The consonantal inventory of Arabic is quite daunting for a speaker of an Indo-European language. There is a large number of guttural (velar/uvular/pharyngeal/glottal sounds). Modern Hebrew does not pose such a problem for two reasons. Firstly, Hebrew had already in antiquity lost some of the consonants of Proto-Semitic, notable some of the ephatic consonants. Secondly, Modern Hebrew has since lost almost all of the remaining difficult consonants, including the pharyngeals and all the emphatics. This is likely due to influence from Indo-European languages such as Yiddish.
I always get confused when I try to remember what all the sounds of Arabic are. Here is attempt to classify them. I shall ignore the relatively easy sounds of /m, b, f, w, θ, ð, n, t, d, s, z, l, r, d͡ʒ and ʃ/ which all appear in Standard English (except for /r/, which appears however in many other IE languages). I shall concentrate on the more difficult guttural consonants.
Using the IPA as a basis, we get the following table (the phones in bold occur in MSA)
| velar | uvular | pharyngeal | glottal | |
| nasal | ŋ | N | ||
| stop | k g | q G | ʔ | |
| fricative | x ɣ | χ ʁ | ħ ʕ | h ɦ |
| approximant | ɰ | (ʁ) | (ʕ) |
/x/ and /ɣ/ aren’t too tricky to pronounce: /x/ appears in the German Bach and /ɣ/ in the Spanish agua. You will notice that according to IPA, the distinction between fricative and approximant is lost in the uvular and pharyngeal columns. This makes sense to me. Even in the velar column, /ɣ/ and /ɰ/ sound very similar to me. /q/ is also not that hard to pronounce, merely being a /k/ pronounced as far back in the throat as you can. /h/ is an English phoneme, as is /ʔ/, albeit marginally, in uh-oh and the Cockney bottle.
The really difficult ones are /ħ and ʕ/ which honestly just sound like voiced and unvoiced choking sounds. Technically, they are produced by pharyngeal constriction. In Arabic, the uvular and velar columns are more alike (/x and χ/ are allophones, as are /ɣ and ʁ/). However it makes more sense for me to think of the velar consonants as being, well, velar, and to group the uvular and pharyngeal consonants together, concentrating on producing them as far back in the throat as possible. Ignoring the straightforward /h/ and /ʔ/, this leaves:
| velar | uvular/pharyngeal | |
| stop | k g | q G |
| fricative | x ɣ | ħ ʕ |
Which is not particularly hard to remember. And now describing the emphatic consonants /tˤ dˤ sˤ and zˤ~ðˤ/ becomes reasonably straightforward too, with /tˤ/ being roughly equivalent to coarticulated /t + ħ/, /dˤ/ to /d + ʕ/, and so on.
And here is some vocab for comparison.
Numbers
| MSA | Moroccan A | Egyptian A | Mod Hebrew | |
| 1 | waaħid | waaħed | wāħed | ehad |
| 2 | iθnaan | ʒuʒ | ʔetnēn | ʃnayim |
| 3 | θalaaθa | tlata | talāta | ʃloʃa |
| 4 | arbaʕa | rebʕa | ʔarbaʕa | arbaʔa |
| 5 | xamsa | xemsa | xamsa | hamiʃa |
| 6 | sitta | setta | setta | ʃiʃa |
| 7 | sabʕa | sebʕa | sabʕa | ʃivʔa |
| 8 | θamaaneya | tmenya | tamanya | ʃmona |
| 9 | tisʕa | tesʕuud | tesʕa | tiʃʔa |
| 10 | ʕaʃara | ʕaʃara | ʕaʃra | ʔassara |
Linguo... dead. Linguo IS dead 