![]() The Arabic Chat WayĪs SMS and texting become more common, Arabic speakers adapted to the Roman script of SMS by adapting certain Arabic letters into numbers. Mac users can take advantage of these special letters by using the “Emoji and Symbols” section of the Character Viewer. Writing in this way is only possible if your computer has this capability. The little “dashes” indicate the “a” sound in “baladi.” That’s the difference between: بلدي and بَلَدي. Short vowels, such both instances of “a” in the word baladī, are not emphasized, and in popular writing, are not written in Arabic. Hans Wehr also distinguishes long vowels from short ones. So, س, which is basically our “S,” would just be S, but ص, which is pronounced more in the back of the throat and has a heavier sound, would be Ṣ. This method uses limited diacritical marks under letters to indicate their Arabic equivalent. There are actually several ways that academics transcribe Arabic into Roman script, but the one that I encountered the most in my studies is the “Hans Wehr” method, named for the system used in the Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic by (you guessed it) Hans Wehr. Transcription is a little bit art, a little bit science, and a lot of understanding how Arabic and its dialects sound when spoken. ![]() That is, taking the sounds of Arabic and writing them in Roman script. A word is always spelled the same way, and we’re discouraged from taking creative liberty with alternate spellings.īut then we enter the wild and wooly world of transliterating Arabic, or, more accurately, transcription. We English speakers learn that there is a correct and incorrect way to spell a word. If you read and write the language, you can type it into the search bar in Arabic and voila! There’s that song you’re obsessed with.īut if you have to search in Roman script… things get a little tricky. If you don’t read or write Arabic, it can be incredibly frustrating to try to find an Arabic song that you love, or maybe YouTube video of a singer performing that song you just discovered and need to hear right now. What about “Laylat Hob”? Or is it “Laylat Hobb,” “Lailet Hob,” “Laylet Hob,” or “Lailat Hobb”? ![]() In the next lesson, you will learn about the diacritics in Arabic, namely the short vowels and why they are not written in Modern Standard Arabic.“Baladi,” “Balady,” “Beledi,” “Beledy,” or “Belady,” or “Beladi”? This will help learn new linguistic term faster as they are introduced. In the list below, you can see how the Arabic diacriticized letters are transliterated into English. ![]() Therefore, once you are able to read and write Arabic using its scripts, you must avoid using transliteration altogether. This certainly isn’t to encourage you to follow this path of learning, as it turns out to be a hindrance in later stages of learning since there isn’t a uniform system of using them in language books. In the above table, you can see how the common sound-related terms covered in the first few lessons are transliterated into English. These sounds are roughly close to Arabic sounds. Some Arabic sounds does not exist in English, so a combination of English sounds is used. transliterating Arabic sounds into the corresponding English ones. This lesson presents the actual pronunciation of Arabic sounds in English sounds, i.e. It facilitates transition from the pure beginner stage to upper-beginner stage plus, it speeds up learning. In the initial stages of learning, using transliteration is inevitable and sometime useful.
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