Google Ngrams chart showing the changing Romanization of Arabic vowels

The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of

written Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...

and spoken

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

in the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of names and titles,

cataloging In library and information science, cataloging ( US) or cataloguing ( UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging provides information such as auth ...

Arabic language works,

language education Language education – the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language – is primarily a branch of applied linguistics, but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language educatio ...

when used instead of or alongside the Arabic script, and representation of the language in scientific publications by

linguists Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingui ...

. These formal systems, which often make use of

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

and non-standard Latin characters and are used in academic settings or for the benefit of non-speakers, contrast with informal means of written communication used by speakers such as the Latin-based

Arabic chat alphabet The Arabic chat alphabet, ''Arabizi'', Franco-Arabic (), refer to the Romanized alphabets for informal Arabic dialects in which Arabic script is transcribed or encoded into a combination of Latin script and Arabic numerals. These informal chat a ...

. 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 Arabic

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s that do not exist in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

or other

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

an languages; the means of representing the

Arabic definite article ( ar, ٱلْـ), also Romanized as ''el-'', ''il-,'' and ''l-'' as pronounced in some varieties of Arabic, is the definite article in the Arabic language: a particle (''ḥarf'') whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed def ...

, 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 (usually ''i u'' or ''e o'', accounting for variations such as ''

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

/Moslem'' or ''

Mohammed Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monot ...

/Muhammad/Mohamed'').

Method

Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct. ''

Transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

'' is the direct representation of foreign ''letters'' using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually '' transcription'' systems, which represent the ''sound'' of the language, since short vowels and geminate consonants, for example, does not usually appear in Arabic writing. As an example, the above rendering ' of the is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration would be '.

Romanization standards and systems

Principal standards and systems are:

Early Romanization

Early Romanization of the Arabic language was standardized in the various bilingual Arabic-European dictionaries of the 17–19th centuries: * Pedro de Alcalá, ''Vocabulista'', 1505. A Spanish-Arabic glossary in transcription only. Edward Lipiński, 2012
Arabic Linguistics: A Historiographic Overview
pages 32–33 *

Valentin Schindler Valentin Schindler (14 February 1543 – 11 June 1604) was a Lutheran Hebraist and professor of the University of Wittenberg, where he was an important teacher of the Hebrew language. He moved by 1594 to Helmstedt. He is known for his dictionary " ...

, ''Lexicon Pentaglotton: Hebraicum, Chaldicum, Syriacum, Talmudico-Rabbinicum, et Arabicum'', 1612. Arabic lemmas were printed in Hebrew characters. *

Franciscus Raphelengius Frans van Ravelingen Latinized Franciscus Raphelengius (February 27, 1539 – July 20, 1597), was a Flemish-born scholar, printer and publisher, working in Antwerp and later in Leiden. During the last decade of his life he was professor of He ...

''Lexicon Arabicum''
Leiden 1613. The first printed dictionary of the Arabic language in Arabic characters. *

Jacobus Golius Jacob Golius born Jacob van Gool (1596 – September 28, 1667) was an Orientalist and mathematician based at the University of Leiden in Netherlands. He is primarily remembered as an Orientalist. He published Arabic texts in Arabic at Leiden, ...

, ''Lexicon Arabico-Latinum'', Leiden 1653. The dominant Arabic dictionary in Europe for almost two centuries. *

Georg Freytag Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Freytag (19 September 1788 – 16 November 1861) was a German philologist. Background Freytag was born in Lüneburg. He studied philology and theology at the University of Göttingen, where from 1811 to 1813 he wor ...

, ''Lexicon Arabico-Latinum'', praesertim ex Djeuharii Firuzubadiique et aliorum libris confectum I–IV, Halle 1830–1837 *

Edward William Lane Edward William Lane (17 September 1801 – 10 August 1876) was a British orientalist, translator and lexicographer. He is known for his ''Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'' and the '' Arabic-English Lexicon,'' as well as his transla ...

, ''

Arabic–English Lexicon __NOTOC__ The ''Arabic–English Lexicon'' is an Arabic–English dictionary compiled by Edward William Lane (died 1876). It was published in eight volumes during the second half of the 19th century. It consists of Arabic words defined and explai ...

'', 8 vols, London-Edinburgh 1863–1893. Highly influential, but incomplete (stops at Kaf)

Mixed digraphic and diacritical

BGN/PCGN BGN/PCGN romanization are the systems for romanization and Roman-script spelling conventions adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) and the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use (PCGN). The system ...

romanization (1956). *

UNGEGN The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) is one of the nine expert groups of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and deals with the national and international standardization of geographical names. E ...

(1972). United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, or "Variant A of the Amended Beirut System". Adopted from BGN/PCGN. ** IGN System 1973 or "Variant B of the Amended Beirut System", that conforms to the French orthography and is preferred to the Variant A in French-speaking countries as in Maghreb and Lebanon. ** romanization (2007) is different from UNGEGN in two ways: (1) ظ is d͟h instead of z̧; (2) the cedilla is replaced by a sub-macron (_) in all the characters with the cedilla. *

ALA-LC ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script. Applications The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...

(first published 1991), from the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...

and the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

. This romanization is close to the romanization of the and

Hans Wehr Hans Bodo Gerhardt Wehr (; 5 July 1909, Leipzig24 May 1981, Münster) was a German Arabist. A professor at the University of Münster from 1957–1974, he published the ''Arabisches Wörterbuch'' (1952), which was later published in an Engl ...

, which is used internationally in scientific publications by

Arabist An Arabist is someone, often but not always from outside the Arab world, who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and culture (usually including Arabic literature). Origins Arabists began in medieval Muslim Spain, which lay on th ...

s. ** IJMES, used by ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'', very similar to ALA-LC. ** EI, ''

Encyclopaedia of Islam The ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' (''EI'') is an encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies published by Brill. It is considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies. The first edition was published ...

'' (1st ed., 1913–1938; 2nd ed., 1960–2005).

Fully diacritical

* DMG (', 1935), adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. **

DIN 31635 DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) as modified by the International Orientalist ...

(1982), developed by the German Institute for Standardization ('). **

Hans Wehr transliteration The Hans Wehr transliteration system is a system for transliteration of the Arabic alphabet into the Latin alphabet used in the Hans Wehr dictionary (1952; in English 1961). The system was modified somewhat in the English editions. It is printe ...

(1961, 1994), a modification to DIN 31635. ** EALL, ''Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics'' (edited by Kees Versteegh, Brill, 2006–2009). ** Spanish romanization, identical to DMG/DIN with the exception of three letters: ǧ > ŷ, ḫ > j, ġ > g. *

ISO 233 The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for romanization of Arabic and Syriac. It was supplemented by ISO 233-2 in 1993. 1984 edition The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language. ISO 233-2:1993 ISO 233-2 ...

(1984), letter-to-letter; vowels are transliterated only if they are shown with diacritics, otherwise they are omitted. **

ISO 233-2 The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for romanization of Arabic and Syriac. It was supplemented by ISO 233-2 in 1993. 1984 edition The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language. ISO 233-2:1993 ISO 233 ...

(1993), simplified transliteration; vowels are always shown. *

BS 4280 BS, B.S., Bs or bs may refer to: Arts and entertainment *BS-, a prefix for all games broadcast for the Satellaview modem via the Japanese Broadcasting Satellite system * "B.S." (song), a song by Jhené Aiko from the album ''Chilombo'' * Team BS ...

(1968), developed by the

British Standards Institution The British Standards Institution (BSI) is the national standards body of the United Kingdom. BSI produces technical standards on a wide range of products and services and also supplies certification and standards-related services to busines ...

ASCII-based

* ArabTeX (since 1992) has been modelled closely after the transliteration standards ISO/R 233 and DIN 31635. * Buckwalter Transliteration (1990s), developed at ALPNET by Tim Buckwalter; does not require

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

s. * Arabic chat alphabet: an ad hoc solution for conveniently entering Arabic using a Latin keyboard.

Comparison table

* Hans Wehr transliteration does not capitalize the first letter at the beginning of sentences nor in proper names. * The ''chat'' table is only a demonstration and is based on the spoken varieties which vary considerably from

Literary Arabic Literary Arabic (Arabic: ' ) may refer to: * Classical Arabic * Modern Standard Arabic Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of standardized, literary Arabic that develo ...

on which the IPA table and the rest of the transliterations are based. * Review '' hamzah'' for its various forms. * Neither standard defines which

code point In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...

to use for ' and '' ''. Appropriate Unicode points would be

modifier letter apostrophe The modifier letter apostrophe is a letter in Unicode encoding, used primarily for various glottal sounds. Encoding The letter apostrophe is encoded at , which is in the ''Spacing Modifier Letters'' Unicode block. In Unicode code charts it loo ...

⟨ʼ⟩ and modifier letter turned comma ⟨ʻ⟩ (for the UNGEGN and BGN/PCGN) or modifier letter reversed comma ⟨ʽ⟩ (for the Wehr and Survey of Egypt System (SES)), all of which Unicode defines as letters. Often right and left single

quotation mark Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...

s ⟨’⟩, ⟨‘⟩ are used instead, but Unicode defines those as punctuation marks, and they can cause compatibility issues. The glottal stop (') in these romanizations isn't written word-initially. * In ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' digraphs are underlined, that is t͟h, d͟j, k͟h, d͟h, s͟h, g͟h. In BGN/PCGN on the contrary the sequences may be romanized with middle dot as ''t·h'', ''k·h'', ''d·h'', ''s·h'' respectively. * 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/

). The variant presented in the table is from the English translation of the dictionary (1961). * BGN/PCGN allows use of underdots instead of

cedilla A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan language, Catalan, French language, French, and Portuguese language, ...

. * ' and ' are traditionally written in

Northwestern Africa The Maghreb (; ar, الْمَغْرِب, al-Maghrib, lit=the west), also known as the Arab Maghreb ( ar, المغرب العربي) and Northwest Africa, is the western part of North Africa and the Arab world. The region includes Algeria, ...

as and , respectively, while the latter's dot is only added initially or medially. * In Egypt, Sudan, and sometimes in other regions, the standard form for final-'' '' is only (without dots) in handwriting and print, for both final and final . for the latter pronunciation, is called ' , 'flexible alif'. * The

sun and moon letters In Arabic and Maltese, the consonants are divided into two groups, called the sun letters or solar letters ( ar, حروف شمسية ', mt, konsonanti xemxin) and moon letters or lunar letters (Arabic: ', mt, konsonanti qamrin), based on wh ...

and hamzat waṣl pronunciation rules apply, although it is acceptable to ignore them. The UN system and ALA-LC prefer lowercase ''a'' and hyphens: ''al-Baṣrah, ar-Riyāḍ''; BGN/PCGN prefers uppercase ''A'' and no hyphens: ''Al Baṣrah, Ar Riyāḍ''. * The EALL suggests ẓ "in proper names" (volume 4, page 517). * ''BGN/PCGN'', ''UNGEGN'', ''ALA-LC'', and ''DIN 31635'' use a normal for {{angbr, {{lang, ar, ج when romanizing Egyptian names or toponyms that are expectedly pronounced with {{IPAslink, ɡ. * {{note, 13, 13 ''BGN/PCGN'', ''UNGEGN'', ''ALA-LC'', and ''DIN 31635'' use the French-based {{angbr, ou for {{IPAslink, u, u(:) in Francophone Arabic speaking countries in names and toponyms. * {{note, 14, 14

Nunation Nunation ( ar, تَنوِين, ' ), in some Semitic languages such as Literary Arabic, is the addition of one of three vowel diacritics (''ḥarakāt'') to a noun or adjective. This is used to indicate the word ends in an alveolar nasal without ...

is ignored in all romanizations in names and toponyms.

Romanization issues

Any

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

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

Vowels

One basic problem is that written Arabic is normally unvocalized; i.e., many of the

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...

s are not written out, and must be supplied by a reader familiar with the language. Hence unvocalized Arabic writing does not give a reader unfamiliar with the language sufficient information for accurate pronunciation. As a result, a pure

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

, e.g., rendering {{Lang, ar, قطر as {{Transl, ar, qṭr, is meaningless to an untrained reader. For this reason, transcriptions are generally used that add vowels, e.g. {{Transl, ar, ALA, 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.

Transliteration vs. transcription

Most uses of romanization call for transcription rather than

: 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. ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, alif'' {{Lang, ar, 2=ا vs. ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, alif maqṣūrah'' {{Lang, ar, ى for the sound {{IPA, /aː/ ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, ā'', and the six different ways ({{Lang, ar, ء إ أ آ ؤ ئ) of writing the

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

(

hamza Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from ...

, usually transcribed ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, ʼ ''). 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 ignore

assimilation Assimilation may refer to: Culture * Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs ** Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the prog ...

of the

definite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...

al- ( ar, ٱلْـ), also Romanized as ''el-'', ''il-,'' and ''l-'' as pronounced in some varieties of Arabic, is the definite article in the Arabic language: a particle (''ḥarf'') whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed def ...

'' before the "

sun letters In Arabic and Maltese, the consonants are divided into two groups, called the sun letters or solar letters ( ar, حروف شمسية ', mt, konsonanti xemxin) and moon letters or lunar letters (Arabic: ', mt, konsonanti qamrin), based on wh ...

", and may be easily misread by non-Arabic speakers. For instance, "the light" {{Lang, ar, النور ''an-nūr'' would be more literally transliterated along the lines of ''alnūr''. In the transcription ''an-nūr'', a hyphen is added and the unpronounced {{IPAslink, l removed for the convenience of the uninformed non-Arabic speaker, who would otherwise pronounce an {{IPA, /l/, perhaps not understanding that {{IPA, /n/ in ''nūr'' is

geminated In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct fr ...

. Alternatively, if the

shaddah Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent t ...

is not transliterated (since it is strictly not a letter), a strictly literal transliteration would be ''alnūr'', which presents similar problems for the uninformed non-Arabic speaker. * A transliteration should render the "closed tāʼ" ('' tāʼ marbūṭah'', {{Lang, ar, ة) faithfully. Many transcriptions render the sound {{IPA, /a/ as ''a'' or ''ah'' and ''t'' when it denotes {{IPA, /at/. **

has a unique symbol, ẗ. * "Restricted alif" (''{{Transl, ar, ALA, alif maqṣūrah'', {{Lang, ar, ى) should be transliterated with an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...

, ''á'', differentiating it from regular alif {{Lang, ar, ا, but it is transcribed in many schemes like alif, ''ā'', because it stands for {{IPA, /aː/. *

: 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 Baghdadi Arabic is the Arabic dialect spoken in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. During the last century, Baghdadi Arabic has become the lingua franca of Iraq, and the language of commerce and education. It is considered a subset of Iraqi Arabic. P ...

), or the official standard (

) as spoken by a

preacher A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach components such as ...

in the mosque 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 English ''

Omar Khayyam Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam ( fa, عمر خیّام), was a polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, an ...

'' with German ''Omar Chajjam'', both for {{Lang, ar, عمر خيام {{IPA, /ʕumar xajjaːm/, {{IPA-ar, ˈʕomɑr xæjˈjæːm} (unvocalized ''{{Transl, ar, ʿmr ḫyām'', vocalized ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, ʻUmar 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 as ''dh gh kh sh th'' rather than ''ḏ ġ ḫ š ṯ'') may be confused with two adjacent consonants—but this problem is resolved in the

romanization system, where the

prime symbol The prime symbol , double prime symbol , triple prime symbol , and quadruple prime symbol are used to designate units and for other purposes in mathematics, science, linguistics and music. Although the characters differ little in appearance fr ...

ʹ is used to separate two consonants when they do not form a digraph; for example: {{Lang, ar, أَكْرَمَتْها ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, akramatʹhā'' ('she honored her'), in which the ''t'' and ''h'' are two distinct consonantal sounds. *Symbols representing phonemes may be considered too similar (e.g., ʻ and ' or ʿ and ʾ for {{Lang, ar, ع

ʻayn ''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac ܥ, and Arabic (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). The letter represents ...

and hamzah); *ASCII transliterations using capital letters to disambiguate phonemes 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

Examples in

: {, class="wikitable" , - !

, style="font-size:larger", {{Lang, ar, أمجد كان له قصر , , style="font-size:larger", {{Lang, ar, إلى المملكة المغربية , - ! Arabic with

(normally omitted) , style="font-size:larger", {{Lang, ar, أَمْجَدُ كَانَ لَهُ قَصْر , , style="font-size:larger", {{Lang, ar, إِلَى الْمَمْلَكَةِ الْمَغْرِبِيَّة , - !

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...

, {{IPA, /ʔamdʒadu kaːna lahuː qasˤr/ , , {{IPA, /ʔila‿l.mamlakati‿l.maɣribij.jah/ , - !

, {{Transl, ar, ALA, Amjad kāna lahu qaṣr , , {{Transl, ar, ALA, Ilá al-mamlakah al-Maghribīyah , - !

, {{Transl, ar, Wehr, amjad kāna lahū qaṣr , , {{Transl, ar, Wehr, ilā l-mamlaka al-maḡribīya , - !

, {{Transl, ar, DIN, ʾAmǧad kāna lahu qaṣr , , {{Transl, ar, DIN, ʾIlā l-mamlakah al-Maġribiyyah , - !

, {{Transl, ar, UNGEGN, Amjad kāna lahu qaşr , , {{Transl, ar, UNGEGN, Ilá al-mamlakah al-maghribiyyah , - !

, {{Transl, ar, ISO, ʾˈamǧad kāna lahu qaṣr , , {{Transl, ar, ISO, ʾˈilaỳ ʾˈalmamlakaẗ ʾˈalmaġribiȳaẗ , - ! ArabTeX , am^gad kAna lahu qa.sr , , il_A almamlakaT alma.gribiyyaT , - ! English , Amjad had a palace , , To the Moroccan Kingdom

Arabic alphabet and nationalism

There have been many instances of national movements to convert

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and th ...

into Latin script or to romanize the language.

Lebanon

A Beirut newspaper, ''La Syrie'', pushed for the change from Arabic script to

in 1922. The major head of this movement was

Louis Massignon Louis Massignon (25 July 1883 – 31 October 1962) was a Catholic scholar of Islam and a pioneer of Catholic-Muslim mutual understanding. He was an influential figure in the twentieth century with regard to the Catholic church's relationship w ...

, 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.{{Cite book, last=Shrivtiel, first=Shraybom, title=The Question of Romanisation of the Script and The Emergence of Nationalism in the Middle East, date=1998, publisher=Mediterranean Language Review, pages=179–196History of Arabic Writing

Egypt

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 the

Arabic language Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

in which the formal Arabic and the

colloquial Arabic The variety (linguistics), varieties (or dialects or vernacular languages) of Arabic, a Semitic languages, Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems tha ...

would be combined into one language and the Latin alphabet would be used. There was also the idea of finding a way to use

hieroglyphics Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1 ...

instead of the Latin alphabet. A scholar,

Salama Musa Salama Moussa (or Musa; 1887 – 4 August 1958) ( ar, سلامه موسى , ) was an Egyptian journalist, writer and political theorist. Salama Moussa was an avowed secularist, he introduced the writings of Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud to ...

, 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 in science and technology. 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.Shrivtiel, p. 188 Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid and Muhammad Azmi, two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for romanization. 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. 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.

References

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External links

Comparative table of DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC, and Encyclopædia of Islam
(not normative) {{Arabic language {{Romanization {{DEFAULTSORT:Romanization Of Arabic Arabic orthography