The Arabic language is made up of a set of emphatic and guttural consonants that exert a phonological influence on adjacent segment sounds by moving the tongue's root back towards the pharynx. This paper discusses the pronunciation difficulties among Malaysian students who learn Arabic words. There are three approaches to account for the production and perception of Arabic segmental difficulties namely speech perception, phonology and phonetic. Data for this research were obtained from two sources: Shehata's study (2018) and observations of Malaysian mispronunciation which were recorded. Data analysis also displays five phonological aspects of mispronunciation involving: substitution, addition, interference, omission and vowel changes. A number of opaque and difficult phonemes of Arabic including : / t ?/, / ? ? / , / ? ?/ , / ð ?/ , / s? ?/, d? ?/, / ð? ? / , /? ?/ , / ? ~ ? ?/ , /q ? /, / k ? /,that can be unfamiliar for Malay students. The paper concludes with findings that indicated Malay Arabic is mostly phonetic rather than phonological. Arabic emphasis spread among Malay students can be a syllabic words or an entire phonological word. Arabic pronunciation difficulties has its implications to other researchers in phonetics and future phonological theory. Malay phonological Arabic system needs more intensive highlights studies for further researchers.
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