deemphaticize

English

Etymology

Pronunciation

Audio (US): (file)

Verb

deemphaticize (third-person singular simple present deemphaticizes, present participle deemphaticizing, simple past and past participle deemphaticized)

(phonology) To render not emphatic any more.
- 2000, Jonathan Owens, “Loanwords in Nigerian Arabic: a quantitative approach”, in Arabic as a Minority Language (Contributions to the Sociology of Language; 83), New York · Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, →DOI, →ISBN, page 284 of 259–345:
  In addition Standard Arabic words may be subjected to other general Nigerian Arabic phonological processes. For example, voiced consonants are devoiced prepausally, and some urban speakers may deemphaticize emphatic consonants. The form lafis < *lafð̥ thus arises via (8h), with devoicing and deemphaticizing of z̥.
- 2014, Edward Y. Odisho, “Some Primary Sources of Accent Generation in the Pronunciation of Arabic by Native Speakers of English”, in Mediterranean Language Review‎^[1], volume 21, →DOI, page 96 of 91–104:
  Undoubtedly, with this many phonologically alien consonants for an English learner of Arabic the accent is expected to be quite distinct. Unfortunately, in addition to the segmental phonological accent there will certainly be a persistent phonetic accent that runs throughout the whole words in which some of those posterior consonants occur, especially the emphatics [sˤص dˤ ض tˤ ط ðˤ ظ]. To demonstrate, consider the word <صَبَرَ> [̯sˤɑbɑrɑ] (became patient) which is fully emphaticized throughout under the influence of the emphatic [sˤ]. If the learner of Arabic fails to properly articulate this emphatic, he will not only transform the whole word semantically to mean <سَبَرَ> [̯sabara] (probed), but will also phonetically deemphaticize the word to sound impressionistically very different from <صَبَرَ>.