowel phoneme that evolved from the diphthong (/aw/) to resemble more of a long (/o:/) sound, as in words such as kaun ("universe") shifting to kōn. A schwa sound [ə] is mainly heard in unstressed and stressed open and closed syllables.

Consonants

Even in the most formal of conventions, pronunciation depends upon a speaker's background.^[3] Nevertheless, the number and phonetic character of most of the 28 consonants has a broad degree of regularity among Arabic-speaking regions. Arabic is rich in uvular, pharyngeal, and pharyngealized ("emphatic") sounds. The emphatic coronals (/sˤ/, /tˤ/, and /ðˤ/) cause assimilation of emphasis to adjacent non-emphatic coronal consonants.^{[citation needed]} The phonemes /p/ ⟨پ⟩ and /v/ ⟨ڤ⟩ (not used by all speakers) are not considered to be part of the phonemic inventory, as they exist only in foreign words and they can be pronounced as /b/ ⟨ب⟩ and /f/ ⟨ف⟩ respectively depending on the speaker.^[4][5]

Phonetic notes:

• /p/ and /v/ occur mostly in borrowings from Persian, and may be assimilated to /b/ or /f/ in some speakers.
• [q] is heard in borrowings of non-Arabic languages.
• /ɡ/ is pronunciation of /q/ in Baghdad Arabic and the rest of southern Mesopotamian dialects.
• The gemination of the flap /ɾ/ results in a trill /r/.