Arabic: 'Vocalization' and WWW

[Uwe Hirayama]

Dear Yakkers,

I do not know whether some of you did ode do learn or use Arabic
from time to time, but anyway I am looking for a WWW site giving
the vocalization of Arabic words (i.e. words written with Arabic
letters) since online dictionaries usually only give the usual
letters without vocalization.

What means 'vocalization'? Arabic is usually written without
vowels, at least without short vowels. Long vowels (â, î, û)
are written, however in most cases it is not clear whether the
accouring symnbol represents

a) a long vocal
b) a diphtong (ai, au)
c) a semivowel followed by a short vowel (ya, yu, wa, wi)

If you feel this would be OT please answer by dropping a private
mail (to hira...@t-onlinde.de).

TIA

Uwe Hirayama
JP 2 GER TRSL

[jmarc...@comcast.net]

Uwe asked:

Dear Uwe,

I am not sure if this site will help, but it does give some standard romanization systems for Arabic letters:

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

I am not sure what your question about vocalization is, but normally this term is used differently in linguistics (to distinguish between two classes of consonants, vocalized and unvocalized).

If you asking about the omission of vowels in Arabic writing, the only answer is that there is no way to explain this easily to someone who has not studied the language. As you note, the three main short vowels in classical Arabic, "a", "i" and "u", are normally omitted in most written works. But it is NOT the case though that long vowels are written; it is rather that one can usually tell from additional letters added after a short vowel that that vowel has either been lengthened or forms a diphthong, in other words, that it is NOT a short vowel. The only way to know which short vowel may have been used, or whether a word contains a long vowel or a diphthong, though, is to know Arabic and be able to supply the missing short or long vowel or diphthong based on your understanding of the grammar and vocabularly. And that can take a lot of work and practice over a long time.

HTH, wish I could explain this better but it is just something that you slowly pick up studying the language over the long haul.


John Marchioro

[Uwe Hirayama]

John Marchioro wrote /katab:

>>>
I am not sure if this site will help, but it does give
some standard romanization systems for Arabic letters:

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

I am not sure what your question about vocalization is,
but normally this term is used differently in linguistics
(to distinguish between two classes of consonants,
vocalized and unvocalized).
<<<

Dear John,

oh, there is a new false friend for German. While "Vokalisation"
has also the meaning "adding vowels" (besides of the meaning you
wrote about), this meaning seems to be absent in English.

I do not know the linguistic standard expression, however,
***the site I am looking for should give the vowels.***

E.g. "katab" or "kataba", meaning that he/it wrote or has written,
is usually written (in Arabic) only with the letters representing
k, t, and b: k-t-b.

May be I should have better written 'pronounciation of Arabic words'.

It does not matter if this is done by transcription (romanization) or
by using the means which the Arabic writing system has (I mean the small
symbols written above or beneath the usual letters) and which resembles
to the method used in Hebrew (Iwrith) and Aramaic.

So, after having muddy waters clarified (as I hope), once again:

Please let me know if you know a WWW site that indicates the pronounciation
of Arabic words including all kinds of vowels (and duplications of
consonants etc.)

Best ragards,

Uwe Hirayama

[jmarc...@comcast.net]

Uwe asked again:

[snip]

It does not matter if this is done by transcription (romanization) or
by using the means which the Arabic writing system has (I mean the small
symbols written above or beneath the usual letters) and which resembles
to the method used in Hebrew (Iwrith) and Aramaic.

[snip]

Please let me know if you know a WWW site that indicates the pronounciation
of Arabic words including all kinds of vowels (and duplications of
consonants etc.)

Dear Uwe,

These are called diacritics, and were used in ancient Greek and many other languages as well:

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

I would try googling "Arabic diacritics" or "harakat" or some combination like that, and you should be able to find a site somewhere that will enable you to supply letters and get a reading with vowels.

But there is a catch. You mentioned "kataba", which does in fact mean "he/she wrote" in classical Arabic. But if you change the vowels a bit, you get "kitaabun", which means "a book", or "kutubun" (books), and so on. 95% of Arabic vocabulary is based on permutations of these three consonant verbs. So to come back to my earlier point, just knowing a three consonant sequence in Arabic does not get you very far, because most three consonant sequences have many words corresponding to it depending on the vowels used. And context and a knowledge of the grammar is indispensable when it comes to filling in the vowels (and knowing the exact meaning) of any piece of written Arabic.

HTH,


John Marchioro

[Marc Adler]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Uwe Hirayama <hira...@t-online.de> wrote:

> from time to time, but anyway I am looking for a WWW site giving
> the vocalization of Arabic words (i.e. words written with Arabic
> letters) since online dictionaries usually only give the usual
> letters without vocalization.

http://dictionary.sakhr.com/

If you enter a word without vowels in the search field (e.g., كتاب) and hit "translate" (تىجم), the word will appear with vowels to the right in the various possible forms, since depending on the form, it could be a verb, a noun, an adjective, etc. (e.g., for كتاب you get the results كِتَاب (kitaab - book) and كُتَّاب (kuttaab - Quranic school (aka "madrasa")).

 
> What means 'vocalization'? Arabic is usually written without
> vowels, at least without short vowels. Long vowels (â, î, û)
> are written, however in most cases it is not clear whether the
> accouring symnbol represents
>
> a) a long vocal
> b) a diphtong (ai, au)
> c) a semivowel followed by a short vowel (ya, yu, wa, wi)

This is true. You have to know the various forms of the words. The only reason Arabic can get away without writing the short vowels, however, is because I'd say 90% of the words in the language (although not 90% of the words in terms of frequency) are standard derivations from the triliteral and quadriliteral roots. In other words, you can generally guess from the structure of a sentence whether a word in the form muCCC (C=consonant), for example, is muCaCCiC ("doer") or muCaCCaC ("doee") and so on. That said, you can sometimes interpret the alif, yaa', and waw as indicating long vowels. But not always, e.g., موز - mawz (bananas), not muz. You really just have to know the various structures.

--
Marc Adler
http://www.linkedin.com/in/adlerpacific

[Marc Adler]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 9:54 AM, <jmarc...@comcast.net> wrote:

But there is a catch. You mentioned "kataba", which does in fact mean "he/she wrote" in classical Arabic. But if you change the vowels a bit, you get "kitaabun",

Actually, only "he wrote." "She wrote" is katabat.

[jmarc...@comcast.net]

I wrote:

But there is a catch. You mentioned "kataba", which does in fact mean "he/she wrote" in classical Arabic. But if you change the vowels a bit, you get "kitaabun",

And Marc noted:

Actually, only "he wrote." "She wrote" is katabat.

I stand corrected, but the point still stands: Any three consonant combination, based on a verb like this, is usually going to have several nouns and adjectives corresponding to it. So context and knowledge of Arabic grammar is the only way to sort it out.


John Marchioro

[Marc Adler]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:10 AM, <jmarc...@comcast.net> wrote:

 

I stand corrected, but the point still stands: Any three consonant combination, based on a verb like this, is usually going to have several nouns and adjectives corresponding to it. So context and knowledge of Arabic grammar is the only way to sort it out.

Except for the site I gave, which will give all (or at least a lot of) vowelled possibilities for any set of consonants.

[Uwe Hirayama]

First of all, thanks to John and Marc for their kind help.

 

Please allow me to add that I have been confronting myself with

Arabic for a couple of years with pauses inbetween and phases

of more or less intensity.

 

This does not mean that I learnt to understand the language by

reading or listening, moreover, I did not happen to learn how

to speak or to write it. There were or still are two big obstacles

waiting to be overcome. The first one are those dancing vowels

mentioned by John. Not writing them certainly makes sense when it comes

to economy of writing (the 'price' to be paid are the mentioned

difficulties in understanding written texts at least for

non-native speakers and/or disciples), but I wonder what weighs

more (fast writing or solw reading). Well, native speakers as well as

quite a lot of people in countries influenced by Arabic or Islamic

culture who are mastering it as a second language can be seen as a

proof for that the writing system works (An argument against this

'proof', however, can be seen in a traditionally low litteracy

rate which restricts access to knowledge and power to a more ore

less wide or narrow circle of people. But as we can see in the

history of Western cultures, low litteracy rates were a social

factum also in the countries dominated by as 'Graeco-Latin Christian

culture)

 

However, whatever the adnatages and disadvantages of this kind of

leaving most of the vowels unwritten, it is a fact that Arabic is

usually written without them and that Arabic native speakers and skilled

non-native speakers can understand written Arabic without serious

difficulties.

 

The second obstacle was the pronounciation of consonants vocalized

deep in the throat as qaf, 3ain, ghain and the h of Muhammad (7a),

and of the 'pharyngalized' variants of t, s, d and z.

 

Each of said consonants seemed to be very difficult to be spoken when I

read the instructions for pronounciation in text books or guidebooks or

other descriptions of the Arabic language. However, it is a fact that

eben speakers who never saw a school from the inside can produce these

sounds.

 

What, then, can one do to get acquainted to said obstacles to overcome

them? As for pronounciation, undoubtedly every language may have sounds

diccicult to pronounce for learners (In deed i still have a German accent

when I speak Japanese - even after about 20 years of 'post-graduate'

practice). As for the 3ain, the most difficult Arabic sound at least for

me, it finally did not take more than 30 minutes of training with a

native vbolunteer (However, now it is that deep throat 'h' which causes

troubles). I just had to forget what is written about its pronounciation.

 

Regarding the vowel dance, it is nearly the same. Without doubt it is

useful to study rules for word formation by different 'vowelling'

patterns, however, it is good to have in mind that all rules are

derivated and do not cover all cases. And one should remember that

katab(a) is a word differing from e.g. katib, maktub(u) etc. At least

for me thinking and acting in that direction is easier than the

approach characterized in studying grammar rules and rules for word

formation.

 

This resembles the process of my overcomming (?) the difficulties

with which Japanese comes along to speakers of SOV languages or

of languages being not 'topic prominent'. When one has to speak

Japanese in situations of actual communication there is simply

no time to think about the rules e.g.when to use は instead of が or

the other way round. There had to be a more 'natural' approach of

acquiring the grammatical rules for the application of は and が, and

there really is. I do not mean to remodel the process of language

acquisition of children because of this would require too much time

at least for 'aged' disciples (i.e. older than about twenty). I

am pretty sure that an intense practice of, in the beginning, hearing

and speaking, which is accompanied by appropiately studying grammatical

rules, are the key to a more rapid acquisition (disclaimer: I do not

claim that I have mastered Japanese 100%. If so I would translate into

Japanese as well.

 

Thank you for your patience and you kind advice & guidance,

 

Uwe Hirayama.

 

----- Original Message -----

[Mark Spahn]

Thank you, Marc and John, for your explanations about

how to overcome the vowellessness of written Arabic

(and Hebrew?) three-consonant words:  to determine which

of many vowel-added possibilities KTB represents, you

must depend on context, including knowledge of the language.

Let's look at this from the angle of redundancy (冗長度).

The surname spelling Knaughreigh is highly redundant to

denote its pronunciation, which could be unredundantly

spelled Nory.  An Arabic spelling like KTB, without

vowel-indicating diacritical marks, is "anti-redundant":

it could represent multiple words; which one it does represent

must be determined from context. 

This is very similar to the "brief forms" in (Gregg) shorthand,

where the stroke representing B could stand for either

"be", "by", or "but", depending on context.  See

http://gregg.angelfishy.net/preanbfs.shtml

 

About Uwe's trouble learning the pronunciation of Arabic

consonants, I had the same trouble with umlauted German vowels.

I found it helpful to have it explained that to pronounce an

umlauted U, you hold your lips so as to pronounce "oo",

but inside your mouth you pronounce either "ee" (for long umlauted U,

as in "ueber") or the short-i "ih" (for short umlauted U,

as in "duenn").  For umlauted O, hold your lips to pronounce "oh",

but inside your mouth pronounce "ee" or "ih".

-- Mark Spahn  (West Seneca, NY)

 

[Marc Adler]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Uwe Hirayama <hira...@t-online.de> wrote:

 

mentioned by John. Not writing them certainly makes sense when it comes

to economy of writing (the 'price' to be paid are the mentioned

difficulties in understanding written texts at least for

non-native speakers and/or disciples), but I wonder what weighs

more (fast writing or solw reading). Well, native speakers as well as

Think of it this way: they leave them out because for a native speaker, including them would be an act of stunning redundancy, sort of like writing [gerund] English [noun] like [adverb] this [pronoun].
 
Learn those forms (most textbooks have charts at the back), learn the vocab, and you'll have no trouble deciphering the vowels for 90% of the words.

Trust me on this. I've studied it for a couple of years, and I'm at the level where I can read newspaper articles with a dictionary. The forms of the words and their grammatical roles in sentences are almost always sufficient indicators of how they are supposed to be pronounced.

As for the laryngeal consonants: find a native speaker and practice, practice, practice.

I don't know what textbook you're using, but I'm using the Cambridge one written by a triad of hard-ass Germans.

http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Arabic-Elementary-Intermediate-Eckehard-Schulz/dp/0521774659

The approach is sehr Deutsch: grammar, vocab, text, dialogue -- grammar, vocab, text, dialogue -- grammar, vocab, text, dialogue -- chapter in, chapter out. No hand-holding, no pictures, no "let's pretend memorizing vocab is fun!" crap. I love it. A lot of people hate it. There's a mountain of vocab for each chapter, too. Check out the reviews on the Amazon page. This textbook separates the language-learning men from the boys.

Only problem is that since it was translated from German, sometimes the German>English translators get some nuances wrong in the vocab (you can figure out why), but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

That said, you're German, so you can find the original. One thing I can guarantee you, though -- the on again, off again language learning method that works with languages like Italian and Catalan doesn't work with Arabic. You have to start and keep going; otherwise you forget what you learned before and you have to relearn it. There's almost no lexical overlap with English (or German).

[Marc Adler]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Mark Spahn <mark...@verizon.net> wrote:

 

Thank you, Marc and John, for your explanations about

Wait a second. I just realized this is on the Honyaku mailing list. I thought it was Honyaku redux.

Isn't this a bit off-topic?

[David Farnsworth]

That’s all right, Mark. I for one have been enjoying this. Almost thou persuadest me to learn Arabic…

 

David Farnsworth

Tigard OR 97224

 

From: hon...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Marc Adler
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 3:05 PM
To: hon...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: WWW Ressources 4 the Pronounciation of Arabic (was: Arabic: 'Vocalization' and WWW)

 

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Mark Spahn <mark...@verizon.net> wrote: