Transliterations for Fun

[Wyatt]

Because the Hebrew alephbet and the Arabic alifbaa are so closely related, I thought (as a language nerd) it would be interesting to be able to transliterate or use a system of Hebrew to write Arabic (maybe vice-versa, but I do not speak Hebrew at all).

This shows the evolution of the letters from the phoenician alphabet also including that of Latin and Greek.

What I've come up with is:

א ב ת תֿ ג ח חֿ ד דֿ ר ז שׂ שׁ צ צֿ ט טֿ ע עֿ פ ק כ ל מ נ ה ו י הֿ

אַ אֻ אִ​

The ة could be this new letter I've created which is a combination of ה and ת:

But, on a computer, it could just be a ה with a line above it.

The system I created was more based off of the relationship between the actual letters rather than phonetic transliterations using the equivalents in Hebrew.

However, I think that which I made probably needs a lot of fixing or alterations.

I was wondering if anyone else knew of some systems like this. I've seen the official transliteration by the Israeli government, but that was useless because they use it for Hebrew language.

Also, I'm interested in doing it for other languages like Syriac! But, I can't type Syriac (nor can I see it) on a Mac at the moment. I will look into it, otherwise I will just have to work on that with a Windows.

Does anyone like this idea? :statisfie

Here is an example of some of the first Surah of the Qur'an.

‎‫1 בשם אללה אלרח‬מן אלרחים
‎‫2 אלחמד ללה רב' אלעלמין‬
‎‫3 אלרחמן אלרחים‬
‎‫4 מלך יום אלדין‬
‎‫5 אי'אך נעבד ואי'ך נשתעין‬​

 

[Woodrow]

While there are many similarities between Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic The pronunciations of the letters do differ quite a bit.

I have found that a person fluent in Aramaic can usually understand all three of the languages. Perhaps it might be better to use the Aramaic Alphabet for transliterations?

Just my thought.


Check this source for the Aramaic Alphabet.

SOURCE

 

[Danah]

^ I got surprised by the number of Aramaic Alphabets, I always though they were more than that

Podarok......interesting way of explaining the evolution of letters.
How could you write the first surah of Quran in hebrew without knowing the language and only by relationships? That is quite amazing and interesting!!

 

[Wyatt]

How could you write the first surah of Quran in hebrew without knowing the language and only by relationships? That is quite amazing and interesting!!

ごめん, I must have worded it strangely. I didn't write it in Hebrew, but in Arabic—using the Hebrew alphabet.

I just replaced letters with their equivalents.

 

[Danah]

^ だいじょぶ Podarok-sensai, maybe it was me who misunderstood a bit

I think I got it now.....
I tried to read this first verse:
בשם אללה אלרח‬מן אלרחים

"If I am not mistaken" but it seems that you write the word:بسم (bism) as بشم

this letter ש is equivalent to ش not س

or maybe I read it wrongly!! :?

 

[*Yasmin*]

really interesting gesture..

this letter ש is equivalent to ش not س

^
this letter sometimes is equivalent to s not sh ..
for example : שמלה = means dress, its pronunciation is : semlah .. not shemlah ..
to make a different between the two pronuciation , a dot is added to the letter..

when its pronuciation is s ,the dot is from the above left side .. else it's from the above right side..
but it's not necessarily to add the dot it just a helpful thing which students sometimes leave after they get used to the right articulation.

 

[Danah]

^jazaki Allah khair for your clarification sis

I find it very interesting actually
can u tell me how we add the dot in right or in left?

 

[Wyatt]

It's different on different keyboard layouts and operating systems. This should clarify it up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_vowels

[edit: שׂ and שׁ. I press alt+S and alt+W, but I'm running a QWERTY-based phonetic Hebrew layout that comes on my MacBook, plus it's on a Japanese keyboard, lol.

Even though in Hebrew, it would have been transliterated with a ס, I chose ש because that's were the arabic س originally came from. As you can see in the chart, it's on the same level with ס, but is still purple. Though, I guess it could be used as well because arabic doesn't have a letter ס could represent otherwise.

I've actually been working on an English one too, which is going better than I thought it would, but I'm still having complications. The letters F, V, U, W, and Y all come from the same origin, and it's kind of annoying to represent them all with ו in some way. When I'm finished, I'll post it on here! :shade:

I'll make an arabic version too- which will look all jumbled to me because I'll want to just phonetically spell things out in Arabic because I know some.

I do this quite often, using Greek and Cyrillic letters instead.


Woodrow, that Aramaic alphabet was basically the same as that of Hebrew, so if there were a Hebrew one, then you could just change the letters appearance to that of Aramaic. Plus, I can't really type those. :hmm:

Anyways, still working on it! If anyone else can come up with suggestions or some other systems, I'd be more than interested! :statisfie

 

[Danah]

^ that seems to be more complicated than I thought :blind:

I will try to write some sentences in hebrow in the same way u did and post them here to see whether I got it or not