Arabic-L:LING:Response to revised clarified transliteration query

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 01 Apr 2002
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Response to revised clarified transliteration query

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1)
Date:  01 Apr 2002
From:khorshid <khorshid at aucegypt.edu>
Subject:Response to revised clarified transliteration query

Dear Emma,

I don't know references. I only have a quick remark. When we write
foreign
words in Arabic we write long vowels for short ones (smiith instead of
Smith).
We do have short vowels in Arabic as diacritic marks, but we don't
normally
use them (except in special cases). So, if we read in Arabic a foreign
word
that we don't know, we may place any short vowel at random with every
consonant. It seems to me? that to the Arab reader long vowels are
closer to
their short counterparts than short vowels of a differen quality. Let me
give
an example of this point:

If the name Smith is written as s+m+th (consonants only), it may be
pronouced
by an Arab who hasn't heard the name before as
smath
smuth
smith
or even simth

Now, it seems that smiith is closer to smith than smath, smuth or simth
is.

salaam.

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End of Arabic-L:  01 Apr 2002