Acquisition of Arabic Guttural Consonants in Jordanian Arabic-English Bilingual Preschoolers

Aim: This study examines the early phonological acquisition of six Arabic guttural consonants (/χ/, /ʁ/, /ħ/, /ʕ/, /ʔ/, and /h/) in Jordanian Arabic-English (JAE) bilingual preschoolers. It investigates whether growing up in English-dominant environments affects the acquisition of these sounds, given that most gutturals are absent in English. Participants: Eighty typically developing children aged 2–6 years participated in this study: 40 JAE bilinguals residing in the United States and Canada, and 40 monolingual Arabic-speaking children living in Jordan (control group). Each group was subdivided into eight age bands: 2–2;6, 2;6–3, 3–3;6, 3;6–4, 4–4;6, 4;6–5, 5–5;6, and 5;6–6 (years; months), with five children per band. Children with hearing, speech, or vision impairments were excluded. Methods: Data were collected using a specially designed articulation test comprising 54 picture-naming items and 18 repetition tasks targeting gutturals in word-initial, medial, and final positions. A hybrid qualitative-comparative approach was adopted, focusing on production accuracy (customary, acquisition, and mastery) and error analysis (mispronunciations and deletions). Perceptual judgments were independently verified by trained native Jordanian Arabic-speaking raters, with high inter-rater reliability (95%), ensuring consistency in transcription and coding. Results: The consonants /χ/, /ħ/, /ʕ/, and /ʔ/ were acquired before age six in both groups, while /ʁ/ and /h/ were not fully acquired. However, bilingual children demonstrated lower accuracy, more production errors, and greater use of variant realizations than their monolingual peers, with delays ranging from 6 to 18 months across the production stages. The laryngeals /h/ and /ʔ/ exhibited the least variation between the two groups. Conclusion: Reduced Arabic exposure and cross-linguistic interaction in JAE bilinguals appear to affect phonological development, particularly in the acquisition of Arabic gutturals. These findings have implications for clinicians, speech-language therapists, educators, and parents and highlight the need for future research on bilingual speech development.