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Romanization of Arabic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Representation of Arabic in Latin script

Google Ngrams chart showing the changing English romanization of theArabic short vowels (ـَfatḥah,ـِkasrah andـُḍammah) between the 19th and 20th centuries, usingمُسْلِم (Muslim) andمُحَمَّد (Muhammad) as examples.
Arabic alphabet
ابتثجحخدذرزسشصضطظعغفقكلمنهوي
Arabic script

Theromanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering ofwritten andspokenArabic in theLatin script. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of names and titles,cataloging Arabic language works,language education when used instead of or alongside the Arabic script, and representation of the language in scientific publications bylinguists. These formal systems, which often make use ofdiacritics and non-standard Latin characters, are used in academic settings for the benefit of non-speakers, contrasting with informal means of written communication used by speakers such as the Latin-basedArabic chat alphabet.

Different systems and strategies have been developed to address the inherent problems of rendering various Arabic varieties in the Latin script. Examples of such problems are the symbols for Arabicphonemes that do not exist inEnglish or otherEuropean languages; the means of representing theArabic definite article, which is always spelled the same way in written Arabic but has numerous pronunciations in the spoken language depending on context; and the representation of short vowels (usuallyi u ore o, accounting for variations such asMuslim and Moslem orMohammed, Muhammad and Mohamed).

Method

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Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct.[citation needed]Transliteration is the direct representation of foreignletters using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actuallytranscription systems, which represent thesound of the language, since short vowels and geminate consonants, for example, do not usually appear in Arabic writing. As an example, the following rendering “munāẓaratu l-ḥurūfi l-ʻarabīyah” ofArabic:مناظرة الحروف العربية is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration would bemnaẓrḧ alḥrwf alʻrbyḧ.

Romanization standards and systems

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Principal standards and systems are:

Early Romanization

[edit]

Early Romanization of the Arabic language was standardized in the variousbilingual Arabic-European dictionaries of the 17–19th centuries:

Mixed digraphic and diacritical

[edit]
Further information:Digraph (orthography) andDiacritic

Fully diacritical

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ASCII-based

[edit]

Comparison table

[edit]
LetterUnicodeName inALAName inISOIPABGN/
PCGN		UNGEGNALA-LCEIWehr 1EALLBSDINISOArabTeXArabizi 2[16][17][18]
ء ‎30621hamzahhamzahʔʼ 4ʾʼ 4ʾʼ 4ʾˈ, ˌ'2
ا0627ʼalifˈalifaːāʾAa/e/é
ب0628bāʼbāˈbb
ت062Atāʼtāˈtt
ث062Bthāʼṯāˈθth 5t͟h 5ṯ_ts/th/t
ج ‎12062Cjīmǧīmd͡ʒ (ɡ~ʒ)jd͟j 5j 6ǧ^gj/g/dj
ح062Dḥāʼḥāˈħḩ 7ḥ.h7/h
خ062Ekhāʼẖāˈxkh 5k͟h 5ḵ 6xẖḫẖ_hkh/7'/5
د062Fdāldāldd
ذ0630dhālḏālðdh 5 d͟h 5ḏ_dz/dh/th/d
ر0631rāʼrāˈrr
ز0632zāyzāyzz
س0633sīnsīnss
ش0634shīnšīnʃsh 5s͟h 5š^ssh/ch/$
ص0635ṣādṣādsˤş 7ṣ.ss/9
ض0636ḍādḍāddˤḑ 7ḍ.dd/9'/D
ط0637ṭāʼṭāˈtˤţ 7ṭ.tt/6/T
ظ0638ẓāʼẓāˈðˤz̧ 7 d͟h 5ẓḏ̣/ẓ11ẓ.zz/dh/6'/th
ع0639ʻaynʿaynʕʻ 4ʿʽ 4ʿ`3
غ063Aghaynġaynɣgh 5g͟h 5ḡ 6ġḡġ.ggh/3'/8
ف ‎80641fāʼfāˈff
ق ‎80642qāfqāfqq2/g/q/8/9
ك0643kāfkāfkk
ل0644lāmlāmll
م0645mīmmīmmm
ن0646nūnnūnnn
ه0647hāʼhāˈhh
و0648wāwwāww,uːw; ūw; Uw/ou/oo/u/o
ي ‎9064Ayāʼyāˈj,iːy; īy;Iy/i/ee/ei/ai
آ0622ʼalif maddahˈalif maddahʔaːā,ʼāʾāʾâ'A2a/aa
ة0629tāʼ marbūṭahtāˈ marbūṭahh,th; t—; th; tẗTa/e(h); et/at
ال06270644ʼalif lāmˈalif lām(var.)al- 10ʾalal-el/al
ى ‎90649ʼalif maqṣūrahˈalif maqṣurahaːáāỳ_Aa
Vocalization
ـَ064Efatḥahaaa/e/é
ـِ0650kasrahiii/e/é
ـُ ‎13064Fḍammahuuou/o/u
ـَا064E0627fatḥah alifaːāaʼA/aaa
ـِي0650064Akasrah yāʼiːīiyI/iyi/ee
ـُو ‎13064F0648ḍammah wāwuːūuwU/uwou/oo/u
ـَي064E064Afatḥah yāʼajayay/ai/ey/ei
ـَو064E0648fatḥah wāwawawaw/aou
ـً ‎14064BfatḥatānanananáaNan
ـٍ ‎14064DkasratāninininíiNin/en
ـٌ ‎14064CḍammatānunununúuNoun/on/oon/un
  • ^1 Hans Wehr transliteration does not capitalize the first letter at the beginning of sentences nor in proper names.
  • ^2 Thechat table is only a demonstration and is based on thespoken varieties which vary considerably fromLiterary Arabic on which the IPA table and the rest of the transliterations are based.
  • ^3 Reviewhamzah for its various forms.
  • ^4 Neither standard defines whichcode point to use forhamzah andʻayn. Appropriate Unicode points would bemodifier letter apostrophe 〈ʼ〉 andmodifier letter turned comma 〈ʻ〉 (for the UNGEGN and BGN/PCGN) ormodifier letter reversed comma 〈ʽ〉 (for the Wehr and Survey of Egypt System (SES)), all of which Unicode defines as letters. Often right and left singlequotation marks 〈’⟩, ⟨‘⟩ are used instead, but Unicode defines those as punctuation marks, and they can cause compatibility issues. The glottal stop (hamzah) in these romanizations is not written word-initially.
  • ^5 InEncyclopaedia of Islam digraphs are underlined, that is t͟h, d͟j, k͟h, d͟h, s͟h, g͟h (or t̲h̲, d̲j̲, k̲h̲, d̲h̲, s̲h̲, g̲h̲). On the contrary the sequencesـتـهـ, ـكـهـ, ـدهـ, ـسهـ may be romanized withmiddle dot ast·h,k·h,d·h,s·h respectively in BGN/PCGN, with theprime symboltʹh, kʹh, dʹh, sʹh respectively in ALA-LC.
  • ^6 In the original German edition of his dictionary (1952) Wehr used ǧ, ḫ, ġ for j, ḵ, ḡ respectively (that is all the letters used are equal to DMG/DIN 31635). The variant presented in the table is from the English translation of the dictionary (1961).
  • ^7 BGN/PCGN allows use ofunderdots instead ofcedilla.
  • ^8Fāʼ andqāf are traditionally written inNorthwestern Africa asڢ andڧـ ـڧـ ـٯ, respectively, while the latter's dot is only added initially or medially.
  • ^9 In Egypt, Sudan, and sometimes in other regions, the standard form for final-yāʼ is onlyى(without dots) in handwriting and print, for both final/-iː/ and final/-aː/.ى for the latter pronunciation, is calledألف لينةalif layyinah[ˈʔælef læjˈjenæ], 'flexible alif'.
  • ^10 Thesun and moon letters andhamzat waṣl pronunciation rules apply, although it is acceptable to ignore them. The UN system and ALA-LC prefer lowercasea and hyphens:al-Baṣrah, ar-Riyāḍ; BGN/PCGN prefers uppercaseA and no hyphens:Al Baṣrah, Ar Riyāḍ.[3]
  • ^11 The EALL suggests ẓ "in proper names" (volume 4, page 517).
  • ^12BGN/PCGN,UNGEGN,ALA-LC, andDIN 31635 use a normal⟨g⟩ for⟨ج⟩ when romanizing Egyptian names or toponyms that are expectedly pronounced with/ɡ/.
  • ^13BGN/PCGN,UNGEGN,ALA-LC, andDIN 31635 use the French-based⟨ou⟩ for/u(:)/ in Francophone Arabic speaking countries in names and toponyms.
  • ^14Nunation is ignored in all romanizations in names and toponyms.

Romanization issues

[edit]

Anyromanization system has to make a number of decisions which are dependent on its intended field of application.

Vowels

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One basic problem is that written Arabic is normallyunvocalized; i.e., many of thevowels are not written out, and must be supplied by a reader familiar with the language. Hence unvocalizedArabic writing does not give a reader unfamiliar with the language sufficient information for accurate pronunciation. As a result, a puretransliteration, e.g., renderingقطر asqṭr, is meaningless to an untrained reader. For this reason,transcriptions are generally used that add vowels, e.g.qaṭar. However, unvocalized systems match exactly to written Arabic, unlike vocalized systems such as Arabic chat, which some claim detracts from one's ability to spell.[19]

Transliteration vs. transcription

[edit]

Most uses of romanization call fortranscription rather thantransliteration: Instead of transliterating each written letter, they try to reproduce the sound of the words according to the orthography rules of the target language:Qaṭar. This applies equally to scientific and popular applications. A pure transliteration would need to omit vowels (e.g.qṭr), 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.alifا vs.alif maqṣūrahى for the sound/aː/ā, and the six different ways (ء إ أ آ ؤ ئ) of writing theglottal stop (hamza, usually transcribedʼ ). This sort of detail is 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:

  • Some transliterations ignoreassimilation of thedefinite articleal- before the "sun letters", and may be easily misread by non-Arabic speakers. For instance, "the light"النورan-nūr would be more literally transliterated along the lines ofalnūr. In the transcriptionan-nūr, a hyphen is added and the unpronounced/l/ removed for the convenience of the uninformed non-Arabic speaker, who would otherwise pronounce an/l/, perhaps not understanding that/n/ innūr isgeminated. Alternatively, if theshaddah is not transliterated (since it is strictly not a letter), a strictly literal transliteration would bealnūr, which presents similar problems for the uninformed non-Arabic speaker.
  • A transliteration should render the "closed tāʼ" (tāʼ marbūṭah,ة) faithfully. Many transcriptions render the sound/a/ asa orah andt when it denotes/at/.
  • "Restricted alif" (alif maqṣūrah,ى) should[citation needed] be transliterated with anacute accent,á, differentiating it from regular alifا, but it is transcribed in many schemes like alif,ā, because it stands for/aː/.
  • Nunation: what is true elsewhere is also true for nunation: transliteration renders what is seen, transcription what is heard, when in the Arabic script, it is written with diacritics, not by letters, or omitted.

A transcription may reflect the language as spoken, typically rendering names, for example, by the people of Baghdad (Baghdad Arabic), or the official standard (Literary Arabic) as spoken by apreacher in theMosque or a TV newsreader. 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 EnglishOmar Khayyam with GermanOmar Chajjam, both forعمر خيام/ʕumar xajjaːm/,[ˈʕomɑr xæjˈjæːm] (unvocalizedʿmr ḫyām, vocalizedʻUmar Khayyām).

A transliteration is ideally fully reversible: a machine should be able to transliterate it back into Arabic. 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 such that digraphs for a single phoneme (such asdh gh kh sh th rather thanḏ ġ ḫ š ṯ) may be confused with two adjacent consonants—but this problem is resolved in theALA-LC romanization system, where theprime symbolʹ is used to separate two consonants when they do not form a digraph;[20] for example:أَكْرَمَتْهاakramatʹhā ('she honored her'), in which thet andh are two distinct consonantal sounds, or where themiddle dot is used in the same way in the BGN/PCGN romanization.
  • Symbols representing phonemes may be considered too similar (e.g.,ʻ and' orʿ andʾ forعʻayn andhamzah);
  • ASCII transliterations using capital letters to disambiguate phonemes[clarification needed] 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 who is familiar with the sounds of Arabic but 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 a reader is not familiar with Arabic pronunciation.

Examples

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Examples inLiterary Arabic:

Arabicأمجد كان له قصرإلى المملكة المغربية
Arabic withdiacritics
(normally omitted)		أَمْجَدُ كَانَ لَهُ قَصْرإِلَى الْمَمْلَكَةِ الْمَغْرِبِيَّة
IPA/ʔamdʒadukaːnalahuːqasˤr//ʔila‿l.mamlakati‿l.maɣribij.jah/
ALA-LCAmjad kāna lahu qaṣrIlá al-mamlakah al-Maghribīyah
Hans Wehramjad kāna lahū qaṣrilā l-mamlaka al-maḡribīya
DIN 31635ʾAmǧad kāna lahū qaṣrʾIlā l-mamlakah al-Maġribiyyah
UNGEGNAmjad kāna lahu qaşrIlá al-mamlakah al-maghribiyyah
ISO 233ʾˈamǧad kāna lahu qaṣrʾˈilaỳ ʾˈalmamlakaẗ ʾˈalmaġribiȳaẗ
ArabTeXam^gad kAna lahu qa.sril_A almamlakaT alma.gribiyyaT
EnglishAmjad had a palaceTo the Moroccan Kingdom

Arabic alphabet and nationalism

[edit]

There have been many instances of national movements to convertArabic script into Latin script or to romanize the language.

Lebanon

[edit]
LEBNAAN in proposedSaid Akl alphabet (issue #686)

A Beirut newspaper,La Syrie, pushed for the change from Arabic script toLatin script in 1922. The major head of this movement wasLouis Massignon, a French Orientalist, who brought his concern before the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus in 1928. Massignon's attempt at romanization failed as the Academy and the population viewed the proposal as an attempt from the Western world to take over their country. Sa'id Afghani, a member of the Academy, asserted that the movement to romanize the script was a Zionist plan to dominate Lebanon.[21][22]

Egypt

[edit]

After the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for a way to reclaim and reemphasize Egyptian culture. As a result, some Egyptians pushed for an Egyptianization of theArabic language in which the formal Arabic and thecolloquial Arabic would be combined into one language and the Latin alphabet would be used.[21][22] There was also the idea of finding a way to usehieroglyphics instead of the Latin alphabet.[21][22] A scholar,Salama Musa, agreed with the idea of applying a Latin alphabet to Egyptian Arabic, as he believed that would allow Egypt to have a closer relationship with the West. He also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances inscience andtechnology. This change in script, he believed, would solve the problems inherent with Arabic, such as a lack of written vowels and difficulties writing foreign words.[21][22][23]Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid andMuhammad Azmi, two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for romanization.[21][22] The idea that romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al Aziz Fahmi in 1944. He was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo.[21][22] He believed and desired to implement romanization in a way that allowed words and spellings to remain somewhat familiar to the Egyptian people. However, this effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cultural tie to the Arabic alphabet, particularly the older generation.[21][22]

See also

[edit]

References

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  1. ^abcdefEdward Lipiński, 2012,Arabic Linguistics: A Historiographic Overview, pages 32–33
  2. ^"Romanization system for Arabic. BGN/PCGN 1956 System"(PDF).
  3. ^abcd"Arabic"(PDF). UNGEGN.
  4. ^Technical reference manual for the standardization of geographical names(PDF). UNGEGN. 2007. p. 12 [22].
  5. ^"Systèmes français de romanisation"(PDF). UNGEGN. 2009.
  6. ^"Arabic romanization table"(PDF). The Library of Congress.
  7. ^"IJMES Translation & Transliteration Guide". International Journal of Middle East Studies.
  8. ^"Encyclopaedia of Islam Romanization vs ALA Romanization for Arabic".University of Washington Libraries.
  9. ^Brockelmann, Carl; Ronkel, Philippus Samuel van (1935).Die Transliteration der arabischen Schrift...(PDF). Leipzig.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^abReichmuth, Philipp (2009). "Transcription". In Versteegh, Kees (ed.).Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Vol. 4. Brill. pp. 515–20.
  11. ^Millar, M. Angélica; Salgado, Rosa; Zedán, Marcela (2005).Gramatica de la lengua arabe para hispanohablantes. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria. pp. 53–54.ISBN 978-956-11-1799-0.
  12. ^"Standards, Training, Testing, Assessment and Certification".BSI Group. Archived fromthe original on 7 October 2008. Retrieved18 May 2014.
  13. ^ArabTex User Manual Section 4.1 : ASCII Transliteration Encoding.
  14. ^"Buckwalter Arabic Transliteration". QAMUS LLC.
  15. ^"Arabic Morphological Analyzer/The Buckwalter Transliteration". Xerox. Retrieved30 April 2017.
  16. ^Sullivan, Natalie (July 2017).Writing Arabizi: Orthographic Variation in Romanized Lebanese Arabic on Twitter (Plan II Honors Thesis).doi:10.15781/T2W951823.hdl:2152/72420.
  17. ^Bjørnsson, Jan Arild (November 2010)."Egyptian Romanized Arabic: A Study of Selected Features from Communication Among Egyptian Youth on Facebook"(PDF). University of Oslo. Retrieved31 March 2019.
  18. ^Abu Elhija, Dua'a (3 July 2014)."A new writing system? Developing orthographies for writing Arabic dialects in electronic media".Writing Systems Research.6 (2):190–214.doi:10.1080/17586801.2013.868334.ISSN 1758-6801.S2CID 219568845.
  19. ^Nazzal, Noor (9 May 2013)."Arabizi sparks concern among educators". Gulf News. Retrieved28 August 2025.
  20. ^"Arabic"(PDF).ALA-LC Romanization Tables. Library of Congress. p. 9. Retrieved14 June 2013.21. The prime (ʹ) is used: (a) To separate two letters representing two distinct consonantal sounds, when the combination might otherwise be read as a digraph.
  21. ^abcdefgShrivtiel, Shraybom (1998).The Question of Romanisation of the Script and The Emergence of Nationalism in the Middle East. Mediterranean Language Review. pp. 179–196.
  22. ^abcdefgHistory of Arabic Writing
  23. ^Shrivtiel, p. 188

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