To B or not to P

[newcastle]

The 'B' and 'P' Switcheroo.....one of the Unsolved Egyptian Mysteries......courtesy of a linguistics expert.

I came across this today:

http://www.cairoscene.com/Demo/4-Unsolv ... -Mysteries

Another thing that confounds us to our core is the Egyptian swapping of a 'b' for a 'p'. We would understand if, due to the Arabic nature of our speech, the majority of Egyptians couldn't pronounce the 'p' sound, much like those pesky foreigners can never seem to master the '7a' sound. We mean, we are nothing if not understanding. But the pickle here is, they can pronounce the 'p' sound. They just decide to swap it around. Bebsi. Pikini. Why? Why? We need a nationwide refresher course in this.


The answer :

Brian Farish · Graduate Teaching Assistant at University of Tulsa - Mary K. Chapman Center for Communicative Disorders

I can speak to the p/b switch, if you like. I hold a Master's degree in performance and I'm a speech-language pathologist graduate student, so I've studied how people talk quite a lot. I also spent roughly 5 years studying Arabic.

The concept that can help us explain this switch is the concept of 'phonemes.' Phonemes are speech sounds that hold linguistic meaning. In the English language, /p/ and /b/ are two sounds that each hold different linguistic meaning, so they are called "discrete phonemes." Both of the sounds are voiced bilabial stops. The sound /b/ is voiced and /p/ is unvoiced. "Voiced" means you make your voice box (larynx) vibrate while you make the bilabial stop; "unvoiced" means you only use a burst of air, with no vibration in your voice box. When someone is talking in normal conversation, the difference between voiced and unvoiced is actually only a matter of a few dozen milliseconds of time.

In both formal and Egyptian Arabic, however, there is no distinction made between /p/ and /b/. There is only one bilabial stop: /ب/ The result is that Arabic speakers of all kinds will interchange /p/ and /b/ arbitrarily, without any apparent pattern, resulting in some Egyptians saying "Bebsi" in one moment and then "pikini" the next. There's no pattern, because the two sounds hold no linguistic difference in Arabic--except, of course, for an Egyptian who has studied English for a long time and is actually able to hear and produce the difference.

The same concept works in reverse with English speakers speaking Arabic. In English we do not discriminate between the /ه/ and the /ح/ sounds. So you will hear native English speakers reversing the two sounds arbitrarily when speaking Arabic, while, in fact, in Arabic they are two discrete phonemes.

This also happens in the classic case of Japanese speakers interchanging /l/ and /r/, when speaking English. This is because in Japanese those two sounds are not two discrete phonemes.

Hope that helps

It will.....when I recover from the headache I got trying to follow the above

[carrie]

I remember speaking to someone who was writing in English, an Egyptian, when I spelt words out to him he couldn't differentiate the sound of b and p. We solved the problem by my saying the one with two holes B or the one with one hole P.

[LovelyLadyLux]

Very interesting Newcastle and I'm 'habby' you bosted it

I've often wondered if a child, when the learning window is open and if they are exposed to a variety of accents and verbalizations are more able in later life to pick up the accent of a different language?

One of the Saudi families here is very intent on their little girl ONLY speaking English and she does flawlessly with not a hint of any other accent (unlike Mom and Dad who speak English but with heavy accents).

As an aside when they came back from a recent trip to Saudi Arabia their daughter, who speaks no Arabic at all, announced that when she was there Arabic just "filled up my whole mouth." (Was cute coming from a 4 yr old)

[Brian Yare]

I first met this "problem" when travelling to Kharga in Spring 2011. Signposts in English indicated Baris. Apparently they were naming villages after foreign capital cities at the time.

[HEPZIBAH]

I come across this problem all the time, although in my case it is the difference between 'L' and 'R' that are the main issue. They are not present in the Japanese alphabet and become interchangeable when used by a Japanese person. They find it hard to hear the difference in the spoken word and often mix them up when writing.

Over the years, with my Japanese and Egyptian contacts I have got used to my name being spoken or spelt in many different forms. I have also become quite adept at interpreting and translating when these problems arise, so much so that when I look, e.g at an Egyptian menu board with these errors, I don't always see the mistake because my brain just automatically overrules it.

[Who2]

That's all 'double-dutch to me, I fall back on "ana mish far hem then, sala nebi, or my favourite, 'em sickle hasheb"
just make em laugh..

'em sickle hasheb' ?

Spoiler

"knock on wood"

[Remus]

First item on an Aswan restaurant menu (spelt exactly thus):

Fried chicken with herpes .....

[BENNU]

... it is the difference between 'L' and 'R' that are the main issue. They are not present in the Japanese alphabet and become interchangeable when used by a Japanese person. They find it hard to hear the difference in the spoken word and often mix them up when writing.

A very serious Japanese woman once invited me to a cultural evening.

"We lead and pray", she said very calmly. I thought that it was another religious event and did not feel like going. Two of my girlfriends went. One had been encouraged to bring her own poetry, the other one a flute and both felt a little nervous. It was their first time to read and play in front of strangers ...

[BENNU]

A South American woman thought that her English, like everything else about her , was more than perfect. She had become very disappointed with a handsome Egyptian man and told him that he was bane. She complained to me that he did not even know the meaning of bane, that's how stupid he was.

Like others from her part of the world and some Egyptians that I know, she always swapped B for V. Had I not noticed that, I, too, would have been too stupid to know the meaning of very handsome young men being bane.

It was no use telling her.

[newcastle]

Spanish (which I assume was the South American lady's language ) does not have the 'v' sound as we know it in English.

I remember, when I first moved to Ibiza, being very confused by this and looking all over town for Calle de la Beergen....ignoring a prominent sign which read " Calle de la Virgen"!

Further confusion arose as Ibiza is usually referred to loçally by its Catalan name - Eivissa.

[Dusak]

First item on an Aswan restaurant menu (spelt exactly thus):

Fried chicken with herpes .....

Honesty can never be questioned.