Romanization of Arabic

File:Google Ngrams chart showing the changing Romanization of Arabic vowels.jpg

Google Ngrams chart showing the changing English romanization of the Arabic short vowels ( Template:Transliteration, Template:Transliteration and Template:Transliteration) between the 19th and 20th centuries, using (Muslim) and (Muhammad) as examples.

The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of written and spoken Arabic in the Latin 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 by linguists. These formal systems, which often make use of diacritics 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-based Arabic 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 Arabic phonemes that do not exist in English or other European languages; the means of representing the Arabic 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 (usually i u or e o, accounting for variations such as Muslim and Moslem or Mohammed, Muhammad and Mohamed).

Method

Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct. Transliteration 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, do not usually appear in Arabic writing. As an example, the following rendering “Template:Transliteration” of Template:Langx is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration would be Template:Transliteration.

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.
• Valentin Schindler, Lexicon Pentaglotton: Hebraicum, Chaldicum, Syriacum, Talmudico-Rabbinicum, et Arabicum, 1612. Arabic lemmas were printed in Hebrew characters.
• Franciscus Raphelengius, Lexicon Arabicum, Leiden 1613. The first printed dictionary of the Arabic language in Arabic characters.
• Jacobus Golius, Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, Leiden 1653. The dominant Arabic dictionary in Europe for almost two centuries.
• Georg Freytag, Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, praesertim ex Djeuharii Firuzubadiique et aliorum libris confectum I–IV, Halle 1830–1837
• Edward William Lane, Arabic–English Lexicon, 8 vols, London-Edinburgh 1863–1893. Highly influential, but incomplete (stops at Kaf)

Mixed digraphic and diacritical

• BGN/PCGN romanization (1956).
• UNGEGN (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.
  • ADEGN 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 (first published 1991), from the American Library Association and the Library of Congress. This romanization is close to the romanization of the and Hans Wehr, which is used internationally in scientific publications by Arabists.
  • IJMES, used by International Journal of Middle East Studies, very similar to ALA-LC.
  • EI, Encyclopaedia of Islam (1st ed., 1913–1938; 2nd ed., 1960–2005).

Fully diacritical

• DMG (, 1935), adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome.
  • DIN 31635 (1982), developed by the German Institute for Standardization ().
  • Hans Wehr transliteration (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 (1984), letter-to-letter; vowels are transliterated only if they are shown with diacritics, otherwise they are omitted.
  • ISO 233-2 (1993), simplified transliteration; vowels are always shown.
• BS 4280 (1968), developed by the British Standards Institution.

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

Comparison table

Letter	Unicode	Name in ALA	Name in ISO	IPA	BGN/ PCGN	UNGEGN	ALA-LC	EI	WehrTemplate:Nbsp1	EALL	BS	DIN	ISO	ArabTeX	ArabiziTemplate:Nbsp2
‎3	0621	Template:Transliteration	hamzah	Template:IPA link	ʼTemplate:Nbsp4			ʾ	ʼTemplate:Nbsp4	ʾ	ʼTemplate:Nbsp4	ʾ	ˈ, ˌ	'	2
	0627	Template:Transliteration	ˈalif		ā								ʾ	A	a/e/é
	0628	Template:Transliteration	bāˈ	Template:IPA link	b
	062A	Template:Transliteration	tāˈ	Template:IPA link	t
	062B	Template:Transliteration	ṯāˈ	Template:IPA link	thTemplate:Nbsp5			t͟hTemplate:Nbsp5	ṯ					_t	s/th/t
‎12	062C	Template:Transliteration	ǧīm	Template:IPA link (Template:IPA link~Template:IPA link)	j			d͟jTemplate:Nbsp5	jTemplate:Nbsp6		ǧ			^g	j/g/dj
	062D	Template:Transliteration	ḥāˈ	Template:IPA link	ḩTemplate:Nbsp7		ḥ							.h	7/h
	062E	Template:Transliteration	ẖāˈ	Template:IPA link	khTemplate:Nbsp5			k͟hTemplate:Nbsp5	ḵTemplate:Nbsp6	x	ẖ	ḫ	ẖ	_h	kh/7'/5
	062F	Template:Transliteration	dāl	Template:IPA link	d
	0630	Template:Transliteration	ḏāl	Template:IPA link	dhTemplate:Nbsp5			Template:Nbspd͟hTemplate:Nbsp5	ḏ					_d	z/dh/th/d
	0631	Template:Transliteration	rāˈ	Template:IPA link	r
	0632	Template:Transliteration	zāy	Template:IPA link	z
	0633	Template:Transliteration	sīn	Template:IPA link	s
	0634	Template:Transliteration	šīn	Template:IPA link	shTemplate:Nbsp5			s͟hTemplate:Nbsp5	š					^s	sh/ch/$
	0635	Template:Transliteration	ṣād	Template:IPA link	şTemplate:Nbsp7		ṣ							.s	s/9
	0636	Template:Transliteration	ḍād	Template:IPA link	ḑTemplate:Nbsp7		ḍ							.d	d/9'/D
	0637	Template:Transliteration	ṭāˈ	Template:IPA link	ţTemplate:Nbsp7		ṭ							.t	t/6/T
	0638	Template:Transliteration	ẓāˈ	Template:IPA link	z̧Template:Nbsp7	Template:Nbspd͟hTemplate:Nbsp5	ẓ			ḏ̣/ẓ11	ẓ			.z	z/dh/6'/th
	0639	Template:Transliteration	ʿayn	Template:IPA link	ʻTemplate:Nbsp4			ʿ	ʽTemplate:Nbsp4	ʿ				`	3
	063A	Template:Transliteration	ġayn	Template:IPA link	ghTemplate:Nbsp5			g͟hTemplate:Nbsp5	ḡTemplate:Nbsp6	ġ	ḡ	ġ		.g	gh/3'/8
‎8	0641	Template:Transliteration	fāˈ	Template:IPA link	f
‎8	0642	Template:Transliteration	qāf	Template:IPA link	q										2/g/q/8/9
	0643	Template:Transliteration	kāf	Template:IPA link	k
	0644	Template:Transliteration	lām	Template:IPA link	l
	0645	Template:Transliteration	mīm	Template:IPA link	m
	0646	Template:Transliteration	nūn	Template:IPA link	n
	0647	Template:Transliteration	hāˈ	Template:IPA link	h
	0648	Template:Transliteration	wāw	Template:IPA link,	w; ū									w; U	w/ou/oo/u/o
‎9	064A	Template:Transliteration	yāˈ	Template:IPA link,	y; ī									y; I	y/i/ee/ei/ai
	0622	Template:Transliteration	ˈalif maddah		ā, ʼā					ʾā			ʾâ	'A	2a/aa
	0629	Template:Transliteration	tāˈ marbūṭah	,	h; t				—; t	h; t			ẗ	T	a/e(h); et/at
	06270644	Template:Transliteration	ˈalif lām	(var.)	al-Template:Nbsp10								ʾal	al-	el/al
‎9	0649	Template:Transliteration	ˈalif maqṣurah		á			ā					ỳ	_A	a
Vocalization
	064E	Template:Transliteration		Template:IPA link	a										a/e/é
	0650	Template:Transliteration		Template:IPA link	i										i/e/é
‎13	064F	Template:Transliteration		Template:IPA link	u										ou/o/u
	064E0627	Template:Transliteration		Template:IPA link	ā								aʼ	A/aa	a
	0650064A	Template:Transliteration		Template:IPA link	ī								iy	I/iy	i/ee
‎13	064F0648	Template:Transliteration		Template:IPA link	ū								uw	U/uw	ou/oo/u
	064E064A	Template:Transliteration			ay										ay/ai/ey/ei
	064E0648	Template:Transliteration			aw										aw/aou
‎14	064B	Template:Transliteration			an		an						á	aN	an
‎14	064D	Template:Transliteration			in		in						í	iN	in/en
‎14	064C	Template:Transliteration			un		un						ú	uN	oun/on/oon/un

• ^1 Hans Wehr transliteration does not capitalize the first letter at the beginning of sentences nor in proper names.
• ^2 The chat table is only a demonstration and is based on the spoken varieties which vary considerably from Literary Arabic on which the IPA table and the rest of the transliterations are based.
• ^3 Review hamzah for its various forms.
• ^4 Neither standard defines which code point to use for Template:Transliteration and [[Ayin|Template:Transliteration]]. Appropriate Unicode points would be modifier letter apostrophe 〈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 marks 〈’⟩, ⟨‘⟩ are used instead, but Unicode defines those as punctuation marks, and they can cause compatibility issues. The glottal stop (Template:Transliteration) in these romanizations is not written word-initially.
• ^5 In Encyclopaedia of Islam digraphs are underlined, that is t͟h, d͟j, k͟h, d͟h, s͟h, g͟h (or t̲h̲, d̲j̲, k̲h̲, d̲h̲, s̲h̲, g̲h̲). On the contrary the sequences may be romanized with middle dot as t·h, k·h, d·h, s·h respectively in BGN/PCGN, with the prime symbol tʹh, 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 of underdots instead of cedilla.
• ^8 Template:Transliteration and Template:Transliteration are traditionally written in Northwestern Africa as and , 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|Template:Transliteration]] is only (without dots) in handwriting and print, for both final and final . for the latter pronunciation, is called Template:Transliteration , 'flexible alif'.
• ^10 The sun and moon letters 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.
• ^11 The EALL suggests ẓ "in proper names" (volume 4, page 517).
• ^12 BGN/PCGN, UNGEGN, ALA-LC, and DIN 31635 use a normal Template:Angbr for Template:Angbr when romanizing Egyptian names or toponyms that are expectedly pronounced with Template:IPAslink.
• ^13 BGN/PCGN, UNGEGN, ALA-LC, and DIN 31635 use the French-based Template:Angbr for Template:IPAslink in Francophone Arabic speaking countries in names and toponyms.
• ^14 Nunation is ignored in all romanizations in names and toponyms.

Romanization issues

Any romanization 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 vowels 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, e.g., rendering as Template:Transliteration, is meaningless to an untrained reader. For this reason, transcriptions are generally used that add vowels, e.g. Template:Transliteration. 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 transliteration: 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. Template:Transliteration vs. Template:Transliteration for the sound Template:Transliteration, and the six different ways () of writing the glottal stop (hamza, usually transcribed Template:Transliteration). 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 of the definite article al- before the "sun letters", and may be easily misread by non-Arabic speakers. For instance, "the light" an-nūr would be more literally transliterated along the lines of alnūr. In the transcription an-nūr, a hyphen is added and the unpronounced Template:IPAslink removed for the convenience of the uninformed non-Arabic speaker, who would otherwise pronounce an , perhaps not understanding that in nūr is geminated. Alternatively, if the shaddah 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, ) faithfully. Many transcriptions render the sound as a or ah and t when it denotes .
  • ISO 233 has a unique symbol, ẗ.
• "Restricted alif" (Template:Transliteration, ) should be transliterated with an acute accent, á, differentiating it from regular alif , but it is transcribed in many schemes like alif, ā, because it stands for .
• 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 a preacher 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 with German Omar Chajjam, both for , (unvocalized Template:Transliteration, vocalized Template:Transliteration).

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 ALA-LC romanization system, where the prime symbol ʹ is used to separate two consonants when they do not form a digraph; for example: Template:Transliteration ('she honored her'), in which the t and h are two distinct consonantal sounds, or where the middle dot is used in the same way in the BGN/PCGN romanization.
• Symbols representing phonemes may be considered too similar (e.g., ʻ and ' or ʿ and ʾ for ʻayn and hamzah);
• ASCII transliterations using capital letters to disambiguate phonemesTemplate:Clarify 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 Literary Arabic:

Arabic
Arabic with diacritics (normally omitted)
IPA
ALA-LC	Template:Transliteration	Template:Transliteration
Hans Wehr	Template:Transliteration	Template:Transliteration
DIN 31635	Template:Transliteration	Template:Transliteration
UNGEGN	Template:Transliteration	Template:Transliteration
ISO 233	Template:Transliteration	Template:Transliteration
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 into Latin script or to romanize the language.

Lebanon

File:Lebnaan Newspaper issue 686.jpg

LEBNAAN in proposed Said Akl alphabet (issue #686)

A Beirut newspaper, La Syrie, pushed for the change from Arabic script to Latin script in 1922. The major head of this movement was Louis 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.

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 in which the formal Arabic and the colloquial Arabic 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 instead of the Latin alphabet. 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 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. 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.

See also

• Arabic chat alphabet
• Arabic diacritics
• Arabic grammar
• Arabic names
• Glottal stop (letter)
• Maltese alphabet
• Ottoman Turkish alphabet – a Perso-Arabic-based alphabet, which was replaced by the Latin-based Turkish alphabet in 1928
• Romanization of Hebrew
• Romanization of Persian
• Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System (SATTS)

External links

• Comparative table of DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC, and Encyclopædia of Islam (PDF; not normative)