'gh' in Afghanistan

[Thom Harrison]

Is this uvular fricative the sound that begins the Arabic name usually
spelled Afif in English?

I used to teach Arabs English, and I had some try to coach me on the
pronunciation of this name, with mixed success.  I came away with the idea
that it was a voiced fricative pronounced somewhere far back and down deep.

Thom

At 07:51 AM 10/1/01 -0400, you wrote:
>>The "gh" in Afghanistan represents the Arabic/Persian letter "ghayn".
>
>This letter is sometimes called an uvular fricative in Arabic, and
>sometimes it may sound similar to French uvular "r" to Anglophones, I think.
>
>The same letter appears in Persian and Pashto and Urdu. In Persian
>apparently it is a voiced velar fricative but with variable devoicing
>depending on phonetic environment and on speaker. The chief languages of
>Afghanistan are apparently Dari (a variety of Persian) and Pashto. Pashto
>and Urdu both apparently have the voiced velar fricative.
>
>I suppose a Pakistani might be pronouncing the word as in Pashto or --
>perhaps less likely -- as in Dari ... or maybe as in his own language,
>which might be Punjabi or Urdu or Pashto or whatever.
>
>-- Doug Wilson
>
Thom Harrison
Macon State College