Hijaiyah Sound Exposure and Consonant Substitution Patterns in English Pronunciation among Indonesian EFL University Students

Abstract

English pronunciation difficulties among Indonesian learners are usually traced to Indonesian and regional languages, but many of these learners also grow up reciting the Qur’an, which trains them in the articulation of the Arabic hijaiyah letters. Whether this second sound system leaves a trace in their English is largely unexamined. This qualitative descriptive study documented consonant substitutions in the English of 15 English Education students at a private Islamic university in Makassar, Indonesia, all of whom had prior exposure to Qur’anic recitation or Islamic schooling. Participants were selected purposively and read aloud 21 words and 10 sentences targeting six English consonants (dental and postalveolar fricatives and affricates). Their voice-note recordings were transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet and compared with reference forms. Every participant showed at least two substitution patterns. The dental fricatives were stopped most often (12 and 11 participants), followed by the replacement of the postalveolar fricatives with alveolar ones (8 and 4 participants) and the loss of affrication (4 and 2 participants). All substitutions kept voicing and changed only place or manner of articulation. Because Indonesian, regional languages, and hijaiyah exposure overlap in this group, the data cannot isolate hijaiyah as the source. The case for a hijaiyah-linked account is strongest for the voiceless postalveolar fricative and weakest for the dental fricatives, where Arabic articulation would predict help rather than interference. Teaching should contrast English consonants explicitly with both Indonesian and hijaiyah articulation, and comparative designs are needed to separate these influences.