Furthermore, as illustrated in Table 9 and Table 10, there are 10 consonant phonemes that exist in Arabic but have no equivalents in English, /ŧ/, /ḍ/, /q/, /ʡ/, /ṣ/, /x/, /ɣ/, /ḥ/, /ʕ/, /∂/. Also, there are several phonemes in the English consonant inventory that do not exist in the Arabic sound system like /p/, /g/, /tʃ/, /ŋ/, /v/, /ʒ/.

 

 

As for the differences and similarities of vowel inventories of these languages, the comparison shows that there are many vowels which occur in English but not in Arabic such as [ɒ], [ə], [ʌ], [ɜː], [ɔː], [e], [æ], [ɪə], [eə], [eɪ], [ɔɪ]. Accordingly, vowels are considered as the most problematic sounds for Arab learners, since in Arabic MSA there is only six monophthongs and 2 diphthongs and this frequently results in mispronunciation of the English vowels. It is worth mentioning that some vowels exist in Arabic not as a separate phonemes but as allophones for the same phoneme, also another essential issue about Arabic MSA is that no one is using it in everyday conversations or acquire it as a native tongue as mentioned in the Introduction, so in order to have a more adequate comparison and examples, a detailed analysis should cover a particular dialect or more since there are many distinctions from one to another and these differences affect the pronunciation of L2 as well.

 

 

Although, the reasons of English pronunciation problems for Arab ESL learners are many as mentioned earlier in the factors affecting L1 interference. In his book A Course in Language Teaching, Penny (1991) mentioned that learners’ pronunciation errors are caused by a variety of factors, the most important of which is the lack of specific sound features or pronunciation rules in the first language. As a result, students tend to substitute the closest equivalent sound or pronunciation rule they are familiar with.