Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon Path: nntp-oslo.uninett.no!nac.no!trane.uninett.no!sunic!pipex!uunet!world!medawar From: medawar@world.std.com (bassem medawar) Subject: Classical Arabic Transliteration Message-ID: Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 22:20:36 GMT Lines: 126 Due to a request, I am reposting my CAT (Classical Arabic Transliteration) standard proposal with minor modifications. bassem/m -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Classical Arabic Transliteration (CAT) version 1.03 (Nov 13, 1994) by Bassem Medawar medawar@rama.poly.edu Purpose of CAT: The purpose of CAT is to allow the representation of classical Arabic characters in ASCII form for computer textual exchange. Most of CAT rules are borrowed from Alephleb [see credits at the end]. It may later be modified by consensus of the users. Why not use Alephleb? Since Alephleb was announced, few people have chosen to ignore its usefulness and argue instead the professed political views of two of its authors. CAT is therefore intended to divorce the politically oriented elements of Alephleb from its classical Arabic proposed transliteration subset of rules. CAT is intended as a stop gap measure until graphic display technology of Arabic characters becomes widespread enough on the majority of computer screens around the world. No political statement what so ever is intended with CAT. Please read none. If you are interested in helping in the development of Arabic character display and editing software for public use, you may want to subscribe to the reader list. To subscribe, send email to iskandar@u.washington.edu. The proposed mapping for the classical Arabic alphabet follows: name represented by e.g. ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ hamzah ' 'amal (hope) aleph aa baasim (smily) maddah aaa aaamaal (expectations) ba b bayt (house) ta t torbah (soil) tha c^ or th thawra (revolution) jiim j jamal (camal) Ha h, or H Himaar (donkey) kha k, or K or kh khaymah (tent) dal d daliil (guide) zhaal z^ or zh zhi'b (wolf) rah r ra's (head) zayn z zahrah (rose) sin s sama' (sky) shiin s^ or sh shams (sun) Saad s, or S Sibaa (youth) Daad d, or D Damiir (conscience) Tah t, or T Tayr (bird) Zah z, or Z Zolm (oppression) @ayn @ @ayn (eye) ghayn g^ or gh ghaym (clouds) fa f fard (individual) qaaf q qamar (moon) kaaf k kalb (dog) laam l laylah (night) miim m marj (field) nuun n nahr (river) ha h hawa' (air) waw w or uu or oo wazir (minister), muruuj or murooj (fields) ye y or ii yasmiin (jasmin) Few rules supplement the mapping: - Accents are placed after the characters they modify, fattHah a kassrah i Dammah o or u - Shaddah is represented by repeating the character it modifies. - Using the uppercase, letter/carret, letter/comma, form of a character is preferred over the letter/letter alternate form to prevent ambiguity. In most cases however, the context could help disambiguate. Be aware though that you can remove the ambiguity completely. For example using k, or K is preferred over using kh but all are valid representations of the same letter. - Capitalizing a letter at the beginning of a sentence is discouraged as it may create ambiguity. - Proper names are exceptions to these rules. They may be written in whatever spelling people are already used to. - When reading CAT transliterated text, you may find it easier to read the text aloud. This involves the auditory memory in addition to the visual memory in the word recognition process. Following are some anticipated frequently asked questions: - What does the carret and the comma form of a character come from? See Alephleb for details. - Where can I get the most recent version of this proposal? - Where can I get Alephleb v.1? By anonymous ftp from rama.poly.edu (128.238.10.212) in the directory: /pub/reader/text/translit/cat.v1.03 Credits: Alephleb v.1 is a standard proposed by (in alphabetical order) Bassem Medawar, Naji Mouawad, and Elie Wardini.