Bikdash Arabic Transliteration Rules

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.

This transliteration

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...

scheme can be thought of as a compromise between the Qalam

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...

transliteration and the Buckwalter 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...

. It represents consonants with one letter and possibly the apostrophe (or 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 in Arabic :ar:إملاء.

Note: The Arabic words in this article are written using the Bikdash Arabic Transliteration Rules.

Guiding Principles

The rules were designed with the following principles in mind http://eiktub.com/batr.html:

Capital and small symbols of the same English letter represent in general different sounds or different Arabic letters. In general, capital letters are emphatic versions of small letters whether vowels or consonants.
The Arabic script should be deducible from its transliteration unambiguously and without necessarily understanding the meaning of the Arabic text. The reverse should also be possible when the Arabic script is fully diacritized
Diacritic
A 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...

or voweled (i.e. muxakkal with kasrah, fatHat', Dammat', xaddat', tanwiin
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....

and other Harakaat
Harakat
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, including ijam ⟨⟩ , and tashkil ⟨⟩...

.). BATR must be high-quality to allow writing the qureaan or Arabic poetry exactly.
BATR should be highly phonetic in the sense that a person with no knowledge of Arabic should be able to read and pronounce the Arabic text with "reasonable" accuracy. When the principles of BATR are explained, this person should be able to approximate the sound of the Arabic text with high accuracy.
Long vowels of Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...

are represented by doubled symbols: ii, aa, and uu, and i, a, and u represent short versions (kasrah, fatHat', Dammat' ). In general, combinations of vowels are allowed to express different vowels or intonations including vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

or colloquial or other nonstandard vowels. For instance, ai represents the Egyptian-dialect
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

vowel in fain? (meaning "where?").
When a vernacular Arabic word can be said, pronounced, or written in several forms, one of which agrees with Classical Arabic, then this latter form is adopted.

Transliteration Tables

Arabic letters																												/ ‎
DIN 31635 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...	/	b	t					d		r	z	s								f	q	k	l	m	n	h	/	/
Buckwalter 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...	A			v	j	H	x		*				$	S	D	T	Z	E	g								w	y
Qalam 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...	' / aa			th			kh		dh				sh					`	gh								w	y
BATR	A / aa			c			K		z'				x					E	g								w / uu	y / ii
IPA (MSA Literary Arabic Modern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech.... )	ʔ, aː	b	t	θ	dʒ ɡ ʒ	ħ	x χ	d	ð	r	z	s	ʃ	sˤ	dˤ	tˤ	ðˤ zˤ	ʕ	ɣ ʁ	f	q	k	l	m	n	h	w, uː	j, iː

hamza is always represented by e. The correct spelling form is deducible from standard rules of spelling when the word is fully voweled. This is in contrast to Buckwalter Transliteration

Buckwalter transliteration

where several symbols are needed; e.g. hamza on alif is represented by > while hamza on waaw is represented by &.

ealif

Aleph

* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...

: In general, ealif is represented by aa or A. The ealif Al-waSl is represented by eo while ealif maqSuurat' is represented by aaa.

Harakaat

Harakat

The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, including ijam ⟨⟩ , and tashkil ⟨⟩...

fatHat': a
Dammat': u
kasrat': i
fatHatayn: aN
Dammatayn: uN
kasratayn: iN
shaddat' or xaddat' is represented by the letter repeated
sukūn: o or -o-
taae marbuuTat': t'
taTwiil: _

External links

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