Arabic writing of some names
Maciej St. Zieba
I am working on a Polish translation of a book about Thomas Merton where
there are some Arabic words, which I would like to write correctly
according to the Polish standards, but as I know no Arabic, and I know
no specialist in Arabic language, I would need your help, if possible.
(see at the end the how I would like to transcribe the letters of the
Arabic alphabet in order to avoid any ambiguity - also any differences
in encoding)
How should one write correctly the fillowing words:
1) Ibn Abbad (a Sufi mystic of XIIIth Century)
2) his full name should be either:
2a) Abu Abdallah Muhammad ben Ibrahim ben Abbad ar-Rundi
or:
2b) Abu 'abd-'Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Ish`aq Ibrahim An-nafzi Al-himyari
Ar-rundi
(which one is correct?)
3) Runda - the city he was born (now Ronda in Spain)
4) Sale - the city in Morocco where he baceme a Sufi
5) rajab - the 6th month
6) raby'al-awwal - the 1st month
some Sufi terms:
7) suf
8) tasawwuf
9) dhikr
10) fana'
10a) fana'-fi='Allah
10b) fana'-al-fani'
11) tawakkul
12) zuhhad
12a) az-zuhd
13) mawlid an-nabi
some other names
14) Abdul Aziz (a modern Sufi mystic, lived in 1940-ies/1960-ies)
15) ibn Qunfud - a friend of Ibn Abbad.
General question: Which elements of the name would you capitalize, words
like "ibn", "ben", "al-/an-" -etc. should they be capitalized or rather
written with small letters?
Please, if possible, send me a copy of your answer by e-mail
msz...@kul.lublin.pl
Thank you very much
Maciej St. Zieba
PS.
The Arabic alphabet written in the order of Arabic letters, as I would
like it to be written. Please mark all long vowels with a colon :
e.g. a:, u:, also please mark all 'alifs.
' b t TH j hx KH d DH r z s SH sx dx tx zx ` GH f q k l m n h w y a i u
a: i: u:
Automort
>there are some Arabic words, which I would like to write correctly
>according to the Polish standards
There aren't any standard methods for doing so in English, so I shudder to
think how Polish would handle it.
I don't know Polish...but I'd guess you could use a system that seems
convenient to you. Since you know English, you might try to follow some system
from a classic text.
Jukka K. Korpela
"Maciej St. Zieba" <msz...@uw.lublin.pl> wrote:
> I am working on a Polish translation of a book about Thomas Merton where
> there are some Arabic words, which I would like to write correctly
> according to the Polish standards,
You would need to contact the national standardization organization*) for
such information. There is an international standard on transliteration of
Arabic texts, ISO 233, but there can well be national adaptations. I know
that in Finland, the national standard defines a "scientific translation" in
accordance with ISO 233 but also a "common language transliteration", which
is somewhat simplified (e.g., omits macrons) and intended for normal use.
The situation might well be similar in other countries, and judgement is
needed, depending on the nature of the text. One possibility is to use
simplified transliteration in the text but include an appendix that lists
the scientific transliterations as well, for exact reference.
*) For a list of national standardization organizations, refer to
<http://www.iso.org/iso/en/aboutiso/isomembers/
MemberCountryList.MemberCountryList>
There might also be exceptions to general rules, as regards to widely known
names that may have got a traditional form in different languages.
> 2a) Abu Abdallah Muhammad ben Ibrahim ben Abbad ar-Rundi
>
> or:
> 2b) Abu 'abd-'Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Ish`aq Ibrahim An-nafzi Al-himyari
> Ar-rundi
>
> (which one is correct?)
I don't really know Arabic or the exact name discussed here, but the first
one is certainly not ISO 233 conformant, since ISO 233 does not use "e" at
all - it transliterates official Arabic, which has only "a", "i", "u" (with
or without macron as length sign) as vowels. The second one is probably not
completely correct either. For example, unless I have missed something, the
definite article is transliterated as "al" according to the written form,
not according to pronunciation which often involves assimilation (to e.g.
ar- before words beginning with r). At least in scientific (ISO 233)
transliteration, you also need to be careful with those ' and ` characters;
you probably need some non-Ascii characters to be quite correct.
> Please, if possible, send me a copy of your answer by e-mail
> msz...@kul.lublin.pl
Exceptionally, that's what I'm doing now. But it doesn't really help you. It
just _adds_ to your burden. You need to check the group anyway - to see, for
example, explanations of real specialists who tell my response was bogus.
(See http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/mail-responses.html )
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Maciej St. Zieba
I think you misundestand me.
I don't ask you for THE STANDARD in English. I am askin for a
transliteration. For example: I am myself an Indologist, so whether I
find a wrod written "Shiva" or "S'iva" or "Çiva" or "Schiwa" or anything
else - I know how it should be written in Devanagari script and I know
how to transcribe it according to any given standard - existing and
known to me or invented just for a given purpose.
But I don't know Arabic _language_ at all. On the contrary I could read
the names written with Arabic letters. So maybe someone were able to
write those words in Arabic letters and send me as gif's or jpg's???
I don't think anybody (except myself) should worry about "how these
things should have been written in Polish". If I knew how they are
written correctly in Arabic letters I would't bother you.
But not having the original writing, only some kind of inkonsu\istent
junk, in order to put them into a correct Polish scholarly
transcriptions, with all those dots under some t's, d's, h's etc. to
distinguish them from the ones without dots, I need a kind of COHERENT
system. Be it ISO or anything, I don't care. What I have invented for
my previous post was as system that would avoid non-ASCII characters,
otherwise how is anybody supposed to render these letters (characters)
in an e-mail, using only 26 Roman ones? I have used "x" for a kind of
diacritical mark, instead of the dot below, and I have capitalised what
is a digraph used with -h following the lettres, only in order to avoid
any PRESUMED ambiguity with any single h following any other letter
(which in fact might never appear in reality, but not knowing the
language I cannot know about the concurrence of lettres within that
language).
BUT ANY OTHER _COHERENT_ SYSTEM would do, only not a kind of popular
junk like these names I have.
I know there are errors in these names /words, like the ones mentioned
by Jukka K. Korpela, but I need someone to tell me exactly how to
replace these errors.
First - I don't know which vowels are short, which long
Second - I cannot distinguis the two H's or S's by myself
Third - I am unable to add 'alifs and `ayins by myself.
Fourth - I don't know which form of the name of the person is correct -
and which incorrect, if I have two similar but not equal ones given
within one source.
In order to write them correctly I need a help of a specialist in
Arabic.
Thank you anyhow for the attempts to help me.
Maciej
M. Ranjit Mathews
>>From: "Maciej St. Zieba" msz...@uw.lublin.pl
>
>
>>there are some Arabic words, which I would like to write correctly
>>according to the Polish standards
>
Peter T. Daniels
which is published simultaneously in English and French; you can look up
all your people in it and find the information you need.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Maciej St. Zieba
>
> Automort wrote:
> >>From: "Maciej St. Zieba" msz...@uw.lublin.pl
> >
> >
> >>there are some Arabic words, which I would like to write correctly
> >>according to the Polish standards
> >
> What are the words?
They were written in my first post. Do you want me to reapeat them?
Maciej
Maciej St. Zieba
Thank you very much for your kind answer, especially for having pointed
to me why I shouldn't ask for an asnwer by e-mail. I have done this for
two reasons 1) I very rarely use newsgroups, and having seen how many
posts are there I was afraid of overlooking something important.
2) I am frequently out of home for 3-4 days a week without the
possibility to check e-mail and I was afraid the postings would
disappear from the newsgroup before I will be able to read them, and
otherwise they'd just wait for me in my mailbox.
I didn't want to be or even to look like rude. I also always double- and
triple-check every information I get before a publication - that's sure.
Sometimes I even spend half a day looking for a single word in a
distionary in order to be sure (that happens most frequently with
Tibetan words, where the popular writing according to a certain
dialectical pronounciation so often differs so much from the actual
transliteration of the Tibetan script). But sometimes I just HAVE to
rely on somebody else (you certainly also sometimes do, don't you?) -
and this is one of those cases. The book is full of misspelled Chinese,
Tibetan, Sanskrit and Japanese names, which I do correct myself, and
there is only a dozen of Arabic ones, which I am unable to correct. I
don't have any Arabic dictionary, and there is no good library in my
neighborhood having a good Arabic dictionary. There are simply no Arabic
studies hereby, the closest ones being some 250 km apart.
But I accept the other arguments and I won't do this any more.
> You would need to contact the national standardization organization*) for
> such information. There is an international standard on transliteration of
> Arabic texts, ISO 233, but there can well be national adaptations.
(...)
Unfortunately you've missed the point. I have probably not expressed
myself too clearly. The things you have written are known to me. Some
thirteen years ago I have even given a series of lectures (in Esperanto,
during an AIS San Marino session in Bialystok) on the issues of popular
vs. scientific transcriptions. The problem for me is not in the choise
of one or another: scientific or popular Polish transription (the choise
- according to me - is alway "scientific" and never "popular" one), the
problem is (as I have explained in detail in my answer to Automort - in
knowing the correct original form of these words (and in one case - in
knowing the correct version of the person's name.)
Contacting standardization organization would be of no use, they'd also
ask me first to have the correct word in the original script.
> I don't really know Arabic or the exact name discussed here, but the first
> one is certainly not ISO 233 conformant, since ISO 233 does not use "e" at
> all - it transliterates official Arabic, which has only "a", "i", "u" (with
> or without macron as length sign) as vowels.
You are 100 per cent right about this point: Classical Arabic has no
"e", althought the common present day Arabic has both "e" and "o". But I
should stick to the "a", "i", "u" scheme, which - as you have seen -
were the only three vowels mentioned in mt "ad hoc transliteration"
scheme.
> The second one is probably not
> completely correct either. For example, unless I have missed something, the
> definite article is transliterated as "al" according to the written form,
> not according to pronunciation which often involves assimilation (to e.g.
> ar- before words beginning with r).
The problem of assimilation was also known to me (theoretically) bu I
have long forgotten about the issue, thanks for having reminded it to
me.
> At least in scientific (ISO 233)
> transliteration, you also need to be careful with those ' and ` characters;
That's why I have asked for them!
> you probably need some non-Ascii characters to be quite correct.
Yes, I will have the, only how do you think I could present all those
macrons and underdots in an e-mail? That's the reason for my ad hoc
transliteration.
Best regards
Maciej
M. Ranjit Mathews
> They were written in my first post. Do you want me to repeat them?
No. Got it. Hmm, that's a long list.
>
> Maciej
Jukka K. Korpela
> Unfortunately you've missed the point. I have probably not
> expressed myself too clearly. The things you have written are
> known to me.
Sorry, I got the wrong idea - it seemed to me that you were looking for
transliteration rules, rather than trying to find out the "right"
spellings of some names. (I use quotes, since the correctness of the
spelling of a name is often relative.) Now that I look at the Subject
line, I realize my mistake. But how could I have guessed that you knew
the rules? :-) (It's actually quite rare to meet people who know the
transliteration rules.)
Maybe soc.culture.arabic would be a more suitable group to ask for the
actual names. I have no idea of the actual content of the group, but
according to its name and position in the Usenet hierarchy, it _should_
be a suitable group. (If you decide to post there, it's a good idea
(well, I would say necessary) to refer to the discussion here, at least
by its Subject, preferably with the Message-ID of the original article
or a reference via Google Groups.)
On the other hand, as people have pointed out, you have several names
to find out. Some of them might be easy to check from references.
People will probably be more willing to help with the names if there's
just a short list of them.
> Contacting standardization organization would be of no use, they'd
> also ask me first to have the correct word in the original script.
Well, they would probably just ask which standard you want to buy, and
if you're lucky, they might help you in finding the eventual national
equivalent or adaptation of ISO 233.
But it's not necessary if you have decided to use international
(scientific) transliteration. On the other hand, that might not be an
optimal choice. If the original text you're translating (presumably
from English?) doesn't use it, should the translation do so? The
original author had, in principle at least, a choice between
international and some other transliteration; should a translator make
the equivalent choice?
>> At least in scientific (ISO 233)
>> transliteration, you also need to be careful with those ' and `
>> characters;
>
> That's why I have asked for them!
What I meant by the remark was their exact nature as _characters_. I
was pretty sure that those symbols used to transliterate Arabic are not
Ascii apostrophe and grave accent, but I wasn't sure of what they
really are. Checking from the Unicode standard, from
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf specifically, I found:
02BE MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING
transliteration of Arabic hamza (glottal stop)
02BF MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING
transliteration of Arabic ain (voiced pharyngeal fricative)
So they are _not_ the same as curly quotation marks, despite quite some
resemblance. On the other hand, I'm afraid that such distinctions will
be all Greek, so to say, to people who will typeset the translated
book. Even if you write the characters correctly e.g. in MS Word, it's
almost certain that some software, hardware, or peopleware component in
the chain from your file to a printed book will do something awful to
those characters. :-/
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
M. Ranjit Mathews
... and sorry I can't help you. FYI, where Poles employ the spelling
Dariusz, in Hindi, it is spelt Da:ryus'.
Maciej St. Zieba
> ... and sorry I can't help you.
No problem, maybe someone else can.
> FYI, where Poles employ the spelling
> Dariusz, in Hindi, it is spelt Da:ryus'.
Well, yes, but I can't see how it is related to my question.
Best regards
Maciej
Maciej St. Zieba
>
> Your local academic library should have the Encyclopaedia of Islam,
> which is published simultaneously in English and French; you can look up
> all your people in it and find the information you need.
Thanks for your suggestion.
MAciej
M. Ranjit Mathews
The Hindi spelling is presumably derived from the Urdu spelling which is
derived from the Persian spelling. If so, it would seem that the Polish
convention deviates sufficiently that it might be difficult to follow an
established "Polish convention" and you might be better off establishing
your own phonemic convention that follows Polish phonology except in
details like 'si' in a transliteration never being pronounced as a
palatal s.
>
> Best regards
>
> Maciej
Peter T. Daniels
> >> At least in scientific (ISO 233)
> >> transliteration, you also need to be careful with those ' and `
> >> characters;
> >
> > That's why I have asked for them!
>
> What I meant by the remark was their exact nature as _characters_. I
> was pretty sure that those symbols used to transliterate Arabic are not
> Ascii apostrophe and grave accent, but I wasn't sure of what they
> really are. Checking from the Unicode standard, from
> http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf specifically, I found:
>
> 02BE MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING
> transliteration of Arabic hamza (glottal stop)
> 02BF MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING
> transliteration of Arabic ain (voiced pharyngeal fricative)
>
> So they are _not_ the same as curly quotation marks, despite quite some
> resemblance. On the other hand, I'm afraid that such distinctions will
> be all Greek, so to say, to people who will typeset the translated
> book. Even if you write the characters correctly e.g. in MS Word, it's
> almost certain that some software, hardware, or peopleware component in
> the chain from your file to a printed book will do something awful to
> those characters. :-/
It's quite normal and acceptable to use ordinary single quote characters
in transliterating Semitic languages. Harrassowitz, when they used real
type rather than camera-ready printer output, often used their
rough-breathing and smooth-breathing signs, because they have a bit more
heft and are easier to distinguish. The simple half-rings are fairly
unattractive because the uniform-width lines don't harmonize well with
the shaded curves of the letters of a usual text font.
Maciej St. Zieba
>
> Maybe soc.culture.arabic would be a more suitable group to ask for the
> actual names. I have no idea of the actual content of the group, but
> according to its name and position in the Usenet hierarchy, it _should_
> be a suitable group.
Soc.culture.arabic is a good place for discussing Palestinian vs.
Israelis, or Iraqi war issues, and for discussing how islam is above
other religions or vice-versa - generally speaking for useless fruitless
discussions leading only to hatred - nothing more. It was enough to look
at the heading to abandon the idea - I have tried it before going to
sci.lang - my experience from the past when I've tried many times
discussing serious scholarly (cultural or linguistic) issues on
soc.culture."ethnic" groups (be them Indian, Chinese, Japanese,
former-Yugoslav, Polish etc.) lead me to this sad conclusion: "ethnic"
culture groups are about everything but serious subjects, that means
about nothing except ethnic (racial, religious) hatred, created there
constantly.
What _should be_ and what _is_ are two diffrent things.
> On the other hand, as people have pointed out, you have several names
> to find out. Some of them might be easy to check from references.
> People will probably be more willing to help with the names if there's
> just a short list of them.
I have 15 words/names to look for, how can I make it less?
> But it's not necessary if you have decided to use international
> (scientific) transliteration. On the other hand, that might not be an
> optimal choice. If the original text you're translating (presumably
> from English?) doesn't use it, should the translation do so? The
> original author had, in principle at least, a choice between
> international and some other transliteration; should a translator make
> the equivalent choice?
Well - The original author (Thomas Merton) was no linguist but a
practitioner of Christian and Eastern mysticism. He didn't care about
corect/incorect transcription at all. The problem is that the book I am
working on is a choise of texts from Merton "elaborated" by certain
Woodcock who tries to "explain" and make "more correct" - so he has
addes introductions to each chapter, footnotes etc. - thus making the
situation worse. I was asked by the publishing house who want to edit
the book in Polish to make necessary corrections (as I am specialist in
Indian and Chinese philosophies) - so that the text be useful for both
general public and a specialist (adding some extra footnotes, making
good transliteration). I have made everything for Indian, Chinese,
Japanese and Tibetan part, but there remains a 8-page chapter on Sufism
- where I am no specialist. I cannot leave the chapter looking different
from the rest - that's why I am looking for some help - which will
certainly be acknowledged.
This way we have the inconsistent English popular transcription which I
cannot change into a consistent Polish one (neither popular nor
scientific) - If I had scientific, I could easily do the other thing.
> >> At least in scientific (ISO 233)
> >> transliteration, you also need to be careful with those ' and `
> >> characters;
> >
> > That's why I have asked for them!
>
> What I meant by the remark was their exact nature as _characters_. I
> was pretty sure that those symbols used to transliterate Arabic are not
> Ascii apostrophe and grave accent, but I wasn't sure of what they
> really are. Checking from the Unicode standard, from
> http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf specifically, I found:
>
> 02BE MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING
> transliteration of Arabic hamza (glottal stop)
> 02BF MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING
> transliteration of Arabic ain (voiced pharyngeal fricative)
>
> So they are _not_ the same as curly quotation marks, despite quite some
> resemblance.
Oh yes, now I understand your point. Of course they are not curly
quotation marks.
> On the other hand, I'm afraid that such distinctions will
> be all Greek, so to say, to people who will typeset the translated
> book.
In Polish we do not use "single quotation marks" so no problem.
> Even if you write the characters correctly e.g. in MS Word,
MS Word is the WORST possible tool for such things as complicated
trasliteration characters, as the software always tends to "know better"
what I intended to write - even if I tun off ALL the auto-corrections,
correct-as-you-type, etc. options, there is still something inside that
disables correct typing.
That's why I never use MS Word, I stick to WordPerfect.
> it's
> almost certain that some software, hardware, or peopleware component in
> the chain from your file to a printed book will do something awful to
> those characters. :-/
I am certain this will happen - but that will be my job to correct them
again.
Best regards
Maciej
Yusuf B Gursey
> Hello,
>
> 2) his full name should be either:
>
> 2a) Abu Abdallah Muhammad ben Ibrahim ben Abbad ar-Rundi
>
> or:
> 2b) Abu 'abd-'Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Ish`aq Ibrahim An-nafzi Al-himyari
> Ar-rundi
>
> (which one is correct?)
the first one is colloquial and lower register modern arabic.
the second one is used for classical arabic and formal transcription.
High classical arabic:
ommit the alif of ibn if part of a patronymic, drop nuantion of first
name with patronymic.
zaydu bnu muHammadin
(read without pausing)
consonantal skeleton: zyd bn mHmd
Zayd, Son of Muhammad
without first name: ibnu muHammadin
skeleton: 'bn mHmd
"Son of Muhammad"
Zayd, Son of Muhammad
if consonantal skeleton is : zyd 'bn mHmd
then read: zaydun ibnu muHammadin
meaning: Zayd *is* the son of Muhammad
the alif recieves a waSla sign, /i/ is read attached to the /n/ of the
nunation (no gottal stops, but no graphic /i/ is shown (since it is
attached to the nuantion sign, itslef a diacritic).
MSA is orthogrpahically the same as classical arabic, but usually
(lower register MSA) one avoids the case endings and one says /bin/ as
in colloquial arabic.
if its the patronymic alone, one normamlly says /ibn muHammad/
(thoughhtis may vary in colloquails to become bin (ben, b@n, and there
is a tendency to differ to colloquial usage in modern practice.
enc. of islam II avoids these complications by just abbreviating "b."
in patronymics: Zayd b. Muh.ammad
>
>
> General question: Which elements of the name would you capitalize, words
> like "ibn", "ben", "al-/an-" -etc. should they be capitalized or rather
> written with small letters?
a problem for romanzation!
Maciej St. Zieba
"M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
> The Hindi spelling is presumably derived from the Urdu spelling which is
> derived from the Persian spelling.
I don't think Hidi spelling has anything to do with Persian spelling -
as Persian (and Urdu) uses Arabic script and Hindi uses Devanagari. Or
else, maybe I still don't catch your point.
> If so, it would seem that the Polish
> convention deviates sufficiently that it might be difficult to follow an
> established "Polish convention" and you might be better off establishing
> your own phonemic convention that follows Polish phonology except in
> details like 'si' in a transliteration never being pronounced as a
> palatal s.
I don't agree for creatiing any NEW Polish convention - task quite
stupid, taking into consideration that in Europe every nation for the
last 150 years created their own conventions, sometimes more than one
(e.g. in Poland we have as many as 5 different conventions to
transcribe Indic languages like Sanskrit or Hindi). The aim was "to
simplify for the general public". The results are, :
a) unintelligibility - for the general public - between the different
nations (books written in German, French, English and Polish write the
same Sanskrit or Arabic or Chinese word each in a different way - nobody
is sure how the word _should_ be written correctly).
Often only a specialist can recognize the same word written in two
diffrent "national" transcriptions.
b) Books written by Polish authors belonging to a different "school" of
transcription have the same word written in a diffrent manner. General
public becomes even more confused when there are two dictionaries on
Indian matter and one is using the Cracow-school spelling of "cz" and
"ri" for Sanskrit "c" and ".r" and the other is using the
New-Warsaw-school spelling of "c'" (even before a vowel!!!) and "ry"
espectively.
c) Books are translated (from English or German into Polish) most
frequently by non-specialist, so very frequently they do not know how to
handle Oriental words within a Greman text, so they leave other spelling
(quit frequently not even recognizing that the final -s was an English
or Franch ending for plural - and leaving it as a part of the "original"
word).
d) Even if a book is written by a scholar/specialist, but a one who
uses a "simplified national" transcription, despite what they presume
that the words transcribed are made so for the use of an average
reader, in fact they introduce some notations that are contrary to the
rules of Polish spelling and/or pronounciation - and create a doubt in a
reader how to pronounce the word written "c'akra" or "s'astra"
this way they introduce wrong pronounciation habits (typical example
Mao-tse tung where most Poles pronounce "mah-o t-se" instead of
pronouncing "mau ce") alongside a spelling unrecognizable to any
foreigner (typical example this "c'akra" and "dz'n'ana" for jnaana)
or alternatively they have to add a chapter on pronounciation rules.
I prefer simplicity. With modern typographical (and computer)
techniques there is no problem in printing dots under or Vietnamese
compound accents above. Just use UNICODE.
Therefore I prefer international transliteration (recognizable and
comparable anywhere) with a chapter on pronounciation (anyhow you have
to learn the diffrence between the script and the pronounciation if you
start learnig ANY foreing language/or words).
Best regards
Maciej
Peter T. Daniels
> Well - The original author (Thomas Merton) was no linguist but a
> practitioner of Christian and Eastern mysticism. He didn't care about
> corect/incorect transcription at all. The problem is that the book I am
> working on is a choise of texts from Merton "elaborated" by certain
> Woodcock who tries to "explain" and make "more correct" - so he has
> addes introductions to each chapter, footnotes etc. - thus making the
> situation worse. I was asked by the publishing house who want to edit
> the book in Polish to make necessary corrections (as I am specialist in
> Indian and Chinese philosophies) - so that the text be useful for both
> general public and a specialist (adding some extra footnotes, making
> good transliteration). I have made everything for Indian, Chinese,
> Japanese and Tibetan part, but there remains a 8-page chapter on Sufism
> - where I am no specialist. I cannot leave the chapter looking different
> from the rest - that's why I am looking for some help - which will
> certainly be acknowledged.
You see, when you give fuller information, you can get more useful
answers. Surely materials on Sufism have been published in Polish
before? Doesn't your encyclopedia (whatever the equivalent to the
Britannica or the Great Soviet is) have an article on it, that would
likely mention the Sufi masters? For that matter, unless your library
purged the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, it should be useful as well: it
can't be too hard to go from cyrillic to Polish orthography, and it
probably also provides the Arabic originals in roman transliteration.
> This way we have the inconsistent English popular transcription which I
> cannot change into a consistent Polish one (neither popular nor
> scientific) - If I had scientific, I could easily do the other thing.
>
> > >> At least in scientific (ISO 233)
> > >> transliteration, you also need to be careful with those ' and `
> > >> characters;
> > >
> > > That's why I have asked for them!
> >
> > What I meant by the remark was their exact nature as _characters_. I
> > was pretty sure that those symbols used to transliterate Arabic are not
> > Ascii apostrophe and grave accent, but I wasn't sure of what they
> > really are. Checking from the Unicode standard, from
> > http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf specifically, I found:
> >
> > 02BE MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING
> > transliteration of Arabic hamza (glottal stop)
> > 02BF MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING
> > transliteration of Arabic ain (voiced pharyngeal fricative)
> >
> > So they are _not_ the same as curly quotation marks, despite quite some
> > resemblance.
>
> Oh yes, now I understand your point. Of course they are not curly
> quotation marks.
See my previous posting. They certainly could be curly single quotes, if
that's what your typesetter has available; there's no need to search for
special characters.
> > On the other hand, I'm afraid that such distinctions will
> > be all Greek, so to say, to people who will typeset the translated
> > book.
>
> In Polish we do not use "single quotation marks" so no problem.
Not even an apostrophe to indicate a contraction? How do you write
French names like D'Artagnan?
> > Even if you write the characters correctly e.g. in MS Word,
>
> MS Word is the WORST possible tool for such things as complicated
> trasliteration characters, as the software always tends to "know better"
> what I intended to write - even if I tun off ALL the auto-corrections,
> correct-as-you-type, etc. options, there is still something inside that
> disables correct typing.
>
> That's why I never use MS Word, I stick to WordPerfect.
There is a way to set the "localization" of your MS Word to "Poland."
Even if your localization is set differently, you can set the "language"
for each individual document, and you can even set the "language" for
individual words -- so that your normal spell checker will skip them, or
if you happen to have the dictionary for the other language, it will
spell-check them, too.
> > it's
> > almost certain that some software, hardware, or peopleware component in
> > the chain from your file to a printed book will do something awful to
> > those characters. :-/
>
> I am certain this will happen - but that will be my job to correct them
> again.
And the next time you write about world philosophies, they might do
better!
M. Ranjit Mathews
Maciej St. Zieba wrote:
>
> "M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
>
>>The Hindi spelling is presumably derived from the Urdu spelling which is
>>derived from the Persian spelling.
>
> I don't think Hidi spelling has anything to do with Persian spelling -
> as Persian (and Urdu) uses Arabic script and Hindi uses Devanagari.
Hindi used PersoArabic script too; when the standard became Devanagari,
foreign names were transliterated to Devanagari.
"Mau Ce" is exactly what I meant by a phonemic convention that follows
Polish phonology. C'akra and dz'n'ana look right for Polish phonology.
Polish a's are intermidiate in length between the short Indian a and the
long one, so leaving out length marks (c'akra:, dz'n'a:na) might not
hurt as much as if this were not the case.
Maciej St. Zieba
"Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
> You see, when you give fuller information, you can get more useful
> answers. Surely materials on Sufism have been published in Polish
> before?
Not really.
> Doesn't your encyclopedia (whatever the equivalent to the
> Britannica or the Great Soviet is) have an article on it, that would
> likely mention the Sufi masters?
I've tried - no help.
> For that matter, unless your library
> purged the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, it should be useful as well: it
> can't be too hard to go from cyrillic to Polish orthography, and it
> probably also provides the Arabic originals in roman transliteration.
You have probably never seen Cyrillic orientalist transliterations. It's
a science of its own.
It is as hard to go from Cyrlillic to Polish as it is to English
orthography. Phonetically our two languages have little in common. If
you compare 33 letters of the Polish Latin alphabet, and 33 letters of
the Russian Cyrillic one - you might come to a wrong impression. But we
use several digraphs for sounds for which they have single characters,
and we have at least 8 sounds (written with single characters) they
don't have and they have 7 characters for something that is not
considered sounds in Polish - and what is sometimes consideed close is
in fact very far away - like what coresponds to English ch in Russian
and what is written with cz in Polish, and they have very funny way of
denoting sounds that do not exist in their language and ....
And you have probably not seen (0r seen but not read) The Great Soviet
Encyclopedia. It's as useless for my purpose as toilet paper is. The
didn't deal with such crazy bourgeois imperialist reactionist religious
ideas as sufism.
And Soviet Encylopedia never lowered itself to having any Latin letters
within - especially not for Oriental scripts.
> > Oh yes, now I understand your point. Of course they are not curly
> > quotation marks.
>
> See my previous posting. They certainly could be curly single quotes, if
> that's what your typesetter has available; there's no need to search for
> special characters.
I agree, they can be without any problem, as I said.
> > > On the other hand, I'm afraid that such distinctions will
> > > be all Greek, so to say, to people who will typeset the translated
> > > book.
> >
> > In Polish we do not use "single quotation marks" so no problem.
>
> Not even an apostrophe to indicate a contraction? How do you write
> French names like D'Artagnan?
We do not have apostrophe in Polish - we do not have contractions.
For us "d'Artagnan" is a foreign word - like "'Allah" will be.
> There is a way to set the "localization" of your MS Word to "Poland."
> Even if your localization is set differently, you can set the "language"
> for each individual document, and you can even set the "language" for
> individual words -- so that your normal spell checker will skip them, or
> if you happen to have the dictionary for the other language, it will
> spell-check them, too.
Please, don't try to convince me to M$ Word. I know the details. and be
sure - Word Perfect is a hundred times better. Sometimes I need to use
M$ Word - so I use it without any pains (withou a problem HOW to use it
- but the result is NEVER satisfactory for me). I only hate it as a very
ill-written tool. Bill Gates never had money to test his programs in
details.
Maciej
Maciej St. Zieba
"M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
> "Mau Ce" is exactly what I meant by a phonemic convention that follows
> Polish phonology. C'akra and dz'n'ana look right for Polish phonology.
But awful - against the rules - for Polish orthography.
> Polish a's are intermidiate in length between the short Indian a and the
> long one, so leaving out length marks (c'akra:, dz'n'a:na) might not
> hurt as much as if this were not the case.
Especially that nobody knows what would a "length mark" be in Polish, as
such thing nowadays does not exist (well, it existed in XVIIth century -
as acute).
Maciej
Yusuf B Gursey
> "Maciej St. Zieba" <msz...@uw.lublin.pl> wrote in message news:<3E4E8B34...@uw.lublin.pl>...
> > Hello,
> >
>
> > 2) his full name should be either:
> >
> > 2a) Abu Abdallah Muhammad ben Ibrahim ben Abbad ar-Rundi
> >
> > or:
> > 2b) Abu 'abd-'Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Ish`aq Ibrahim An-nafzi Al-himyari
> > Ar-rundi
> >
> > (which one is correct?)
>
> the first one is colloquial and lower register modern arabic.
>
> the second one is used for classical arabic and formal transcription.
>
> High classical arabic:
>
> ommit the alif of ibn if part of a patronymic, drop nuantion of first
> name with patronymic.
see wright p. 23
the alif is retained if the name following is not that of the
father's, i.e. mother - 3i:sa" ~bnu maryam(a) Jesus, Son of Mary [acc.
to muslim belief, his only parent! but arab and other christains
disagree :)] - grandfather or nickname (which might be the case with
ibn `abba:d) or ancestor (ditto for ibn `abba:d ].
M. Ranjit Mathews
> "M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
>>"Mau Ce" is exactly what I meant by a phonemic convention that follows
>>Polish phonology. C'akra and dz'n'ana look right for Polish phonology.
>
> But awful - against the rules - for Polish orthography.
Really? In what way is it against the rules? BTW, following the Marathi
pronunciation, the 2nd word would be dn'a:n. Following a certain other
common pronunciation, it would be gn'a:n.
>>Polish a's are intermidiate in length between the short Indian a and the
>>long one, so leaving out length marks (c'akra, dz'n'a:na) might not
>>hurt as much as if this were not the case.
>
> Especially that nobody knows what would a "length mark" be in Polish.
Right; I meant the lack of length marks might not hurt as much.
Would you consider rzurzu pronouncable by a Pole? That would be close to
the pronunciation of an Old Tamil word meaning sleep. How about a:rzc'a
(week), magirzc'c'i (joy), pa:rzpal (mimic), or LaLLa:l (bat)? (By L, I
mean 'ew', the first letter in Lodz).
> Maciej
Yusuf B Gursey
: Hello,
: I am working on a Polish translation of a book about Thomas Merton
where
: there are some Arabic words, which I would like to write correctly
: according to the Polish standards, but as I know no Arabic, and I
know
: no specialist in Arabic language, I would need your help, if
possible.
well, now that I got the arabic spellings, someone else moght help you
use a more conventional approach suited for publication.
: (see at the end the how I would like to transcribe the letters of
the
: Arabic alphabet in order to avoid any ambiguity - also any
differences
: in encoding)
I'll write it in my style, in High Classical unless otherwise
specified. You
could figure your own conventions.
: How should one write correctly the fillowing words:
: 1) Ibn Abbad (a Sufi mystic of XIIIth Century)
ibn 3abba:d
: 2) his full name should be either:
: 2a) Abu Abdallah Muhammad ben Ibrahim ben Abbad ar-Rundi
: or:
: 2b) Abu 'abd-'Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Ish`aq Ibrahim An-nafzi
Al-himyari
: Ar-rundi
: (which one is correct?)
second is fuller and more classical and what one finds in the entry
Ibn Abbad
(Ibn `Abba:d) in enc. of islam II.
ibn 3abba:d seems to be a pen name, nickname or referring to his clan
rathe
rthan a true patronymic. The banu: `abba:d were a "Ta:'ifa(t)" or
petty dynaty
in muslim spain.
: 3) Runda - the city he was born (now Ronda in Spain)
runda(t) or rundah pronounced runda .
: 4) Sale - the city in Morocco where he baceme a Sufi
sala:
but,
(official) French spelling Sale (with acute accent on e, Salé);
colloquial Arabic sla
: 5) rajab - the 6th month
rajab
: 6) raby'al-awwal - the 1st month
rabi:3u-~l'awwal
: some Sufi terms:
: 7) suf
Su:f (S = Sa:d)
: 8) tasawwuf
taSawwuf
: 9) dhikr
*dh*ikr
: 10) fana'
fana:'
: 10a) fana'-fi='Allah
fana:'(un) fi(:)~lla:h(i)
: 10b) fana'-al-fani'
fana:'u-~lfa:ni: (not fa:ni'
: 11) tawakkul
tawakkul
: 12) zuhhad
zuhha:d
: 12a) az-zuhd
az-zuhd
: 13) mawlid an-nabi
mawlidu-~nnabiyy(i) (nabiyy may also sometimes be written nabi:' , the
particular work AFAIK has nabiyy)
: some other names
: 14) Abdul Aziz (a modern Sufi mystic, lived in 1940-ies/1960-ies)
3abdu-~l3azi:z
: 15) ibn Qunfud - a friend of Ibn Abbad.
ibnu qunfu*dh*
Peter T. Daniels
>
> "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
>
> > You see, when you give fuller information, you can get more useful
> > answers. Surely materials on Sufism have been published in Polish
> > before?
>
> Not really.
>
> > Doesn't your encyclopedia (whatever the equivalent to the
> > Britannica or the Great Soviet is) have an article on it, that would
> > likely mention the Sufi masters?
>
> I've tried - no help.
>
> > For that matter, unless your library
> > purged the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, it should be useful as well: it
> > can't be too hard to go from cyrillic to Polish orthography, and it
> > probably also provides the Arabic originals in roman transliteration.
>
> You have probably never seen Cyrillic orientalist transliterations. It's
> a science of its own.
Only the works of I. M. Diakonoff, who was pretty darn respectable
whatever language he wrote in ...
> It is as hard to go from Cyrlillic to Polish as it is to English
> orthography. Phonetically our two languages have little in common. If
> you compare 33 letters of the Polish Latin alphabet, and 33 letters of
> the Russian Cyrillic one - you might come to a wrong impression. But we
> use several digraphs for sounds for which they have single characters,
> and we have at least 8 sounds (written with single characters) they
> don't have and they have 7 characters for something that is not
> considered sounds in Polish - and what is sometimes consideed close is
> in fact very far away - like what coresponds to English ch in Russian
> and what is written with cz in Polish, and they have very funny way of
> denoting sounds that do not exist in their language and ....
But neither of those two sets of letters exists in Arabic, so they're
irrelevant.
> And you have probably not seen (0r seen but not read) The Great Soviet
> Encyclopedia. It's as useless for my purpose as toilet paper is. The
> didn't deal with such crazy bourgeois imperialist reactionist religious
> ideas as sufism.
>
> And Soviet Encylopedia never lowered itself to having any Latin letters
> within - especially not for Oriental scripts.
I've only used the English translation of it, and then only for
Diakonoff's article on writing systems.
> > > Oh yes, now I understand your point. Of course they are not curly
> > > quotation marks.
> >
> > See my previous posting. They certainly could be curly single quotes, if
> > that's what your typesetter has available; there's no need to search for
> > special characters.
>
> I agree, they can be without any problem, as I said.
>
> > > > On the other hand, I'm afraid that such distinctions will
> > > > be all Greek, so to say, to people who will typeset the translated
> > > > book.
> > >
> > > In Polish we do not use "single quotation marks" so no problem.
> >
> > Not even an apostrophe to indicate a contraction? How do you write
> > French names like D'Artagnan?
>
> We do not have apostrophe in Polish - we do not have contractions.
> For us "d'Artagnan" is a foreign word - like "'Allah" will be.
You don't indicate the <'> at the beginning of <Allah> because it's not
a hamza, it's only an alif (being the definite article).
> > There is a way to set the "localization" of your MS Word to "Poland."
> > Even if your localization is set differently, you can set the "language"
> > for each individual document, and you can even set the "language" for
> > individual words -- so that your normal spell checker will skip them, or
> > if you happen to have the dictionary for the other language, it will
> > spell-check them, too.
>
> Please, don't try to convince me to M$ Word. I know the details. and be
> sure - Word Perfect is a hundred times better. Sometimes I need to use
> M$ Word - so I use it without any pains (withou a problem HOW to use it
> - but the result is NEVER satisfactory for me). I only hate it as a very
> ill-written tool. Bill Gates never had money to test his programs in
> details.
I use FrameMaker for everything important, but I have to use Word when
submitting articles to editors, and when doing editing jobs because of
the (actually very useful) Track Changes feature, which publishers rely
on in the absence of marked-up paper mss.
xlmcn
> Maciej St. Zieba wrote:
>
>> "M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
>>
>>> "Mau Ce" is exactly what I meant by a phonemic convention that follows
>>> Polish phonology. C'akra and dz'n'ana look right for Polish phonology.
>>
>>
>> But awful - against the rules - for Polish orthography.
>
>
> Really? In what way is it against the rules? BTW, following the Marathi
> pronunciation, the 2nd word would be dn'a:n. Following a certain other
> common pronunciation, it would be gn'a:n.
>
>>> Polish a's are intermidiate in length between the short Indian a and the
>>> long one, so leaving out length marks (c'akra, dz'n'a:na) might not
>>> hurt as much as if this were not the case.
>>
>>
>> Especially that nobody knows what would a "length mark" be in Polish.
>
>
> Right; I meant the lack of length marks might not hurt as much.
>
> Would you consider rzurzu pronouncable by a Pole?
But how would you pronounce 'rz'? Like in "marznąć" or like in "rzeka"?
'rz' pronounced like in "marznąć" appears maybe in this word only
and its forms. Pronounced like in "rzeka" it cannot appear just enywhere
you would like. It is pronounced nowadays like 'ż' or 'sz' and spelled 'rz'
only for historical reasons. I don't believe it is used to transcribe
foreign words or names written in non-Latin scripts (like "Żenia").
Yusuf B Gursey
> Maciej St. Zieba wrote:
:> We do not have apostrophe in Polish - we do not have contractions.
:> For us "d'Artagnan" is a foreign word - like "'Allah" will be.
: You don't indicate the <'> at the beginning of <Allah> because it's
not
: a hamza, it's only an alif (being the definite article).
actually it exists phonetically if cntext initial. on arabic it is
optional to graphically indicate it or not, since it is a waSla.
dictionaries usually don't. incidentally, in the writing in the
current iraqi flag, it is indicated. in romanized transliterations it
is not usually indicated.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
>
>> Maciej St. Zieba wrote:
>>
>>> "M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
>>
>> Would you consider rzurzu pronouncable by a Pole?
>
>
>
> But how would you pronounce 'rz'?
Like a devoiced Czech r<hacek>* with a trifle more airspace to render it
frictionless.
> Like in "marznąć" or like in "rzeka"?
> 'rz' pronounced like in "marznąć" appears maybe in this word only
> and its forms. Pronounced like in "rzeka" it cannot appear just enywhere
> you would like. It is pronounced nowadays like 'ż' or 'sz' and spelled 'rz'
> only for historical reasons. I don't believe it is used to transcribe
> foreign words or names written in non-Latin scripts (like "Żenia").
>
Ah! I thought it was the same as a Czech r<hacek>.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> >
> > Would you consider rzurzu pronouncable by a Pole?
>
> But how would you pronounce 'rz'?
Close to rz in Dvorzak but voiceless and frictionless.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> "M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
>
> > "Mau Ce" is exactly what I meant by a phonemic convention that follows
> > Polish phonology. C'akra and dz'n'ana look right for Polish phonology.
>
> But awful - against the rules - for Polish orthography.
I'm still curious about what is wrong with these spellings.
BTW, I would prefer dn'ana to dz'n'ana and would prefer dn'an even
more since the last a is a schwa and it's considered more acceptable
to drop it (like in Hindi and Marathi) than to make it as long as the
Polish a. In the case of c'akra, since kr is a consonant cluster, it
is considered more acceptable to keep the a - it is retained after a
consonant cluster in Hindi and Marathi.
Maciej St. Zieba
>
> Maciej St. Zieba wrote:
> > "M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
> >>"Mau Ce" is exactly what I meant by a phonemic convention that follows
> >>Polish phonology. C'akra and dz'n'ana look right for Polish phonology.
> >
> > But awful - against the rules - for Polish orthography.
>
> Really? In what way is it against the rules?
letters c' s' z' and n' and digraph dz' can appear only:
before a consonant
in the final position of a word
in the final position of a compound (like c'wierc'inteligent*)
they can never appear before a vowel; if the sound appears before a
vowel, the letter (digraph) is replaced by a combination:
ci si zi ni and dzi respectively.
In these cases the letter "i" is not pronounced separately, only
indicates the "softening" (palatalization) of the previous consonant.
These rules are learned in the 1st grade.
* c'wierc'inteligent = a 1/4-intelligent = a person pretendinding to be
intelligent (educated) but in fact lacking much of the usual
intelligence and/or normal wisdom one would expect from an educated
person.
> BTW, following the Marathi
> pronunciation, the 2nd word would be dn'a:n. Following a certain other
> common pronunciation, it would be gn'a:n.
Yes, I know, but I follow what is supposed to be the original Sanskrit
pronounciation.
>
> >>Polish a's are intermidiate in length between the short Indian a and the
> >>long one, so leaving out length marks (c'akra, dz'n'a:na) might not
> >>hurt as much as if this were not the case.
> >
> > Especially that nobody knows what would a "length mark" be in Polish.
>
> Right; I meant the lack of length marks might not hurt as much.
It doesn't hurt - and moste Poles don;'t care about such thing as vowel
length, but when I need to indicate it - following the Finnish and
Japanese examples - I indicate long vowels with double vowels.
> Would you consider rzurzu pronouncable by a Pole? That would be close to
> the pronunciation of an Old Tamil word meaning sleep. How about a:rzc'a
> (week), magirzc'c'i (joy), pa:rzpal (mimic), or LaLLa:l (bat)? (By L, I
> mean 'ew', the first letter in Lodz).
no problem pronouncing "rzurzu" (if you mean the Polish rz = z* = zh in
Brezhnev or similar to English s in leisure). In other cases the Pole
would pronounce "rz" as "sz" (by assimilation to c' or p).
"magirzc'c'i" would be quite difficult for a Pole - double affricates
are not uncommon in Polish but they rarely occur in a company of another
consonant.
Maciej
Maciej St. Zieba
xlmcn wrote:
>
> > Would you consider rzurzu pronouncable by a Pole?
>
> But how would you pronounce 'rz'? Like in "marznąć" or like in "rzeka"?
> 'rz' pronounced like in "marznąć" appears maybe in this word only
> and its forms.
In marzna*c' the "rz" is pronounced as two sounds r and z separately.
There is another word with this pronounciation, but I have now
forgotten which one (except for the "word" erzet - being the name for
the digraph rz.
Pronounced like in "rzeka" it cannot appear just enywhere
> you would like.
It is pronounced nowadays like 'ż' or 'sz' and spelled 'rz'
> only for historical reasons. I don't believe it is used to transcribe
> foreign words or names written in non-Latin scripts (like "Żenia").
And when it follows t or d the whole combinations "trz" and "drz" have
created new sounds in modern Polish = long affricates
"Rz" is not used for transcription - except that it used to be used for
transcribing Czech r-haczek (which is not the same sond, anyhow).
But when talking about popular transcription - I use the "trz" and "drz"
to transcribe the sounds of Tibetan (Lhasa dialect) - very close to
those Polish ones - typically written in English popular transcriptions
as tr and dr, and being written in Tibetan script as kr, tr or pr and as
gr, dr or br respectively (the third in the Tibetan thr - written khr,
thr or phr) has no corespondent in Polish as we have no aspirate sounds.
Maciej
Maciej St. Zieba
"Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
>
> > It is as hard to go from Cyrlillic to Polish as it is to English
> > orthography. Phonetically our two languages have little in common. If
> > you compare 33 letters of the Polish Latin alphabet, and 33 letters of
> > the Russian Cyrillic one - you might come to a wrong impression. But we
> > use several digraphs for sounds for which they have single characters,
> > and we have at least 8 sounds (written with single characters) they
> > don't have and they have 7 characters for something that is not
> > considered sounds in Polish - and what is sometimes consideed close is
> > in fact very far away - like what coresponds to English ch in Russian
> > and what is written with cz in Polish, and they have very funny way of
> > denoting sounds that do not exist in their language and ....
>
> But neither of those two sets of letters exists in Arabic, so they're
> irrelevant.
It depends on what do you mean by "neither of those two sets of letters
exists". Letters as such of course exist only in respective alpahbets,
but the sounds they try to render exist in other alphabets (including
Arabic). Take into consideration Russian "sh" and "kh" ("X"), whereas
Russians don't have anything like "h", we have "h", "ch" (for "kh"), and
"sz" (for "sh") etc. Russinas use yotacized-vowels in tehir
transcriptions (ya, yu, ye/e mixing with yo/e"), and don't have a letter
foy "y" as in English "your" (unless you consider i-kratkoe, as
corresponding to this "y"), they use "myagkiy znak" and "tvyordyy znak"
for varoius purposes having nothing to do with the actual sound value of
those signs (like `ayin and hamza) etc. ......
Long vowels? No accents used in Russian.
Emphatic consonants? ...
Enough examples.
> I've only used the English translation of it, and then only for
> Diakonoff's article on writing systems.
That explains everything. I'd like to read this article - what was its
title (if possible in Russian?) -we still keep the Soviet Encyclopedia
in our library.
> You don't indicate the <'> at the beginning of <Allah> because it's not
> a hamza, it's only an alif (being the definite article).
I don't understand - alif is a letter, not an article definite or
indefinite, n'est-ce pas?
> I use FrameMaker for everything important, but I have to use Word when
> submitting articles to editors, and when doing editing jobs because of
> the (actually very useful) Track Changes feature, which publishers rely
> on in the absence of marked-up paper mss.
WordPerfect also has such a function, but the publishers here don't like
WordPerfect (Microsoft monopoly prevails) and still prefer using paper
mss. for what they cannot see in Word (like Vietnamese accents).
Maciej
Peter T. Daniels
I assume it starts with <pism->, no?
> > You don't indicate the <'> at the beginning of <Allah> because it's not
> > a hamza, it's only an alif (being the definite article).
>
> I don't understand - alif is a letter, not an article definite or
> indefinite, n'est-ce pas?
The Arabic letter alif is not used like the aleph of Hebrew or Syriac:
it denotes only the long aa. To note the glottal stop you use hamza,
which is the squiggle that sits on top of alif, yaa', or waw (depending
on the surrounding vowels) or on the line, interrupting the sequence of
letters in a word. Thus the definite article is always transliterated
<al-> and never <'al->. You need to know, for any initial-appearing
vowel, whether the Arabic is written with hamza or with the mark for an
"eliding" glottal stop that Yusuf mentioned yesterday. (IVth Form verbs
have hamza, imperatives, with a prothetic vowel, don't.)
The name Allah is, morphologically and orthographically, the definite
article prefixed to a word for 'god', 'the god'.
> > I use FrameMaker for everything important, but I have to use Word when
> > submitting articles to editors, and when doing editing jobs because of
> > the (actually very useful) Track Changes feature, which publishers rely
> > on in the absence of marked-up paper mss.
>
> WordPerfect also has such a function, but the publishers here don't like
> WordPerfect (Microsoft monopoly prevails) and still prefer using paper
> mss. for what they cannot see in Word (like Vietnamese accents).
I can type Vietnamese in Word because I have a Vietnamese font. The word
processor doesn't matter.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> before a consonant
> in the final position of a word
> in the final position of a compound (like c'wierc'inteligent*)
>
> they can never appear before a vowel; if the sound appears before a
> vowel, the letter (digraph) is replaced by a combination:
> ci si zi ni and dzi respectively.
>
> In these cases the letter "i" is not pronounced separately, only
> indicates the "softening" (palatalization) of the previous consonant.
> These rules are learned in the 1st grade.
Interesting. It doesn't look like [Cilp@CAstr@] (Shilpashastra) can be
spelt in Polish, then.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> Brezhnev or similar to English s in leisure).
If you pronounce it such that the listener can't tell whether it's
yuyu or zhuzhu, it would be about right. zhuru with an American rhotic
r might be a reasonably acceptable mispronunciation.
Hans-Christian Holm
> Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>
> > 02BE MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING
> > transliteration of Arabic hamza (glottal stop)
> > 02BF MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING
> > transliteration of Arabic ain (voiced pharyngeal fricative)
> >
> in transliterating Semitic languages. Harrassowitz, when they used real
> type rather than camera-ready printer output, often used their
> rough-breathing and smooth-breathing signs, because they have a bit more
> heft and are easier to distinguish. The simple half-rings are fairly
> unattractive because the uniform-width lines don't harmonize well with
> the shaded curves of the letters of a usual text font.
That's perhaps why Unicode also offers these:
02C0 MODIFIER LETTER GLOTTAL STOP
. typographical alternate for 02BC or 02BE
02C1 MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED GLOTTAL STOP
. typographical alternate for 02BF
(02BC is "MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE", which seems to be identical to the
0027 apostrophe. I don't know exactly why it's duplicated, since it looks
the same, and both are "apostrophes". My guess is that the 02BC is meant to
be used for other purposes than the 0027, the same way as you use different
A's for Latin and Cyrillic.)
Hans-Christian Holm
Maciej St. Zięba
"Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
>
> > > I've only used the English translation of it, and then only for
> > > Diakonoff's article on writing systems.
> >
> > That explains everything. I'd like to read this article - what was its
> > title (if possible in Russian?) -we still keep the Soviet Encyclopedia
> > in our library.
>
> I assume it starts with <pism->, no?
Maybe. Or maybe sth else. What was the English title, then.
> The Arabic letter alif is not used like the aleph of Hebrew or Syriac:
> it denotes only the long aa. To note the glottal stop you use hamza,
(...)
Thanks for explaining. Very important. I recall some time ago having
heard soemthing like that but completely forgotten since then.
> > WordPerfect also has such a function, but the publishers here don't like
> > WordPerfect (Microsoft monopoly prevails) and still prefer using paper
> > mss. for what they cannot see in Word (like Vietnamese accents).
>
> I can type Vietnamese in Word because I have a Vietnamese font. The word
> processor doesn't matter.
You have the font and I have the font but THEY don't have it. And even
then once everything is clear within Word, they finally convert
everything to some "professional" fonts, which causes that I have to
start the corrections anew and again.... ;-(((
Maciej
Maciej St. Zięba
> You need to know, for any initial-appearing
> vowel, whether the Arabic is written with hamza or with the mark for an
> "eliding" glottal stop that Yusuf mentioned yesterday. (IVth Form verbs
> have hamza, imperatives, with a prothetic vowel, don't.)
In which article was it? - I could'nt find any post mentioning that. And
no Yusuf's yesterday's (or maybe Monday's) post, either.
Maciej
Peter T. Daniels
>
> "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
> >
>
> > > > I've only used the English translation of it, and then only for
> > > > Diakonoff's article on writing systems.
> > >
> > > That explains everything. I'd like to read this article - what was its
> > > title (if possible in Russian?) -we still keep the Soviet Encyclopedia
> > > in our library.
> >
> > I assume it starts with <pism->, no?
>
> Maybe. Or maybe sth else. What was the English title, then.
Either "Writing" or "Writing Systems." (Unfortunately I haven't filed
the copy back where it belongs.)
> > The Arabic letter alif is not used like the aleph of Hebrew or Syriac:
> > it denotes only the long aa. To note the glottal stop you use hamza,
> (...)
>
> Thanks for explaining. Very important. I recall some time ago having
> heard soemthing like that but completely forgotten since then.
>
>
> > > WordPerfect also has such a function, but the publishers here don't like
> > > WordPerfect (Microsoft monopoly prevails) and still prefer using paper
> > > mss. for what they cannot see in Word (like Vietnamese accents).
> >
> > I can type Vietnamese in Word because I have a Vietnamese font. The word
> > processor doesn't matter.
>
> You have the font and I have the font but THEY don't have it. And even
(Actually we probably have different fonts ...)
> then once everything is clear within Word, they finally convert
> everything to some "professional" fonts, which causes that I have to
> start the corrections anew and again.... ;-(((
That's not Word's fault, that's the publisher's fault! If they're
publishing linguistics, they need to have fonts with all the necessary
characters. (I have an article in *Lingua Posnaniensis*, and they did a
fine job.)
Peter T. Daniels
Oh- I don't know -- look for hamzatalwasl? (I think he wrote it without
spaces.)
Maciej St. Zieba
>
> Your local academic library should have the Encyclopaedia of Islam,
> which is published simultaneously in English and French; you can look up
> all your people in it and find the information you need.
I have checked today, they don't have it (I told you, there are no
Islamic or Arabian studies here) but hopefully - thanks to your advice -
I have found "Dictionnaire historique de l'Islam" of J. & D. Sourdel,
and "Handworterbuch des Islam" of A.J.Wensinck and J.H. Kramers, and
also a reprint 1977 of "Distionary of Islam" of T.P. Hughes of 1885.
I was able to find the correct writing of most of the words.
Yusuf B Gursey
this one:
From: Yusuf B Gursey (y...@theworld.com)
Subject: Re: Arabic writing of some names
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Date: 2003-02-17 00:45:44 PST
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:<3E4FA4...@worldnet.att.net>...
> Maciej St. Zieba wrote:
:> We do not have apostrophe in Polish - we do not have contractions.
:> For us "d'Artagnan" is a foreign word - like "'Allah" will be.
: You don't indicate the <'> at the beginning of <Allah> because it's not
: a hamza, it's only an alif (being the definite article).
actually it exists phonetically if cntext initial. on arabic it is