Different approaches and methods for
the romanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
of ArabicModern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
exist. They vary in the way that they address the inherent problems of rendering written and
spoken ArabicThe Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
in the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
; they also use different symbols for Arabic
phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s that do not exist in
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
or other
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an languages.
Method
Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct.
TransliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
is the direct representation of foreign
letters using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually
transcriptionTranscription may refer to:*Transcription , a business which converts speech into a written or electronic text document*Transcription , software which helps convert speech into text transcript...
systems, which represent the
sound of the language. As an example, the above rendering
of the is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration would be
.
Romanization standards and systems
This list is sorted chronologically. Bold face indicates column headlines as they appear in the table below.
- IPA
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
: International Phonetic Alphabet (1886)
- Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft
The Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft , in English the German Oriental Society, is a scholarly organization dedicated to studies of Asia and the broader Orient....
(1936): Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. It is the basis for the very influential Hans WehrHans Wehr was a German Arabist. A professor at the University of Münster from 1957-1974, he published the Arabisches Wörterbuch , which was later published in an English edition as A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J Milton Cowan. For the dictionary Wehr created a transliteration...
dictionary (ISBN 0-87950-003-4). http://www.dmg-web.de/
- BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institution. http://www.bsi-global.com/index.xalter
- SATTS: One-to-one mapping to Latin Morse equivalents.
- UNGEGN (1972): United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, or Variant A of the Amended Beirut System http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
- IGN System 1973 or Variant B of the Amended Beirut System, which conforms to French orthography and is preferred to the Variant A in french-speaking countries as in Maghreb and Syria http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
- DIN
DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
31635DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
(1982): Developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung is the German national organization for standardization and is that country's ISO member body. DIN is a Registered German Association headquartered in Berlin...
(German Institute for Standardization).
- ISO
The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
233The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
(1984).
- Qalam
A qalam is a type of pen made from a dried reed, used for Islamic calligraphy. The word derives from the Greek word κάλαμος, meaning reed. In modern Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish, the word simply means "pen" or "pencil", while in Hindi and Urdu, the word solely means "pen". It is also the...
(1985): A system that focuses upon preserving the spelling, rather than the pronunciation, and uses mixed case. http://eserver.org/langs/qalam.txt
- ArabTeX
ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Maghribi, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Hebrew,...
(since 1992) its "native" input is 7-bit ASCII: "has been modelled closely after the transliteration standards ISO/R 233 and DIN 31635"
- ISO 233-2 (1993). Simplified transliteration.
- Buckwalter Transliteration
The Buckwalter Arabic transliteration was developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter in the 1990s. It is an ASCII only transliteration scheme, representing Arabic orthography strictly one-to-one, unlike the more common romanization schemes that add morphological information not expressed in Arabic script...
(1990s): Developed at XeroxXerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
by Tim Buckwalter http://www.qamus.org/transliteration.htm; doesn't require unusual diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s. http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/arabic/info/buckwalter-about.html
- Bikdash Transliteration (BATR
A set of rules for the romanization of Arabic that is highly phonetic, almost one-to-one, and uses only two special characters, namely the hyphen and the apostrophe as modifiers. This standard also includes rules for diacritization, including tanwiin....
): A system http://eiktub.com/batr.html which is a compromise between Qalam and Buckwalter Transilterations. It represents consonants with one letter and possibly the single quotation mark as a modifier, and uses one or several Latin vowels to represent short and long Arabic vowels. It strives for minimality as well as phonetic expressiveness. It does not distinguish between the different shapes of the hamza since it assumes that a software implementation can resolve the differences through the standard rules of spelling of Arabic http://www.eiktub.com/guide.html.
- ALA-LC (1997). http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf
- SAS: Spanish Arabists School (José Antonio Conde
José Antonio Conde y García was a Spanish Orientalist and historian. His Anacreon obtained him a post in the royal library in 1795. He also published several paraphrases of Greek classics. These were followed in 1799 by an edition of the Arabic text of Muhammad al-Idrisi's Description of Spain,...
and others, early 19th century onwards). http://www.sumadrid.es/ariza/alandalus/Transli.htm
- Arabic
The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
chatThe Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
alphabetThe Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
: Not a system; listed here merely for completeness. In some situations, such as onlineONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
communication, users need a way to enter Arabic text only with the keys immediately available on a keyboard. As an ad hoc solution, such letters can be replaced with Arabic numerals of similar appearance.
A (non-normative) table comparing romanizations using DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC and Encyclopaedia of Islam systems is available here:
http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Arabic_2.2.pdf.
Comparison table
| Letter |
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
|
Name |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
|
UNGEGN The United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names is a periodic international conference organised by the United Nations Statistical Commission, the central purpose of which is to facilitate the standardization of national geographical names...
|
ALA-LCThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
|
DIN DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
| ISO The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
|
SAS |
-2 |
BATR A set of rules for the romanization of Arabic that is highly phonetic, almost one-to-one, and uses only two special characters, namely the hyphen and the apostrophe as modifiers. This standard also includes rules for diacritization, including tanwiin....
|
ArabTeX ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Maghribi, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Hebrew,...
|
chat The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
|
| |
0621 |
|
ʔ |
|
style="font-size:170%"> |
style="font-size:160%">, |
style="font-size:170%"> |
style="font-size:140%">' |
e |
style="font-size:140%">' |
2 |
|
0627 |
|
aː |
|
style="font-size:170%"> |
|
aa |
aa / A |
a |
a/e/é |
|
0628 |
|
b |
b |
|
062A |
|
t |
t |
|
062B |
|
θ |
th |
|
ç |
|
c |
_t |
s/th |
|
062C |
|
d͡ʒ~ɡ~ʒ |
j |
|
|
j |
j |
^g |
j/g/dj |
|
062D |
|
ħ |
|
|
H |
.h |
7 |
|
062E |
|
x |
kh |
|
|
j |
x |
K |
_h |
kh/7'/5 |
|
062F |
|
d |
d |
|
0630 |
|
ð |
dh |
|
đ |
z' |
_d |
z/dh/th |
|
0631 |
|
r |
r |
|
0632 |
|
z |
z |
|
0633 |
|
s |
s |
|
0634 |
|
ʃ |
sh |
|
x |
^s |
sh/ch |
|
0635 |
|
ˤ |
|
|
S |
.s |
s/9 |
|
0636 |
|
ˤ |
|
|
D |
.d |
d/9' |
|
0637 |
|
ˤ |
|
|
T |
.t |
t/6 |
|
0638 |
|
ðˤ~zˤ |
|
|
đ̣ |
Z |
.z |
z/dh/6' |
|
0639 |
|
ʕ |
|
|
ř |
E |
style="font-size:140%">` |
3 |
|
063A |
|
ɣ |
gh |
|
g |
ğ |
g |
.g |
gh/3' |
| |
0641 |
|
f |
f |
| |
0642 |
|
q |
q |
2/g/q |
|
0643 |
|
k |
k |
|
0644 |
|
l |
l |
|
0645 |
|
m |
m |
|
0646 |
|
n |
n |
|
0647 |
|
h |
h |
|
0648 |
|
w, uː |
w |
w; |
w; o |
w; uu |
w |
w; o; ou/u/oo |
| |
064A |
|
j, iː |
y |
y; |
y; e |
y; ii |
y |
y; i/ee; ei/ai |
|
0622 |
|
ʔaː |
|
style="font-size:140%"> |
style="font-size:140%"> |
style="font-size:140%"> |
|
'aa |
eaa |
'A |
2a/aa |
|
0629 |
|
a, at |
h, t |
|
t; — |
ŧ |
t' |
T |
a/e(h); et/at |
| |
0649 |
|
aː |
y |
á |
|
|
à |
aaa |
_A |
a; i/y |
|
|
|
(var.) |
al- |
style="font-size:140%"> |
al- |
al-; ál- |
Al- |
al- |
el |
The
chat table is only a demonstration and is based on the
spoken varietiesThe Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
which vary considerably from
Literary ArabicModern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
on which the IPA table and the rest of the transliterations are based. Review
hamzah-Places:* Hamza Stone, black colored antic rock at the Giresun Adası* Tala Hamza, town in northern Algeria* Hamza River, a very large aquifer, that roughly follows the course of the Amazon River, in Brazil.-Other uses:* Hamza, letter of the Arabic alphabet...
for its various forms. The original standard symbols for these schemes for transliterating
and
{{Contains Arabic text}}
{{Arabic alphabet}}
Different approaches and methods for the romanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
of ArabicModern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
exist. They vary in the way that they address the inherent problems of rendering written and spoken ArabicThe Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
in the Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
; they also use different symbols for Arabic phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s that do not exist in EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
or other EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an languages.
Method
Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct. TransliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
is the direct representation of foreign letters using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually transcriptionTranscription may refer to:*Transcription , a business which converts speech into a written or electronic text document*Transcription , software which helps convert speech into text transcript...
systems, which represent the sound of the language. As an example, the above rendering {{transl|ar|DIN|munāẓarat al-ḥurūf al-ʿarabiyyah}} of the {{lang-ar|مناظرة الحروف العربية}} is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration would be {{transl|ar|mnaẓrḧ alḥrwf alʿrbyḧ}}.
Romanization standards and systems
This list is sorted chronologically. Bold face indicates column headlines as they appear in the table below.
- IPA
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
: International Phonetic Alphabet (1886)
- Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft
The Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft , in English the German Oriental Society, is a scholarly organization dedicated to studies of Asia and the broader Orient....
(1936): Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. It is the basis for the very influential Hans WehrHans Wehr was a German Arabist. A professor at the University of Münster from 1957-1974, he published the Arabisches Wörterbuch , which was later published in an English edition as A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J Milton Cowan. For the dictionary Wehr created a transliteration...
dictionary (ISBN 0-87950-003-4). http://www.dmg-web.de/
- BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institution. http://www.bsi-global.com/index.xalter
- SATTS: One-to-one mapping to Latin Morse equivalents.
- UNGEGN (1972): United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, or Variant A of the Amended Beirut System http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
- IGN System 1973 or Variant B of the Amended Beirut System, which conforms to French orthography and is preferred to the Variant A in french-speaking countries as in Maghreb and Syria http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
- DIN
DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
31635DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
(1982): Developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung is the German national organization for standardization and is that country's ISO member body. DIN is a Registered German Association headquartered in Berlin...
(German Institute for Standardization).
- ISO
The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
233The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
(1984).
- Qalam
A qalam is a type of pen made from a dried reed, used for Islamic calligraphy. The word derives from the Greek word κάλαμος, meaning reed. In modern Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish, the word simply means "pen" or "pencil", while in Hindi and Urdu, the word solely means "pen". It is also the...
(1985): A system that focuses upon preserving the spelling, rather than the pronunciation, and uses mixed case. http://eserver.org/langs/qalam.txt
- ArabTeX
ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Maghribi, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Hebrew,...
(since 1992) its "native" input is 7-bit ASCII: "has been modelled closely after the transliteration standards ISO/R 233 and DIN 31635"
- ISO 233-2 (1993). Simplified transliteration.
- Buckwalter Transliteration
The Buckwalter Arabic transliteration was developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter in the 1990s. It is an ASCII only transliteration scheme, representing Arabic orthography strictly one-to-one, unlike the more common romanization schemes that add morphological information not expressed in Arabic script...
(1990s): Developed at XeroxXerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
by Tim Buckwalter http://www.qamus.org/transliteration.htm; doesn't require unusual diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s. http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/arabic/info/buckwalter-about.html
- Bikdash Transliteration (BATR
A set of rules for the romanization of Arabic that is highly phonetic, almost one-to-one, and uses only two special characters, namely the hyphen and the apostrophe as modifiers. This standard also includes rules for diacritization, including tanwiin....
): A system http://eiktub.com/batr.html which is a compromise between Qalam and Buckwalter Transilterations. It represents consonants with one letter and possibly the single quotation mark as a modifier, and uses one or several Latin vowels to represent short and long Arabic vowels. It strives for minimality as well as phonetic expressiveness. It does not distinguish between the different shapes of the hamza since it assumes that a software implementation can resolve the differences through the standard rules of spelling of Arabic http://www.eiktub.com/guide.html.
- ALA-LC (1997). http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf
- SAS: Spanish Arabists School (José Antonio Conde
José Antonio Conde y García was a Spanish Orientalist and historian. His Anacreon obtained him a post in the royal library in 1795. He also published several paraphrases of Greek classics. These were followed in 1799 by an edition of the Arabic text of Muhammad al-Idrisi's Description of Spain,...
and others, early 19th century onwards). http://www.sumadrid.es/ariza/alandalus/Transli.htm
- Arabic
The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
chatThe Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
alphabetThe Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
: Not a system; listed here merely for completeness. In some situations, such as onlineONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
communication, users need a way to enter Arabic text only with the keys immediately available on a keyboard. As an ad hoc solution, such letters can be replaced with Arabic numerals of similar appearance.
A (non-normative) table comparing romanizations using DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC and Encyclopaedia of Islam systems is available here: http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Arabic_2.2.pdf.
Comparison table
| Letter |
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
|
Name |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
|
UNGEGN The United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names is a periodic international conference organised by the United Nations Statistical Commission, the central purpose of which is to facilitate the standardization of national geographical names...
|
ALA-LCThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
|
DIN DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
| ISO The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
|
SAS |
-2 |
BATR A set of rules for the romanization of Arabic that is highly phonetic, almost one-to-one, and uses only two special characters, namely the hyphen and the apostrophe as modifiers. This standard also includes rules for diacritization, including tanwiin....
|
ArabTeX ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Maghribi, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Hebrew,...
|
chat The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
{{ref>1|1}} |
| {{lang>ar|ء}} {{ref|2|2}} |
0621 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|hamzah}} |
ʔ |
{{unicode|ʼ}} {{ref|3|[note 3]}} |
style="font-size:170%">{{unicode|ʾ}} |
style="font-size:160%">{{unicode|ˈ}}, {{unicode|ˌ}} |
style="font-size:170%">{{unicode|ʾ}} |
style="font-size:140%">' |
e |
style="font-size:140%">' |
2 |
| {{lang>ar|ا}} |
0627 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif}} |
aː |
{{unicode|ā}} |
style="font-size:170%">{{unicode|ʾ}} |
{{unicode|ā}} |
aa |
aa / A |
a |
a/e/é |
| {{lang>ar|ب}} |
0628 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|bāʾ}} |
b |
b |
| {{lang>ar|ت}} |
062A |
{{transl|ar|DIN|tāʾ}} |
t |
t |
| {{lang>ar|ث}} |
062B |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ṯāʾ}} |
θ |
th |
{{unicode|ṯ}} |
ç |
{{unicode|ṯ}} |
c |
_t |
s/th |
| {{lang>ar|ج}} |
062C |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ǧīm}} |
d͡ʒ~ɡ~ʒ |
j |
{{unicode|ǧ}} |
{{unicode|ŷ}} |
j |
j |
^g |
j/g/dj |
| {{lang>ar|ح}} |
062D |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ḥāʾ}} |
ħ |
{{unicode|ḩ}} |
{{unicode|ḥ}} |
H |
.h |
7 |
| {{lang>ar|خ}} |
062E |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ḫāʾ}} |
x |
kh |
{{unicode|ḫ}} |
{{unicode|ẖ}} |
j |
x |
K |
_h |
kh/7'/5 |
| {{lang>ar|د}} |
062F |
{{transl|ar|DIN|dāl}} |
d |
d |
| {{lang>ar|ذ}} |
0630 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ḏāl}} |
ð |
dh |
{{unicode|ḏ}} |
đ |
z' |
_d |
z/dh/th |
| {{lang>ar|ر}} |
0631 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|rāʾ}} |
r |
r |
| {{lang>ar|ز}} |
0632 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|zayn/zāy}} |
z |
z |
| {{lang>ar|س}} |
0633 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|sīn}} |
s |
s |
| {{lang>ar|ش}} |
0634 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|šīn}} |
ʃ |
sh |
{{unicode|š}} |
x |
^s |
sh/ch |
| {{lang>ar|ص}} |
0635 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ṣād}} |
ˤ |
{{unicode|ş}} |
{{unicode|ṣ}} |
S |
.s |
s/9 |
| {{lang>ar|ض}} |
0636 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ḍād}} |
ˤ |
{{unicode|ḑ}} |
{{unicode|ḍ}} |
D |
.d |
d/9' |
| {{lang>ar|ط}} |
0637 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ṭāʾ}} |
ˤ |
{{unicode|ţ}} |
{{unicode|ṭ}} |
T |
.t |
t/6 |
| {{lang>ar|ظ}} |
0638 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ẓāʾ}} |
ðˤ~zˤ |
{{unicode|z̧}} |
{{unicode|ẓ}} |
đ̣ |
Z |
.z |
z/dh/6' |
| {{lang>ar|ع}} |
0639 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʿayn}} |
ʕ |
{{unicode|ʻ}} {{ref|3|[note 3]}} |
{{unicode|ʿ}} |
ř |
E |
style="font-size:140%">` |
3 |
| {{lang>ar|غ}} |
063A |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ġayn}} |
ɣ |
gh |
{{unicode|ġ}} |
g |
ğ |
g |
.g |
gh/3' |
| {{lang>ar|ف}} {{ref|4|4}} |
0641 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|fāʾ}} |
f |
f |
| {{lang>ar|ق}} {{ref|4|4}} |
0642 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|qāf}} |
q |
q |
2/g/q |
| {{lang>ar|ك}} |
0643 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|kāf}} |
k |
k |
| {{lang>ar|ل}} |
0644 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|lām}} |
l |
l |
| {{lang>ar|م}} |
0645 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|mīm}} |
m |
m |
| {{lang>ar|ن}} |
0646 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|nūn}} |
n |
n |
| {{lang>ar|ه}} |
0647 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|hāʾ}} |
h |
h |
| {{lang>ar|و}} |
0648 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|wāw}} |
w, uː |
w |
w; {{unicode|ū}} |
w; o |
w; uu |
w |
w; o; ou/u/oo |
| {{lang>ar|ي}} {{ref|5|5}} |
064A |
{{transl|ar|DIN|yāʾ}} |
j, iː |
y |
y; {{unicode|ī}} |
y; e |
y; ii |
y |
y; i/ee; ei/ai |
| {{lang>ar|آ}} |
0622 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif maddah}} |
ʔaː |
{{unicode|ā}} |
style="font-size:140%">{{unicode|ʼ}}{{unicode|ā}} |
style="font-size:140%">{{unicode|ʾ}}{{unicode|ā}} |
style="font-size:140%">{{unicode|ʾ}}{{unicode|â}} |
{{unicode|ā}} |
'aa |
eaa |
'A |
2a/aa |
| {{lang>ar|ة}} |
0629 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|tāʾ marbūṭah}} |
a, at |
h, t |
{{unicode|ẗ}} |
t; — |
ŧ |
t' |
T |
a/e(h); et/at |
| {{lang>ar|ى}} {{ref|5|5}} |
0649 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif maqṣūrah}} |
aː |
y |
á |
{{unicode|ā}} |
{{unicode|ỳ}} |
à |
aaa |
_A |
a; i/y |
{{lang>ar|ال is the definite article in the Arabic language; a particle whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed definite. For example, the word kitāb 'book' can be made definite by prefixing it with al-, resulting in al-kitāb 'the book'...
}} |
|
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif lām}} |
(var.) |
al- |
style="font-size:140%">{{unicode|ʾ}}{{unicode|al}} |
al- |
al-; ál- |
Al- |
al- |
el |
The chat table is only a demonstration and is based on the spoken varietiesThe Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
which vary considerably from Literary ArabicModern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
on which the IPA table and the rest of the transliterations are based. Review hamzah-Places:* Hamza Stone, black colored antic rock at the Giresun Adası* Tala Hamza, town in northern Algeria* Hamza River, a very large aquifer, that roughly follows the course of the Amazon River, in Brazil.-Other uses:* Hamza, letter of the Arabic alphabet...
for its various forms. The original standard symbols for these schemes for transliterating {{transl|ar|DIN|hamzah}} and
{{Contains Arabic text}}
{{Arabic alphabet}}
Different approaches and methods for the romanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
of ArabicModern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
exist. They vary in the way that they address the inherent problems of rendering written and spoken ArabicThe Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
in the Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
; they also use different symbols for Arabic phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s that do not exist in EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
or other EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an languages.
Method
Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct. TransliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
is the direct representation of foreign letters using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually transcriptionTranscription may refer to:*Transcription , a business which converts speech into a written or electronic text document*Transcription , software which helps convert speech into text transcript...
systems, which represent the sound of the language. As an example, the above rendering {{transl|ar|DIN|munāẓarat al-ḥurūf al-ʿarabiyyah}} of the {{lang-ar|مناظرة الحروف العربية}} is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration would be {{transl|ar|mnaẓrḧ alḥrwf alʿrbyḧ}}.
Romanization standards and systems
This list is sorted chronologically. Bold face indicates column headlines as they appear in the table below.
- IPA
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
: International Phonetic Alphabet (1886)
- Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft
The Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft , in English the German Oriental Society, is a scholarly organization dedicated to studies of Asia and the broader Orient....
(1936): Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. It is the basis for the very influential Hans WehrHans Wehr was a German Arabist. A professor at the University of Münster from 1957-1974, he published the Arabisches Wörterbuch , which was later published in an English edition as A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J Milton Cowan. For the dictionary Wehr created a transliteration...
dictionary (ISBN 0-87950-003-4). http://www.dmg-web.de/
- BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institution. http://www.bsi-global.com/index.xalter
- SATTS: One-to-one mapping to Latin Morse equivalents.
- UNGEGN (1972): United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, or Variant A of the Amended Beirut System http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
- IGN System 1973 or Variant B of the Amended Beirut System, which conforms to French orthography and is preferred to the Variant A in french-speaking countries as in Maghreb and Syria http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
- DIN
DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
31635DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
(1982): Developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung is the German national organization for standardization and is that country's ISO member body. DIN is a Registered German Association headquartered in Berlin...
(German Institute for Standardization).
- ISO
The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
233The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
(1984).
- Qalam
A qalam is a type of pen made from a dried reed, used for Islamic calligraphy. The word derives from the Greek word κάλαμος, meaning reed. In modern Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish, the word simply means "pen" or "pencil", while in Hindi and Urdu, the word solely means "pen". It is also the...
(1985): A system that focuses upon preserving the spelling, rather than the pronunciation, and uses mixed case. http://eserver.org/langs/qalam.txt
- ArabTeX
ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Maghribi, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Hebrew,...
(since 1992) its "native" input is 7-bit ASCII: "has been modelled closely after the transliteration standards ISO/R 233 and DIN 31635"
- ISO 233-2 (1993). Simplified transliteration.
- Buckwalter Transliteration
The Buckwalter Arabic transliteration was developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter in the 1990s. It is an ASCII only transliteration scheme, representing Arabic orthography strictly one-to-one, unlike the more common romanization schemes that add morphological information not expressed in Arabic script...
(1990s): Developed at XeroxXerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
by Tim Buckwalter http://www.qamus.org/transliteration.htm; doesn't require unusual diacriticA diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s. http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/arabic/info/buckwalter-about.html
- Bikdash Transliteration (BATR
A set of rules for the romanization of Arabic that is highly phonetic, almost one-to-one, and uses only two special characters, namely the hyphen and the apostrophe as modifiers. This standard also includes rules for diacritization, including tanwiin....
): A system http://eiktub.com/batr.html which is a compromise between Qalam and Buckwalter Transilterations. It represents consonants with one letter and possibly the single quotation mark as a modifier, and uses one or several Latin vowels to represent short and long Arabic vowels. It strives for minimality as well as phonetic expressiveness. It does not distinguish between the different shapes of the hamza since it assumes that a software implementation can resolve the differences through the standard rules of spelling of Arabic http://www.eiktub.com/guide.html.
- ALA-LC (1997). http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf
- SAS: Spanish Arabists School (José Antonio Conde
José Antonio Conde y García was a Spanish Orientalist and historian. His Anacreon obtained him a post in the royal library in 1795. He also published several paraphrases of Greek classics. These were followed in 1799 by an edition of the Arabic text of Muhammad al-Idrisi's Description of Spain,...
and others, early 19th century onwards). http://www.sumadrid.es/ariza/alandalus/Transli.htm
- Arabic
The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
chatThe Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
alphabetThe Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
: Not a system; listed here merely for completeness. In some situations, such as onlineONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
communication, users need a way to enter Arabic text only with the keys immediately available on a keyboard. As an ad hoc solution, such letters can be replaced with Arabic numerals of similar appearance.
A (non-normative) table comparing romanizations using DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC and Encyclopaedia of Islam systems is available here: http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Arabic_2.2.pdf.
Comparison table
| Letter |
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
|
Name |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
|
UNGEGN The United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names is a periodic international conference organised by the United Nations Statistical Commission, the central purpose of which is to facilitate the standardization of national geographical names...
|
ALA-LCThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
|
DIN DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
| ISO The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
|
SAS |
-2 |
BATR A set of rules for the romanization of Arabic that is highly phonetic, almost one-to-one, and uses only two special characters, namely the hyphen and the apostrophe as modifiers. This standard also includes rules for diacritization, including tanwiin....
|
ArabTeX ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Maghribi, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Hebrew,...
|
chat The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
{{ref>1|1}} |
| {{lang>ar|ء}} {{ref|2|2}} |
0621 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|hamzah}} |
ʔ |
{{unicode|ʼ}} {{ref|3|[note 3]}} |
style="font-size:170%">{{unicode|ʾ}} |
style="font-size:160%">{{unicode|ˈ}}, {{unicode|ˌ}} |
style="font-size:170%">{{unicode|ʾ}} |
style="font-size:140%">' |
e |
style="font-size:140%">' |
2 |
| {{lang>ar|ا}} |
0627 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif}} |
aː |
{{unicode|ā}} |
style="font-size:170%">{{unicode|ʾ}} |
{{unicode|ā}} |
aa |
aa / A |
a |
a/e/é |
| {{lang>ar|ب}} |
0628 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|bāʾ}} |
b |
b |
| {{lang>ar|ت}} |
062A |
{{transl|ar|DIN|tāʾ}} |
t |
t |
| {{lang>ar|ث}} |
062B |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ṯāʾ}} |
θ |
th |
{{unicode|ṯ}} |
ç |
{{unicode|ṯ}} |
c |
_t |
s/th |
| {{lang>ar|ج}} |
062C |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ǧīm}} |
d͡ʒ~ɡ~ʒ |
j |
{{unicode|ǧ}} |
{{unicode|ŷ}} |
j |
j |
^g |
j/g/dj |
| {{lang>ar|ح}} |
062D |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ḥāʾ}} |
ħ |
{{unicode|ḩ}} |
{{unicode|ḥ}} |
H |
.h |
7 |
| {{lang>ar|خ}} |
062E |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ḫāʾ}} |
x |
kh |
{{unicode|ḫ}} |
{{unicode|ẖ}} |
j |
x |
K |
_h |
kh/7'/5 |
| {{lang>ar|د}} |
062F |
{{transl|ar|DIN|dāl}} |
d |
d |
| {{lang>ar|ذ}} |
0630 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ḏāl}} |
ð |
dh |
{{unicode|ḏ}} |
đ |
z' |
_d |
z/dh/th |
| {{lang>ar|ر}} |
0631 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|rāʾ}} |
r |
r |
| {{lang>ar|ز}} |
0632 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|zayn/zāy}} |
z |
z |
| {{lang>ar|س}} |
0633 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|sīn}} |
s |
s |
| {{lang>ar|ش}} |
0634 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|šīn}} |
ʃ |
sh |
{{unicode|š}} |
x |
^s |
sh/ch |
| {{lang>ar|ص}} |
0635 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ṣād}} |
ˤ |
{{unicode|ş}} |
{{unicode|ṣ}} |
S |
.s |
s/9 |
| {{lang>ar|ض}} |
0636 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ḍād}} |
ˤ |
{{unicode|ḑ}} |
{{unicode|ḍ}} |
D |
.d |
d/9' |
| {{lang>ar|ط}} |
0637 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ṭāʾ}} |
ˤ |
{{unicode|ţ}} |
{{unicode|ṭ}} |
T |
.t |
t/6 |
| {{lang>ar|ظ}} |
0638 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ẓāʾ}} |
ðˤ~zˤ |
{{unicode|z̧}} |
{{unicode|ẓ}} |
đ̣ |
Z |
.z |
z/dh/6' |
| {{lang>ar|ع}} |
0639 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʿayn}} |
ʕ |
{{unicode|ʻ}} {{ref|3|[note 3]}} |
{{unicode|ʿ}} |
ř |
E |
style="font-size:140%">` |
3 |
| {{lang>ar|غ}} |
063A |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ġayn}} |
ɣ |
gh |
{{unicode|ġ}} |
g |
ğ |
g |
.g |
gh/3' |
| {{lang>ar|ف}} {{ref|4|4}} |
0641 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|fāʾ}} |
f |
f |
| {{lang>ar|ق}} {{ref|4|4}} |
0642 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|qāf}} |
q |
q |
2/g/q |
| {{lang>ar|ك}} |
0643 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|kāf}} |
k |
k |
| {{lang>ar|ل}} |
0644 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|lām}} |
l |
l |
| {{lang>ar|م}} |
0645 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|mīm}} |
m |
m |
| {{lang>ar|ن}} |
0646 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|nūn}} |
n |
n |
| {{lang>ar|ه}} |
0647 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|hāʾ}} |
h |
h |
| {{lang>ar|و}} |
0648 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|wāw}} |
w, uː |
w |
w; {{unicode|ū}} |
w; o |
w; uu |
w |
w; o; ou/u/oo |
| {{lang>ar|ي}} {{ref|5|5}} |
064A |
{{transl|ar|DIN|yāʾ}} |
j, iː |
y |
y; {{unicode|ī}} |
y; e |
y; ii |
y |
y; i/ee; ei/ai |
| {{lang>ar|آ}} |
0622 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif maddah}} |
ʔaː |
{{unicode|ā}} |
style="font-size:140%">{{unicode|ʼ}}{{unicode|ā}} |
style="font-size:140%">{{unicode|ʾ}}{{unicode|ā}} |
style="font-size:140%">{{unicode|ʾ}}{{unicode|â}} |
{{unicode|ā}} |
'aa |
eaa |
'A |
2a/aa |
| {{lang>ar|ة}} |
0629 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|tāʾ marbūṭah}} |
a, at |
h, t |
{{unicode|ẗ}} |
t; — |
ŧ |
t' |
T |
a/e(h); et/at |
| {{lang>ar|ى}} {{ref|5|5}} |
0649 |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif maqṣūrah}} |
aː |
y |
á |
{{unicode|ā}} |
{{unicode|ỳ}} |
à |
aaa |
_A |
a; i/y |
{{lang>ar|ال is the definite article in the Arabic language; a particle whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed definite. For example, the word kitāb 'book' can be made definite by prefixing it with al-, resulting in al-kitāb 'the book'...
}} |
|
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif lām}} |
(var.) |
al- |
style="font-size:140%">{{unicode|ʾ}}{{unicode|al}} |
al- |
al-; ál- |
Al- |
al- |
el |
The chat table is only a demonstration and is based on the spoken varietiesThe Arabic language is a Semitic language characterized by a wide number of linguistic varieties within its five regional forms. The largest divisions occur between the spoken languages of different regions. The Arabic of North Africa, for example, is often incomprehensible to an Arabic speaker...
which vary considerably from Literary ArabicModern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
on which the IPA table and the rest of the transliterations are based. Review hamzah-Places:* Hamza Stone, black colored antic rock at the Giresun Adası* Tala Hamza, town in northern Algeria* Hamza River, a very large aquifer, that roughly follows the course of the Amazon River, in Brazil.-Other uses:* Hamza, letter of the Arabic alphabet...
for its various forms. The original standard symbols for these schemes for transliterating {{transl|ar|DIN|hamzah}} and {{transl is by Modifier letter apostropheThe modifier letter apostrophe is a glyph. It is used in the orthography of Tundra Nenets to denote a glottal stop. In IPA it is used to express ejective consonants. It is encoded at ....
({{unicode|ʼ}}) and [[ʻOkina#The new standard and transitional problems|Modifier letter turned comma]] ({{unicode|ʻ}}), respectively. However, there is a common practice to instead, use Right single quotation mark (’) and Left single quotation mark (‘), respectively.{{transl|ar|DIN|Fāʾ}} and {{transl|ar|DIN|qāf}} are traditionally written in North Eastern AfricaThe Maghreb is the region of Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. It includes five countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara...
as {{script/Arabic|ڢ}} and {{script/Arabic|ڧـ ـڧـ ـٯ}}, respectively, while the latter's dot is only added initially or medially. In Egypt, Sudan and sometimes in other regions, the standard form for final-{{transl is only {{lang|ar|ى}} (without dots) in handwriting and print, for both final /-iː/ and final /-aː/. {{lang|ar|ى}} for the latter pronunciation, is called {{lang|ar|ألف ليّنة}} {{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif layyinah}} ˈʔælef læjˈjenæ, "flexible alif".
Romanization issues
Any romanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
system has to make a number of decisions which are dependent on its intended field of application.
Vowels
One basic problem is that written Arabic is normally unvocalizedThe Arabic script has numerous diacritics, including ijam ⟨⟩ , and tashkil ⟨⟩...
, i.e., many of the vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s are not written out, and must be supplied by a reader familiar with the language. Hence unvocalized Arabic writingAn abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....
does not give a reader unfamiliar with the language sufficient information for accurate pronunciation. As a result, a pure transliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
, e.g. rendering {{lang|ar|قطر}} as {{transl|ar|qṭr}}, is meaningless to an untrained reader. For this reason, transcriptionTranscription may refer to:*Transcription , a business which converts speech into a written or electronic text document*Transcription , software which helps convert speech into text transcript...
s are generally used that add vowels, e.g. {{transl|ar|DIN|qaṭar}}.
Transliteration vs. transcription
Most uses of romanization call for transcriptionTranscription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
rather than transliterationTransliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
: Instead of transliterating each written letter, they try to reproduce the sound of the words according to the orthography rules of the target language: Qatar. This applies equally to scientific and popular applications. A pure transliteration, for example, would need to omit vowels (e.g. qtr), making the result difficult to interpret except for a subset of trained readers fluent in Arabic. Even if vowels are added, a transliteration system would still need to distinguish between multiple ways of spelling the same sound in the Arabic script, e.g. {{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif}} vs. {{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif maqṣurah}} for the sound {{transl|ar|DIN|ā}}, and the six different ways ({{lang|ar|ء إ أ آ ؤ ئ}}) of writing the glottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
(hamza, usually transcribed {{transl|ar|DIN|ʾ}} ). This sort of detail is unneeded and needlessly confusing except in a very few situations (e.g. typesetting text in the Arabic script).
Most issues related to the romanization of Arabic are about transliterating vs. transcribing – others, about what should be romanized:
- transliteration ignores assimilation (sandhi
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...
) of the article before the "sun letters", and may be easily misread by non-Arabs. For instance an-nur (or an-nuur, or an-noor) would be more correctly transliterated along the lines of alnur. In the transcription an-nur, a hyphen is added and the unpronounced 'l' removed for the convenience of the uninformed non-Arab reader, who would otherwise pronounce an 'l', probably not understand the word to be nur, pronounce only one 'n', and be confused by the role of the double 'n'. Alternatively, if the shaddaShadda , is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, marking a long consonant . It is functionally equivalent to writing a consonant twice in the orthographies of languages like Latin, Italian, Swedish, and Ancient Greek, and is thus rendered in Latin script in most schemes of Arabic...
is not transliterated (since it is strictly not a letter), a hypercorrect transliteration would be alnur, which presents similar problems for the uninformed non-Arab reader.
- a transliteration must render the "closed tā" (ta marbuta
The is a variant of the letter used at the end of words. It mostly exists in grammatically feminine words. In Modern Standard Arabic, it denotes the final sound and, when in construct state, . The regular letter ta, to distinguish it from , is referred to as .In the word is denoted as ,...
ة) faithfully, a transcription must render the sound ("a" like any other "a" or "t" like any other "at" – or in a vocalized textThe Arabic script has numerous diacritics, including ijam ⟨⟩ , and tashkil ⟨⟩...
nothing vs. t)
- ISO 233
The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for Arabic transliteration . It has been completed by ISO 233-2 in 1993.- 1984 edition :The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.- ISO 233-2:1993 :...
has a unique symbol, {{Unicode|ẗ}}.
- "short alif" ({{transl|ar|DIN|ʾalif maqṣurah}}, ى) must be transliterated with a special symbol, like Iª,ıª, but is transcribed like standing alif, when it stands for a long a (ā)
- Nunation
In some Semitic languages, notably Arabic, nunation is the addition of a final nun to a noun or adjective to indicate that it is fully declinable and syntactically unmarked for definiteness....
: what is true elsewhere is also true for nunation: transliteration renders what is seen, transcription what is heard.
A transcription may reflect the language as spoken, for example, by the people of Baghdad, or the official standard as spoken by a preacher in the mosque or a TV news reader.
A transcription is free to add phonological (such as vowels) or morphological (such as word boundaries) information. Transcriptions will also vary depending on the writing conventions of the target language; compare English Omar KhayyamOmar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....
with German Omar Chajjam, both for {{lang|ar|عمر خيام}} (unvocalized {{transl|ar|ʿmr ḫyʾm}}, vocalized {{transl|ar|DIN|ʿumar ḫayyām}}).
A transliteration is ideally fully reversible: a machine must be able to transliterate it into Arabic and back. A transliteration can be considered as flawed for any one of the following reasons:
- A "loose" transliteration is ambiguous, rendering several Arabic phonemes with an identical transliteration, or digraphs for a single phoneme (such as sh) may be confused with two adjacent phonemes;
- Symbols representing phonemes may be considered too similar (e.g., ` and ' or {{Unicode|ʿ}} and {{Unicode|ʾ}} for ayin
' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet...
and hamza);
- ASCII transliterations using capital letters to disambiguate phonemes are easy to type but may be considered unaesthetic.
A fully accurate transcription may not be necessary for native Arabic speakers as they would be able to pronounce names and sentences correctly anyway, but it can be very useful for those not fully familiar with spoken Arabic and who are familiar with the Roman alphabet. An accurate transliteration serves as a valuable stepping stone for learning, pronouncing correctly, and distinguishing phonemes. It is a useful tool for anyone familiar with the sounds of Arabic but who are not fully conversant in the language.
One criticism is that a fully accurate system would require special learning that most do not have to actually pronounce names correctly, and that with a lack of a universal romanization system they will not be pronounced correctly by non-native speakers anyway. The precision will be lost if special characters are not replicated and if someone is not familiar with Arabic pronunciation.
Further difficulties
{{Original research|section|date=April 2011}}
During the creating of a romanization system some problems can occur:
– Repeated symbols, like h in traditional English-styled transcription:
th=ث ; kh=خ ; dh=ذ ; sh=ش ; gh=غ ; ah=ة , but h is used also for ه letter.
For example, it is difficult to read the combination th in the word mitha:l – (meaning: an example).
It is to be read as interdental t (ث), but some people can read it t, then h.
The best way here is to underline the combination to avoid dual reading.
– Problems with diacritic marks (dots, commas, round-ups and under the letters as well as macrons for long vowels).
Example: ḲṪABun (meaning "book") accurate transliteration) becomes kitabun in simplified one;
– Coincidence of the meaning of symbol in your transciption system with standard meaning (I.e.: h in some variants means ħ, but not the same sound, like in English and German; c sounds like j in jam, but not as in standard way; e sounds like English h and so on).
– Coincidence of meanings of a combination. E.g.: الرياض – Ar-Riyyadh in standard literature representation.(dh = ض). But dh
is also in use for ذ: dhikr – ذكر – memory.
– Bad distinguishment of some symbols. I.e.: you can read two or more symbols like one sound because of similar graphical elements. For example, ' – hamza and ` – `ayn in some systems.
Examples
Examples in Literary ArabicModern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
:
ArabicThe Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
|
{{script|Arab|خليفة كان له قصر}} |
{{script|Arab|إلى المملكة المغربية}} |
Arabic with diacritics
(normally omitted) |
{{script|Arab|خَلِيفَة كَانَ لَهُ قَصْر}} |
{{script|Arab|إِلَى الْمَمْلَكَة الْمَغْرِبِيَّة}} |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
|
/xaliːfa kaːna lahu qasˤr/ |
/ʔila l mamlaka al maɣribijja/ |
| DIN 31635 DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
|
{{transl|ar|DIN|Ḫalīfah kāna lahu qaṣr}} |
{{transl|ar|DIN|ʾIlá l-mamlakah al-Maġribiyyah}} |
| ALA-LC ALA-LC is a set of standards for romanization, or the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. The initials stand for American Library Association - Library of Congress....
|
{{transl|ar|ALA|Khalīfah kāna lahu qaṣr}} |
{{transl|ar|ALA|Ilā l-mamlakah al-Maghribīyah}} |
| UNGEGN The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names was set up by the Secretary General of the United Nations on April 23, 1959....
|
{{transl|ar|UNGEGN|Khalyfah kana lahu qaşr}} |
{{transl|ar|UNGEGN|ʼIly al-mamlakah al-maghribiyyah}} |
| BATR A set of rules for the romanization of Arabic that is highly phonetic, almost one-to-one, and uses only two special characters, namely the hyphen and the apostrophe as modifiers. This standard also includes rules for diacritization, including tanwiin....
|
{{transl|ar|BATR|Kaliifat' kaana lahu qaSr}} |
{{transl|ar|BATR|ilaaa almamlakat' almagribiyyat'}} |
| ArabTeX ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Maghribi, Uyghur, Kashmiri, Hebrew,...
|
{{transl|ar|ArabTeX|_halyfaT kana lahu qa.sr}} |
{{transl|ar|ArabTeX|il_A almamlakaT alma.gribiyyaT}} |
| English |
A CaliphThe Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transcribed version of the Arabic word which means "successor" or "representative"...
had a palace |
To the kingdom of Morocco |
See also
- Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
- Arabic Chat Alphabet
The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
- Arabic grammar
Arabic grammar is the grammar of the Arabic language. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages....
- Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
- Arabic names
- Glottal stop (letter)
The symbol ⟨⟩ is a letter of the Latin alphabet, used to represent a glottal stop in several phonetic transcription schemes, as well as in the alphabets of some languages...
- Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
- Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
- English exonyms of Arabic speaking places
The list includes countries and territories, and their capitals or administrative centres, where at least one official language is Arabic. Standard Arabic pronunciation was chosen.-Countries/territories and capitals/administrative centres:-Egypt:...
- Harakat (Arabic vocalisation)
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, including ijam ⟨⟩ , and tashkil ⟨⟩...
- Ottoman Turkish alphabet
The Ottoman Turkish alphabet was the version of the Perso-Arabic alphabet that was used for the Ottoman Turkish language during the time of the Ottoman Empire and in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, until the adoption of the new Turkish alphabet, derived from the Latin script, on...
– a Perso-ArabicThe Persian or Perso-Arabic alphabet is a writing system based on the Arabic script. Originally used exclusively for the Arabic language, the Arabic alphabet was adapted to the Persian language, adding four letters: , , , and . Many languages which use the Perso-Arabic script add other letters...
-based alphabet, which was replaced by the Latin-based Turkish alphabetThe Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
in 1928
- Maltese alphabet
The Maltese alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet with the addition of some letters with diacritic marks and digraphs. It is used to write the Maltese language. It contains 30 letters: - Las muestras :...
{{Arabic language}}
{{Romanization}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Romanization Of Arabic}}